was highly incensed at the end of my labours, to find no allusion whatever to the only kind of gridiron worth a farthing. There was a great deal about Taurus, but not a word about good oxbeef. The "first point of Aries" was mentioned often, but the "point" I wanted to come to was boiled lamb and spinach. It is a maxim with the Greedys not to attack the patriarch of the flock, until they have first consumed his descendants; so I cared not the centisimal of a barley-corn about all the points of Aries put together; I was very near letting the professor know my mind on the subject one day that he lectured so long on the battleaxe of the fixed stars, and the refractory properties of the atmosphere, that by means of Dr. Brinkley I was on the brink of losing my Commons. There is but the difference of one letter between astronomy and gastronomy; but how immeasureably in true dignity (always inseparable from usefulness,) does the latter transcend the former! What is an observatory compared to a kitchen? or the great circle at Dunkirk-Dunsink I mean-about which they make so much rout, to a simple frying-pan or griddle? Faith, Sir, I am no foe to science; but I had rather have one cook than all the star-gazers and comet-hunters in Europe. Talk of Laplace in the same breath with Dr. Kitchener! The milky way is a sublime thing, no doubt, but I am carnal enough, I own, to prefer a bowl of whipt cream. Talk of Gemini or Pisces!-Give me a pair of barn-door fowl, or a dish of fresh Dublin bay herrings, and I will make you a present of all the delicacies in the zodiac. Just refer the question to Herschel, Pond, or Hamilton :-I am content to abide by the authority of astronomers themselves. All I ask is, that they may be consulted about five, or between five and six o'clock in the day. At that hour I should like to put the question to one of these eminent professors, which is the nobler employment, ransacking the firmament for a comet, or rummaging a pie for a wood-cock-I should like to ask them whether the perfection of the kitchen-range is not just then, even in their exalted and etherial contemplations, a matter of more moment than the delicate construction of a chronometer or sextant?

My dear sir, it is truly wondrous to observe how popular the principles of the Greedy family grow about dinnertime. There is more witchery in that hour than in midnight. We, the Greedys, are held in all possible scorn until the clock strikes five, or six, or seven, or whatever may be the family hour for celebrating the rites of the belly-god; we are called a multitude of filthy names, and are compared to swine and other obscene animals; in short, before dinner one would think that the whole world was agreed upon the indecency and brutality of eating and drinking. All is refinement, abstemiousness, downright self-denial-the Greedy-philosophy will not be listened In vain we demand with the founder of our school

to.

"Wherefore did nature pour her bounties forth With such a full and unwithdrawing hand, Covering the earth with odours, fruits, and flocks,

Thronging the seas with spawn innumerable, But all to please and sate the curious taste?" In vain we exclaim with the same high authority—

"Oh foolishness of men! that lend their ears
To those budge doctors of the Stoic fur,
And fetch their precepts from the Cynic tub,
Praising the lean and sallow abstinence!"

No

Before dinner this is all in vain everybody is for hermit's fare until "the tocsin of the soul," as Byron well calls it, sounds, and then mark the revolution of opinion! All of a sudden the Greedyphilosophy comes into vogue. more blaspheming of Comus !-no more ridicule or abuse of your humble servant, or his principles or practices! The astronomer comes down from his sublime speculations, deserts the meridian for a merry thought, and would sell Orion for an omlet-the civilian forgets the pandects, and betakes himself to pancakes-the poet descends from Parnassus, and thinks no elevation so noble as the peak of a venison pasty-the politician thinks more of a capon than the commonwealth-the conchologist prefers the fish to the shell-the florist prizes a cauliflower above all the flowers in the gardenthe lover has been known, in the charms of Anne-Chovy, to lose all remembrance of Anne, his mistressand the critic, whom, but a few moments before, nought could please but a play of Shakspeare, or a stanza

of Spenser, begins to entertain an
opinion which I have maintained at all
hours, and all through life, to wit, that
the noblest lines in the language are-
Little Jacky Horner,
Sate in a corner,

Eating a Christmas pie;
He put in his thumbs,
And pulled out the plums,

And cried, what a fine boy am I.

