ing lines, which we quote as a charade for landsmen: "Embrailed the fluttering topsails lie, While we are at the page we referred to, we may as well treat the reader to a mouthful of sunset in a storm : "How horrible is sunset in a storm! Forms in the clouds, and death in every form; Clarendon Lord High Chancellor of England, in capitals thereto adjoined. We have seldom met with a more ridiculous piece of vanity; it is almost as bad as the book of Mr. Shepherd Grace, who decorated his ancestorial dignities, by inserting amongst his own family the heads of all the sovereigns in whose reign they lived, and the heads of all the great men with whom his forefathers were contemporaries. Lucian gives a comical deduction of a would-be literaire of his day, who inferred that as physician to a company of pike-men he was under the patronage of Esculapius, who was son of Apollo, the leader of the Muses, whence he, as a physician, was entitled also to the dignity of an author. Does Mr. S. wish to air his logic with equal effect by stuffing his ancestors into a volume of poems? But by what we have said we do not intend to demolish Mr. Sillery altogether There are some very Hell on the billows, with destruction far from it. Fiends on the gales, and lightnings On shore, the cataract foaming into The stripped trees dancing through the bellowing woods." This is a pretty fair bout of the elements: earth salutes sea in the breech; and sea, not caring to box his match, flies like a Whig in the face of heaven. Then is it any wonder for the woods to bellow when the trees dance naked? At the same time, be it observed, that we do not clearly comprehend how, if the trees fall a dancing, the woods can stand by and bellow. But this may be a mistake of ours in thinking that a wood consists of trees. Horace gives us to understand that it contains something more; but of this enough. This poem is followed by a diatribe in blank verse, upon the portrait gallery of Mr. S.'s ancestors, heralded by a very silly remark upon Byron's family pride, and one not much more sensible by Rousseau; however, on the strength of such good company Mr. S. carries us from generation to generation, a long line of Sillerys down to note first of the Appendix, where we have the genealogical tree in full leaf, with a coronet blossom on top, and the Earl of pretty pieces of poetry, containing many "Be her's the slumber of the blessed- We do not suppose that Mr. S. has intentionally plagiarised the spirit and rythm of the above; but it reminds us strongly of a strain familiar to our schoolboy ears. "While many a cheek, o'er crabbed Greek So when he died of apoplexy, We shall acquit ourselves to a host of authors and publishers in our ensuing number. IRISH CHURCH COMMISSION, AND THE CORONATION OATH SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF EDWARD LASCELLES, GENT. Chapter V. Page 121 136 137 ADVENTURES IN SOUTH AMERICA-No. IV. The Prize AN ADDRESS TO THE PROTESTANTS OF ENGLAND, ON THE MEASURES 219 ANTHONY POPLAR'S NOTE-BOOK. Naturalist's Library-Walker's Physiognomy-Drury's Thucydides 239 DUBLIN: WILLIAM CURRY, JUN. AND COMPANY. SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. A WORD TO OUR DEARLY BELOVED PUBLIC. "DEARLY BELOVED," we say in good earnest for in the spirit of the old proverb, that "love begets love," the "universal public" are become mighty favorites with us. In the first place, we would have all men to know that henceforward our Magazine is to be called and denominated by the title and epithet of DEA, as we ourselves rejoice in no other appellation than that of Anthony Poplar, and in that we do in sooth_rejoice. Now, let no one dispute the propriety of the name. The Roman Emperor deified his dead mistress; and we may surely do the same in honour of the living "ladye of our love ;" and we who know her qualities best do declare her to be altogether divine; and so if any one shall, after the issuing of this our proclamation, deny her claim to the title of Dea, he is hereby declared to be guilty of high treason against the Protestant interest, Ireland, and Anthony Poplar; and is bound in all the pains and penalties thereto appertaining. Now, which of the goddesses of the poet's song she is-it is perfectly superfluous to enquire. She is, as occasion requires, an impersonation of them all. She is a Juno, for she wields the thunderbolt wherewith she hurls Whigs and traitors (if this be not tautology) from their seats. She is Minerva in her wisdom, and also because she has leaped fullgrown, in her panoply of radiant armour, from the head of her parent. She is Venus in her beauty, and also because she rose like Venus from the waves that dash "our seagirt Isle." Chaste as Diana, she repudiates from her pages everything that