We deny not the merits of either the radical baronet or the refining duke; but the former is an accomplished theorist rather than a man of action, and the latter is an amiable young nobleman, who has only promise to bring, instead of the actual deeds of men like Cobden, Bright, and a crowd of other working men, by whose hard toil the Aberdeen-Russell banquet is furnished forth, but from which the plebeian caterers are excluded. Supposing again that Cobden, Bright, and Co., being sensible and rational English Saxons, and not implacable and impulsive Irish Celts, will sit down calmly contented with the mere mental satisfaction of having won the Free-trade fight, and will not grudge others the enjoyment of its sweets, or resent their own exclusion, is the forbearance of the irascible and appetent Irish to be safely relied upon? Should Cardinal Wiseman or Archbishop Cullen play off some freak, involving a palpable violation of the Ecclesiastical Titles Act, will unity of spirit and the bond of concord pervade the Aberdeen-Russell Cabinet on the occurrence of so probable an event? Would Mr. Gladstone and Lord John Russell, the Duke of Newcastle and Sir William Molesworth, Lord Palmerston and the Duke of Argyle, regard the transaction with the same eyes and agree to treat it in the same manner? If they can, then they have respectively abjured the several creeds they have so ostentatiously recited; their professions are pretences, their principles a sham, and a flexibility obtains among them such as Talleyrand might have envied, but would scarcely have aspired to emulate.

Finally, unless the public at large has been under the deceptive influence of glamour-unless Mr. Gladstone is a myth and the Peelites are shadows-unless all the recent proceedings in the House of Commons have not been disgraceful realities but unreal mockeries, the coinage of a disordered imagination-if the constituent qualities of human nature remain radically the same as they have been since the flood-unless a new human nature has been "developed" on earth-the prolonged existence of the Aberdeen-Russell Administration is morally and physically impossible: it must speedily fall to pieces from internal dissentions and inherent incompatibilities, or succumb beneath the first onset of a vigorous Opposition.

Meanwhile, we deplore and deprecate a rumoured fracas at the Carlton. Let Conservatives be cool and collected, and, if they please, contemptuous under their reverses; but let them beware of furnishing a handle for the complaints of their astute and unscrupulous enemies.

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Notices of Books.

The Colloquies of Edward Osborne, Citizen and Clothworker of London. By the Author of " Mary Powell." London: Hall and Virtue.

THIS is a tale for the times in an antique mould, and so cleverly done that it is more interesting to the present generation, from its adaptation to their tastes by one of themselves, than if it were really the product of an age with which we have no living sympathy.

The scene is laid in the last years of our Sixth Edward, and the story reaches to the accession of Elizabeth, and therefore covers the whole of Mary's reign; and it brings before us in a very striking manner the sufferings which many were then called to endure, being accused of no other crime than meeting together to pray or to read the Scriptures. And this is not dragged in, but seems only incidental and natural, and it tells the more forcibly on this very account.

Edward Osborne is apprenticed to a clothworker on Londonbridge, and saves his little daughter from drowning by jumping into the Thames from the window out of which she had fallen, and in due course of time becomes the husband of the child he had rescued and inherits the wealth of her father: all which is wrought up into one of the prettiest love stories we have ever met with, relieved and contrasted by the broad humour of some of the characters, and the touching piety and endurance of the martyrs of Mary's reign, some of whom Osborne visits in prison.

The character of little Anne, as it developes itself into womanhood, is drawn with great delicacy; and the struggles in the young apprentice between growing affection for the daughter, and the honourable revolt against abusing his master's confidence by telling his love to his young mistress, is shown with the same truthfulness in Ned Osborne. And in recounting these struggles to his son, who remarks that he spoke as if he felt it, Osborne replies, "Why, I do! I am an oldish man now at least, you think me not over young; but there are some good and pure feelings, lad, thou wilt never become dull to, so long as thou keepest thy heart with all diligence. And the best of it is that while these feelings, so far as they were pleasant, are pleasant still, the pains, then so bitter, that came from keeping down all that was wrong with a strong hand, are now pleasures too-that are recalled over and over again

VOL. XXXIII.-Q

when, may be, we seem cogitating or dosing. Give me thy hand, lad, I see you believe ine. And so did master Hewet believe me" (245).

Osborne has a fellow-apprentice named Miles whose Protestantism takes rather too violent a form to last: he gibbets a cat in priest's attire, and strikes off the head of Thomas á Beckett's image twice. After a time, this furious Protestant married, and, when Osborne called upon him, "he followed me to the door when mine errand was sped. Ned, whispered he, and coloured all over, there'll be no more hanging of cats! ......She's a stauch Roman, is Nell! and I'm obliged to conform, I can tell thee! Rely on't, there's much to be said on both sides' And this was he that said he was as firm as London Stone" (209).

6

A Protestant of another sort is represented in Tomkins, a lame weaver, who had worked in the garret of the house where Osborne was apprentice. He had not thought much of religion till a few words from Osborne, spoken at a time when the troubles were just beginning, led him to think seriously and also to read the Scriptures. He married and left the garret, and some time after Osborne calls upon him and finds him a totally altered man.

"Tomkins! (cried I, filled with sudden admiration), thou could'st not always have thus quoted and applied the Bible!"

