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the ruinous consequences which attend upon the credulous adherents of their sedition. We again recommend this admirable little work to the earnest perusal of those for whose benefit it is written.

Foreshadows; or, Lectures on our Lord's Parables.

By the Rev. JOHN CUMMING, D.D. London: Hall and Co. THIS able champion of Protestant truth now lays down the weapons of controversy, and appears in the guise so peculiarly suited to the Christian pastor-that of the guide who, with extended hand, points out the path to salvation. "Parables are foreshadows of the future, projected on the sacred page.' Such is the view taken by the rev. doctor, and he unfolds it with that eloquent simplicity which is his peculiar characteristic. We regret we have not sufficient space to quote from this valuable work; but can only recommend it to the earnest perusal of our readers.

1. England's Trust and other Poems. London Rivingtons. 2. English Ballads and other Poems.

By Lord JOHN MANNERS. 1841.

By Lord JOHN MANNERS. London: Rivingtons. 1850.

THESE volumes of graceful poetry have been for some years before the public, and are re-noticed by us at this moment because many of their lines have been misquoted, ignorantly misunderstood, or wilfully misrepresented by Sir Benjamin Hall and politicians of his calibre, in justification of their own sneering denials of the noble author's fitness for public office. What can a poet-a sentimental poet-know of the practical business of life? By this rule the author of "L'Allegro" and "Il Pensoroso" might have been rejected from the Secretaryship of State, from a fear that he would have been found basking under a May-day sun beneath hedge-rows green, or pacing the aisles of a cathedral listening to the anthem's pealing note of praise, instead of penning a despatch or inditing a protocol. Such stupid nonsense and crass ignorance scarcely deserve a notice, and would not receive any from us only that the meddling member for Marylebone is partial in his censure of poets. If he were just, he would exclude from office Mr. Macaulay and Lord Carlisle, who have each of them written verses as copiously as Lord John Manners. But the latter noble author has attuned his harpmost musical to all ears not deafened by the sibillations of a Marylebone vestry and rendered insensible to every gentler

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sound--to strains commemorative of cavaliers, heroic in their lives, and in their deaths faithful to a falling cause; whereas the Whig versifiers have thrown their gorgeous and gaudy colouring around the successful though most dirty intrigues of a cunning adventurer, the idol of Daniel Defoe and the nursing father of money-brokers and Change-alley jobbers. The fact of the most imaginative poets, both male and female, being remarkably attentive in due season to the work-day details of common life, is so notorious to all but the chosen of Marylebone and persons ejusdem generis, that we feel an apology is due to Lord John Manners for even alluding to these ignoble attacks; but, to throw mud at a nobleman and mark how it sticks is so congenial an amusement to Marylebone minds that it may be well not to pass by in total silence the paltry low sarcasms against the new President of the Woods and Forests. We e honestly believe Lord John Manners competent to fill any office; but his poetic taste, so bitterly objected to him by Sir Benjamin Hall, of itself marks him out as peculiarly fitted for the one to which Lord Derby's discrimination has appointed him. We do not fear that one whose eye has been so classically filled with the forms of ancient beauty will mar the royal parks with uncouth and unseemly structures; neither need the most popularity-hunting of metropolitan representatives apprehend lest one who has written and spoken with so much eloquence and feeling on the pastimes and recreations of the labouring classes-indulgences so grudged by the money-grubs and Whig dulberts -will curtail the accustomed promenades of the humble in royal ground.

The lines which have been perverted by dull malevolence occur in the first volume (1841) of these miscellanies, entitled "England's Trust," and are as follow:

"Must we, then, hearken to the furious cry
Of those who clamour for equality?'
Have not the people learnt how vain the trust
On props like that which crumble into dust?
Are the gradations that have marked our race
Since God first stamped his likeness on its face-
Gradations hallowed by a thousand ties
Of faith, and love, and holiest sympathies-
Seen in the Patriarch's rule, the Judge's sway,
When God himself was Israel's present stay,
Now in the old world's dotage to be cast
As weak pretences to the howling blast?
No! by the names inscribed in History's page-
Names that are England's noblest heritage-

Names that shall live for yet unnumbered years,
Shrined in our hearts witli Crescy and Poictiers ;
Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning, die,
But leave us still our old nobility."

"Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senseswhatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present-advances us in the dignity of thinking beings," wrote Dr. Johnson among or at least with a full memory of the ruins of Iona. Tried by Johnson's test, an ability of lifting his senses above the level of a Marylebone snuggery, can that man be pronounced to have attained the "dignity of a thinking being," who, in Lord John Manners's glorious lines, fraught with noble recollections, sees the selfishness of an oppressive aristocrat who cares for no ruin, no misery, so long as his own coffers are unrifled-his own sensual enjoyments uninterrupted-who would mock the poor peasant weeping over the ashes of his consuming cottage-so long as the battlements of Belvoir Castle were unscathed, and its banquet-hall filled with wine and wassail, mirth and revelry? The man who cannot read the lines we have quoted without mistaking their meaning so flagrantly as Sir Benjamin Hall did would require an ancient dame's printer to guide his unsteady, lacklustre eye, along the lines of a Psalter, or the help which the old sign-painters were accustomed to extend to rude spectators by underwriting their pictures" This is a Lion"-"This is a Bear." We would, however, recommend Lord John Manners, for the avoidance of mistakes involving the temporary privation of his personal liberty, not to indulge any reveries next autumn at either Tintern Abbey or Ragland Castle; for Sir Benjamin Hall is a magistrate as well as a coal-merchant of Monmouthshire, and might revive some old law against Jacobites were Lord John caught writing elegies over the Stuarts within the worshipful Benjamin's jurisdiction. But to all those well-attuned minds who can sympathise with the heroic sufferings of Charles, and weep over the indignities offered by Whig churls to Mary of Modena, and yet remain practically loyal to Queen Victoria of the line of Brunswick, we can promise a treat in many of Lord John Manners's graceful tributes to the memory of the Stuarts.

