The pleasant inference from this argument is, that in the opinion of the reformers themselves his lordship would deserve to be brought to the scaffold, if he did violate the independence of one branch of the legislature by an unlimited creation of peers; but then, to have his head chopped off in so delightful a cause would be "sweeter than a garland of the most odoriferous roses and jessamines," (what pretty prattle!) while to keep it on his shoulders, and fail in carrying the bill, would be the "extreme of torture." We have a notion, however, the noble earl will prefer his head, to the roses and jessamines of PhiloRadical.

We have called this personage a writer of emphatic truisms. For the amusement of our readers, we copy the following sentences from his roses-andjessamine-letter:

To the Editor of the Times. Sir,-Obstinacy is not magnanimity; tenacity is seldom a virtue; inflexibility may even become a vice; self-will is not heroism; and extreme caution, as extreme temerity, leads alike to destruction. Self

devotion is noble and patriotic, when the sacrifice is made for the country's good, but childish and unfruitful when produced by prejudice, and indulged in for an undeserving object. The hero may sink into the infant.

their opinion, the Lords have no right to propose alterations in any measure of legislation which originates with the Commons. Oh, yes!" they will reply, "in any measure, save this particular one, they may exercise their constitutional functions; but the Reform Bill must come out of their house precisely in the same state as it goes into it." And why must their constitutional functions be held in abeyance upon this particular measure? "Because it is a a measure which belongs in an especial manner to the people.' Ergo, all future measures which may be considered as belonging in an especial manner to the people (and there will be no lack of such measures when the people have their reformed House of Commons), will, in like manner, and upon the authority of this precedent, be withdrawn from the concurrent jurisdiction of the House of Lords.

Let us apply this principle to a supposititious case. Let us imagine the House of Lords to originate a measure especially affecting its own rights and interests; a bill, for example, to limit the prerogative of the crown in making send it down to the House of Commons peers: and having passed this bill, they with an understanding that they are not to presume to make any changes in it. If either branch of the legislature may thus encroach upon the independence of the other, what but confusion can ensue, in the first instance to be followed by a struggle which will end in establishing the ascendancy of the stronger party! And then-where is the constitution?

The insolence of demanding from the House of Lords this unreasoning assent to the bill, is exceeded only by the still greater insolence of telling them that if they do not give this unreasoning assent a sufficient number of persons will be hired by the crown to outvote them.

We beg leave, however, to remind these persons (perhaps to inform them, for they are not overburdened with knowledge of any kind), that the very essence of the constitution is that the legislative power is lodged in the King, Lords, and Commons, and every one has a negative power upon the other two. Apply this hitherto undisputed principle to the case in question. The Commons pass a bill which the Lords reject: the King steps in, and, by an abuse of his pre

rogative, creates a sufficient number of peers to destroy the legislative power of the House of Lords. What is this but lodging the power of making laws in the King and the House of Commons, and violating consequently the essence of the constitution? What is it but the dispensing power (which lost James II. his crown) applied to the making of laws instead of to setting them aside when made?

SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

In Ireland, a political union has been formed, the motto to whose circular is the following:

As long as Popish spade and scythe,
Shall dig and cut the Sassenagh's tythe,
And Popish purses pay the tolls
On heaven's road for Sassenagh souls ;
So long the merry reign shall be
Of Captain Rock and his family.

Our readers need hardly be informed that "Sassenagh" is here used synonymously for Protestant, though in its etymological signification it means the Saxons or English; an appellation of the latter as old as the conquest of Ireland in the reign of Henry II.

Under whose auspices is this crusade against the established church (for it is not tithes, but the church which they seek to get rid of) undertaken? Another quotation from the circular will best answer the question.

Having legally and constitutionally combined (we must not forget that it is in Ireland where this doctrine of legal and constitutional combination is promulgated) to support his majesty and his majesty's ministers against a plundering faction, &c., we are unanimous that there should be no church allied to or depending on the state, &c. And therefore we will be satisfied with nothing less than the total and unqualified abolition of tithes, and a transfer of the whole of the church property to his majesty's exchequer, to be applied to a diminution of the national burdens, &c.

Thus then the matter stands. Abolition of tithes confiscation of church property-the demolition of the church itself, and the subversion of the constitution by reform, are all sought in the name of the king, and justified by a reference to the king's ministers! How

The Right Reverend black-silk aprons in God talk and write most learnedly against the superstition of Catholic countries, and

inveigh with a vigour very creditable to their fat sides, against the odious humbug by which the Popish priest bamboozles the men, and confissions the women; the first out of their pence, the second out of their little all. But we are confident, that if the sleek and sable shepherds of our Protestant flocks don't play the same game, it is in no degree from a want of disposition on their part to gull us. They know that it won't do-and they have nous enough not to try it. What but the spirit of cant and reverend quackery has prompted the pulpit chieftains to proclaim a general fast?

