At length our visitor said with a loud voice, that as he must suppose if any gentleman had made assertions against Mary Neil's character, he would have had the spirit to avow it, he must therefore take it for granted that his information was erroneous, and, in that point of view, he regretted having alarmed the Society! And without another word, he bowed three times very low, and retired backward to the door; his dog backing out with equal politeness, when with a parting salute, doubly ceremonious, Mr Rowan ended this extraordinary interview. On the first of his departing bows, by a simultaneous impulse, we all rose and returned his compliment, almost touching the table with our noses, but still in profound silence; which bowing on both sides was repeated till he was fairly out of the room. Three or four of the company then ran to the window, to be sure that he and his dog were clear off into the street. And no sooner had this satisfactory dénouement been ascertained, than a general roar of laughter ensued, and we talked it over in a hundred different ways; the whole of our argument, however, turning upon the question,

Which had behaved the politest on the occasion?'"

The truth was that the whole affair was a surprise. The giant protector of Mary Neil had pounced upon them before they had any idea of his coming; and thus instead of calling up the landlord to throw him down stairs, and accompanying this meritorious office by a general contribution of horsewhips, which an intruder, under such circumstances, so richly deserved, they let the business take its way. But, that no similar surprise may again take place on British ground, be it understood that the Chairman, for the time being, is the depositary of the brains, the power and the honour of the Club, and that upon any similar intrusion, which in our days of anarchy may not be among the most impossible things, it is his primal and imperious duty to order the intruder to be kicked out of his presence, by the united energies of the Club. The President on this occasion was undoubtedly deficient in the due sense of his official responsibility. The courage of

the thing was out of the question. Every barrister in those days was a fire-eater, as ready to take up the pistol as the brief, and in some instances oftener indulged in the former than the latter. No barrister thought himself entitled to resign the tented field," until he had arrived at the Bench, and even then he sometimes stole a quiet opportunity to vindicate his original love of combat, and, like the Son of Thetis, after his long secession, on silken couches and woolsacks, shine again in arms.

Hamilton Rowan's history now makes one of the public documents of his country. He was the great agitator of his time. His speech, his pistol, or his cudgel, was always at the service of what he called "The sacred cause of Humanity." But, as Mary Neils could not rise every day, and he probably, from after circumstances, even in her instance, began to feel the ridicule of his Quixotism in so suspicious a cause, he looked for a more active impulse in his ascent to popular fame. In Ireland, unhappily, this impulse is to be found by every body. The candidate for renown has only to protest that Ireland is the loveliest, most fertile, most generous, gallant, and glorious spot that the sun shines on; that it is also the most degraded, undone, hideous, wretched, beggared, and trampled on, of any since the discovery of Africa; and that this tissue of calamities, this web of affliction, this shroud of despair, wrapping the palpitating limbs of the land, which it chills into a corpse, is wholly and solely the work of England! of Saxon England, of the soil of Bigotry and Bishops, of absentee profligacy, of legislative tyranny, of three estates, to which the three Parcæ were flexible, and the three Furies tame, tender, and good-tempered. With this stock of miseries prepared, any political trader may open his warehouse, and find popularity flowing in, ragged, it is true, and ruffianly besides, a representative miscreancy sent by idleness, vice, and bloodshed, to assure the new trafficker of their patronage; and contribute a share of all that they can beg, or steal, to the support of the firm. Rowan, at length abandoning private wrongs for public injuries, assumed the protection of his country. The country

exhibited no signs of being the better for its new clientship; and the generous patron was soon evidently much the worse. Some of his expedients in "the sacred cause of Humanity" now began to exhibit that solitary consideration for his own security, which fell rather beneath the dignity of a determination to be hanged. On one occasion an auction at his house was made the dexterous contrivance of telling his mind. A bundle of printed papers was thrown into the fireless grate, which of course every comer was at liberty to take, and which thus conveyed his opinions in the most innocent and accidental manner. But this could not go on for ever. Government at last grasped him; he was convicted of publishing a paper which brought down a sentence of fine and imprisonment, and he was thrown into Newgate.

And those were the first fruits of his labours-this the career of a man, whom fortune, birth, education, and habits marked out for a life of usefulness and honour; no low-born adventurer, no dastardly malignant, no hater of the society that scorns and excludes him, but a gentleman, in every sense of the word but that which includes common loyalty and common understanding.

