would we expect a proper and well-oiled motion in our House of Peers! If my Lord the Marquis Baker attempted any little piece of pilfering for the sake of his private tooth, would there not be my Lord the Viscount Butcher to keep him in check? If my Lord the Duke Scavenger employed his honours in support of dirty streets and unswept lanes, would not my Lord the Earl Tavern-Keeper coalesce with my Lord Baron Shopkeeper, and bear down the proposed iniquity? We could show, indeed, that with such a House of Peers the affairs of the nation would proceed in admirable style. And then, what better obstacle could be had to the innovations of a revolutionary House of Commons? House of Commons has already walked, and, some years hence, may again walk over the necks of the existing House of Peers; but with our House they would know better than try any such audacity! We shall write a volume soon on this subject, and lay it at the feet of his gracious Majesty; but, in the meantime, we warn all men against the small and stupid measure on which they were violently bent, as was said in the columns of the Chronicle and the Times! Create The a few more Peers, to overcome the obstinacy of the present assembly! Give privilege to a few more to cure the arrogance of a privileged assembly! If you put a man in a starched cravat, will he not necessarily be stiffnecked? If you gird the healthy branch of a tree, will not the sap cease to rise through it in sufficient abundance? will it not become shrivelled, privileged,—dead to all good purposes? If you shut a sane man in a mad-house, especially if he be naturally a good creature, or weakish in the intellects, is there not potent ground for the suspicion that he will soon be no oddity amongst the inmates? Creation of Peers! Bah! Dig up the causes of your hostility to the present House, good countrymen! and try, if these causes would not exist in regard of a modified House, in their fullest force. Is it that there is a fatal virus-a hereditary taint in the blood of your Wellingtons, Winchelseas, Caernarvons, and Londonderrys? No such thing: these are as good men to spoil as you could find any where; too good some of them for being spoiled, which is the pity. The virus is the atmosphere of that tapestried hall: it is full of malaria. Privilege-irresponsible power-dignity-dignity unmerited, that is the virus. The cup of power is sweet, but fatally intoxicating! Listen to one short extract from the illustrious teacher of the modern world, The following is from BENTHAM'S Letter to his Fellow-Citizens of France : Is it that, How then stands the truth of the case? the more there is of this dignity, with its et cæteras, the more there is of this same perfect aptitude? Oh no: but, contrariwise, the less. For as to appropriate moral aptitude, this is the fruit of self-denial, itself an irksome sort of operation; as to appropriate intellectual aptitude, and active aptitude,-these are the fruits of hard labour-another irksome sort of operation: and the quantity of them is naturally in proportion to the quantity of need; and, the less the need a mar has of any irksome sort of operation, the less does he employ of it. Of this same dignity, the use is, the procuring for the possessor of it, respect, deference, compliance with such demands as it pleases him to make,-compliance with his wish and desire, in so far as it is known, or can be guessed at and of all these good things, by means of which are produceable and produced all other sorts of good things-the more a man can have, without either of the above-mentioned irksome operations, without which appropriate aptitude is not to be had,-the less of it will he have need of; and, accordingly, the less of it will he give himself. Accordingly, if you would see that relative inaptitude which is correspondent and opposite to official appropriate aptitude, if you want to see that same relative inaptitude or in one word, depravity-in its several gradations, look to the top of the scale: there you may see Kings. Exactly as their power and dignity is their depravity so, mathematically speaking, less and less, as they have less and less of those same attributes. To come down to Peers. So it will be with Peers. True it is your Peers, if you continue to have any, will not be so bad as ours: for they will not have so much they will not have near so much-power, along with their honour and dignity. They will not have the nomination of the self-constituted and self-stiled Representatives of the People; they will not be in the habit of having distant dependencies obtained and retained, for the sake of official situations established in them, for the purpose, and with the effect, of being filled by Peers, or elder or younger sons of Peers, for the profit of depreda tion, and pleasure of oppression, to be exercised by those same living receptacles of honour and dignity. The consequences of any such burthen would, in your part of the world, be, for some time, too bad for endurance; and therefore it would not, till after a considerable length of time, be endeavoured to be fastened on you. But, when all this is taken off, there is surely enough left, to prevent you from consenting to be loaded with any such encumberance as it would load you with. To come home to your Chamber of Peers. Part and parcel of the matter of corruption would be,-every atom of honour, every atom of dignity,-meaning always, factitious honour and factitious dignity, manufactured as above, every spark of lustre, and every spark of splendour, possessed by the Chamber of Peers, or by any member of it, as such. Let it be called influence-influence simply, or legitimate influence-would it-now, at any rate, be the less clearly seen to be the corruption that it is? Would not the speaking of it, as necessary, or even contributory, to the support of good government, be, by all lovers of good government, regarded as an endeavour to produce illusion ?