Something, we are aware, is due by way of apology, for reproducing this senseless and disgusting filth; but unless we did reproduce it-if we only described it, supposing it possible to describe it in any language less nauseating than its own-could we hope to be believed? All we are desirous of saying further upon the subject is, to inquire whether these be not most intelligible "signs of the times," and whether we are not indebted for them to the men who rule us, and

*

VOL. III.

R

Dublin!

This was on the eve of his being appointed to take the command of the British forces in Portugal; on the eve of that day he was destined to shed glory, not only on his own name, but on his country. Yet, though he had already won bright laurels in India, though the battle of Assye, and the plains of Seringapatam, had been rendered tributary to the military fame of Sir Arthur Wellesley, it can hardly be supposed that they who knew him best, or who were most competent to form a correct judgment respecting him, would have ventured to predict, under whatever favourable circumstances he might have been placed, the stupendous series of successes which afterwards immortalized the DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

And surely there must be moments when this great man himself looks back upon his own career with emotions scarcely less enviable than any he may have known in the proudest one's of victory. Can he connect these two periods of time for instance-his present unequalled greatness in the estimation of Europe, and the period when he accompanied his brother the Marquis Wellesley (then Earl Mornington) to India, as the Hon. Colonel Wellesley, without a feeling of astonishment? Can he recal what were, in all probability the utmost limits of his hopes, and of his ambition, forty years ago, contrast them with the splendour of his subsequent career and of his actual position, and not be secretly affected with an amazement at least equal to the complacency with which he may survey his achievements? And may we not suppose in such retrospections, that he, like every other man who has

climbed to greatness, is secretly conscious of how much should be justly ascribed to accident, which is now given to design? In the most important and complicated, as well as in the more ordinary concerns of life, a very small proportion of that which does happen, happens either as we anticipate, or in consequence of causes which we ourselves prepare, and set in motion.

It is not the object of this paper to dilate upon the military exploits of the Duke of Wellington. To the present generation they are familiar; and for posterity they are already recorded in the imperishable annals of his country. In an age pre-eminently warlike, and consequently distinguished by many renowned generals, it was reserved for England to send forth one greater than all. We do not found this assertion upon the mere circumstance that he triumphed over all who were opposed to him, closing his transcendent career of glory with the subjugation of Napoleon himself, though that single fact might be deemed sufficiently conclusive as to his superiority. Neither do we found it upon the extraordinary circumstance that he never sustained a defeat; but we look to the means with which he accomplished his victories, so inadequate with their stupendous results, and from that circumstance alone pronounce him the greatest general, not only of his own age and country, but of any age or country; not even excepting those two illustrious names of antiquity, Alexander and Cæsar. Whoever looks upon the situation of the Duke of Wellington, when he lay intrenched behind the lines of Torres Vedras in one corner of Portugal, and then trace his career step by step, victory by victory, till he finds him planting the standard of England upon the walls of Bayonne and Thoulouse, and while he so traces him, marks the incongruous elements he had to assimilate; the feuds, jealousies, and intrigues, he had to counteract; the unwarlike habits of the auxiliary troops of Spain and Portugal, which were his only resources beyond the handful of British soldiers he commanded: whoever, we say, takes all these circumstances into his consideration, and adds to them the cold support he found at home, in the outset, with the factious opposition of the Whigs to the war itself,

will not merely acknowledge the capacious mind and the moral energy, which could have adapted such means to such results as we know were produced, but wonder how any mind, whatever might be its capacity, or any moral energy, however great, could have succeeded in producing them. He had not, like Bonaparte, a mighty nation at his beck, and confederated nations at his control: he could not, by his fiat, assemble one, two, or three hundred thousand men, led on by consummate generals, and complete in all the appointments of the field, to execute his designs; neither had he, at first, the talismanic influence on his side of that confidence which so often secures victory from the implicit conviction that it must follow. On the contrary, when he took the command of the army in Portugal, owing to previous defeats, he had to contend with the exactly opposite influence, an apprehension, if not a positive conviction, that France was invincible, and that England, like all the other monarchies of Europe, could make no effectual stand against her except on the ocean. Yet we find him driving back her legions, defeating one after the other, her greatest generals, and ending, as we have said, with the crowning victory of Waterloo, where he triumphed over the great master of war, the modern Alexander himself. It is upon these grounds thus faintly stated, that we claim for the Duke of Wellington a renown which posterity will confirm-the renown of transcending every commander of former times.

