bounds. Southey has shewn himself to be, what every great Poet must be, unless dark or evil passions have unsettled and disturbed his spirit, a patriot-a devout lover of his country. In his early days he worshipped Freedom with that untamed and irrepressible transport, that only freedom, love, or religion, can rouse in the soul of the youth of genius. As he witnessed more widely the destinies of man, he came to see, with a high and philosophic sorrow, that the world is filled with bright delusions, and that the good have in all ages adored in their simplicity, those seemingly innocent and salutary schemes for the amelioration of human nature, which the bad have conceived in their cunning, for its degradation and overthrow. Still true to all his former principles, he sees now, in the wisdom of matured experience, the limitations under which they must be made to act when reduced into practice, and brought into contact with the manifold passions of men, bound mysteriously together into nations, by the secret influence of government and laws. He is an enemy, therefore, to those sudden innovations that would tear violently to pieces, those masses of feeling which, in the form of great National Institutions, have been raised, and cemented, and hallowed, by a long succession of ages. He knows that it is easy to destroy, but difficult to create; that when a fine old reverend building is removed, a flimsy thing is often built on its site and that even the ruins of what is magnificent should be repaired with a gentle hand, and with the same materials. It is thus that Southey has become odious to the reformers; and, that in the bitterness of their hatred and despair, they accuse him of having deserted the creed of his youth, and become a renegade and an apostate. Base and infatuated calumniators! His creed never was at any time their creed, nor was his life ever as their life. Even when they would have made the world believe that Southey was with them, they knew well that his high and pure soul was altogether in another sphere. He, in truth, loved mankind, which they pretended to do, but he did not hate his country, as they in sincerity did, and still mortally do, now that she stands eminent among all the nations-and that a calm, sedate, and firm spirit, yet bold, generous, and free, prevalent alike in the councils of her rulers, and in the patriotism of her best population, shews them how hopeless now are all the long-cherished schemes of revolution and anarchy. What a glorious thing is public feeling, my dear friend, in this happy country, and with what a voice of thunder does it speak! "I am not afraid of the judgment of the people of England on my character, either moral or intellectual," said Southey to me that evening, with a confidence inspired by the consciousness of having deserved well of his country. He had indeed no cause to fear. Even amid all the violence of faction—all the bitterness of party-all the prejudices of sectarian spleen-all the levity and indifference, real or affected, of mere worldly men to the character and pursuits of a recluse poet and philosopher like Southey;-how splendid and noble a reputation is his,-and with what authority his very name comes upon the ear when pronounced in any company of enlightened and good men, citizens, and Christians. All the violent and insane reproaches that have been spattered out against him in pamphlets, reviews, and public harangues, and private gossipping, are then forgotten, as their wicked or pitiful authors-and all at once shew, by their respect and admiration for the poet and the patriot, that, with a free and intelligent people, calumny has no .dwelling-place in national remembrance; or is saved from total oblivion only in the indignation and disdain of the wise and virtuous. OUR JOYS. (From Goëthe.) THERE fluttered round the spring Libella, lightly ranging, Red, blue, and green, Soon lost as seen Oh! that I had her near, and knew She flutters and floats--and will for ever- I look and see a sad dark blue; THE INTERVIEW. (From Schiller.) I SEE her yet amidst her lovely train, I stood aloof, irresolute, subdued, But all at once, as on resistless wing, What may have been that moment's wilder ed feeling, And what my song, in vain would I recal; Now burst at once impetuous from its thrall, Hushed were the chords, and that wild impulse by, My soul relapsed into itself again; strain Oh! none henceforth may breathe such tones of love, But spirits blest, that swell the choirs above. "The faithful heart, that pines disconsolate, Nursing a timid love in silence long, Shall find one soul its self-hid worth to rate, Be mine to wreak that heart on fortune's wrong; Poor though it be, it claims the brightest fate; To love alone the flowers of love belong; The fairest boon rewards that heart aright, Which feels its worth, and will that worth requite." THE ELEMENTS. (From Bürger.) I TEACH a lofty lore-attend! To Fire's bright fount, the Sun, 'tis given For thousand thousand miles afar? Sun, Moon, and many a lovely star. The Air enfolds this earthly ball, No darksome cave its search deceives, Through wood and field the Water flows; Earth's Maker, when he hailed her bride, The Elements unite in love. Now prove thyself, now tell me truly, Thy tuneful tongue-does it too bear And hold'st thou sacred from a breach Succour'st a fellow-creature's need With thine own drink, with thine own bread? And bidd'st his naked limbs recline In linen and in cloth of thine ? Thou! heedless of thy