—maleficent illusion? These questions will assuredly be seen to furnish their own answer. There is vast wisdom here, as in every thing that fell from that august prophet's lips. Sometime soon we shall return to what he has taught us, and we write now only to say, that we intend to teach that wisdom to all other men. Meanwhile, What is to be done with the Peers?—what is to be done on behalf of the patriotic assembly, an excellent, and talented, and meek House of Commons? That is the poser! One solitary gleam of light breaks through the darkness. If the House of Lords perseveres in its perverse and obstinate endeavour to frighten Lord Grey and Lord John Russell, their conduct will be actionable at common law. We throw out this hint for the especial benefit of our friend, Henry Cockburn, who was said, last session, to have shivered not a little, because of the perils of the Constitution. Let Henry Cockburn prosecute forthwith, if violence be threatened again. If the King's leiges have no right to protection against being put in terror, it is time the thing should be known. For ourselves, good Lords! we are afflicted by no fears! Your blustering is innocuous; for we know, that in opposition to the nation you are as-CHAFF. When their Whigships shall be pleased to remove their massive bodies from in front of you, we will rejoice in showing you this and many other truths; and, if we judge the signs of the times aright, that season is at hand. ADAH; A SKETCH FROM THE BYRON PORTFOLIO. ADAH is the very essence of the purest earthly love; love which no being can turn from its object, no hardships cool, no crimes sever. In all her words and actions there is exemplified a heart overflowing with kindness,-a heart which pours its treasures, like the rains of heaven, upon "the evil and the good." She cannot form a conception of unkindness: her whole nature is so essentially love, that the opposite feeling is to her an unknown thing. Yet Adah distinguishes between the love due to the Creator and that due to the creature. Thus, when the arch-fiend, by expatiating on the beauty of the starry host, endeavours to wile her into the meshes of that net which has already so completely enveloped her husband, how delightfully her whole soul speaks forth in her language! She tells him she gazes on these beautiful symbols of the Eternal with a feeling of deep delight she loves them, for they are so beautiful. She inquires, touchingly, if they too must die, and is glad when she is told that they will outlast her and her posterity for ages ;-she would not have such bright and splendid things come under the doom of man's disobedience. here she stops, in the calm, trusting love she bears to their Maker. It is with a feeling something similar that she looks upon Lucifer. She admires his beauty; she is fascinated by some unknown power of attraction to his presence; she cannot spurn him ;-but in all the devotedness of love, she calls upon her beloved Cain to save her from him. She cannot gainsay his arguments; yet she sees unhappiness stamped upon his beauty, and her heart tells her that goodness can never be unhappy. Trembling with the indistinct fear, how beautifully she exclaims, Yet "Thou seem'st unhappy! do not make us so, And I will weep for thee!" Adah loved her husband most deeply. When he is about to leave her, how earnestly she entreats him to stay. She cannot bear the thought of trusting him without her into the company of this mysterious being. And when Lucifer, dreading that her persuasions will be successful in detaining his intended victim, authoritatively commands him instantly to leave her, how intrepidly she exclaims, in all the undauntedness of love, daring even a power whose magnitude she could not comprehend, "Who Art thou that steppest between heart and heart ?" Ere he departs, however, she must have assur. Mystery of Cain. "Alone! oh my God! Who could be happy and alone, or good? Adah had not felt the curse of the fall. Adam, Eve, Abel, Zillah, and her husband,―all, though in different moods, mourned over the expulsion from Eden; but she was happy. In her husband, her children, and their society, she could make an Eden as bright and beautiful as that paradise itself; without them she "could not, nor would be happy." With them she could be so, despite even of Death. Death she feared not, because she did not associate with it the idea of separation from her family. Therefore it was to her most truly but an "awful shadow." But