is impure; and, therefore, like Diana, she is fit to be the companion of the maidens that wander over mountain and glen; but mountain and glen far more beautiful than those of Delos or Cythæron; and maidens fairer and more lovely than ever joined the goddess of the Chase-the daughters of Erin. She is Hebe in her eternal youth-for just as you see her now when twenty moons have scarcely filled their horns since she lighted on this mortal world-just such shall your children's children see her when a century has rolled by and found no change in her still young and vigorous and merryhearted, still rejoicing as a giant to run her course. Like Cybele, she wears a crown of turrets, and on every turret stands a watchman true. Like Cybele, too, she is the Bona Dea-yes, Bona Dea be her name. She is good-she is all good-nothing that is below the degree of optimism shall be found in her pages-then Bona Dea be her name. In the next place, our dear public will perceive that our leading article for this month was written before the foul conspiracy in the cabinet had unseated Gaffer Grey. After this article was in press we received the eloquent and soul-stirring address to the Protestants of England. It is true that it repeated some things which we had said ourselves; but then it said them with much more force, and it came also from a quarter sufficient to ensure for it attention and respect; and it was on a subject upon which too much can hardly be said or written, and so we could not withhold it. Now, a word for his Grace the Archbishop of Dublin. His Grace has been playing some strange tricks about getting a King's Letter for his new College. Now, let not his Grace suppose that anything can escape our knowledge. We have a little bird that tells us a great many things; and being ourselves also immaterial and intellectual in our essence, we can hover near His Grace when we are not seen. We know that the King's Letter has been drawn out, although His Grace thought that it was a secret; but he can keep no secret from us; and if he goes on, all we have said to him yet will be praise and kindness to what we will say. But we will make a bargain with His Grace-let him give over maneuvering about colleges, and mind the affairs of his diocese, and His Grace and we shall be the best friends possible. If he keeps himself quiet we will let him alone; but if not ANTHONY POPLAR. THE IRISH CHURCH COMMISSION, AND THE CORONATION OATH. GREAT BRITAIN IS A PROTESTANT STATE. This is a truth which impudence has not as yet presumed in words to deny a principle which wickedness has not as yet attempted openly to contradict. It was in defence of this principle that the revolution of 1688 was undertaken; and it was the sacredness of this principle that hallowed that noble and glorious struggle of a people contending against tyranny for their religion. It was this principle, established at the revolution, and bequeathed to all succeeding generations of Britons, that placed the house of Hanover on the throne; and it is only so long as this principle is maintained in all its integrity, that William the Fourth possesses a legal or a moral right to be our king. Protestantism is not an accident, but the essence of our constitution. Our ancestors have placed it above all law and beyond all legislation, when to maintain it they interfered with the most ancient legal rights, and dispensed with the most established forms of legislative usage. The act of settlement has interwoven national Protestantism with all the common and all the statute law of the land. When it regulated and limited by this principle the succession to the throne, it made it the warrant of all those judicial trusts, and all those executive authorities that depend upon the prerogative of the king; nay, it made VOL. IV. it the basis of all future acts of parliament that should derive their legality from the signature of any future king. Resting upon the same authority with the title of the sovereign to rule, or rather that title and authority itself, it is linked to all public rights and to all personal immunities; it is the jewel which, placed in the centre of the ark of the constitution, cannot be injured without breaking up the coffer in which it is enclosed; it is the band of our social compact, which once removed, all our partnership in the state is at an end, and our allegiance to its confedederacy is absolved. The commonwealth, when once it discards this principle, vitiates every act of government that has been done since the expulsion of the Stuarts; and brands all our foreign and domestic policy, since that period, as but a course of unjust aggression and iniquitous usurpation. From the moment Britain ceases to be Protestant, her government is at an end; and that