brother-men! Thou, bastard! loveless among men, A SPEECH, TO THE TUNE OF THE EMERALD ISLE, Delivered at the Dublin Dilettanti Society, 12th January 1819. * Mr O'C. is distinguished from the other orators of the Catholic board by a coach; this coach is green, his liveries green, his hall door green, &c. &c. The author of many bad speeches, and the object of one good pun-having once, it is said, dined with doctor Troy, the titular archbishop of Dublin, he availed himself of the opportunity of imbibing more wine than he could with safety carry. As he conceived, he was returning home, some watchmen thought proper to be dissatisfied with his conduct, and brought him to a watch-house, where heureusement he met the learned Lord N., who, after making a few inquiries, rebuked these heedless guardians of the night, observing, that they were little aware of the dignity of the personage with whom they had presumed to interfere; that the charges they preferred against him must be unfounded, for, that he was no other than "the pious Eneas, returning from Troy's sack." His lordship also indulged, with his wonted felicity, in some excellent jokes about his mother, Venus, &c., adding something about “ Nympharum domus," and "Tantæ molis erat Romanam condere gentem.' Lately cut by the Catholic Committee. § Member of the Greek Society at Athens, and of the Dublin Lending Library-these honours were the tribute of public gratitude for her national tales, "Ida of Athens," and The Wild Irishman.' Sir Charles T. Morgan. At a dinner given by the Dublin Dilettanti to Mr Moore, Sir Charles T., who rose immediately after Mr Phillips, and delivered a longer speech, expressed his regret that he was not "a native of the land which had given birth, at no distant interval, to the talented company by which he had the honour of seeing himself surrounded;" he then proceeded in a long eulogium on the Irish people, adding, however, "that he chiefly knew them through the medium of Lady Morgan." OF SOME MEMOIRS WRITTEN IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. An ancient chronicle, written by a contemporary, is one of the luxuries of the historical student. Its pictures of manners so interesting to the philosophical mind have even been found as entertaining as a new novel or a book of travels to more common readers. We are transported into a new state of society, where our sympathies are awakened, with pain indeed, as well as with delight; for, after all, however disguised by other customs, the tale is true, and it is the history of human nature. Among such rare and original memoirs may be classed those of Jacques du Clercq, who has written the events of his own times and country, in which our nation was much concerned, begun in 1448, and left unfinished in 1467. It was a period when France lay a prey to the incursions of the English: an English monarch had not long before been seated on the throne of France; and the French people were suffering between the divided dominion of the French sovereign, and the Duke of Burgundy, the ally of England. It was a feudal age, when their heroes were valiant in the field, but atrocious in the dread retreat of their own chateaux; when the spirit of Christianity had no influence over the tyrannical and incontinent knight, and the ecclesiastic corrupted by pride, pomp, and licentiousness; while no law, nor even any moral sense, relieved the violated maiden, the spoliated peasant, the degraded citizen-nothing, not even pity, to check the remorseless passions and the brute force of the military character. These memoirs exhibit this curious picture. They are unknown to the public, as they have only been printed in that great collection of memoirs relative to the history of France, contained in more than seventy volumes; a work now not possible to be completed, for in the fury of the Revolution the copies were wasted, that no recollections might remain of the loyalty and bravery of the fathers of their land-those statesmen, those marshals, and other officers of state, who had not only devoted their daily business to the public, but had consecrated their leisure, and perhaps gratified no mean vanity, by informing posterity of all the good they had laboured to obtain for them. VOL. IV. The present memoirs are indeed a rude and artless narrative; but its simplicity is strong with such honest feelings, that we cannot resist this ancient" escuyer and conseiller" of the fifteenth century, in yielding full credit to his protestation; for he "certifies to all persons, that this book was made neither for gold nor silver, nor for a salary, nor for the account of any prince, nor man, nor woman live ing; neither willing to favour nor blame any one, but only to declare things as they happened." More ele gant historians could not have honestly subscribed this public protestation. Passing over the public events of the times, we shall give what appears most striking in the domestic history of the age-the private anecdotes which shew us best what men were doing, and which we rarely perceive in the more imposing generalities of history. One of the means by which these feudal lords attempted to increase their own power, was in procuring rich wives for their vassals. "At this time," writes our memoir-writer, “died one John Pinte, a furrier; and the morning after John Pinte was laid under ground, did his widow, a young woman about thirty-four years of age, marry that same day a young man, one Willaret of Neuville, another furrier, and she slept the following