them and their urgent necessities. What then is there in reserve for the relief, not of the poor solely, but of the public also? Charity, it seems, can effect no good; parliamentary reform would produce much evil. Retrenchment and economy in the various departments under Government have been tried, and are about to be tried on a still larger scale. It is clearly foreseen, however, and is readily admitted by every party man, in every place except the House of Commons, that no sum of money, really important to Great Britain, can be saved by any degree of retrenchment and economy, let the one be ever so severe, the other ever so pinching and pitiful. We must therefore rely, as already hinted, on the Revival of Trade, and the Repeal of Taxes. The vast sweep of our trade was occasioned by the war, and its bounds have been contracted by the peace: the consideration of which might abate our love of peace, if a war, great enough to extend trade, could possibly be maintained, without such a loss of men as sometimes spreads mourning over the face of a country; and such an expenditure of public money as never fails to entail on it very heavy burdens. We must then owe the revival of trade to some cause or causes less forbidding than any conceivable state of war. We must allow time for foreign nations to complete the political, financial, and commercial regulations, which the altered state of their affairs requires to look around them at home and abroad, so as to know first themselves and their wants, then our merchants and their capabilities. This done, they will again resort to England, aware that no where else can they experience such facilities and such advantages. In the meantime our traders of all denominations will have recovered spirit and means with which to launch out afresh; articles imported will have become reasonably cheap-so will those of native growth; while the pressure of taxes will have ceased to be heavy and irksome. But the repeal of taxes is an essential ingredient in the remedy for the existing evil. And when may we expect to witness such a repeal as shall contribute materially to the domestic convenience of some, the commercial and agricultural success of others, the satisfaction and enjoyment of all? We answer, when the forces by sea and land can safely be reduced to a low peace establishment. In the meantime, however, as stated in the preceding paragraph, a considerable amelioration of the circumstances of the nation will have taken place. The measures adopted by Parliament and the Government-the abolition of some imposts, of some pensions, of some sinecures, and of a great many miscellaneous places, will have afforded a partial relief both to the cultivator and the proprietor of land, though by no means enough to enable the latter to reduce his rents so as to make it practicable for tenants to pay them regularly. This, we repeat, can be done only after the arrival of the time when the country can safely be put upon a very reduced peace establishment: and, till that time, which depends much on the English reformers and the Irish emancipators, though more on the stability of the French Government, there will be sufficient need, throughout the sister islands, for the exercise of the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity. What the quantity of good is that may reasonably be expected from a great, but gradual reduction of the poor-rates, and from some slight safe alteration in the tithe system, we do not now inquire, having touched on both topicks in preceding Numbers. Nor shall we, at present, enter upon the subject of the nefarious combinations through which bread and animal food are continued at such extravagantly high prices. Parliament is soon to meet, and enter upon the business of a Session which promises to be more active and laborious, and, at the same time, more interesting and important, both to the hundreds who are to be engaged within the walls of either House, and to the millions who will anxiously await their deci sions without, than any that has been witnessed by the oldest. man living. Most of its great and characterizing measures will be founded on domestic circumstances and occurrences, which, to ourselves at least, are highly momentous; while the affairs of foreign countries exhibit little that can either strongly attract, or ought much to affect our feelings as a people. The northern and central nations of Europe are studying profoundly their own substantial interests. One half of the French are doing something with all their might; while the other half are, as usual, striving to thwart them. Turkey and Italy are barely worthy of notice; and Portugal, as a kingdom, is not in the new map of Europe. Spain respires heavily; and, on looking to the Indies, with good reason doubts the tutelary power of her host of saints. In our western colonies all is quiet; and in the East the refractory have been speedily subdued, because we have relied but little on Hercules. In America, affairs are of a very diversified nature; and, unless bigotted Spain be soon enabled to manifest far more vigour than it does at present, we may, by and by, have