This, Sir, I call poetry, although it is to be found neither in Campbell's Specimens, or Percy's Reliques. It has all the requisites of poetry. "In a corner"-mark that expression, see how much it conveys! Young Mr. Horner was alone; he not only possessed a Christmas pie, but he possessed it without a rival; he owned it with a sole dominion. He was no co-partner with a plaguy crew of brothers and sisters, all putting in their thumbs, too, and battling every inch of it-the ravenous, sensual, little miscreants! No, he was "alone in his glory," like Sir John Moore, and might have exclaimed with Alexander Selkirk,

"I am monarch of all I survey,

My right there is none to dispute." Then observe the line-" And pulled out the plums." How delicious the picture. Our lips water as we read; nay, we almost fancy ourselves, like the pigmy knight in the novel, in the very entrails of the pie, rioting in sweets and drowning in syrup. Oh, what an euthanasia! may such be the death of the Greedys!

Do not, however, mistake me for an epicure. I hate and despise epicures. They are a branch of the Nibbler family; and, time out of mind, they have been the scorn of our house. A pack of peddling, pecking, paltry coxcombs; they are the very Whigs of the dinner-table. There is no solidity, manliness, or honest ambition about them. While an Apicius, or Darteneuf, drivels at the gentleman's bone, a Greedy would dispose of the whole haunch of mutton. "The substantials! the substantials!" as our great progenitor used to say. We are for the solid, massy, honest, magnanimous, cookery of Old England. France, Sir, we denounce, with all her revolutionary kick-shaws. A Greedy dine upon the hind-legs of frogs. Give him a chine of a mammoth, or the leg and wing

and part of the breast of a roe, and he will show you what it is to dine! “The substantials! oh, Sir Giles, the substantials!" Ifever I shall have leisure enough from the grand business of life to turn author, I shall trace all the vices, moral and political, of the French people to the levity of their cuisine. This is the true account of their republican and atheistical tendencies. The Greedys, Sir, are no incendiaries, although they love a broil; they are fond of no revolutions but those of the spit; and they are determined foes of the present piece of patch-work, hight an administration, albeit the name of the premier disposed them at first to support it. We perceive, Sir, in the Whigs a dogged resolution to keep all the good things to themselves, and not so much as to throw the famished nation a bone. They are too greedy even for the Greedy family. To eat up a whole country-to swallow a constitution at a single meal-is, believe me, as disgusting a piece of gluttony in our eyes as it can possibly be in yours. This is, in truth, the "Harpyiis gula digna rapacibus." Of myself it may be said, in the words of another poet,

"Nulli major fuit usus edendi Tempestate suâ ;"

which, for the gratification of the unlatined sex, may thus be vernacularized :

"At dinner, Gregory Greedy was sublime, The most experienced eater of his time." But hark! I hear the dinner-bell! It is nearly a quarter of an hour since I last lunched. Excuse me, Sir! Really if you had Solomon's wisdom, illuminated with Curran's wit, at this crisis I could not enjoy your company a monent longer. What's for dinner, John? John! what's for dinner?

Editor: One word, Mr. Greedy! Mr. Greedy: Business, Sir, business: I am on business.

Editor: I have a point to mention of some moment.

Mr. Greedy: It will keep, Sir; it will keep. John, I say, what's for dinner? Editor: I shall take it as a favor.

Mr. Greedy: Sir, you ought to know better. Editor comes from edo, and edo is to eat.

Editor: It has other meanings, Mr. Greedy!

Mr. Greedy: None, Sir, worth a farthing.

HISTORY records a law of the ancient Lacædemonian legislature, by which every person of full age was obliged to belong to some party in the state. Without expressing any opinion upon the wisdom of the compulsory patriotism of the Grecian republic, we may safely venture to assert that there are times when circumstances and duty imperatively enforce the practical observance of such a rule; that there may be a crisis in the political concerns of a nation when no man can indulge his indolent desire for the peacefulness of private retirement, without a plain and positive dereliction of public duty. Assault may be carried on so far that it becomes treason not to join in the defence; there is a point in the progress of revolution, at which every man must make up his mind to take one side or other, when the friends of order may adopt as their motto " he that is not with us is against us," when neutrality is a crime, and even moderation is a fault, because the energies—the active-the uncompromising energies of all the friends of order, are required to prevent its subversion. When the struggle is plainly and undisguisedly between the evil and the good; the man whose principles would lead him to support what is right, if he withholds his assistance from the righteous cause, is virtually subtracting so much from the power of that cause, and is giving so much of negative, but not, therefore, the less injurious assistance to the other. He is worse than the most violent partizan of wrong, because he adds to the guilt of assisting what is wrong, the baseness of abandoning what is right. Truth must look on him not merely as an enemy, but a traitor. 'He knows what is right but he does it not."