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"But I thought not of Francis the gallant and brave,
Nor of Henri the pride of Navarre,

Nor of him

who went down to a cavalier's grave,

In the glorious pageant of war.

"But I turn'd to the tomb where a few words relate

The virtues and sorrows of one

Who in fortune's bright noontide of splendour was great,
But greater when lost and undone.

"And my heart it was stirred as I thought of the time
When King James o'er my country bore sway,
And, England, I thought of thy treason and crime,
In the church of St. Germain-en-laye."

If any hot-headed Hanover zealot begins to fume against Lord John Manners for thus mourning over James the II.'s tomb, we beg to remind the worthy gentleman that the tomb was raised by George the Fourth, who caused the remains of the last Stuart King to be interred, after remaining for nearly two centuries above ground in a dust-covered, tarnished, mouldering hearse, in the side aisle of a French church, and caused the following inscription to be inscribed upon his tomb, one elegant line of which Lord John has happily paraphrased in his stanzas :-

"Regio Cineri Pietas Regia. Ferale quisquis hoc Monumentum Aspices, Rerum Humanorum vices meditare. Magnus in prosper, is in adversis major. Jacobus II. Anglorum Rex insignes Ærumnas, Dolendaque Nimium Fata pio placido que obitu exsolvit in hac urbe, die xvi. Septembris, 1701. Et Nobiliores quædam corporis ejus partes hic reconditæ asservantur."

The spirit which pervades and animates every effusion of Lord John Manners's muse is solemn, passionate, religious-in all points antithetical to the sneering, sceptical, noisy, pushing, go-a-head temper of the present day. Lord John always delights to return from existing turmoils to breathe the refreshing air of a purer age. "In returning and rest shall ye be saved-in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength," is the motto which his lordship selects for his "England's Trust;" and sincerely do we wish that a portion at least of this staid spirit were that of all public men among us: far more hopeful should we then feel for England's future. Sydney Smith thought his friend John Russell too fast a coachman, and confessed that he was always mentally exclaiming, Gently, John, gently: don't drive so fast, or you'll do us a

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* Henry II. killed here in a tournament by Montmorenci. [No, by Montgomery, a captain of the Scotch guard whom Henri II. compelled to tilt against].

mischief." We are, however, thankful that the reins are at last out of dangerous John's hands, and committed to a coachman of firmer nerves who will not be for ever galloping his horses to hide his own fidgetty fears. In private life, and in the case of individuals, we know that the man who is always in a hurry, who has never time at command, who is always in motion and never can sit still, invariably despatches less business, and that little incomparably worse, than the man who always looks cool and collected-never appears hurried and heated -and who, though always bent upon business, never seems at a loss for time to bestow upon every reasonable applicant.

The recent tumultuous agitation and the present serene serviceable mood of the Parliamentary mind, will illustrate our proposition as to the evils of fussy hurry, and the abiding benefits resulting from cool self-possession. Lord John Russell declared with almost frantic eagerness the imperative duty imposed upon his successor, Lord Derby, to instantly dissolve Parliament; for to attempt to carry on the Government even for twenty-four hours with a minority in the House of Commons, was most unconstitutional. Oh! shades of Pym, Hampden, and Fox-so unconstitutional an attempt must-do; or produce what, sir? that the strife of parties has been compelled if not soothed into quiet; and now that Free-traders, Protectionists, Peelites, and Cobdenites, or the four parties into which the House of Commons is divided in whatever distinctive titles they may rejoice, have been constrained for a time to lay aside their quarels for precedency, and compelled to think less of their differences than of the numerous points they each of them have in common. Now, that this cessation of unprofitable hostilities has been forced upon reluctant members, the real business of the session is going on exceedingly well—better, indeed, than we have witnessed on the eve of Easter for many years. The strong battalion of law lords, Lords Lyndhurst, Brougham, Campbell, Denman, Cranworth, headed by the present Chancellor Lord St. Leonards, are resolutely devoting themselves to the task of Chancery Reform; and, if this lull ́ continues, we cherish hopes that a quadruple alliance for business-strictly for business-may be formed also in the House of Commons. We are quite willing that the several contracting parties to such an alliance should swear eternal enmity to each other, and a fierce determination to renew hostilities the instant the business in hand is despatched. Such a diversion of Parliamentary minds from the struggles of faction to the common weal of the nation may, in the Whig

We cannot conceive; but we know

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