said more fine things, to less purpose. He fires off his guns at all hands, with a tremendous noise and brightness; but though well served, they are badly pointed, and when we get from among the fire and smoke, and begin to estimate the result of the engagement, we find that a great deal of real powder and shot has been expended, but no wall knocked down, nor fortress gained. He has a thorough contempt for small arms, and if a sparrow comes in his way which must be shot, he fires artillery at it. But these things do not appear to cost him effort; the display is not studied, and the reader, in place of being disgusted with having it forced upon him, is only sorry that it should be made upon an incommensurate occasion. It is because there is not room for amplification in a song, that Mr. Cunningham has succeeded so well in that kind of composition, the very nature of which requires that the diction be succinct, and the thoughts be wound up speedily to a close. Whenever his imagination is not subdued by this restriction-when he enters, for instance, upon a three-volume work, and finds ample scope and verge enough, there is, in fact, no end of him. He does not fatigue, it is true, by writing whole pages of common-place; but he leads us on, and on, and says abundance of fine things, which are most of them well said, if considered by themselves, but unfortunately do not fall in with the main aim of the narrative. His exuberance of imagery necessarily brings along with it a too great diffuseness of language-a love of indicating things by circumlocutions, or fitting them with holiday terms, that savour rather too much of the ancient days of euphuism. It is high time that these affectations of language were abandoned, and that not only Mr. Cunningham, but other popular authors, were convinced, that a good style, like a fine woman, ought to be simplex munditiis. That they will be so convinced ere long we cannot doubt, for the inferior scribes, having been tinged with the metaphor-mania, are now figuring away with their tropes at such a rate, that respectable writers must be ashamed to be seen in such company. It is thus that the poor abused tenants of Grub Street are of infinite use to the republic of letters; for no sooner does any piece of bad taste gain admittance in higher quarters, than they instantly lay claim to it, and generally succeed in convincing the world that it is their own. We wish them all manner of success in their present efforts.

Mr. Cunningham appears to possess in general a very accurate perception of character, which is unusual perhaps in one with so large a share of imagination. His Paul Jones would have been considered an excellently supported character, provided the interest of the rest of the work had been such as to draw general attention to it. Mr. Cunningham is the first that has ventured among these latter times of revolution for the materials of a historical novel; and he has forcibly pourtrayed the indefinite aspirings after an imaginary state of perfection in government, by which many agents in

the recent revolutions are supposed to have been actuated. He has made his hero, born a peasant, war against the pride of descent, with more pride in his own heart and love of distinction, than if he had boasted a hundred generations. The disappointment of his ill-directed ambition is no less ably delineated, and furnishes a moral more obvious and more directly instructive than can be drawn from most fictions; and, on this account, there is greater reason to regret that the author has been less successful in the other parts of his work.

Of one portion of Paul Jones, we cannot help remarking, what every one that has read both it and Don Juan cannot have failed to observe, that the prose-writer seems to have taken the poet as his authority. We allude to the greater part of what is said on Russian affairs. Mr. Cunningham might be forced into this coincidence by the necessity of adhering to the leading facts in the history of his hero; but the necessity was, to say the least of it, unfor

tunate.

It has been suggested, that our author has erred in the same way that Lucan did, by choosing a point in history too recent to be made the subject of a work of imagination. If the mere length of time be considered, Mr. Cunningham has been even more daring in this respect than his alleged prototype. But this is not at all the real question;-the notoriety, and not the recency of events, is what makes them improper objects of fiction. Whatever is indistinctly known, is equally the property of the poet and novelist, whether it happened yesterday or five hundred years ago. Lucan has been more censured for the choice of his subject than he ought perhaps to have been. We judge of the matter in reference to the state of letters among ourselves, without remembering the very different nature of the Roman reading public. The details of even the greatest achievements in their history, must have been so imperfectly known to the best informed among them, that we believe these details are in all respects better known to us than they were to their contemporaries; and, therefore, if Lucan chose to impede the flow of his genius by too strict an adherence to facts, it was an error of his own judgment, and what the state of information among those for whom he wrote, did not require at his hands. With regard to Mr. Cunningham's hero again, people assuredly know very little about him or his exploits. The name is familiar to every one, indeed, and perhaps also what the song says of its owner, namely, that—

