He calls thee now from this rude stormy world, Now is there strength D'Aubigné (pointing upwards.) Seest thou, my child, As if unworthy Fear or wavering Faith In its dark hour once more!-And we will sleep— (They sing together.) PRISONERS' Evening hymn. We see no more, in thy pure skies, Still feeding all thy flowers with light, Though Man hath barr'd it from our sight. We know Thou reign'st, the Unchanging One, th' All-Just, And bless Thee still with free and boundless trust! We read no more, O God! thy ways His pole-star burns, though mist and cloud We know Thou reign'st!-All Holy One, All-Just! And bless Thee still with Love's own boundless trust. We feel no more that aid is nigh, By his dread cry, the air which rent In terror of abandonment; And by his parting word, which rose We know that Thou mayst wound, mayst break Sad suppliants whom our brethren spurn, To whom but Thee ?-All-Merciful, All-Just! KEENE, OR FUNERAL LAMENT OF AN IRISH MOTHER BY MRS HEMANS. Many of these Keenes abound with touches of a wild and simple pathos. The following is not a translated one, but only in imitation of their peculiar style, which seems to bear much analogy to the characteristics of Irish music. DARKLY the cloud of night comes rolling on- Silent and dark! EDMUND BURKE, PART VIII. THERE are strong analogies between the conduct of men and nations. Few men have ever looked back upon life, without being able to point to some period when their better genius seemed to desert themwhen they gave way to some passion, which, in the retrospect, seems to have been all but frenzy, or plunged headlong into some pursuit, which at length excites nothing but astonishment at the folly of the hour. It is told of the celebrated Bishop Butler, that, once walking in his garden, he suddenly started from a profound meditation, and asked his chaplain, "Whether nations could not be taken with madness-like individuals ?"-France, at the present day, is the nation looking backward on the frenzy of fifty years ago. Nothing is more remarkable, in the language of French society, than the wonder which they express at the violences of Revolution. They pronounce it a folly-a fever-a madness -a return to barbarism-a reign of treachery-ariot of furious licentiousness a hot carousal of blood. France will be fortunate, if she writes those epithets upon her phylacteries, and, casting aside the love of her old democratic idolatry, worships the spirit of freedom with the sincerity of the heart, as well as with the formality of the lips. But vain, fickle, and presumptuous, she still has hazards prepared by her own hands, and the recompense of her vices will be the instability of her throne. Still her Revolution will have had its uses, if it act as a warning to nations better worth rescuing from ruin. The fire that shot up from her funeral pile will have done its service, if it becomes a beacon to Europe. Even the racks and scaffolds, the fierce slaughters, and indiscriminate miseries of the revolutionary reign, will almost take the rank of instruments of good, if, by that narrow period of their rage, they lead the way to wisdom among mankind for the time to come. We may almost forgive the wild fury of the evil spirit that issues in his more complete subjection, and closes his fiercer assault, and the haughtier da-' ring of his vengeance, by the grasp that consigns him to his dungeon for a thousand years. But it is to England that the lesson is of pre-eminent value. In the continental nations there is still much to change. There are pressures which a man of humanity would feel an insult to human nature, a philosopher would trace to inherent evil in the state, and a man of virtue would survey only as the visitations of justice on the offences of empire. There are trials of human patience, under the iron sceptres of the military sovereigns, which might well make a wise man balance between the brief paroxysm of a revolution, and the chronic stings of a government of the sword. It is enough for the ears of Englishmen, who know that true liberty is the breath in the nostrils of States-the living principle which, sent into their frame from above, turns the form of clay into life-to hear, that the whole freedom of the German and his kindred nations, is by sufferance; that the personal character of the monarch constitutes the good or ill of his people; and that no man beneath the throne, who lays his head this night on his pillow, can be secure that he may not lay it to-morrow night on the floor of his dungeon. It is true that civil war would be a fearful cure for this mitigated slavery. Evil is a formidable purifier of evil; and calamity, to a proverb, follows redemption by rebellion. The sword never yet hacked away the chain, without drawing the blood of the slave. Yet it is to be deeply regretted, that some portion of the heat from that conflagration, which burned so furiously in the centre, was not suffered to shoot round its circumference, and melt those icy barriers with which absolute power guards its throne. It would be fortunate if the sovereigns of the Continent had learned from the first violence of the French Revolution, the wisdom of opening a safetyvalve for that fierce effervescence, which, sooner or later, will burst out in every region of Europe, and which will rend and explode its way only with the more fury for the weight of the resistance. The murmurs ringing at this moment round every continental kingdom, are the prophetic warnings of the wild havoc that will strike them all to their roots, when the true time of havoc is come. It may linger. A temporary escape in the North or the South -a rash ebullition in Poland, or a treacherous burst in Portugal, may Jull the great latent principle of overthrow. The priesthood of Spain, or the guards of Austria, may trample out the flame in its first creepings along the ground, but the time will come when it will creep no longer, but, shooting up in universal and irresistible spires, enfold both the soldier and the monk, or send them forth as chief propagators of the conflagration. But to England