But while he lay in his dungeon, new discoveries of a deeper nature were announced, evidence was alleged, which made the patriot feel that even in prison he must not wait

for the law. Before the charges could be put into shape, he contrived to evade the vigilance of his jailers, fled to the house of a friend in the neighbourhood of Dublin, and finally was smuggled off in a fishing-boat to France. He gave himself great credit for the adroitness, whatever he might do for the intrepidity, of his conduct on this occasion. But the probability of the case is, that his escape was connived at, if not actually suggested, by Government. Escape from a French jail is, like every thing French, a melodramatic affair, and the turnkeys are all heroes of romance. But English, and even Irish, jailers are made of sterner stuff; and if it were their will to have held him fast, no dexterity of his could have opened his prison gates. The truth is, that the public opinion was in favour of this foolish man's heart in contempt for his head; he was considered as an enthusiast, and as such, there was no wish to mingle his blood with that of the wilful conspirators. He was never pursued. After a slight investigation, the subject was dropped. And at the close of an exile in America, he made his submission, received the King's pardon, was suffered to return and resume his property, and left to meditate thenceforth, on the difference between the mercy of a King, and the massacres of Republicanism. He is now old, or dead; in either case, he is, as he ought to be, forgotten.

"KNOWLEDGE," says Lord Bacon, "is POWER:" he has not said it is either wisdom or virtue. The extension of the means of requiring information to the middling and working classes, is the greatest of all additions to their political importance; but in itself, it is not only no safeguard against the introduction of error amongst them, and unless duly guarded, the greatest of all inflators to the depraved principles of our nature. Like the Amreeta Cup in Kehama, it is the greatest of all blessings, or the greatest of all curses, according to the character and circumstances of the people among whom it is introduced: as much as it diffuses the principles of virtue, and the habits of industry, amongst a simple and religious, does it spread the poison of infidelity, and the extravagance of passion among a more corrupted community. The power of reading in itself is neither a blessing nor a curse: it is merely an instrument of vast power put into the hands of the people, and which may be rendered an engine of the one or the other, according to the use which is made of it, and the direction which it receives.

It is here that the vast, the irretrievable, and fatal error of the present age is to be found. It consists in the belief, which has not only been entertained, but acted upon by a great proportion of the wisest and best, as well as the most ambitious and reckless of the community, that it was sufficient for the poor if you merely taught them to read, without any attention to their preservation from the incalculable mass of error and falsehood with which the Press abounds; or any care to instruct them in right moral and religious principles; and that the human mind, if left to itself, would choose the safest and most improving information, just as an animal would select out of a field the sweetest and most nutritious aliment.

The error was natural: it was even praiseworthy: it arose from many of the most amiable feelings of our nature, and was to be found in the most estimable and delightful men. But it was an error of the greatest magnitude, it betrayed a total ignorance of the practical working of the human mind, and it has been attended with the most disastrous consequences. Experience, dear bought woful experience, has now proved its futility; and demonstrated that in measures intended to act generally upon society, not less than in those destined for the improvement of the individual, we must equally calculate upon the inherent weakness of our natural depravity, and guard against knowledge becoming the inlet for the admission of evil, not less scrupulously than prepare it for being the channel for the introduction of good.

The reason of this necessity is to be found in the fact which is announced to us in the earliest works of Revelation, which was coeval with the birth of man, and is evidently destined to continue as long as he exists, viz. the corrupt and wayward tendency of his nature, and the absolute necessity for the most strenuous efforts, to counteract the disposition to evil, which seems to be as natural to him as for the sparks to fly upward. We are not now going to enter into any theological argument: we are no advocates for the extreme of Calvinistic Divinity; we merely mention a fact, upon which all who know the human heart, in all ages have been agreed, and without a constant recollection of which all our efforts for the improvement of the species will be worse than nugatory. This fact is the rapid and instantaneous propagation of vice, and the extremely slow and tardy progress of virtue-the facility with which the most profligate and corrupting ideas can be diffused, and the tardy progress of all the attempts to counter

act their influence. This doctrine is not peculiar to Christianity, it is to be found in the Philosophers, Moralists, and Sages of every age and country in the world; in Xenophon and Plato, in Cicero and Aristotle; in the dreams of the Hindoos and the Enigmas of the Talmud, in the Proverbs of Solomon and the Maxims of Confucius. When the rival Goddesses of Pleasure and Virtue, in the beautiful Grecian Fable, stood before the infant Hercules, the one was clothed in the garb and arrayed in the colour likely to captivate a youthful fancy; but the other was severe and forbidding in aspect, and terrified the beholder by the awful severity of her brow; and the emblems will continue to the end of time to distinguish the Siren, whose bewitching smiles tempt to the path of perdition, and the sober matron who guards the narrow way, which leads in the end to temporal and eternal happiness.

"The corrupt nature of man," says Archbishop Tillotson, "is a rank soil to which vice takes easily, and wherein it thrives apace. The mind of man hath need to be prepared for piety and virtue; it must be cultivated to that end, and ordered with great care and pains; but vices are weeds that grow wild and spring up of themselves. They are in some sort natural to the soil, and therefore they need not be planted or watered; 'tis sufficient if they be neglected and let alone. So that vice having this advantage from our nature, it is no wonder if occasion and temptation easily call it forth. Our corrupt hearts, when they are once set in motion, are like the raging sea, to which we can set no bounds, nor say, Hitherto shalt thou come and no farther.' Sin is very cunning and deceitful, and does strangely gain upon men, when once they give way to it. It is of a very bewitching nature, and hath strange arts of address and insinuation. For sin is very teeming and fruitful, and though it hath no blessing annexed to it, yet it does strangely increase and multiply. As there is a connexion of one virtue with another, so vices are linked together, and one

sin draws many after it. When the Devil tempts a man to commit any wickedness, he does, as it were, lay a long train of sins, and if the first temptation take, they give fire to another.” * If any of our readers feel that these principles are not applicable to themselves, we congratulate them on their condition, and sincerely hope it will long continue so: we can only say, that is not the case with ourselves, nor any class of men, in any climate, rank, or age of the world with whom we are acquainted.