constitution which has long been supported by the fealty that is due to prescriptive right--by the voluntary homage that a nation renders to its ancient judicatures-is resolved into its elements-to be swept away by the winds of anarchy-or cemented for a time by the awkward soldering of economists ultimately to be kept. together by the iron rivets of unmitigated force. K Now, in considering the Irish Church Commission, this truth must be borne in mind. That commission has been issued by the ministers of a Protestant state, and the ministers have affixed to it the signature of a Protestant King. It is not the act of a state that has discarded the God of Revelation, and deified the goddess of Reason; nor of a state that is virtually infidel while it professes to be indifferent-that adopts the most absurdly anomalous principle that men in communities must altogether avoid any acknowledgment of that which, in their private capacity, they are bound, as they value their eternal interests, to recognise. Britain, thank God, is not such a nation. She believes in Christianity as the revelation of Him who rules the destinies of nations, and she adopts Protestantism as the purest form of Christianity. And if she has of late years admitted those who are not Protestants into her legislature it is not without exacting an oath (no matter how that oath is kept), a most solemn oath, that they will do nothing to interfere with the Protestantism in which she believes, and with the church which she reveres; she does not teach her statesmen to regard themselves as raised to a political elevation from which they may look down in philosophic indifference, on the religious prejudices of those whom they govern; but she demands it of them to be anxious for religion; and even on her king she imposes a vow at the altar of his Creator, to "maintain the laws of God," and the "true profession of the gospel." And, lest some keeper of the king's conscience might find out, in the indefiniteness of the oath, a pretext for its violation, she adds-" the Protestant reformed religion, established by the law;" and then, to show how best she believes that religion may be maintained, she binds him by the most tremendous of all sanctions-a sanction which not even kings can neglect with impunity, to "preserve unto the bishops and clergy of this realm, and the churches committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges as by law do, or shall, appertain unto them, or any of them." These are the vows imposed by a Christian state, that is anxious, first, for the power of godliness, but yet is not regardless of main taining the form. And these vows breathe the spirit of her constitutiona spirit that, in accordance with her national character, is essentially religious and Protestant; and even in the very act in which she departed farthest from that spirit-when she admitted those who held doctrines which she declared to be "damnable," into her councils-she yet showed the reluctance with which she violated her feelings, by the vow with which she accompanied that concesssion; and seemed, even in the hour of her madness and her guilt, to cling, with an almost despairing tenacity, to the principles of religion which she was virtually abandoning. It is our intention, before we conclude, to examine the Commission and the measures which ministers intend to found upon its information, (for these never can be separated from it,) in reference to the Coronation Oath; and, when we come to do so, no fear of man-no respect of persons, shall prevent us from saying honestly what we think. But we will first speak of it in relation to the Protestantism of the State. A Commission has been issued from his Majesty, directed to Lord Brougham, Lord Melbourne, Edward John Littleton, Thomas Doyley, Thomas N. Lister, John Wrottesley, G. B. Lennard, Edward Carleton Tufnel, Daniel Maude, George Cornwall Lewis, William Henry Curran, William Tighe Hamilton, Acheson Lyle, and William Newport, directing them to visit every parish in Ireland, and ascertain, by the best evidence they can procure, the number of persons in communion with the Church of England, and also the number of those attached to other persuasions also the number of clergymen, and the number of places of worship-also to ascertain the number of schools, the average attendance at each, and the sources from which they are supported-and, finally, to report such other circumstances, related with the moral and political relations of the church establishment, and the religious institutions of other sects, as may CLEARLY!! bring into view their bearing on the general condition of the people of Ireland! Now, if all this could be separated from the declared intentions of ministers, which, we repeat, it |