a great part of Adah's joy consists in her children, especially Enoch. This contemplation was a never-failing source of pleasure. Cain gazes upon Enoch's beauty; but the thought recalls the poisonous language of the Tempter. The very innocence and loveliness of his firstborn brings to him heart-rending anticipations of future unhappiness. When the infant smiles in its sleep, he thinks it is dreaming of the lost Paradise; and bitterly bids it dream of it, for that is all it will ever taste of its happiness. But Adah thinks of her infant's beauty, and the mirrored resemblance it bears to her husband and herself; and draws pleasure from the idea that it will one day enjoy the same pleasure in contemplating its offspring. In the meantime, Cain, breathing but the envenomed accents of the arch-fiend, utters a wish that his darling boy were rather dashed to pieces on the spot, than exposed to the train of miseries which his gloomy imagination pictures forth as the inevitable lot of his offspring. The mother, engrossed with her own pleasing ideas, hears but indistinctly the words; yet the fearful expression fills her with horror. Her heart leaps up instantly, and, starting in an agony of natural love and fear, she exclaims,― "Touch not the child! my child-thy child, oh, Cain!”, Here the character of the wife is for the moment absorbed in that of the mother. All love, all pleasure, is centred in the unconscious child; all concern is engrossed in its safety. At the moment, she could brave even her husband, for the sake of her darling boy. When Cain explains that his language was nought save a wish that such had happened, rather than he should live to be as unhappy as his sire, this thought is scarcely more tolerable than the other. She would not forego the plea- | sure of watching over and nursing her child, for Eden. With what heartfelt pleasure she expatiates upon the beauty of the rosy sleeper! With what maternal pride she exclaims,"Talk not of pain! The childless cherub well might envy thee The pleasures of a parent!" Her heart is swelling with the delightful feeling, and she cannot understand how her beloved Cain can be unhappy while the same source of joy is open to him. With what touching unconsciousness of evil she says, "Surely a father's blessing may avert The blessing of a parent is to her a sovereign talisman. No evil influence can counteract it in her estimation. Armed with this, she is not afraid to trust her darling boy, even in the reach of the dread serpent, whose power and malignity are so often the theme of discourse with her parents and their family. But, though Adah's heart was so full of connubial and maternal love, yet its exhaustless fountain had another outlet: Adah loved her parents, and her brother and sister, with a most fervent love. Their company forms one of the essential parts of her actual Eden. She views the Supreme as the Parent of All, and she praises him for having created "These best and beauteous beings!" When the angel utters the fearful words, "Thou hast slain thy brother, And who shall warrant thee against thy son ?" The idea" speaks daggers" to her. Then she is before our mind's eye, as if struck by a thunderbolt, gasping for breath. The horror of the thought has almost petrified her. Her eyes are fixed wildly on vacancy, while her arms clutch the terrified child with fearful force. As soon as she can muster breath she hurriedly exclaims, "Angel of light! be merciful,-nor say, That this poor aching breast now nourishes A murderer in my boy, and of his father !" The pitying angel assures her, not; yet then, even, she is not entirely calm. The storm has not wholly passed; some dregs of it have yet to blow by, ere the agitation can entirely cease. During this period her sorrow for the death of Abel has been hidden, but not destroyed. Ere she leaves the spot she takes a last look, and the Her very nature is exemplified, when she declares floodgates of her heart strain with the ill-stemthem, "To be beloved more than all save Thee!" All her desires are bounded in this simple and beautiful petition, with which she concludes her prayer,― "Let me love Thee and them!" There can be nothing in prayer more comprehensive; it embraces all our duties to Creator and creatures, and these, too, in their most delightful form. But it is after the horrid crime that her hus band has committed that the character of Adah shines forth in its most ennobling light. In that, like the impugned Princess of Saxon times, she has walked the red-hot ordeal; and her love comes forth from the fiery trial, without an item of alloy, pure as the sun in his meridian splendour. At first, when the agonized Eve accuses him of the crime, how eagerly she starts forth in his defence! With what undoubting sincerity she calls upon her beloved Cain to free himself from the accusation! Though the undenying silence leaves no doubt of his guilt, what can be more heart-rending than the appeal she makes to Eve to stay her curses! "Curse him not, mother, for he is thy son! med torrent of grief that presses against them, and she stoops down and kisses the body with a heart almost bursting. Tenderly and most mournfully she bewails the early doom