We wish we could add that the glory of the warrior had sustained no diminution by the errors of the statesman; and still

more do we wish the warrior had never aspired to be the statesman. It was the infirmity of a great mind; but still an infirmity. Of all countries, England is the least capable of being wisely governed by a minister who brings to his task nothing more than superior intellect. Her vast manufacturing and commercial interests, the complexities of her financial system, the peculiarities of her foreign relations, are each of them subjects which demand something more for their due preservation, and for the direction of those affairs which are connected with them, than can by possibility be acquired in camps. It would have been as preposterous for a Pitt, a Liverpool, a Londonderry, or a Canning, to lead our armies to battle, as it was preposterous in the Duke of Wellington to superintend the interests of our merchants, manufacturers, agriculturists, and capitalists. Hence the errors he committed, substituting decision, which is the cardinal virtue of the general, for knowledge, which is the duty, and for deliberation, which is the security, of the minister. The concession of the Catholic claims was a melancholy illustration of this decision; and we will venture to say, seeing what he now sees, as the legitimate fruits of that act, there is not a man in the kingdom who more sincerely laments that concession than the Duke of Wellington himself; for he must feel, that if he had never yielded that outwork of the British constitution, it would never have been necessary for him to stand forward as the champion of those conservative principles by the assertion of which he still hopes to preserve the remaining defences.

BETWEEN the lofty mountains of the Vindhya range and those of Mokundra, in the most fertile and beautiful part of Central India, lies the valley of the Nerbudda. At its utmost extremity, hanging in frightful suspension over the river, which is here interrupted with enormous masses of dark stone, scattered in confused heaps, and forming a bar

rier, which the rushing waters overleap with thundering fury, frowns the rock of Onkar Mundattah; a spot regarded with terror by the inhabitants, from its being considered the abode of the powerful evil spirit, from whence its name was derived, and to whom, at distant periods, a human sacrifice was offered: the victim being compelled to leap from

the rock, a height of 120 feet, into the foaming abyss beneath.

Near this fearful object, by the side of a well of crystal water, were seated a company of men and women, whose attention appeared powerfully attracted by the tales of a venerable person, who, reclined in the midst of them, was relating various legends of the country. The soft features of the girls were expressive of extreme awe as well as interest, and the men listened with silent admiration and wonder, as, pointing with his raised hand in the direction of the rock, the sage recounted the adventures of "Holkar, the Foredoom'd."

The mother of Holkar was the wife of a Mahratta chief: she was extremely beautiful, and possessed the devoted love of her husband. She was perfect in all accomplishments belonging to her sex, and particularly excelled in that which was held in high esteem by her country women, namely, the management of the fiery courser, on which she frequently accompanied Hemaja to the chase, and on many of his expeditions. The riches of Cashmere were lavishly expended to adorn her person, already sufficiently embellished by nature, and she was regarded by all with affection and admiration yet, in spite of every advantage of every means of enjoyment that surrounded her, she was wretched. Three years had elapsed since her marriage, and she had no child. The disappointment and disgrace attached to this circumstance prayed on her mind, and imbittered every hour in vain her husband strove to banish the unceasing regret, which drove the roses from her cheek, and dimmed the radiance of her eyes; if she concealed from him her sorrow, she indulged it in secret. Hemaja was called from her by the imperious voice of war, and during his absence, she retired from society, and lamented her misfortune with uncontrolled grief.

It was at the close of a sultry day, when the fresh breeze invited to wander along the lovely banks of the Herbudda, that her favourite attendant persuaded her to seek refreshment, if not amusement, by its side. As she strolled

* Priest.

along, a crowd of mournful images presented itself to her mind. "Alas!" she

sighed, " Iyon lotus, reclining its drooping head on the waves that sustain it, may perish before another sun shall rise, but beside it, ready to burst its fragile bonds, is a young bud, in whose fragrant beauty it will be renewed; but when I am cold in the sleep of eternity, I where will be the sweet flower that should renew to Hemaja the image of his unfortunate Alia! Oh, that my prayers may move Heaven!—Oh, that my vows could gain the object of so many hitherto fruitless prayers!"

While she spoke with passionate earnestness, her eyes upturned and her hands clasped, suddenly descending slowly from the rock of Onkar Mundattah, near which unwittingly she had approached, she observed the figure of a majestic-looking man, who, advancing to where she stood, remained immoveable before her, with his arms folded on his breast and his eyes fixed on her with intent expression. She started, and would have turned to retrace her steps, but found herself unable to do so; a singular fascination keeping her still gazing on the stranger, who said in a calm voice," Daughter, fly me not; why should a charun* of the sacred order inspire fear in thy bosom? It may be that I have power to comfort thee. There is sorrow on thy brow, and thy face is like the water-lily, veiled in the dew of tears. Tell me thy grief, and if it may be, I will not withhold consolation." Alia, reassured by the mildness of his manner, and recollecting that he belonged to the revered order of priests, whom every Brahmin is bound to regard with respect, answered with much simplicity, and with renewed tears related to him the cause of her distress. After having consoled her mind by discourse drawn from sources to which in his holy capacity he had access, he concluded with these words: "Return home, fair daughter, and doubt not that your vows will be accomplished; I will be an intercessor for you. On this day twelvemonth return to this spot, on the banks of the Nerbudda, and I will claim from you a reward."