riddle, nothing is stronger and sweeter,) have dared, despising earthly scorn, to syllable that name, yet change it, Brother Bumpus; if not for the world's good pleasure, yet for your own renown, your happier hopes, and future peace of mind. It is true that hazard has conferred it; names, like marriages, are a lottery; but, as it was said to the Briton who married a Creole, You have certainly drawn a black ball.' It is delightful to judge in charity rather than with severity; and I must say, that I can scarcely perceive the propriety of all the reprobation attached to Lord Eldon's procuring that unusual Act of Parlia ment. With a solemn and undoubting sense of the merits of its object, (and they are neither few nor indifferent,) something must be allowed for his Lordship's feelings for his delicacy-in letting term after term pass over and he uncoifed, while that one term remained. The perplexity of his tenderer nature at the proposed conferment of legal honours, may (as novel-writers say) be better imagined than described.' It must have haunted him in his goings and at rest, invaded the privilege of the peerage, and even violated the repose of private life. I can readily imagine him on the woolsack, abstracting his thoughts for a moment from the horrors of Catholic Emancipation, and exclaiming Bumpus,'-giving the Royal assent to Game Laws or Taxes, and sighing forth, as he remembered those to whom they were applicable, 'Bumpus,' as he did it-dreaming of his Master, in the purple chair at Lincoln's Inn, and shudderingly ejaculating Bump-us'and even on his nightly and uneasy couch disturbing the partner of his joys and cares by a Bumpus!'-dreaming of a Whig (but not his own) in office, and awakening under the horrors of the nightmare, shrieking Bumpus!' until all things political, professional, and natural, became associated with that jaundiced appellation.

6

"It is well thus to record (however imperfectly) the names of some of the brethren ere they go hence, and are no more seen;' for a fearful and (if it be executed) fatal blow has been levelled at their fame, and wealth and honour, by Mr. Brougham. The institution of Serjeants has wholly outlived its purpose; and when the business of courts of law could be better divided than at present; when actions of libel, and for criminal conversation, and a million others, were scarcely known, it was perhaps well to select the most learned and skilful of the profession to maintain the ever intricate subject of pleas of land, which required more of legal science than any others advanced for adjudication. At present there is scarcely one of the brethren who can be peculiarly termed a Property Lawyer; and the practice of the second greatest tribunal of the land has long become a matter of patronage in the hands of one individual, who, in coinmon with his predecessors, however free from the imputation of conferring it from improper motives he may and must be held, was regarded in general as only fitly exercising it in favour of patient merit, and to redeem that neglect which their qualities, whatever they might have been, had incurred, in other branches of the profession, from the public. Such men as Best and Lens were 'raræ aves in terris,' and were neither indebted for fame or fortune to the possession of the coif; but few others have of late distinguished themselves; and in that peculiar department of the law for which Serjeants were originally destined to manage, Preston would dis

dain to associate with them, and would easily confound them all by his rich store of learning and research into the rights of things.

"Of the officers of the Court I knew and know but little. There was one, to be sure, worthy of mention, who, although I believe he purchased his place, has ever performed the duties of his office with equal zeal and ability, and to the undivided satisfaction of the professionthat is Mr. Prothonotary Watlington, who, in the exercise of his taxatory functions, was, most favourably for himself, contrasted with Master Groves of the King's Bench; and to every virtue that could adorn private life, united an urbanity of manner, as a public officer, that rendered his severity of principle, where the dictates of conscience rendered severity necessary, if unpalatable to practitioners, wholly inoffensive; for he was good-humour itself, and conveyed his admonitions or reproofs with so kindly a spirit, that such as might disagree with him in opinion felt respect for his motive, and gratitude for his mode of giving that motive expression.

6

The unfortunate Clerk of the Juries, Sir Thomas Turton, is, as the Court Calendar cruelly but unmovedly observes, (it had better been styled the Newgate Calendar,) executed at the Chief-Justice's chambers.' How his Lordship and Mr. Cox, his associate, reconcile this to themselves, it is hard to say; but it certainly is a mad world, my masters; and, like the punning emblems over the entrance of an ancient Augustine convent at Paris, of a globe and a white cabbage (c-abus in French), justifies the motto attached to it, 'Le monde n'est qu'abus.' The respecter of law and the perpetrator of a crime may sometimes be found in the same person, as might be seen in the case of the celebrated highwayman Goreau, who was tried a few years since in France for his life, and on a witness (whom he had proposed to rob) having observed that, had he met the brigand, he would have shot him, the prisoner calmly replied, Vous auriez eu tort, Monsieur, car personne ne devrait prendre justice dans ses propres mains.' Indeed, like others, whose chamber-practice, as we perceive, might not be deemed wholly reputable, Goreau was tender of his character in some respects; for, on being accused of having attacked a person during the night, he denied the charge with the utmost indignation, in asserting Qu'il portait trop de respect à son nom et à sa famille, de voler après le coucher du soleil.' But to turn to the Common Pleas. The Filazers of the court are understood to have an excellent birth of it-little labour and large profits. If their offices demand but a slight exertion of intellect, and as little of industry, there are great names amongst them; or, at least the coincidence of their denominations with those of successive Justices, or their connexions, is sufficiently curious, for we see there, Surtees, Mansfield, and Best. It may be accident."

