Dublin, December 7th, 1828.

Dear Julia,

The descriptions of public dinners and the * * *

* * * * * * *

are now at an end, and I must conduct you to a breakfast at the Post-office. The Director, Sir Edward Lee, a very agreeable and accomplished man, who gave the entertainment, first conducted us, in company with a number of elegant ladies, through the various offices ‘pour nous faire gagner de l’appetit.’ In one of them, called the ‘Dead Letter Office,’ a very strange incident occurred in our presence. All letters, the address of which is unintelligible, or which are addressed to persons who cannot be discovered, are taken into this office, where they are opened at the end of a fortnight, and, if they contain nothing important, burnt. This seems to me rather a barbarous custom, since many a heart might be broken from the loss of what a Post-office clerk might think ‘of no importance.’ So it is, however, and we found three men busied in the operation. Several of us seized these doomed epistles, and turned them over with great curiosity, when the clerk who stood nearest to me took up rather a large packet on which there was no address whatever, only the post-mark of an Irish country town. How great was his surprise and that of all of us, when on opening it we saw not a single line of writing, but £2700 in bank-notes! This, at least, appeared ‘of importance’ to all, and an order was immediately given to write to the town in question to make inquiry about it.

In the evening I went to pay the ‘nightingales’ a visit, but found them flown, and only their father at home, with whom I had a scientific conversation. He showed me several curious newly-invented instruments;—one among them for ascertaining the exact strength of the lungs, and therefore invaluable in consumptive diseases. He told me that a person high in office was given over last year by all of the most eminent physicians in Dublin, as far gone in pulmonary consumption. Believing his danger to be imminent, he had made up his mind to give up his place, and to go to Montpellier, as the only means of prolonging his life. Sir A—— was at last consulted, and resolved to try this instrument, which he had just received from London. Scarcely could he believe his eyes when he found on experiment that the lungs of the patient were two degrees stronger than his own,—he being in perfect health. The disease was now discovered to be in the liver, though it had exhibited every symptom of consumption; and in four months the patient was entirely cured, and kept his lucrative place which he had determined to give up.

I shall not describe to you the various instruments of torture which I saw; ‘tant pis pour l’humanitÉ, qu’il en faut tant.’ A prettier thing was a barometer, in the figure of a lady, who at the approach of bad weather holds up her umbrella, in a hard rain opens it, and in settled fine weather uses it as a walking-stick. To use a lady as a continually changing prophet of weather. ‘Quelle insolence!’

December 8th.

Sir A——, who has a place in the Bank, showed that building to me this morning. The edifice is fine, and formerly served as a place of meeting for both houses of the Irish Parliament, whose restoration is now so ardently desired. The thing most worth seeing is the printing of bank-notes. The whole machinery is moved by a magnificent steam-engine, while a smaller one fills the boiler with water and the furnace with coals, so that human assistance is scarcely wanted. In the first room the printing ink is prepared; in the next the bank-notes receive their various marks and ornaments. This process is very rapidly performed. Only one man is employed at each press; and while he places the blank papers, one after another, under the stamp, the number of printed notes marks itself in the inside of a closed box. In the next room they are numbered. This is done on a small chest; and the machinery numbers them, as if by invisible hands, from one to a thousand. The man employed there has nothing to do but to blacken the numbers as they come out with printer’s ink, and to lay the notes in their proper order. All the rest is accomplished by the machine.

Every note which returns to the Bank after circulation is immediately torn, and kept seven years, at the expiration of which time it is burnt. This last operation leaves a residuum of indigo, copper, and the materials of the paper, which looks like metal, and glitters with all the colours of the rainbow. Of course many hundred notes go to make up an ounce of this substance, of which I carried away a beautiful piece.

We afterwards ascended the roof of this great building, a sort of world in miniature, whence, like the ‘Diable Boiteux,’ we could see into the surrounding houses; but at length so confused ourselves, that we thought we should need Ariadne’s clue to enable us to find our way down again. I arrived too late, in consequence, at dinner at Sir E—— L——’s; a thing which is not taken so ill in England as with us.

Dec. 9th.

Lord Howth invited me to a stag-hunt, whence I am just returned, equally tired and pleased. My lessons in Cashel were now of great use to me, for Lord Howth is one of the best and most determined riders in Great Britain. He had given me a very good horse, in spite of which I fell twice: this also happened once to Lord Howth himself, and I followed him so well that I think I brought no discredit on our cavalry. At length more than two-thirds of our fifty red-coats were missing. I was particularly struck with an officer who had lost an arm, and nevertheless was one of the first: his admirable horse had not refused or missed a single leap.

This sort of hunt is a very agreeable diversion now and then; but how a man can devote himself to so utterly unintellectual an amusement three times a week, for six months of every year, and always pursue it with the same passion, does, I own, remain unintelligible to me. What, besides, makes stag-hunting much less interesting in England than on the continent, is, that the stags are tame, and are trained to the sport like race-horses. They are brought to the place of rendezvous in a kind of box, and there turned out. When they have run a certain distance, the hunt begins, and before it ends the hounds are called off, and the stag is put into the box again and kept for another hunt. Is not this horribly prosaic, and scarcely compensated by the ‘agrÉment’ of being in continual risk of breaking one’s neck over a wide ditch, or one’s head against a high wall?

