succumb to despotism; it proves only that divided Europe cannot stand against united Russia, half the strength of liberty against the whole forces of despotism. Freedom has need of all its forces to resist the attack of fanatical zeal, and the lust of conquest led by regulated despotism aided by military skill. Had England been united to France in 1812, Russia would have been repelled to its deserts by the legions of Napoleon and Wellington: had the triumph of the Barricades and the Reform transports not paralysed Britain and Germany in 1831, the independence of Poland would have been re-established by the arms of Skrzynecki. The strength of the East lies in its indissoluble union under a single head; the weakness of the West, in its ceaseless divisions under many.

In the very front rank of the great league of the Western powers, which can alone preserve Europe from Russian subjugation, must be placed THE RESTORATION OF POLAND. Such a measure would not be revolutionary; it would be conservative. Restoration is a work of justice, of which no government, how strong soever, need be ashamed: the principle of Revolution is spoliation, not restitution. To restore Poland is not to introduce new ways, but to return to the old ones. In the courage and heroism of the Sarmatian race is to be found the real and the only effective barrier against the encroachments of the Muscovite: in their indelible feeling of nationality, the provision made by Providence for its resurrection, like the Phoenix from its ashes. Such a barrier is not to be found in Turkey. England and France may fight their own battle in the Crimea or on the Danube, but they will not find their real allies in the Ottomans. The Cross must defend itself; it is not to be defended by the Crescent. Europe committed a great sin in permitting the barrier of Poland to be swept away; it can be expiated only by aiding in its restoration. The extension of Austria to the mouth of the Danube, and the acquisition by it of Moldavia and Wallachia, under the burden of the stipulated payment to the Porte, is the obvious mode, without doing injustice to any one, of winning its consent to the cession of Gallicia. If Prussia casts in its lot with the Muscovites, it cannot complain if it undergoes the fate which it itself imposed on Saxony when its sovereign adhered to Napoleon in 1814. But to cement the league which is to achieve this mighty deliverance, the cause of independence must be severed from that of democracy; Poland must be restored by an effort of united Europe, not by arming one section of it against the other. Its partition was the sin of the sovereigns alone, and restitution must be made or retribution endured by the sovereigns, not the people."

We remember to have noticed sentiments almost identical with these in a well known quarterly journal, the representative of opinions differing in many respects, almost in all, from those which Sir Archibald Alison commonly puts forward; and we are glad to perceive this unity, not only of feeling but of judgment, in historians and publicists who have

little else in common. In an article upon M. Mérimée's life of Demetrius the Impostor, in No. LXX (Jan. 1854) of the Dublin Review, we find the following passage:

"It is quite with a touch of enthusiasm M. Mérimée records the services rendered to Russia by the patriotie butcher, Minin, to whose harangues Russia is mainly indebted for her independence and her present race of Emperors, and the traditions of whose trade it will not be denied have been faithfully preserved by the Romanoffs. Not being Russians ourselves, and not pretending to any thing like pure cosmopolitanism, we cannot say we dwell with pleasure upon any event or any series of events which led, however remotely, to the fall of Poland. It was on the contrary with a feeling of irrepressible melancholy we read the last of her successes, and our heart was touched anew as we reverted to the fate of that glorious land so dear to memory and so sacred to sorrow. We grieved to think that her pure cause should be under the detestable protection of Democracy; to see the palm of her confession broken and repudiated, and the purple of her martyrtom dabbled in the base blood that ran upon the barricades of '48. We know it was the Nemesis of Poland that plied her scourge by the hands of Bem and Dembinski, but we could wish to see her more nobly avenged and on a lawful field. In the war which Russia has so determinedly drawn upon herself, does no statesman look to the reconstitution of Poland as an issue? Does no monarchist think of detaching from revolution her most formidable ally? Does no liberal think opposing a bulwark to the encroachments of despotism? Does Napoleon III. mean to repeat the crime and blunder of Napoleon I. in trifling with the liberties of Poland ? Does it ever occur to Austria and Prussia that if their right eye scandalize them, it were well to pluck it out; and that it is better to continue in life without Gallicia or Posen, than to go down with Gallicia and Posen into that terrestrial empire of darkness, which is ruled by the terrestrial deity' of the Russians."

It is hardly necessary to say, that these are our sentiments also; and that we adhere with a settled and immoveable conviction to the belief, that Poland must be built up again, and entrenched upon the confines of civilisation. The outposts of European freedom and greatness should be again committed to the sacred band that held them and advanced them so proudly before. The nation that, under the disadvantages of a constitution and government the most absurd, perhaps, ever imposed upon a community civilised or savage, beat down the power of Turkey when Turkey was powerful, and rolled back the torrent of triumphant barbarism from the gates of Vienna, from the gates of Europe; surely such a people, under a strong and well knit monarchy, would stand upon the frontier land of European society, and, like the angel at the gate