66

These are not days for soft words, or for the concealment of honest and manly opinion, and accordingly we have little hesitation in translating into broad, intelligible language, the import of the few observations with which we have commenced. The

events of the last few years have been such as to force upon every man the consciousness that in the few next the fate of England will be decided. There may have been former periods of political excitement, when the passions of the people were roused into unnatural agitation, and the quiet of the country disturbed, and the healthy functions of the constitution interfered with.

But all these disturbances have been temporary in their duration and transient in their effects; they have been the storms that swept harmless over the face of society, left no trace of their ravages behind; but far otherwise is the case in these days of political convulsion; the constitution itself is the stake that is at hazard, the religion and the liberties of Britain are assailed-every principle that has hitherto guided the councils of the nation, is set at nought-every sanction of the national religion is disregarded-infidelity has openly shown itself as the ally and the pioneer of anarchy, and in trampling on all the maxims, and all the institutions of our social faith, is going far towards breaking up all the restraints of social order. The question now is, whether we shall continue as we have been, a nation united in the sacred compact of citizenship, with Christianity as the bond of our union; or be resolved and separated into the broken fragments of a people without either a religion to control, or a government to restrain ; and we say that the man who contents himself with a mere tacit acquiescence in the principles of truth; who permits his theoretical attachment to the constitution to slumber in operative inaction, and does not give his every energy to its support-be his professions of philanthropy, or sanctity, what they may-is virtually indifferent alike to the sanctions of religion and the calls of patriotism, and is, at heart, not merely a rebel to his country, but a traitor to his God.

We express ourselves thus plainly and strongly, not merely because we

have accustomed ourselves to an awkward habit of calling things and persons by their right names-a habit that is certainly inconvenient in days when, in most instances, these names are anything but complimentary. We cannot indeed, upon any occasion, tame down the expression of our honest feelings to the measured terms of polite discretion; but in the present case we feel that it is necessary to speak out. Protestants do not appear sufficiently sensible of the moral guilt and the moral turpitude of inaction: in politics they seem unaccountably to leave out sius of omission from their catalogue of offences, and forget that the leaving undone the things which we ought to have done, is scarcely second in enormity to the doing the things which we ought not to have done. And yet the end of all moral obligation is no less the enjoining of certain duties than the forbidding of certain crimes; and we forfeit our allegiance to truth no less by the neglect of the one than by the commission of the other. But if there be one duty more than another which is plainly binding upon us in our capacity of citizens, it is to endeavour, at all hazards and at any cost, to preserve to succeeding generations the blessings we ourselves enjoy-blessings which God, who is the author of all society, has given us in trust for them-and this is a trust which we cannot decline, and which, therefore, if we neglect we violate. The time has now come when it is only by active and strenuous exertions that this trust can be discharged; and if we shrink from these exertions-no matter under what specious epithets we palliate our conduct to others-no matter by what plausible excuses we justify it to ourselves-we are guilty of a base and unworthy dereliction of a duty which our Creator has enjoined upon us; and the stern language of truth can apply to our neglect no softer epithets than cowardice and crime.

The Protestants of Ireland have commenced a great and, we believe, a decisive movement. Those who have been long assailed, have at length put themselves in an attitude of defence the men upon whom war has been made for years, have at length seemed to feel that hostilities are going on;

and even in the eleventh hour, when our liberties are all but lost, and our cause is all but hopeless, a vigorous and determined stand has been made against that tyranny which, under the specious name of liberality, is trampling on the rights and privileges which our fathers purchased with their blood. We repeat, that this movement is decisive of our fate; if it be successful-and successful it must be, if it be not the fault of the Protestants themselves-the victory is gained, and the country is saved: if, on the contrary, the apathy, the indolence, or the cowardice of Protestants neutralize this last effort of their more honest and more determined brethren-if the few be now left unsupported to sustain the cause of the many-then all hope of ever organizing a Protestant party is at an endand it will in future be little short of madness in any one to expose himself to the fury of revolution by attempting the task of staying its progress-it would be a self-sacrifice, without either an object or a hope.

