In our age of universal illumination, darkness is a past idea. Politics have lost their intricacy. Morals are as simple in theory as they are rigid in practice. Science sits in the corners of the streets, lecturing to naked philosophers; and Government throws off her robe of ceremony, and walks as naked as the philosophers themselves. Yet, too much light may be as overwhelming as too little, and it is possible that our sansculotte politicians may be as much bewildered in the excessive sunshine of the nineteenth century, as the most carefully costumed minister in the obscurity of the eighteenth. However, "Di meliora." It is not the part of wisdom to boast, or of reasoning to draw conclusions in scorn of facts. We have discovered, that our forefathers were totally ignorant of every sound principle of government at home, and policy abroad. Among our accessions of knowledge, we have ascertained, that in distrusting France, and allying themselves with Germany, they entirely miscalculated the nature of the national good and evil. And not to speak contemptuously of those whose blood flows in our veins, and who, by some means or other, certainly contrived to build up a very considerable empire, we admit that luck is an element of policy, that the blunderer may be as well off as the sage, and that there is a pity, or a protection, which, as the Turks say, especially saves the bones of children and idiots from being broken. Yet History, old almanack as it is in the new vocabulary, will make its impression upon the more refractory minds. Those whose alertness is not sufficient for the rapid movement of a moving time, the race of reason, must be content with such guides as they can find; and while the bolder energies and brighter spirits of the age of light sail loose on the wings of speculation, we must try to make our way by clinging to the skirts of experience as we can.

History tells us that the only genuine peril of England has been from

France. To all other aggressors she has opposed, and will oppose, an iron rampart of confidence and valour. The navy of Spain was dashed more against that rampart, than against the natural barriers of her soil. The pious gratitude of the country acknowledged the high interposition which sent the winds and billows to fight for the land of Religion; but it was the heroism of heart, which thought it "foul shame that Parma or Spain should invade the borders of her realms; and the heroism of hand, which would have seconded that magnanimous feeling with the last drop of the enemies' blood and its own, that awed the Spaniard for ever from the land." To all the other powers of Europe and the earth she is inaccessible. But France can subdue with her principles, before she strikes with her sword; her tactic is not in the field, but in the cottage, the manufactory, and the streets; her campaign is in the conspiracy; and the most fatal triumph of her eternal rivalry, is in the closest alliance with the spirit of her councils. Let us not be misunderstood, as desiring war with any nation, or as even repelling the intercourses of amity with France, while it is possi ble to be retained. Our alarm is generated only by the attempt at identity of purpose, by the adoption of her principles, by the separation of our policy from that of our old allies for the sake of combining more exclusively with France; our thinking the world well lost, and playing the part, to meet the fate of Anthony, for our glittering, voluptuous, protesting, profligate Cleopatra. France exhibits at this moment one feature which should warn us against all promises of her fidelity. She is without a religion. It is utterly impossible that without this great pledge of honour, justice, and peace, she can be faithful to a British alliance. The connexion may go on unbroken for a few years, but it is illicit; it wants the only sanction which can make it honest, prosperous, or firm. Even if no blight should

fall upon it from a higher source than the passions or principles of man, it must break off by the nature of human things; what began in imprudence must end in caprice: fortunate if a community of error does not end in a community of corruption, and the ill-judged alliance of the vices and the follies surprise the world with the moral, how a great nation may be most speedily undone.

It is not to be supposed that we can be panegyrists of the ancient church of France. Its prejudices, and its unfitness for being the teacher of a national mind, or the depository of those deathless truths, which were given for the instruction of that mind in higher objects than the rights even of kings, churches, and prelates, brought their own heavy penalties. But, we think, with Plutarch, that the darkest superstition is better than infidelity; the most ignorant reverence of an Eternal Source of truth, purity, and justice, is a better element of society than the most sparkling contempt of them all; and that when the winds are abroad, and the commonwealth is on the surge, we should confide more in the fidelity that piloted itself by the dimmest gleam of the worlds above, than in the most flourishing promises of reaching our anchorage, with republican honour at the prow, and republican Atheism at the helm. We therefore pronounce that our alliance with the throne and people of Louis-Philippe must be insecure; if we extendit, must be dangerous to the full degree of its extent; and in the first serious collision with Europe, may be our ruin. In France, at this moment, there is no national religion. That has been abolished by the legislature of the streets. The deliberations of the pike and the pistol, in the three days of July, decided that question without the formality of debate. The rabble of Paris spoke the word, and it was done. The legislature was worthy of the work, and the work worthy of the legislature. Now every man in France may choose his religion for himself, or make his religion, or may neither choose nor make. Thus, nine-tenths of France have no religion of any kind. The rising generation will be the inheritors of their fathers' principles;