December 10th.

For some weeks past I have been a frequent visitor at the Gymnastic Academy. These exercises are become very fashionable in Great Britain and Ireland. Certainly they are of inestimable value in the training of youth; they are a highly improved Turnen,[152] but without politics. When one considers what facilities are now at hand for the physical as well as moral education of man; how those whom nature has misshapen are placed within cases of iron till they are transformed into Apollos; how noses and ears are created; and how academies are daily advertised in the newspapers, in which the most profound erudition is engaged to be communicated in three years,[153]—one really longs to be a child again, that one might come in for a share of all these advantages. It appears as if the law of gravitation operated in the moral as well as in the physical world, and that ‘the march of intellect’ went on in an increasing ratio like the rapidity of a falling cannon-ball. A few more political revolutions in Europe, the perfecting of steam-power for soul and body, and God knows what we may get to, even without the discovery of the art of steering air-balloons. But to return to the Gymnasium, the utility of which, at least, is undoubted. It strengthens the frame to such a degree, and imparts such agility to the limbs, that a man really doubles or trebles his existence by it. It is literally the fact, that I saw a young man, the arch of whose breast, after an uninterrupted practice of three months, had increased seven inches; the muscles of his arms and thighs had at the same time enlarged to three times their volume, and were as hard as iron. But even much older people,—men of sixty,—though they cannot expect to effect such changes, may strengthen themselves very considerably by moderate exercise in the gymnasium. I constantly found men of this age, who played their part very well among the young ones who had but recently begun. Some perseverance is however necessary; for the older a man is, the more painful and fatiguing is the beginning. Many feel themselves for months as if they had been on the rack, or were set fast with universal rheumatism. A Frenchman was at the head of the establishment, although his predecessor had sacrificed himself, two years before, to the glory of his art: his name was Beaujeu. He was endeavouring to show two ladies, (for there are also feminine gymnastics,) how easy exercise No. 7. was. The pole broke, and so did, in consequence of his fall, his spine. He died in a few hours; and, with an elevation and enthusiasm worthy of a greater cause, exclaimed with his last breath, “VoilÀ le coup de grÂce pour la gymnastique en Irlande.” His prediction, however, was not fulfilled, for both gentlemen and ladies are more gymnastically-minded than ever.

December 14th.

As I have been unwell for several days and unable to go out, I have no interesting news to give you. You must therefore receive with indulgence a few detached thoughts, the offspring of solitude; or if they tire you, leave them unread.

PARLOUR PHILOSOPHY.

What is good or evil fortune? As the former has seldom fallen to my lot, I have often proposed the question to myself. Blind and accidental, it certainly is not; but necessary, and part of a series, like every thing else in the universe, though its causes do not always depend on ourselves. How far, however, we really have it in our power to bring it on ourselves, is a salutary inquiry for every one. Lucky and unlucky occasions present themselves to every man in the course of his life; and the art of seizing the one and averting the other with address, is commonly what procures for a man the reputation of fortunate. It cannot however be denied that, in the case of some men, the most powerful and the wisest combinations continually fail, by what we call accident; nay, that there is a sort of secret foreboding or presentiment, which gives us the dim feeling that our project will not succeed. I have often been tempted to think that luckiness and unluckiness are a sort of subjective properties which we bring with us into the world, like health, strength, a finely organized brain, and so on; and whose preponderating power must always attract things magnetically to themselves. Like all other properties, this of luckiness may be cultivated or let to lie dormant, may be increased or diminished. The will does much; and thence the proverbs, Nothing venture nothing have, (Wagen gewinnt:) Boldness and luck go together, (KÜhnheit gehÖrt zum GlÜck.) It is also observable that luckiness, like the other faculties, falls off with age, that is, with the vigour of the material. This is certainly not the consequence of weaker or more ill-advised plans or rules, but appears truly to be the decline of a secret power which, so long as it is young and vigorous, governs fortune, but in later years is no longer able to hold her in. High play affords very good studies on this subject; and perhaps this is the only poetical side of that dangerous passion: for nothing affords so true a picture of life as the hazard-table; nothing affords a better criterion to the observer, by which to try his own character, and that of others. All rules which avail in the struggle of life, avail also in this; and penetration combined with energy is always sure, if not to conquer, at least to make a very able defence. But if it is combined with the talent or gift of luckiness, a sort of Napoleon of the gaming-table is the result. I am not now speaking of that class of gentlemen ‘qui corrigent la fortune.’ But even here the resemblance is still true: for how often in the world do you meet men who govern fortune by fraud?—the most unfortunate, be it said by the by, of all speculators. Their occupation is truly drawing water in a sieve; the collecting of rotten nuts. For what is enjoyment without security? and what can outward fortune avail where the internal equilibrium is destroyed?