of Paradise, warn off with her sword of fire the barbarians who have forfeited their right of citizenship. Trammelled, as we have said, by a constitution that no mere reform could mend, preyed upon by parricidal factions, often represented in the field by a few thousand lances, when she might have disposed of as many myriads, yet even thus she propagated her boundaries year after year, absorbed vast provinces, annihilated armies sixteen times the strength of her own, gave laws in the Kremlin, and nearly half a century after heaven and the constitution had wrought her downfall, maintained with the resources of four millions of Poles the struggle we have seen, against the master of forty millions of Russians. It is difficult to understand how these circumstances should not have forced themselves more peremptorily, not upon the statesmen but upon the people of these countries. We do not think there is virtue, genius or courage in our government to face such a solution of the question, nor is it to be expected that any pressure of events outside our own four seas will put that dish of skimmed milk into motion. The treaty that may be supposed to follow our successes, and put a restraint upon Russian encroachment, will be our own handiwork, the contrivance of man, whereas Poland is conspicuously marked by the finger of God to be the rampart of liberty and Christianity. That rampart is prostrate but not demolished, and it rests with us to build it up "e vivis et electis lapidibus." While Poland yet existed, it was part of the constitutions of Polish chivalry that, during the chaunting of the gospel at the altar, the knightly worshipper should stand with his sword half drawn, an attitude sublimely indicative of his place and functions in the economy of European society. When Europe comes to feel the value of Poland, and realize the truth that society is a commonwealth of nations, in which every individual people has its allotted part, not to be usurped by any other without derangement of her entire polity--when she comes to understand further, that the place so long held by Poland, and now so long vacant, is necessary to the general security, and can be filled by Poland alone-when the people of this empire will be careful to separate the cause of Poland from that of other nationalities whose claims, supposing them to have any, cannot be urged with profit to them, or without disaster to the cause of Poland-when all this comes to pass, there will be some hope of the only issue to the present contest

worth the struggle. The fiction of the preservation of Turkey has drifted and cleared away with the smoke of the first shot. It is for Europe, for ourselves, we stand; and even upon no higher, no more dignified principle, the restoration of Poland ought to be the rallying word upon every hustings. On no pretence of embarrassing the course of negotiations, of detaching Austria from the allies, or of provoking the hostility of Prussia, should evasion of this question be permitted. We, for our part, have never triumphed in the weakness or humiliation of Austria; we have no sympathy with her rebels or her defamers; the dearest action of Irishmen has been spent in her service; we are bound to her for a generous and openhearted hospitality in evil times; and we would not willingly deprive her of a foot of territory or a scruple of influence. We have no particular grudge against Prussia, if we take anything from her it must be at a valuation. Let Austria have the Danubian provinces and something more; mediatize half a dozen of German princes and throw their dukedoms to Prussia, but let Poland be revived at any cost. Gratify the pride, make safe the interests of Austria and Prussia. as events may permit; the means will not be wanting if the determination be adopted and adhered to. Austria and Prussia will be more immediate gainers; Austria, no doubt, is aware of this, but her position is lamentably peculiar. Sheowes it to Russia that she exists. When all Europe, and England more particularly, stood by and flouted her in the death struggle with democracy upon all her frontiers, Russia interposed and saved her. And has Russia no claim upon her gratitude? Alas, Poland was her first deliverer, and gratitude never interposed to forbid the partition, though the partition was simply a crime, while the reduction of Russian power is a necessity. After a little decent reluctance, and a little ceremonious pressure from without, Austria, we may be assured, will come to terms. Prussia, too, it is likely, will come to understand her own interests, and may be brought to surrender Posen for a proper equivalent; but she is under the fascination still, and will require more peremptory dealing. In a word, Europe can have no faith in moral obligations, she must have her "material guarantee" or nothing. Russian and European interests can have nothing in common; their enmity is instinctive, their antipathy invincible, their union impossible, their very co-existence scarce conceivable-

Statesmen are not even yet disabused of the idea that Russian and European destinies, like the lines of the parabola, can approach for ever without ever coming into contact. Men seem to think that some squinting treaty looking every way and no way, or blinking the only interest it would appear to stare upon, is the necessity of the time-Diplomatists, if it be left to them, will continue to substitute darkness for safety, ambiguity of clauses for opposition of forces, paper for iron, and back-doors for ramparts in front-Poland is the only rampart that will stand; and unless we raise it up, ministers may outwit each other upon details and win their little victories with their customary little arts; but the solid victory will remain with Russia-nay we can suppose her to play the part of the penitent and vanquished, and consent like Sampson to be bound with bonds of her own choosing, that she can snap without an effort; but we, who know the secret of her strength, how long are we to trifle with our opportunity ?-Let us lay it to heart that Russia is beyond her own control, and that nothing short of a physical obstacle can arrest her progress. A great and fanatical people set in motion by the superstition of a destiny, is no more master of its own will than an avalanche detached from the mountain; and you might as well attempt to arrest the one by artificial obstructions as the other. only the opposite mountain, the natural barrier in a word, that can offer an effectual resistance-Poland, we say once again, is that barrier, and can expect to have no other-Poland belongs to the West by religion, civilization, tradition, manners, feelings, instincts, antipathies; and while Russia holds a single fort in the West, Europe is threatened and defied-Goldsmith, a mere poet, an unfortunate scholar, a philanthropic vagabond, who never learned diplomacy, and had as little acquaintance with red tape as with the red ribbon; a few years before the first partition of Poland, felt and described the danger of Russian preponderance in the West more forcibly than any one of us all appears to understand it now. "A fort in the power of this people," he says, "would be like the possession of a flood-gate; and when ambition, interest, or necessity prompted, they might then be able to deluge the world with a barbarous inundation." When Goldsmith wrote, the possession of a single fort by Russia in Western Europe was almost an improbable event. We now find her conterminous with Austria, Prussia, and Turkey; overawing the first, fascinating the second, and on the point of swallowing the third.

It is