single antithesis; but woe betide the man who is facetious upon the thirty-nine articles.

Within this sophism the lawyers have entrenched themselves, upon being driven, by public opinion, from an open and barefaced defence of persecution. By its assistance they are still enabled to fine or imprison, any one who presumes to question the truth of law-established dogma. It has taken some centuries to storm the outwork; how many will it take to capture the citadel!

LEGISLATIVE LITERATURE.

LORD C-F-N was very amusing to-day: every thing he said was cleverly said; full of information, and abounding in curious historic anecdote. I observe, that the elders of the English aristocracy have an amazing mass of historical knowledge. History is the mirror of aristocratical amour-propre. How I should read history if I were a Howard, or a Stanley, or a Russel! The

knowledge of history is, besides, a part of the qualifications for an hereditary legislator; and, of necessity, it engages the attention of those nobles, who are not above, or beneath, all sense of duty and propriety. The mischief of it is, that their tastes and education lead them rather to anecdote, than to philosophy; and their knowledge consists more in facts, than in deductions. The ecclesiastical education of our English universities is at war with philosophy; and the great reject all philosophy that is not genteel and within bounds, like Paley's. Dugald Stewart is their ne plus ultra. Of physiological philosophy, the philosophy of fact, they are usually ignorant. A single page of De Tracy would scare the whole House of Lords. Though they may very generally read the Heloise, they do not the less reject Rousseau's other works, as too philosophical,-Rousseau, the least philosophical of thinkers, and as vehement a hater of philosophers, as the author of the Metromanie himself! "If," said Lord L, to his old friend, General C, who wanted him to purchase a duplicate set of Voltaire's works-" if I were to let your Voltaire into my house, I should

expect the roof to fall and crush me." Another lord, to compare great things with small, actually burned my France, having first called his whole household to witness the solemnity. From the beginning of time this flaming argument has been the favourite court moyen with the powers that be. In this they do but follow the natural instinct which leads us to fear whatever we do not understand. Philosophy is, in truth, but a democratical piece of business: it knows nothing of castes and privileges its object is only the happiness of mankind at large; and it mounts not to the sublimity of vested rights, the transcendentals of politics. But anecdotes, facts, and dates, the sayings and doings of our ancestors, are so useful, so imposing, so applicable to every thing and to nothing, they are so ornamental in discourse, and they so set off a debate !! What a figure they made in the discussions on the catholic question-the arguments of the E.'s, and the eloquence of the W.'s.

VICE REGAL PROGRESSES.

"Les ambassadeurs envoyés en France par les princes étrangers, faisoient à Paris une entrée pompeuse et solemnelle. Cet usage a subsisté jusque vers le milieu du dernier siècle : on ignore pourquoi il a été aboli."*

Dict. des Etiquettes, par M. de Genlis.

! The of

age

I THINK however one may guess pompous and solemn ceremonies, like the age of chivalry, is over, and for ever; both belonged to times of ignorance and barbarism: and long before the great explosion from the revolutionary crater took place, public opinion and private comfort were undermining that mass of cumbrous forms, which weighed upon the feelings, tastes and enjoyments of the victims whose rank obliged them to submit to their galling infliction. If any now submit to the gêne of gorgeous state, it must be in the irremediable dulness which produces the lowest

*Foreign ambassadors formerly made a pompous and solemn entry into Paris. This usage subsisted until the middle of the last age: we know not why it was abolished."

order of pride, and which is more gratified by figuring in a procession, than in the page of history, to illustrate the records of their country.

The Irish Lord Lieutenants of the olden times were subjected to all the pageantry, privation and display which then distinguished the majesty they represented. From the very starting post of official initiation, they were called on to abandon all the personal ease and independence of private life. They left England, and returned to it, according to certain rules and forms, which it would have been leze-majesté to have neglected. The interval of the commonwealth, had caused some of the forms of the vice-regal progress to be forgotten; yet in Charles the Second's time, we find Lord Essex writing to a friend, to find out, if he is to return in the same state with which he departed, and to prepare him a black suit trimmed with black ribbons, to make his grand entry into London; even though he returned in a sort of disgrace. Sir John Perrot's departure for the Lord Deputyship, as described by his quaint biographer, is a scene for a melodrame! He had received the queen's orders to sail with, and command the fleet, sent to inter