France, without the declaration of Atheism, will have the substance; and the popular novelty will be the man who believes in the existence of a hereafter, or binds his oath, and keeps his conscience in awe, by the acknowledgment of a God. We say this in no angry recollection of old rivalry, and in no modern fear. We say it as little in offence to the personal honour of her people, or the political integrity of her sovereign. The stipulations of public council may be formed in the purest spirit of good faith; but the solidity of the connexion is forbidden by a law more powerful than human honour or national policy. With a people nationally divorced from religion, no other safe connexion can follow. Strength and weakness may combine. But Protestant England and Infidel France must overpower a repulsion seated in nature, before they can combine. As well might both ends of the needle point to the pole.

When Pitt, in 1793, was reproached by Opposition with refusing to make peace with France, he turned on his reproachers, and boldly asked, With whom was he to make peace? where was the French Government? Was England to send an ambassador to treat with the Tribunal, or catch the faction as it passed through the streets to the scaffold? What, could the honourable gentleman tell him, was the Government of France at that hour, or who; or how long they might last, or whether another week of change might not see the firmest treaties worth no more than the paper they were written on, and France, under the new sovereignty of a new mob, choosing new allies, acting on new principles, and finishing a mock negotiation by a furious plunge into hostilities? And what is the difference in the year 1834 ? A rabble quarrel, a popular play, a trial for libel, a Parliamentary duel, a refugee princess, a duellist's funeral, each and all shake the consumptive frame of the State into convulsions. A hundred thousand of the rabble following the hearse of an individual never heard of before, and five-and-twenty thousand troops of the line paraded to keep them from sacking the Tuileries, are the evidences of royal stability. If LouisPhilippe were to die to-morrow, who

to the whole oratorio family,-a species of authorship, which, whether on or off the stage, or whether flourishing in stage frippery, or limited to the orchestra, utterly lowers the solemn dignity of the subject, vulgarizes language which ought never to be used but in scenes totally remote from the heated follies and gross feelings of a theatrical audience, and always has offended, and always must offend, every sentiment of every mind that can distinguish between ribaldry and reverence. In these censures, we pass by managers, publishers, and the whole crowd of mere agents; they follow but the change of the time-they are passive

would ensure royalty in France for a week? The succession of his family would be as fair a matter of the die, as any game at the tables of the Maisons de jeu of the Palais Royal; the whole a matter of chance whether the Duke of Orleans put the crown on his head, or M. Lafayette ascended the chair in the majesty of the bonnet rouge; whether the Parliament took the oath of allegiance, or the bayonets of the National Guard, crossing the bayonets of the line, set tle the succession in their own way, and establish a Grand National Republique of ten-franc freeholders. These truths are as palpable as the day and it is to this floating government that we are to anchor the British Empire, and bravely resolve to sink or swim with our companion.

But the still more formidable fruits of the alliance are already sprouting among ourselves. The literature of France, the product of Republican principles on private licentiousness, is coming over in every shape of temptation; profligate no vels for the closet, profligate plays for the theatres, are the last importations from France. We have already had an exhibition on the Metropolitan Stage, of the profanation of the tomb, the dead actually walking out of their coffins, to the tune of a quadrille, and a hundred and fifty opera girls running about the stage, in a condition, as to dress, startling even among opera girls. In this instance, the public were taken by surprise. Disgust soon put down the exhibition, and a fortnight in London finished the display which in Paris enjoyed the full flame of popularity for a year. But another exhibition followed, of a more mature order of the profane. The history of that magnificent and wonder-working period which brought Israel from the Egyptian dungeons, was turned into a stage show, and Moses sang, harangued, and even would have danced, but for the intervention of an authority, which ought to have at once extinguished the whole offence. The "Sacred" Ballet was prohibited, but just in time, by the Bishop. Another attempt of the same kind was hurried on, too injudiciously, before the pub lic had time to forget the disgust of the former. It perished, and we shall hope it has given a deathblow

they are the carriers, the conduits, the instruments-to them the results may be unconsidered, or unknown. The crime is in the public taste, and the perversion is the work of France. If this channel be not cut off, the corruption of the land must follow.

