wards me, which took place on the Change of Administration, and it remains very well known to be the fact that that Inflexibility cannot be shaken.

"There is not a Being in London, who corresponds with me in this dead Season of the year. So that I know nothing but what I hear from the Newspapers, which, at this Season, are very dull and stupid. You have probably seen in them the Letters of Lord Kenyon and The Duke of Newcastle.* There are not two better or [moret] well-meaning Men living-but it required great Consideration, and much good Advice, before those Letters should have been published-If as general Protestant Associations could have been hoped for in England, as there are likely to be in Ireland, the Step they have taken would have been undoubtedly right--but, sorry as I am to say it, the Truth seems to be that in England there seems to be little Anxiety among the different Ranks of Persons as to what Religion they profess, or whether there is any-and the danger is this-viz., that as now a Sort of appeal is made to the Protestants of the Nation, if the protestant part of the Nation was equally divided, the Friends of the Roman Catholics would argue that, adding to one-half of the protestants, who, in that case, would be for them, their, the Roman Catholics', own Numbers, a large Majority of the whole of the people of the United Kingdom is for them-if such, therefore, was the Result, harm would be done-But more harm would be done, if it should happen that a Majority of the Counties in England should declare for them, or be neuter-and take no part against them, for then it would be quite impossible for the Friends of the Protestants in Parliament to say, as they have hitherto, that the Majority of the People of England are against the Catholic Claims. The County of Kent and that of Buckingham will petition ag them-but I hear of no other Movement. Durham and Northumberland will be for them or neuter. The same as to Dorset, Devon and Cornwall. To meet and petition in Yorkshire is a Matter of vast Expense, and I suppose won't be attempted-and I hear nothing of any other Counties. So that it seems to me that the appeal of those noble Lords to the People should not have been made, till they knew what the People would do upon that appeal. According to what the People do, the appeal will do Good, or do Mischief. And what is probable, I think, is not very pleasant to think of.

"The famous John Wilkes used to say that, as Member for Middlesex, he always followed the Instructions of his Constituents-which he was told was unconstitutional-He admitted it to be so in general Cases-but never in his Case, for said he, I always first tell my Constituents what Instructions they are to give me- -So those noble Letter-writers-most excellent Men certainly-should have been sure what their Correspondents,

* Lord Kenyon's first letter "On the State of the Catholic Question," dated 30th of August, 1828, appeared in the Morning Post of the 2nd of September. His second letter, dated the 10th of September, appeared in the Morning Post of the 12th of the same month. After this, on the 18th of September, the Duke of Newcastle addressed a letter to Lord Kenyon on the same subject, which appeared in the Morning Post of the 23rd of the same month. These are the letters to which Lord Eldon referred.

We have inserted this word to complete the sense; though in the original, from which we are copying, it does not occur.

the People at large, to whom, in fact, their Letters are written, would or or would not do, upon receiving their good Advice.

"Our Love to you and my Sister, Lady Eldon, is as usual. John sends his Love to you both, together with Lady E.'s, and that of “ Yrs aff3,

"ELDON."

In the following spring the anticipations of Lord Eldon were verified. The Roman Catholic Relief Bill became a government measure, and was carried. His opposition during its progress through the House of Lords was uncompromising; and loud were his complaints in private that nowhere was faith inviolable. Amongst those of his old colleagues against whom he used to vent his indignation, Sir Robert Peel was most prominent; for he maintained that he had reason to think that there had existed between the home secretary and himself a general accordance in political sentiments, and an entire union of opinion respecting the particular question of the Roman Catholic claims.

The zeal, which Lord Eldon on this occasion evinced, induced his admirers to institute a subscription for an "Eldon testimonial," to commemorate how "ably and uniformly" his exertions had been directed to the "maintenance of the Protestant Constitution of his country."