"He was a murderer,

And kill'd his carpenter;"

but the history of Paul Jones is really involved in obscurity, and some mystery besides. It is true that the general history of the time in which he lived, and of the men with whom he acted, is yet fresh in the memories of all; but by taking care not to contradict what is known, our author was at liberty to make the personal

adventures of the pirate of any nature almost that he chose to invent. It may be alleged, too, that although a sufficient degree of uncertainty attaches to the principal incidents, still the manners of the period are too familiar to be introduced either in what is called a romance or a historical novel. Modern manners are frequently enough displayed in pure fictions; and if they are to be admitted here, it may be asked, why object to them in a historical novel? or how should they be too familiar for the one, when they do not appear so in the other? In answer, we would observe, that the novel of pure fiction is usually made the vehicle of satire, while the historical partakes something of the dignity of genuine history, and that things may be important enough to be ridiculed, which yet would seem impertinent to be in a manner put upon record. But this objection, though it might have been valid in a case where the author wrote to Englishmen of English manners, does not hold good in the one before us; for Mr. Cunningham's characters consist of Scotchmen, Americans, Russians, and Frenchmen, while ninetenths, at least, of the novel readers of Great Britain are to be found south of the Tweed, whether the work be of English or Scotch publication; and, consequently, as the manners are those of a strange people, antiquity is a matter of no moment. We conceive, then, that if Paul Jones be an unsuccessful work, it must be for other causes than the too recent date of the events;-and these causes we have already endeavoured to point out.

In conclusion. Although we cannot favour the publishers with a passage transferable to their advertisements, setting forth that Paul Jones ought to be found in every drawing-room, and that no select collection of modern books can be perfect without it-we think that it is a production which the public ought by no means to neglect. It contains much of what constitutes an excellent novel; and we shall be no way surprised if, at some future period, Mr. Cunningham produce one most excellent. Let him only choose a subject that he is master of, and give his judgment, not his imagination, the management of it,-above all, let him think twice of his metaphors and expletives, and there is no fear of him.

ART. III.

1. A Plain Statement in support of the Political_Claims of the Roman Catholics; in a Letter to the Rev. Sir George Lee, Bart. By Lord Nugent, M. P. for Aylesbury. 8vo. pp. 84. 2s. London. J. Hookham. 1826.

2. Three Months in Ireland. By an English Protestant. 8vo. pp. 284. 8s. 6d. London. Murray. 1827.

3. The Civil Articles of Limerick, exactly printed from the Letters Patents: wherein they are ratified and exemplified by their Majesties under the Great Seal of England. Published by Authority. Dublin; printed by Robert Thornton. 4to. pp. 11. 1692.

Of all its public acts, there are none that so deeply concern the honour of a nation, as the faithful maintenance of its treaties: and,

we believe, that of all the nations on the face of the globe, there are none which boast so proudly of their scrupulous adherence to the obligations of such solemn compacts, as Great Britain. It was but very lately that, under circumstances of more than ordinary difficulty and peril, we were called upon, in virtue of our ancient treaties with Portugal, one of them as old as 1661, to enable her, by the aid of our arms, to resist a most wanton and infamous aggression on the part of Spain. The whole voice of the country was raised, as that of one man, to meet the casus fœderis on the instant, and even the delay of a moment was not unnecessarily incurred, lest it should seem to sully the fair renown of England. It was not at all certain at that period, that by sending an armament to Portugal, we were not putting to imminent hazard the tranquillity of the whole Continent: but even for that result we were prepared, sooner than allow it to be proclaimed in the face of Europe, that we had deliberately departed from the faith of treaties.