of her gentle brother; yet she dare not give vent to her grief. How truly she says, "Of all who mourn for thee, I alone must not weep!" She was denied even the poor consolation of giving her sorrow scope. Like Rebecca in Ivanhoe, (though with a different feeling,) she must repress it," though every fibre of her heart bleed" in the attempt. And the reason is given as beautifully as the rest of her lament : "My office is, Henceforth, to dry up tears, and not to shed them! But yet, of all who mourn, none mourn like me, Not only for myself, but he who slew thee!" In conclusion, we consider Adah as a complete portrait of the perfect wife; a character of all others the most delightful, yet, alas! the most other delineations of this master-mind in this; rare to be met with. She is superior to all the there is a pure unobtrusive piety in Adah, that, like the sunlight on a picture, brings all its beanties into view, discovering those which were com. paratively hidden, and shedding the brighter glory on the more prominent parts, E, ON A CRITICISM OF NIEBUHR. To the Editor of Tait's Edinburgh Magazine. THE learned Niebuhr, as he is generally termed, has had the advantage of at once puzzling and alarming the critics in the Reviews; and they, who are so bold in general, content themselves with giving extracts from his work, (The Fragment of a History of Rome;) and without venturing on any opinion, finish as they began, by calling him the learned author, and so wash their hands of him. ing, may, if they will search for, probably find similar inaccuracies. This very story of Cincinnatus, and Niebuhr's exposure of it, are, we see, given and amplified in the Foreign Quarterly Review, with much praise to the learned author, and without the slightest doubt or surmise of any possibility of his being in error. The following is the story given from Livy by Niebuhr : "The Dictator (Cincinnatus) ordered the serviceable men to be in readiness at sunset, food for five days, and each with twelve palisades. "At midnight, they reached Mount Algidus, and were near the enemy's camp, which enclosed that of the Romans in the midst. The Dictator made his troops march onward in column, till a circle was formed about the Æquians; then they halted, and began to dig a trench, and to heap up a mound, on which the palisades they brought with them were to be driven in. When they were setting to work, they raised the Roman This announced to the Consul's troops that the wished-for succour was arrived ; and they delayed not to burst forth from their camp. The Equians fought with them during the whole night," &c. This statement, and the victory obtained over the Equians by the Dictator, Cincinnatus, are thus ridiculed and disposed of by Niebuhr : It appears, however, that there is ample room for remark,-in fact, great necessity for investigating, sifting, and curtailing his sweeping alterations, emendations, and decisions. Niebuhr's claim to belief without examination, which, however, he puts forth with great candour and modesty, on the score of his deep researches, is unreasonable, and will never be granted to him; not only because blind assent, without inquiry, is repugnant to the opinions of the day, but also, because we are aware that men of genius are particularly liable to selfdeception; and the very circumstance of poring long over a subject, which is the foundation of the claim above-mentioned, leads to the imagina-battle-cry. tion becoming heated, and seeing, not only things difficult to perceive, but also those which do not exist otherwise than in the "mind's eye." Niebuhr has an easy method of discrediting and getting rid of such events as stand in his way. He terms the History of the Kings of Rome, as given in Livy and other ancient authors, a 66 "Lay," or rather, Lays; not that any poetry exists, or is stated to have existed on the subject, but he thinks it likely that lays may have been written, containing accounts of the ancient Roman monarchy; from which poems he assumes that the prose history which we read, may have been taken. He gradually becomes sure on the point, and forth with proceeds to state it as a fact. Of the more recent history, likewise, he clears away such facts as he thinks proper, by terming them, not lays, but "Legends." Being inclined, however, to question this peremptory manner of demolishing all our old scholastic and deeply-imprinted ideas, I determined to endeavour to follow this author through some of his proofs, and see if all was right. I took at hazard the well-known" Legend" of Cincinnatus, raised from the plough to be Dictator of Rome. On this story the learned German is at once sarcastic, humorous, and witty, (after a fashion ;) notwithstanding which, if I, like himself, have not been deceived by my imagination, I think we shall be able to show that his reasons for discrediting Livy on this point are groundless. I do not charge him with intentional unfairness; but the incorrectness is quite extraordi nary. This, certainly, is only one out of a thousand of his emendations; and others, with more leisure, more ability, and, above all, more learn "This legend will not stand the test of historical criticism, any more than those