The friend, to whom the last letter which we have transcribed was addressed, may be presumed to have applied to this testimonial the somewhat inaccurate description of a "national monument," for Lord Eldon thus answered him, in a letter, probably written in the summer of 1829, containing much more of his easy conversational humour than is commonly to be found in the extracts which Mr. Twiss has given from his correspondence or "anecdote book" :

"As to national monument, my dear Friend, that honor must be paid only to those who are more deserving of it. As to any other Monument, the kindness of that Being, who has given me Leisure, and a Respite from Labour between the business of Life and the Close of it, that I might not go hence too well known to others, too little known to myself, I trust will postpone, for some Time longer, the Occasion, upon which it may be considered whether I should have a Monument to my Memory, or be quietly suffered, which perhaps is best for me, to be forgotten.*

"I own that I am not in very great hurry to take possession of that little Spot of Land, which, when possessed, must be occupied by me till Time shall be no more. Our poor Friend Reay, if you remember, thought his Mother might be in a hurry about such a business, for his Father having by will left her a Vault in some Church, he wrote her a civil Letter to tell her that he would give her possession as soon as she pleased to take it."

In June, 1830, the demise of George IV. transferred the crown to his brother the Duke of Clarence. In the autumn of this year, when the foundations of political society throughout continental Europe were convulsed, and the thrones based upon them were tottering to their fall, Lord

* Lord Eldon was not destined to go thus unhonoured. The dates-twenty-one in number of the principal events of his life have been crowded into an epitaph, too brief for a history, too long for an inscription. It appears in unlucky contrast to the well-expressed narrative of Mr. Twiss, into which it has been incorporated at Vol. III., pp., 311, 312.

Eldon watched the moral earthquake and eruption with timorous curiosity and gloomy anticipation. The latter part of the following letter, addressed by Lord Eldon to his brother-in-law William Surtees, evinces his feelings at that momentous crisis. The letter is proved by internal evidence* to have been written at the commencement of September,

"Dear Surtees,

"A great many Thanks to you for your Letter. I trust that your Entrance upon your 81st year may be only the Fore-runner of your entering upon and enjoying, in many more, Health and all Blessingsand in this wish your Sister most heartily joins me-Our Love waits also upon my Sister, and we read, with much Satisfaction, your good Account of her health.

"I am very glad to hear so good an account of the Norfolk cropsbut I confess I don't consider, (if Mr. Willis's Letters to me are right as to fact,) that these great Crops will be as beneficial to the Landlord or Tenant, as one might, in other Circumstances, have hoped-for he assures me that they have very good Crops-but that the Corn, imported from abroad, is already in quantity so great, that our Corn cannot sell, so as to enable the Farmer to get a price, which will enable him to pay his Taxes and his Rent-As to the political Changes, which are going on abroad, and which are leading to political Changes here, it seems, by no means, improbable, that even you and I may live to see England without a Rag left of the Constitution, under which we have so long lived.

"I don't think we shall be able to move from Town, for, tho' I think Lady Eldon somewhat better, she is not sufficiently better to leave Town I doubt.

"Encombe is elected again, but there is a petition against his election. "Our best Love attends you and my Sister, and I am “Y. old and sincere Friend

"ELDON."

* We have read many letters from Lord Eldon to his intimate friends, in the inside of which there were no dates-a fact accounted for by the consideration that the franked envelopes, containing such of his letters as were sent by post, would present the dates to those who received them. Afterwards, unluckily, the franks and letters have often been separated.

Q.

66

THE PEOPLE-BY M. MICHELET.

AUTHOR OF "PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.'

THE word "People" has various acceptations. Its most legitimate sense is that of a nation or of persons generally, its most received in the present day, is that of the lower classes when brought into opposition with the upper. It is in this sense that M. Michelet treats of the People," as he labours with great intelligence, and sincere and real sympathy, to develop the popular mind, by exposing its actual condition and position, and to cleanse the heart, exalt the faith, and consolidate the patriotism, of those whom he ironically terms "barbarians," by the enfranchisement of instinct, friendship, love and marriage, and religion.

These subjects may appear, in a pre-eminently utilitarian and mammonworshiping country like Great Britain, to be vague and theoretical; but this is so far from being the case, that the best interests of the human race are involved in their discussion, and the future prospects of nations are contained in their solution. The distinguished historian of France, the able antagonist of Jesuitism, and the protector of the wife and family against priestcraft, has entered upon his subject with the energy of one who is himself of the People.