The meeting at the Mansion-house was a noble and a cheering beginning of this effort. We may safely say that never was there so much of the intellect, the rank, and the property of the country represented in any public meeting. Never did so resolute, and at the same time so Christian a spirit pervade an assembly, and never do we remember to have witnessed such gratifying demonstrations of attachment to the principles of truth. But while we feel the moral influence which this great meeting must have already produced upon the feelings of the country-while we know that its proceedings must have their weight, even with our enemies, we yet feel, with Lord Roden, that did it terminate merely in the brilliant and eloquent speeches which swayed as one man the minds of the multitude that was assembled, or in the printed report of those speeches which has conveyed the sentiments of the speakers throughout the empire, it would, after all, be but a splendid failure. It is as the first of a series of efforts that we look on it as the most important meeting that ever was convened; and if we do not altogether mistake the character of those who have nobly come forward to give direction to those efforts, we may

safely venture to predict that they will be worthy of our sacred cause, and that unless Protestants, by the most inexcusable indolence, prove themselves, both to God and man, unworthy of the blessings they enjoy, that cause will be triumphant, and Protestants will be yet permitted the undisturbed exercises of their religion, and left to retain those privileges the preservation of which has been so often and so solemnly guaranteed to them.

We know that many weak, but well meaning, persons object to any attempt to rouse the Protestant population of the North, by the instrumentality of public meetings, because, forsooth, it savours too much of Protestant agitation. Every honest prejudice we respect, and every honest objection we would labour to remove; but the generality of mankind are far too easily imposed upon by names. If by agitation be meant that selfish and unprincipled excitement of the passions of the mob, which has no other end or aim than the personal aggrandizement of the agitator. If, by agitation, be meant that reckless setting of the lower orders against the higher, that has gone far towards breaking up all the relations of society-that wicked inculcation of disobedience to the laws which has desolated Ireland with blood, and caused the theoretical lesson of the day to be put in practice in the midnight assassination-then we say God forbid that ever our cause should be desecrated by such unholy means; but if on the other hand men choose to fasten on us the name of agitators, because we endeavour to oppose misrule, and to bring forth the peaceable and constitutional expression of public opinion, because we call on those whose rights are assailed to resist aggression on those whose properties are threatened, to protest against spoliation-then we say that we are not to be frightened from our duty by a name. We would look on the man as a fool who would quietly suffer himself to be robbed, lest resistance might gain for him the epithet of brawlerand we certainly will not permit our rights to be taken away without a struggle, because our enemies may give to our efforts to retain them, the name of agitation.

We believe that public opinion is

decidedly conservative-we are persuaded that could the honest and unbiassed sentiments of each member of the community be ascertained-there would be found an immense majority in the cause of order. But unfortunately the destructives are the most clamorous and noisy portion of the community-and it is this very circumstance that has given to them the appearance of having public opinion in their favour. And this advantage, which is no trifling one, they knew well how to turn to account. Most men are, in their opinions, the creatures of circumstances; all of us influenced more or less by the political atmosphere in which we breathe. While the conservative party neglect to take some efficient means to contradict the notion that the mass of the people are opposed to them-they throw into the ranks of their enemies all the waverers and paralyse the efforts of their friends. There are in every community a number of persons who are influenced by public opinion, or what they believe to be public opinion-and every demonstration of national feeling on either side of the question, tells powerfully upon this large, and therefore, under our present system of government, this influential class. It is thus that public opinion in its expression may be said to reproduce and multiply itself-and it is precisely by acting on this principle, that the radicals have succeeded; they have taken every opportunity of putting themselves forward as the national party, and as the advocates of the cause of the people; and the falsehood was uncontradicted until it was believed-and men whose every predilection, and all whose convictions were in favour of the constitution, began to fancy themselves radical, simply because they heard that radicalism was the national party. General opinion does not depend so much upon general conviction, as is frequently supposed; if it did, it would not be so proverbially fluctuating and unsteady. To any one who has taken any trouble to find out the true state of feeling among the lower and middling orders, it is well known that many are enthusiastically attached to radicalism who do not know what it is, and who, while they express the most vehement regard for its principles in general, would yet be found,