all that Republicanism can offer is its warning. Of all the countries that ever solicited change, this is the country in which it is least required. If abuses cling to all things human, it is within the British shores that they least abound, are productive of least evil, and are extinguished by the most simple operation of public vigilance. The casual worm or weed may fix on the keel of the great vessel of the State, but on none that bore the flag of empire were they ever less suffered to grow; their spreading is forbidden by the mere rapidity of her coursethey are torn off by the billows through which she plunges with such proud and perpetual mastery. All that violent change can do in England, would be to subvert. Our only recompense for civil struggle would be the trampling into utter sterility of the field where the battle was fought. The nation, exhausted and impoverished by the struggle, would have no fruit of the infinite peril, confusion, and misery of the time, but the remorse and self-contempt that belong to the discovery of folly too late true liberty would be thrown into disgrace; the name of Constitution would thenceforth be a sound of fear, or a record of shame; and the country, in beggary or in chains, sunk to the dust in the presence of Europe, or flooding it with her population of armed slaves, fol lowing the track of some military tyrant, would, whether victor or vanquished, be undone. It is in this view, as a book of political wisdom, that we have hitherto looked upon the immortal labour of Burke. And it is still as a great code for the legislative guidance of our statesmen, or a great chart for the course of the nation, among the difficulties that beset the time, that we propose it as deserving of the perpetual study of England. The progress of Revolution is there laid down before us in all its grades; from the simple level on which it first stood, to the highest step of that unhallowed temple, where, on an altar sacred to eternal discord, it offered up the blood of monarch and people, and, like the plague of Egypt, scattered the ashes for a pestilence among the nations. Burke characterizes the spirit of the Revolution as essentially a spirit of plunder"I see," he exclaims, " the confiscators begin with bishops, and chapters, and monasteries, but I do not see them end there. I see the princes of the blood, who, by the oldest usages of the kingdom, held landed estates, (hardly with the compliment of a debate,) deprived of their possessions, and in lieu of their independent, stable property, reduced to the hope of some precarious, charitable pension, at the pleasure of an assembly, which, of course, will pay little regard to the rights of pensioners at pleasure, when it despises those of legal proprietors. Flushed with the insolence of the first inglorious victories, and pressed by the distresses caused by the lust of unhallowed lucre, disappointed, but not discouraged, they have at length ventured completely to subvert all property of all descriptions throughout the extent of a great kingdom. What vestiges of liberty or property have they left? The tenant-right of a cabbage-garden, a year's interest in a hovel, the goodwill of an alehouse or a baker's shop, the very shadow of a constructive property, are more ceremoniously treated in our Parliament, than with you the oldest and most valuable landed possessions, in the hands of the most respectable personages, or than the whole body of the monied and commercial interest of your country. The ground upon which your confiscators go is this-that the rules of prescription cannot bind a legislative assembly!' So that this legislative assembly of a free nation sits, not for the security, but for the destruction of property; and not of property only, but of every rule and maxim which can give it stability, and of those instruments which alone can give it circulation." The seizure of the Church property of France, by the arbitrary act of the Assembly, stamped the character of the Revolution; and it is to the direct and fatal consequences of this act, that Burke continually summons the eye of Europe." It is not the confiscation of our Church property in England that I dread, though I think this would be no trifling evil. The great source of my solicitude is, lest it should ever be considered as the policy of the State to seek a resource in confiscations of any kind; or that any one description of citizens should be brought to regard any of the others as their proper prey." An admirable passage follows, on the effects of excessive public debt. "Nations are wading deeper and deeper into a boundless ocean of public debt. Public debts, which at first won a security to governments, by interesting many in the public tranquillity, are likely, in their excess, to become the means of their subversion. If governments provide for their debts by heavy impositions, they perish, by becoming odious to the people. If they do not provide for them, they will be undone by the efforts of the most dangerous of all parties, an extensive, discontented monied interest, injured, but not destroyed. The men who compose this interest, look for their security, in the first instance, to the fidelity of government; in the second, to its power. If they find the old governments effete, worn out, and with their springs relaxed, so as not to be of sufficient vigour for their purposes, they may seek new ones that shall be possessed of more energy. And this energy will be derived, not from an acquisition of resources, but from a contempt of justice. Revolutions are favourable to confiscation, and it is impossible to know under what obnoxious names the next confisca tions will be authorized. The progress of this system of confiscation is still more descriptive. No confiscator begins by announcing that his object is plunder. Mammon is kept out of sight, by a veil thrown over him by patriotism! The monstrous visage of public robbery is covered with a mask of public necessity. Good faith is pleaded for a transaction which violates all its principles; and a pompous figure |