"I have written this book," he says, in his prefatory address to M. Edgar Quinet," of myself, of my life, and of my heart. It has sprung from my experience much more than from my study. I have drawn its materials from my observations, from my relations of friendship and of neigbourhood; I have 'gathered them up on the way-side; chance delights in favouring those who have always the same thought. Lastly, I have more especially derived them from the reminiscences of my youth. To understand the life of the people, their labours, and their sufferings, I have only required to interrogate my memory.

"For, I also, my friend, have worked with my hands. The true name of the modern man-that of workman-I deserve in more than one sense. Before making books, I have literally composed them. I gathered letters together before I collected ideas. I am not ignorant of the melancholy of the workshop, of the weariness of long hours."

M. Michelet then goes on to argue that the documents collected in works of statistics and political economy, even supposing them to be exact, do not suffice to make the People understood. He quotes, as an example not to be met with in statistical works, the immense acquisition of cotton stuffs made by poor households about 1842, although wages had been lowered. It was a progress made in cleanliness, to which so many other virtues attach themselves. The progress of economy must not, he says, be measured, as is usually the case, by the condition of the savings'-banks, nor must it be supposed that does not go there, that is eat or drank. The woman, in poor households, is economy, order, providence. Every influence that she gains is a progress made in morality. She seeks, before every thing, to render the home clean, agreeable, and desirable. He then proceeds to examine what other writers have accomplished in the same cause.

"Writers, artists, whose proceedings are directly opposed to these abstract methods, ought, it would appear, to have carried the sentiment of life into the study of the People. Many of the most eminent of this class, have grappled with this great subject, and talent did not desert them,

their success has been immense. Europe, whose invention has been long slumbering, receives with avidity the products of our literature. The English do little more than write reviews. As to the German books, who reads them, except the Germans ?"

It is something to be sent to Coventry in good company. Dupin, however, another Frenchman, would tell Michelet, that while the writers alluded to above, are exalting the sentiment, the English are improving the material condition and relieving the burthens of the people with a more than Herculean energy. The French, too frequently for their own welfare, write about that which the English are silently accomplishing; hence, while with them invention or fiction is in the ascendant, the literature of fact is paramount with us.

*

But Michelet denies that even the popular French authors of the day represent the People faithfully. "It would be important," he says, "to examine if these French books, which are so popular, in Europe, truly represent France, if they have not shown certain exceptional and very unfavourable aspects, if these pictures, in which our vices and our bad points are brought into the foreground, have not done immense injury to our country among foreign nations. The talent, the good faith of the authors, their known liberality, gave to their words an overwhelming power. The world received their books as a terrible judgment upon France herself.”

The danger of being thus upheld to other nations as vicious, the author goes on to show is to afford a plea to English, Russian, and German aristocracies, to keep themselves in arms against a country which they only await a favourable moment to overwhelm. Such writers, he asserts, have neglected the chief aspect of things as too well known, trivial and vulgar. They wanted effects and sought for them in that which does not appertain to ordinary life.

"The romancists conceived that art lay particularly in the ugly. They imagined that the most infallible effects of art were to be found in moral perversity. Irregular affections appeared to them to be more poetical than domesticity, robbery than work, and the prison than the workshop. If they had themselves entered by personal experience and suffering into the profound realities of life at this epoch, they would have seen that the household, the labour, the most humble life of the people possess within themselves a holy poetry. To feel it and to show it, is not a mere mechanical labour, it does not require that theatrical accidents should be multiplied. But it requires eyes trained to a mild light, eyes that see in the obscurity, the retiring, the humble; and the heart, also, must lend its aid, to enable the eye to penetrate into these recesses of the household and Rembrandt shadows of the hearth."

The People taken in this humane and sympathising light, Michelet goes on to prove, possess most of the higher virtues and all the better feelings of human nature.

"The eminent capital feature," he says, "that which always struck me most in my long study of the People, is, that among the disorders of indif

Even in the literature of fiction, if we borrow largely from the French, so they also borrow from us. We observe from the letter of the Paris correspondent to the Literary Gazette, that two newspapers, the Messager and the Commerce, are simultaneously publishing translations of Mr. Ainsworth's "Miser's Daughter" and "Guy Fawkes." Mr. Dickens's "Cricket" is also made to chirp at the bottom of newspapers. Mr. D'Israeli's "Coningsby" is being published, and "Ten Thousand Year" is in preparation.