IMMIGRATION OF IRISH AUTHORS.

WELL! God be thanked, we have got a Tory Ministry once more, to our heart's content; and Ireland, it is to be hoped, will at last be reduced to some Christian rule. There's no pleasing those Irish, strike where we may ;-whichever way we turn, we are met by them. Irish poverty, Irish turbulence, Irish popery, and Heaven knows how many other Irish abuses, are ringing in our ears from morning till night. If we go to a Missionary Society, to enjoy a quarter of an hour's quiet railing against the old lady of Babylon, as a good Protestant should do, up gets a lump of a man, with a brogue as broad as his shoulders, and a speech longer than his head, in defence of her reputation, and insists on our hearing his last word. If we assist at an Education Meeting, to force the benighted Irish to read the Bible, there he is again, proving that, time out of mind, his countrymen intuitively knew at least as much of that book as any Protestant dean. If we go to a Visitation, the Charge is assuredly against the Irish "church without a religion." In Oxford and Cambridge the tutors do nothing but deprecate the arrival of Irish pupils, who kick up rows, and read no books but the Racing Calendar; and if we bend our steps to the Petty Sessions, as sure as eggs are eggs," the matter at issue is an Irish assault, or the passing of an Irish vagrant. In short, there is no evil current, of which Ireland has not to bear the blame; and if the matter were well sifted, the Irish would unquestionably be found at the bottom of the Thames Tunnel, and to have had some hand in pulling down the Brunswick Theatre. Of the intrigues of the Irish papists to overthrow our glorious Constitution, it is needless to speak. The danger of the Church is known; or if some stranger, last from the Antipodes, should be at a loss on the subject, he may learn the particulars from my Lord Eldon, from Sir Robert Inglis (who never could persuade old Pius the Seventh to reform, though he supplied his Holiness with the last editions of the most approved tracts), or indeed from any of the members of the Pitt Club, or of Bedlam. These are terrible doings, sad goings-on; but it would be well if this were the worst. Not contented with attacking the Thirty-nine Articles, they carry their impertinent interference even to meddling with political economy; setting all its most approved doctrines astray, and showing that there is at least one land where no general rule will apply,-where Ricardo would find rents high with the best land uncultivated, and where no element of national prosperity is in so much esteem as the idle and unprofitable waste of the manufactures of the country.

"The Irish have some very curious notions,

That when a nation grows extremely poor,
Nought silences an hungry mob's commotions
Like making ruin'd spendthrifts spend still more.

Thus as hydropics call for larger portions,

They ope to fresh extravagance the door,

And strive to heal their credit's widening fracture,

By wasting silk of Irish manufacture.”—Royal Progress.

Whatever the bishops may say, this is more hard to bear, even than attacks on the Church; for a man may live very well without his reli

own.