"Lad (quod he), times are altered. I don't suppose there ever was a quiet fair-spoken man nearer the edge of the pit of destruction than I was a few years back. Just as I was trifling on the brink, a child's voice called me back. Ned! 'twas thine. I had known for months and years what 'twas to lie down with a heart ill at peace with God. He that is very glad to get into a good and safe covert will not waste his time in dallying with too curious subleties. Since I have gone the way I should, years have seemed like days. I have tasted the life of life; yet never was more ready to lay it down at my Master's feet! "Tis all I have to give him!" (181).

Tomkins, with five others, was apprehended and carried before Bonner; and he, as being the oldest of them all, was brought the most forward :-"To intimidate these poor men the more, Bishop Bonner had got together a goodly muster of his clergy and friends, Dr. Chedsey, Master Harpsfield and others. Beginning the attack, according to his wont, with the real presence, he puts it to Tomkins whether or no he believed in transubstantiation. On Tomkins' meekly but firmly confessing that he did not, and giving his reasons for that confession, Bonner struck him on the face with his fist, and violently

tore out a handful of his beard. Tomkins bore this in silence, remembering him who stood before Caiaphas. Then Bonner, lashing himself up, began anew to question him; and, being still unable to catch him in his talk, he seized him by the wrist, and, holding his hand over a lighted candle of three or four wicks that stood on the table, savagely kept it there till the veins shrank and the sinews burnt" (195).

This was but the prelude to their all being burnt in Smithfield, exhibiting patience and constancy till the last. But the reign of Mary, and these its attendant horrors, soon came to a close, and the accession of Elizabeth brings with it universal joy, and national prosperity quickly ensues. For the way in

which this exultation is expressed in the pageants and shows, we must refer our readers to the volume itself; and we can assure them that they will find in it ample materials both for amusement and instruction.

The tone of thinking which pervades the whole is unexceptionable; and the lessons it imparts, whether regarding religion or social conduct, are sound and healthy. And the story is told so well, and has so many striking and amusing incidents, that we have rarely met with a book of the kind so likely to become a general favourite with all classes. For there is something to please all, and very little with which any can justly be offended.

Journals of a Landscape Painter in Southern Calabria. By EDWARD LEAR. Bentley. 1852.

THIS is no ephemeral publication, but a pleasing and ornamental work that will find a permanent place on the shelves of our libraries. There are evidently strange sights and scenes to meet the traveller's eye in Calabria, and Mr. Lear's acknowledged ability as an artist has enabled him to adorn his volumes with numerous views of certainly the most remarkable places he visited in his travels. Calabria, in this respect, is probably superior even to Albania; but both countries present scenes to the painter that are very strange to the English eye. What a site for a town is that of Pentedatilo, and what a race inhabit it each alike almost unapproachable and inaccessible !

The views here given of the many picturesque habitations of men with which this region abounds are of the highest interest, because they are the only memorials that remain of some of them-an earthquake in August, 1851, having utterly ruined several of the towns described. The fine town of Melfi especially had one hundred and sixty-three of its houses levelled with the ground-ninety-eight in part destroyed, and 180

damaged: five monasteries were destroyed, with churches, a college, and the cathedral. Fifteen hundred bodies were buried in the ruins. The neighbouring village of Ascoli lost its church with thirty-two houses and two hundred of its inhabitants. The town of Barile has altogether disappeared. Mr. Lear is undoubtedly one of the most amusing of modern tourists. Travelling generally as a pedestrian, he mingles much with the people, marks their peculiarities, and makes a picture from his simple description of their manners and appearance. The volume is altogether one of great interest and beauty, and is done full justice to by the publisher.

Lectures principally on the Church Difficulties of the Present Time. By the Rev. J. M. NEALE, M.A., Warden of Sackville College. London: Cleaver. 1852.

A STRANGE medley of good and evil, truth and falsehood, light and darkness, Catholicism and Romanism, have we here. Almost unparalleled audacity is, we must say, the most marked characteristic of the book; but there is much that is valuable -much that is highly suggestive-much that is even commendable. On the one hand, we find the expression of merit applied habitually to man's good works, and the Blessed Virgin's faith affirmed to be the source of the Church's life (see page 67); "for the fathers are constant, that, if St. Mary had hesitated in receiving the angelic message, the whole economy of grace would have been frustrated!" Preposterous blasphemy!-to represent the everlasting counsels of God for the redemption of the human race as dependent on the will of one fallible creature-a creature, on the contrary, who had announced to her from on high as certainly impending the highest blessing that ever was bestowed on mortal, and who simply bowed her spirit to God's immutable decree. And there are, if possible, worse things than even this behind: but, on the other hand, we have a very admirable exposition of the peculiar grace of confirmation, and also of the desirability of administering this ordinance at a comparatively early age, before the youth or girl leaves our schools and is thus exposed to the worst temptations-an exposition only marred by the unhappy insolence of tone, as we must call it, with which the supposed and it may be real error of judgment of certain of our reverend "fathers in God," the bishops of this Church and land, is commented on by their most presumptuous instructor. We find also many striking though unloving censures of the "Laudian Reformation," which is aptly contrasted with the movement of the last twenty years-a section of the book from