night with her said second husband. I have put this down in writing, because I ima gine few women have been known to remarry as soon, although in some re spect an excuse might be made for this hasty widow; for at this time, in the country of the Duke of Burgundy, as soon as any tradesman, artisan, and sometimes the burgher of a large town, died, leaving a rich widow, the Duke, his son, or others of his people, would compel the widow to marry one of their archers, or other of their de pendents; and these widows, if they would marry, were obliged to accept the offers which these gentlemen made, or buy off either those who would offer themselves, or those who governed the lord, and sometimes even the lord himself. Fortunate were those who could find friends or money to be delivered out of this thraldom; for usually, will he nill he, if they thought of marriage, they had no other choice than the man these lords had pitched on. Thus, likewise, when a man was rich, had he a daughter to marry, if he did 3 F not marry her off very young, he was worked on after this manner." Such was the general relaxation of all justice-morality was a feeling quite unexperienced by them-that it was an ordinary occurrence for armed men to seize on the daughter by the side of the mother, when they were walking or labouring in the fields; and when summoned before the judge, which was not as usual as the crime, the daughter, beguiled by the base promises of her ravisher, would publicly declare before her mother's face, that she had left her parent with her own free consent. Thus it happens that criminals whose crimes are committed with impunity, can entice others into crimes to which they would otherwise have been strangers. Here the unpunished ravisher produced the unfilial and shameless daughter. Such immorality, in some respect, carries with it its own chastisement; for crimes of so violent a cast would naturally produce a reaction in the friends of the oppressed, or even from the solitary hand of the oppressed herself, and the ravisher or the tyrant were often assassinated. Those who found themselves deficient in prowess substituted the hired assassin, a humbler but certain vengeance. It appears in this chronicle, that five soldiers were executed for assassinating Peter of Louvain, a knight, at the instigation of three other knights, brothers of the name of Flany, to avenge the assassination of their brother William. This William Flany had been murdered by his barber, who had cut his throat at the request of the lady of the said Master William: she, when his throat was cut, placed a pillow on his face and stifled him. Soon after, Master Peter of Louvain came to the chateau and married the widow. This William, in his time, was a valorous captain on the king's side, but the most tyrannical of men, committing horrible and unimaginable crimes, such as forcibly carrying off damsels, in spite of every remonstrance, and racking, torturing, and hanging persons at a word; and, among others, had caused the father of his lady to die. Although this knight was a man of sixty, and his beautiful lady about twenty-three, he had many new damsels in his house, and often threatened his wife, which was the real occasion of his own death. But because that death was disgraceful and vulgar, given by the. razor of a barber, his brothers pursued the widow to have her burnt; but not succeeding in their wish, they made a victim of her lord." Of one of these heroes the honest chronicler tells a tale, where the bru tal vigour of the knight is finely contrasted with the meek sufferings and the magnanimity of a patient Griselda. It forms a story, pathetic for its incidents, and curious for the manners it paints. "In 1459, in the city of St Omer, Messire Louis de la Viefville, knight, aged about forty years, died suddenly alighting from his horse. He was the captain of Gravelines, a handsome knight, but very voluptuous, and remarkable for the following circum◄ stance. "Two or three years before, in the open fields, he seized on the beautiful niece of the abbess of Bourbourgh, a noble woman. He brought her to his lady, who indeed was belle et bonne, and had made him the father of several children. Yet though the lady was good, and beautiful, and chaste, he made this girl sit at his table and share his bed, and often thrust from him his lady out of his apartment, and bade her go where she willed. Patiently this noble lady endured this affliction, and did more; for after this knight had violated the damsel, the Duke of Burgundy summoned him, with the damsel, to appear before him, that justice might be administered. The noble lady, who had several children by the knight, was fearful that, if the damsel should complain of the violence done her, and told the truth, the Duke would condemn him to the death, and so she and her children, in after-times, be reproached. This to avoid, many times, and for many days, she cast herself at the feet of the damsel, earnestly praying her to be piteous of her husband, and not complain of the violence done her. By soft and humble intreaties, and with a thousand gold florins, the lady succeeded; and when the damsel appeared before the Duke, she complained not. And thus, by the aid of God and his rela tions, but still more by the lady his wife, was this knight not put to death, although the fact was notorious, for it happened in open day, and the damsel offered all the resistance a woman ought, and can, in that horrible situation. Many wished to have seen the |