to regret the loss of much more than of our traffic with the vast Southern Peninsula. Such, however, is the present excitement of feeling among the members of opposition; and such, too, the versatility of their genius in all questionable cases, that Ministers expect to be frequently surprised and harassed, and obliged to defend positions which they had not judged it requisite to fortify. They hope, however, to be successful, because they intend that their conduct shall be consistent with what it was, while they were placing their country on the eminence which it now occupies: but their opponents also reckon upon success, though nobody can tell how much, or how little: Blessed is the Whig who expecteth nothing. It is not to be doubted, but that they will be promptly and cheerfully countenanced by all the mobs who may have been called together for the purpose of making an idle clamour about something which they do not understand—but which they preposte rously call parliamentary reform. Yet what can this unseemly sort of countenance avail them? None of their friends who are averse to a grand experiment on the Constitution, which not a few of them are, will consider it wise or dignified to follow such guides; the only consequences of which will be, that we shall by and by hear, that the petitions which had caused so much idleness among those who had need to have been constantly at their daily labour, had, in one place, been respectfully received and properly disposed of; in another, brought up, and read, and discussed, and then thrown aside-as having no one good, but many a bad tendency. We do not now mention the incessant worry about economy and retrenchment as an effectual parliamentary resource to the party. The topic seems old, though likely to be about two or three years older before it sink into oblivion; and there is no chance of its affording either much advantage to those who may speak on it within doors, or much amusement to those who may talk of it out of doors. Louis XVIII. in opening his Parliament the other day, desired the two Houses "to be well assured of his unshaken firmness in repressing malevolence, and in restraining the impulses of a misguided zeal." The Prince Regent and the King of France have the same means of enforcing moderation-the power of dissolving Parliament; the exercise of which, by the way, some gentlemen had as well not be in a hurry to provoke. ART. II.-The Poetic Mirror, or the Living Bards of Britain. 12mo. London. 1816. HERE is a thing as good as the Rejected Addresses-with less of broad comedy, but more of chastened humour; a thing which at once gives evidence of a finer faculty of distinguishing the poetical character of the authors imitated, and of greater powers of touch in the delineation of their style. They are unfortunately connected by a fiction, which is destitute of all elegance, ingenuity, and probability; but we shall not dwell upon this. We introduce our readers, at once, to the book itself. The poetry of Lord BYRON is first imitated. The author has attempted a serious poem in his manner; in which, we are sorry to say, he has completely failed. Lord Byron may be copied in his quaintness, in his abrupt affectations, in his poetical quotations from prose writers, in the Persian, and Turkish, and Arabic words with which he so profusely embellishes his poetry-and we have already seen that a very ludicrous use may be made of his gloomy misanthropy: but his proper style cannot be imitated, without copying his own figures and expressions; and this in a serious poem would be altogether intolerable. He is by far the most powerful and original painter, in the present day, of those wild and stormy passions which agitate the bosom, or of the terrible and silent broodings of despair and revenge, or of the complainings of that high-wrought and agonized tenderness which sinks deep into the heart: and he has no rivals but Campbell and Crabbe, in the pure and exquisite delineation of that peaceful and lovely affection which reposes upon one alone, and is wound about the soul of that one with innumerable foldings. There can be little hope of finding a breathing copy of such high poetical qualities as these; and there is still less reason to hope for any thing like the melancholy and enthusiastic, and lofty and indignant eloquence of his reflections upon degraded Greece. Perhaps there is nothing in modern poetry so original, so pathetic, and so exquisitely sad, as his comparison of that country, in its present state, to the quiet loveliness of a lifeless and beloved object. His descriptions, too, of the dazzling skies, and the serene air, and the magnificent ruins, and the twilight groves,-and the thousand recollections of heroes and poets which their names awaken, give to his poetry another charm, scarcely less powerful than his painting of the "fierce wars and faithful loves" with which they are interwoven. "The Guerilla" opens with these verses, in which all our sagacity cannot discover the slightest resemblance of the manner of Lord Byron : "Sore for the selfishness of men I wail,- Who in aught else save their own strength confide. |