And the chief calamity of this state of things is, that it assumes something of the shape of an operation of nature. Whether the present Ministers have been the cause (we do not believe them to have been the cause), or whether they would desire to get rid of the result, it is beyond their power. A violent separation might be as ruinous, as identity.

We are Siamesed to France; we cannot cut asunder the link without hazarding blood; and we must await the work of time, and be vigilant to watch for those opportunities which Providence gives to nations, not wilfully undone. We must try to recover our character with the great German powers; to cherish such amity as we can with Prussia, now only an outpost of the great northern Empire, to fix the most unhesitating faith with Austria, now shrinking from our revolutionary tactics, and in that terror, siding with Russia; and with France neutral, neither provoked to injure, nor enabled to betray, calmly and resolutely make our preparation for the bloodiest contest that Europe has ever seen, and in which the war will be with England, against England, and for the last ship and shilling, the last acre and the last privilege of England. A war with Russia, in the course of a few years, is as inevitable as the spreading of the sea over an

must extend its influence. A predominant inclination towards it appears in all who have no religion; when otherwise, their disposition leads them to be advocates even for despotism. Hence Hume, though I cannot say that he does not throw out some expressions of disapprobation on the proceedings of the levellers, in the reign of Richard II., yet affirms that the doctrines of John Bull were conformable to the ideas of primitive equality, which are engraven in the hearts of all men. Boldness formerly was not the character of Atheists, as such. They were even of a character nearly the reverse. They were, like the old Epicureans, rather an unenterprising race. But they have grown active, designing, turbulent, and seditious. They are sworn ene. mies to king, nobility, and priesthood."

undefended shore. And that war will essentially be anti-English. But that all conjecture on things so little within the competence of man must be vague, it might be pronounced that the direction and the instruments of that war will equally differ from all the past. The first struggle will be at sea, and the field of battle will be the Mediterranean. The means will be, not skill, but numbers; science will have little operation; the true element of the war will be multitude. With the Euxine for her wet dock, Russia may pour down a thousand ships, some to be destroyed, some to be captured, but the rest to sweep the seas. Europe will be no longer the grand tilting-place of armies. Asia Minor, Syria, the borders of the Euphrates, and the Indus, will be the, field. The days so long expected, may be at hand, when those vast stagnant countries, to be roused from their stagnation only by war, will feel the force of that thunderstorm, and awake before the whirlwind. Egypt and the Saracen world will pour forth, to meet the North. The Tartar tribes which have now for two hundred years been swelling their undisturbed population, and sharpening their unused swords for war, will be once more summoned to their old work of devastation, and fill the East with the terrors of barbarian inroad, and perform their terrible share in shaking the system of the world. Whether this will be the last blow; or whether a still more universal havoc shall complete the catastrophe, is among those questions which only presumption would attempt to resolve. But, of one thing we are sure, that to prepare for struggle is the best security for turning it into success; and that to adhere to the maxims by which England has been made wise, happy, and free, is the best preparation, let the struggle come when it will.

What was the fine far-seeing language of Burke forty years ago? "A French conspiracy is gaining ground in every country. This system, happening to be founded on principles the most delusive, indeed, but the most flattering to the natural propensities of the unthinking multitude, and to the speculations of all who think, without thinking profoundly,

Republicanism was checked in Europe by the double cause of its excesses in France, and its ravages beyond France. The nations hurrying to prostrate themselves before a god, shrank from the worship of a maniac. Even the populace who hailed the French armies as deliverers, were indignant when their deliverance was felt only in blows. But the salutary terror is gone with its cause. France is now no longer the naked lunatic, rending its own flesh, and pledging the nations round it in cups of blood. She now wears the dignity of a settled government; she speaks the principles of rebellion from the majesty of a throne. She is not now the wild sibyl uttering her frenzied inspirations from caverns and ruins, and sending her fragile decrees to be borne on the She is now the gusts of the storm. Pythoness, standing on the golden tripod, with the magnificence of national wealth, and the solemnities of national worship round her; and summoning the grave procession of kings and kingdoms to listen to the words of fate. A total and a most formidable change has come over her whole instrumentality for affecting the European future. Alliance, not war; the appearance of the most generous candour, instead of the most ostentatious perfidy; a fond, zealous, universal sympathy in the wrongs of mankind, undistinguished by clime or colour, instead of open