gion (at least there are some very good, pious, sanctimonious, and loyal people, who do not appear to be overburthened with it, any more than the man who, except inasmuch as he was an atheist, was a very good dissenter); whereas, to live without eating is "downright impossible, and not to be done." It is high time, therefore, that the Catholic Association should meet with their match in the Duke of Wellington and his new-made staff (cabinet, I meant to say). Not contented with breaking up three successive ministries, putting poor Lord Roden into bodily fear," against the form of the statute in that case made and provided," and ousting Leslie Foster and his algebra off his seat for Louth (which is as good as done,) they are now determined to ruin Old England out and out, by overrunning the land with their papistical, poteenbibbing, potatovorous population of paupers, (there's a magnificent alliteration!) to whom the locusts of Egypt were no more than a lovesick maid of fifteen is to Alderman Curtis. We have heard a great deal of the jacobinical levelling of national regeneration; but, if you would have the comble of all political horror, the master principle of revolution, it must be sought in a word shorter at least by the first syllable. John Bull is nothing, if not matrimonial;-not like the French, and the Italians, and the Germans, gallivanting it all day and all night; but staying at home with his deary, who breeds like a rabbit or a herring. An Englishwoman's first merit is child-bearing; her second, child-bearing; and her third, child-bearing. Her final cause is, in Shakspeare's words, "to suckle fools, and chronicle small-beer:" and her husband's delight is to show off her handiworks, as if they were his I wish I could draw you the face of complacency with which he presents you his overgrown "lubberly boy," as he cries with a chuckle, "That's my son, sir." Perhaps Cruickshanks would do it for us-but this is the man that Daniel O'Connel would serve with a supersedeas from paternity, starving the nation into a state of "single blessedness," and compelling Parliament to turn inside out the jus trium liberorum, by making procreation in England after the measure-for-measure fashion, felony without benefit of clergy! To this complexion we must come at last, if we suffer the Irish rebels to multiply like the Antediluvians, and spread their spawn unrebuked over England. King Priam was nothing in this respect to a papist; and the German lady who had three hundred and sixty-five at a single litter, was a mere type of the fecundity of a papistess. The plan of attack is already arranged: steam-boats are hired for carrying over the invaders, and the Catholic Rent is for the future to be paid in kind, after the rate of a child per annum from every peasant, and twins from the gentlemen farmers. Of what use will it be for an honest Englishman (all Englishmen are honest) to rear a promising youth, and to give him the best of educations, at the university, or at a penny-a-week auxiliary supplementary Bible school, if, when he is ready to be bound apprentice,-no matter whether it be to a Secretary of State or a pin-maker,-a tall, lanky, hungry-visaged, two-handed fellow, shall be suffered to stalk over from Ireland, with his fist in one hand, and a shillelagh in the other, and a short pipe stuck in his hat, and offer to do the young gentleman's business at half-price? Already the evil is felt in the highest quarters. Are there not Spring Rice, and Croker, and Vesey Fitzgerald, doing their best to hustle the Horace Twisses and

the Tindals out of their places, like so many unfledged cuckows in a hedge-sparrow's nest? Are not our fair countrywomen, of the highest blood, elbowed out of Almack's by Irish Countesses? and have not the Liffey and the Shannon all the sunny side of Bond-street to themselves? Think of whole colonies of weavers deserting their native plains, for the express purpose of teaching the Manchester folks to starve, and of weaning the young men of Leeds from the luxury of shoes and stockings! Think of Archbishop Magee's black squad marching into England to mortify the vanities of a Welsh curate, and to force him to preach à un prix discret! Think of a cloud of Lord Manners's "unemployed poor," in silk gowns, settling about the ears of the Sugdens and the Adolphuses, and literally taking the bread out of their mouths! Such, however, must soon be our case. One-half of Ireland is actually in a state of combination with the other to over-populate the empire; and the accursed officina gentium is making papists by millions; while the New Reformation-men cannot count their converts even by units. "Think of that, Master Brook!" If this is permitted to continue, we English must take ship, and leave the Island. Already our workingclasses are in rags, and the "face of an Englishman" will soon be not to be had for love or money in the country. There is not a trade in which the Irish do not "push us from our stools." Formerly, they were contented to have the monopoly of Bath, and the wateringplaces; to be in the exclusive possession of all marrying widows, lovesick boarding-school misses, and heiresses who had the scarlet fever ; together with a right of preemption in all young men of fortune who were fond of dice, and had no objection to a game at billiards. Formerly an Irish "jontleman" had a soul above work; and "love and war took turns" with him, to the exclusion of all tradesman-like employment. But, now-a-days, they put their fingers into every man's dish. They more than divide the army with the Highlanders, and the navy with the saints; they have got possession of the shuttles of Glasgow; they have colonized Liverpool, and turned all London into one Broad Saint Giles's. This, Mr. Editor, is an evil which, hard as it presses upon the nation at large, comes home most especially to our business and bosom; for, of all the trades of London, there is none with which these troublesome interlopers are fonder of meddling than our's; and if we do not stir ourselves to prevent it, Othello's occupation will be gone indeed. Forty years ago, the whole parliamentary branch of literature was carried on by Scotchmen; and half Grub-street spoke the language of Allan Ramsay. But at present that business has fallen altogether into the hands of the Irish. He who cheats an Aberdeen man, they say, has only the devil to dupe; and to be farther north than the gude men" of St. Andrew's and Glasgow, to overmatch them in industry, and to undersell them by superior economy, is no small proof of desperate abilities. Truly, I would have you look to your Editor's chair. It is familiarly known in Ireland that delicate-faced youths can make a livelihood in London, as well as the stoutest chairmen; and that there is a decent provision for them all, if not as porters, as reporters. Literature, or, as they more commonly call it, litherature, is the very element of an Irishman. It is the only trade to which he takes naturally, except turf-cutting and fighting; for it is the only one which requires no capital. A carpenter must at least have his box of tools;