Observe the precautions which the experience of all ages and countries has proved to be necessary for the protection of youth, from the contamination to which they would otherwise be exposed by the corruptions or errors of knowledge. How carefully are the minds of the young preserved from the mass of infidelity, profligacy, and vice, with which the press abounds; how guarded is the selection of authors put into their hands; how great the efforts made to save them from the evident and easy irruption of falsehood, and prepare them by laborious efforts, and the study of the great authors of our own or other countries, for the duties, the trials, and the temptations of the world! Would any one expect that by simply teaching the young to read, and immediately allowing them to devour every thing, good, bad, and indifferent, which came in their way, they would either extend their knowledge, improve their habits, or fortify their minds? Is any thing more certain, than that by such conduct the minds of the great majority of men would be depraved instead of being improved, inflamed instead of being calmed; that they would choose not that which was most useful, but most agreeable; not that which promised ultimate benefit, but that which was attended with immediate amusement; not that which strengthened the understanding, but that which excited the passions? It is the universal experience of this truth, which in all ages and countries has rendered it indispensably necessary to place the education of the young under

the immediate and special control of the ministers of religion, to watch with anxious care over every thing which they received, and by the most sedulous attention prevent that rapid and fatal inhaling of vice, to which the extension of knowledge from the inherent propensity to evil would otherwise infallibly lead.

The neglect of this obvious and familiar truth, has been the remote, but certain and prolific source, of the gradual, but certain and approaching ruin of the British empire. The advocates for popular education were universally deluded by the idea, that to reform the world, to check the progress of vice, purify the administration of government, it was only necessary to educate the people; to give them the means of reading, and nothing more, and to bring knowledge to their doors by the publication of cheap editions of many works, containing useful and valuable information. The idea was plausible; it pervaded many of the best of the community; it was founded on a benevolent view of human nature; but it argued a lamentable want of practical acquaintance with mankind, and, above all, a total ignorance or forgetfulness of the fundamental principles of religion. What has been the result? Exactly that which any of our great divines, judging from principle, would have prophesied; what any practical man, judging from experience, would have anticipated; but what the Whigs, judging from theory, never dreamt of; that a large proportion of the lower orders of mankind have rushed in tumultuous crowds to every thing that was exciting, intoxicating, and vicious, to the entire neglect of every thing that was elevating, useful, and ennobling; that they have neglected philosophy to devour novels, laid aside history to dream over romances, abandoned science to feed themselves with journals, forgot the Bible to read Carlile.

That this has been the practical result of the heedless and irreligious education of the people, must, we fear, be conceded even by the warmest advocates of the extension of knowledge to the lower or ders. Without the explanation indeed of this great and general cause

without taking into consideration the prodigious influence of this new element, which has now for the first time been let loose in human affairs, it is impossible to account for the extraordinary demoralization of the lower orders during the last twenty years, and the extent to which licentiousness and profligacy in that class, now press not only against the barriers of government, but the restraints of religion, the precepts of virtue, and even the ordinary decorum of society. Unhappily too, and this is a most characteristic circumstance, these symptoms of corruption have become most apparent in the lowest classes of the state. Formerly, the progress of evil was from the higher to the inferior ranks of society; vice began to overflow first in the most elevated regions of the state, among those whom wealth had corrupted, and idleness unnerved, and it spread to the inferior classes in a great degree from the influence or example of their superiors. Now, the case is reversed. The most depraved class of society, beyond all question, at least in the great towns, is the lowest; the corruptions of rank and opulence have been fairly outdone by those of penury and discontent; entering by the gates opened by the schoolmaster, degeneracy has intrenched himself in the dense population of the great towns, from whence as to many centres, the leprosy is rapidly overspreading the land. How is this deplorable fact, so opposite to what à priori was expected, to be accounted for? Simply in the multitude of inlets which the power of reading and the press have opened into the human mind, when totally unprepared for the trial, and the instantaneous rush which every species of corrupting and disorganizing composition has made to occupy the space thus for the first time laid open, to the general ex: clusion of the more distasteful habits of real utility. In the general deluge, every thing calculated to elevate, purify, or improve human nature, has, among the lower orders in our great cities at least, been overwhelmed; knowledge has given place to fiction; information to abuse; religion to infidelity; Newton to the Republican; Bacon to the Satirist; the Bible to the Black Dwarf.