Those who attempted, on that occasion, to question the expediency of our compact with Portugal, will not soon forget the shout of manly indignation with which their opinions were received throughout the country; not indeed that doubts might not well be entertained on the subject, but because the expression of them, at such a moment, evinced a disposition to divert the government from the high and straight-forward path of its duty. This is no time," it was justly and wisely answered, " for weighing the terms of the compact: there it stands ratified and confirmed by that compact we must now stand or fall." Does any man doubt at the present moment, that by acting promptly on such upright sentiments, the best interests of this country were consulted, and new bulwarks raised round its independence and glory?

One would imagine that, leaving out of view the advantages which always attend the strict performance of engagements, the mere existence of an obligation ought, in all cases, to be a sufficient and irresistible reason for discharging it. The announcement of the proposition, is its demonstration. It needs no argument to explain or support it. Let a lax and dishonest doctrine be for a moment upheld on this subject in our legislature, and we may bid farewell to our relations with the old world and the new. Those relations are all conducted under the guidance of treaties, the supreme laws of nations; if they cease to be inviolable in one country, how can we expect that they shall be held sacred in another?

Ireland forms at present a part of the United Kingdom; but the period is not very remote when it was a separate nation, and had for its lawful sovereign an individual different from the then equally lawful sovereign of England. A war is commenced between the two monarchs: armies are assembled to sustain their respective objects; battles are fought with alternate success; towns are besieged and taken; a city of peculiar importance, well fortified, is among the last holds of one of the adversaries; it is surrendered, under the

guarantee of a solemn treaty, securing certain advantages to the Irish nation the treaty is duly ratified by the conqueror, and after he has received the consideration for which it was so made and ratified, he violates every one of its most important stipulations.

Is this a romance, or is it history? Is it not well known that James II., after he abdicated the throne of England, was still the lawful and acknowledged sovereign of Ireland? He proceeded thither in March, 1689, to maintain his rights. William took the field against him in the year following, and though successful at the battle of the Boyne, his forces were defeated before Athlone, and he himself was defeated before Limerick. The state of his affairs having recalled William to England in the autumn of 1690, he left his troops in Ireland, under the command of general De Ginckle. This officer, after taking Athlone, had the good fortune to defeat the Irish army at Aughrim; after which he laid siege, on the 25th of August, 1691, to that city of Limerick, which had already repulsed William. On the 29th day of the siege, the garrison beat a parley, and after three days' negociation, general De Ginckle proposed conditions; these were accepted, and reduced to a treaty, which was sanctioned by the Lords Justices of Ireland, and duly ratified by William, on the 24th of February, 1692. We shall copy the first, second, third, seventh, ninth, and tenth articles of this treaty, from a gazette 'printed by authority,' in Dublin, in the year 1692, which now lies before us.

I. The Roman Catholicks of this kingdom, shall enjoy such privileges in the exercise of their religion, as are consistent with the laws of Ireland; or as they did enjoy in the reign of King Charles the II.: and their Majesties, as soon as their affairs will permit them to summon a parliament in this kingdom, will endeavour to procure the said Roman Catholicks such farther security, in that particular, as may preserve them from any disturbance, upon the account of their said religion.

II. All the inhabitants or residents of Lymerick, or any other garrison now in the possession of the Irish, and all officers and souldiers, now in arms, under any commission of King James, or those authorized by him to grant the same in the several counties of Lymerick, Clare, Kerry, Cork, and Mayo, or any of them; and all the commissioned officers in their Majesties' quarters, that belong to the Irish regiments, now in being, that are treated with, and who are not prisoners of war, or have taken protection, and who shall return and submit to their Majesties' obedience, and their and every of their heirs, shall hold, possess and enjoy all and every their estates of free-hold, and inheritance; and all the rights, titles and interest, privileges and immunities, which they, and every, or any of them held, enjoyed, or were rightfully and lawfully intituled to, in the reign of King Charles the II., or at any time since, by the laws and statutes that were in force in the said reign of King Charles the II., and shall be put in possession, by order of the government, of such of them as are in the King's hands, or the hands of his tenants, without being put to any suit or trouble therein; and all such estates shall be freed and discharg'd from all arrears of crown-rents, quit-rents, and other publick charges incurred and