which refer to the time of the Kings; but such a test must not be applied to it any more than to them. The poet, whether he sang his story or told it, had no need to reflect, that if five palisades were a heavy load for a soldier enured to his duties, men called out in a general levy must have been totally crushed by the weight of twelve. That so great a number of them could not be made use of, unless the circle was so large that, if all the soldiers stood in a line, they had a fathom of ground apiece; in which case, to say nothing of the time it would have required before each had finished his piece of wall and ditch, an attack in any quarter from the Equians, who were far superior to Minucius, would have burst through the whole fortification. Or that no scout could have walked the distance between Rome and Mount Algidus, more than 20 miles, betwixt sunset and midnight; and here it is done by a column of men, heavy armed and heavy laden. The poet, however, neither counted their steps nor the hours. Still more might he smile at any one who objected that the Æquians must have been struck with blindness and deafness if they allowed the Romans to march round about them, and enclose them in a net, without offering any impediment, and never interrupting them while throwing up their intrenchments: for this, to be sure, was not wrought by human means. God had smitten them, so that they neither saw nor heard, and could not perceive the battlecry which pierced to the ears of the army enclosed by their lines," &c. On this part of the story, the Foreign Quarterly is even more express; stating, that "the shout was unheard by the Equians." The story, or rather the legend, is therefore scouted and discredited, because 1st, The men are stated to have carried twelve palisades, instead of five, (the usual number.) 2d, Because, between sunset, and midnight, they marched to Algidus, a distance of twenty miles. 3d, Because they dug trenches without being perceived by the Equians. And, Lastly, (and which creates the greatest mirth in the author,) Because the Roman soldiers shouted so as to be heard by their comrades, but yet were not heard by the intervening enemy. Yet, taking all this without contradiction, even as stated, we do not find the matter so clearly and indisputably a "legend" as is assumed. However, opinion is free; and we are not obliged to leave the matter so in doubt; for, 1st, As to the palisades, possibly the soldiers were quite able to carry them; or, very possibly, they might have assistances in their journey. There seems very little to found an argument, one way or the other, as to these palisades. As to the Algidus, Niebuhr make a gross and remarkable mistatement: the distance is twelve miles from Rome, and not twenty; which, we imagine, makes all the difference. And it would be well if some explanation were given of so great a mistake; one, indeed, which should prevent our taking for granted any of Niebuhr's statements. With regard to the intrenchment being cast up unperceived, in the middle of the night, there is nothing worthy of reply in the objection. Lastly, (and which is very extraordinary,) Niebuhr's assertion, that the historian represents the shouting of the Romans as heard by their comrades alone, is utterly unfounded; and the wit concerning the gods rendering the Equians deaf, &c. &c. is quite thrown away. Livy's statement is express, that the "shout resounded on every side of the enemy, and, reaching be yond their camp, was heard by that of the Consul, exciting terror in the one, and the greatest joy in the other."* B. P. S.-As Niebuhr is to set all the ancient history right, so his translators intend to rectify the modern spelling; and thus their translation is throughout disfigured with "promist, attacht, reacht, forein, soverein," &c. &c. and numerous other elegances and improvements. We rather think the t, though, perhaps, allowable in the participle-past, is not so in the preterperfect tense; but in the translation it is used almost always in both cases. • Clamor hostes circumsonat-superat inde castra hostium, et in castra consulis venit; alibi pavorem, alibi gaudium ingens facit. THE ARMY. IN 1792 the Army consisted of 44,333 rank and file. Of this number, 22,924 were in Great Britain, and 21,429 were distributed among our foreign possessions. The returns which have been laid before Parliament make the numbers greater; but these returns are of all ranks, and of the numbers on the establishment of the Army, and not of the effectives. The whole expenditure on the Army in 1790 was £1,844,140. In 1792, the number of seamen and marines in the Navy was 16,000. The number of ships in commission 108; and the whole expenditure on the Navy was £2,000,000. In 1792, the number of officers and men in the Ordnance Military corps was 4,846; and the expenditure on them was £151,606. The expenditure for the whole Ordnance service was £375,000. At the present time (January, 1834,) our Army consists of 95,791 rank and file, and of 109,139 of all ranks. In our Navy we have now employed 29,000 seamen and marines; and we have 180 ships in commission. The following numbers of seamen were voted in the six first years of the peace : |