There are men who, although endowed with distinguished qualities, never know how to make them available in the world, unless they have been from the beginning of their career placed by fate in their right position. They can never reach it by their own efforts; because a too feminine fancy, liable to the constant impression of extraneous forms, prevents them from seeing things as they really are, and causes them to live in a world of airy floating phantasms. They set about their projects with ardour and talent; but their fancy hurries after, mounted on her poetical steed, and conducts them so rapidly through her kingdom of dreams, to their end, that they can no longer endure the slow and weary journey through the difficulties and obstacles of the real road. Thus they suffer one project after another to fall to the ground before it has attained to maturity. And yet, like every thing else in the world, this unfortunate turn of mind has its advantages. It prevents a man, indeed, from making his fortune, as it is commonly called, but affords incalculable comfort under misfortune, and an elasticity of spirit that nothing can entirely crush,—for the race of pleasure-giving creatures of the imagination is absolutely inexhaustible. A whole city of castles in the air is always at the command of mortals of this class, and they enjoy, in hope, an everlasting variety of realities. Such people may be of infinite use to other more sedate, reflecting, and matter-of-fact men, if these latter do but understand the art of awakening their enthusiasm. Their intellectual faculties derive from a positive steady purpose, and from the constraint which it imposes, a degree of constancy and persevering energy which their own interest could never have inspired; and their ardour is more durable for the good of others than for their own. From similar causes, if they are placed by some superior power on the summit of the hill from the commencement of their lives, they will accomplish great things by themselves; for in this case the most grand and varied materials are already furnished; and along with them, the enthusiasm which persons of this character want, is produced, and fixed on some adequate and determinate object. There is nothing entirely new, uncertain, and baseless to create or to found;—only to employ, to improve, to elevate, to adorn, what already lies under their eye and hand, with the acuteness and address of a skilful artist. From such an eminence, which is their proper station, their keen, far-sighted glance, supported by a thousand executive heads and hands, strengthened by their own inward poetic eye, will reach further than that of more everyday natures. But at the foot or on the slope of the hill this acuteness of the mental sight is of no use to them, because their horizon is bounded; and for climbing the toilsome ascent, their indolent limbs will not serve them, nor could they resist the airy phantoms which would tempt them from their path. They live and die, therefore, on the hill, without ever reaching its summit, and consequently without ever being fully conscious of their own power. Of such men, the well-known saying might be reversed, and we might say with truth, ‘Tel brille au premier rang qui s’Éclipse au second.’

However beautiful and noble the words Morality and Virtue may sound, the universal distinct recognition of them as the useful is the only thing that will be truly salutary and beneficial to human society. He who clearly sees that the sinner is like the savage who hews down the whole tree in order to come at the fruit, often sour, or tasteless, or unwholesome; while the virtuous man is like the prudent gardener who, waiting their maturity, gathers all the sweet produce, with the joyful consciousness that he has destroyed no future crop;—this man’s virtue will probably stand on the most secure basis. The more enlightened men in general are, as to what is good or profitable for them, the better and more humane will their manners and conduct towards each other become. Action and reaction will then proceed in a beneficent circle;—enlightened individuals will establish better forms of government and better institutions, and these again will increase the intelligence of all who live under them. If matters once reached such a point, that a truly rational and elevating system of education freed us from the chimeras of dark times, dismissed all constraint on religious opinions among other obsolete absurdities, while it clearly demonstrated the inward and outward necessity of Love and Virtue to the happy existence of human society; while by the establishment of wise, firm, and consistent laws and political institutions, sprung from the conviction of this necessity, it imposed sufficient restraint to ensure the permanent adherence to these by the salutary habits produced,—Paradise would exist on earth.

Mere penal laws, whether for here or hereafter, without this profound conviction,—all worldly policy, in the sense of clever, adroit knaves,—all prophets, all superhuman extra-revelations, heaven, hell, and priests,—will never bring us to this:[154] indeed, so long as all these hang on the spokes, the wheel of improvement will revolve but slowly and painfully. For this reason, so many strive with all their might against such a result; nay, even Protestants protest backwards, and many desire to establish a new continental embargo to shut out foreign light.

‘Au reste,’ one cannot take it amiss of any man ‘qu’il prÊche pour sa paroisse.’ To require from an English archbishop with 50,000l. a year that he should be an enlightened man, is as preposterous as to expect from the Shah of Persia that he should transform himself into a constitutional monarch of his own free will. There are few men who would voluntarily refuse a rich and splendid sinecure, where nothing is required of them but to fling a little dust in the people’s eyes, or to be a despot ruling millions with his nod. It is the business of human society, if possible, to put things upon such a footing that none of us, be our good-will for it ever so great, can either get such a sinecure or become such a despot.

When I was a child, it often happened to me that I could get no rest for thinking of the fate of Hannibal, or that I was in despair at the battle of Pultawa;—now I am grieving over Columbus. We are greatly indebted to the distinguished American, Washington Irving, for this history. It is a beautiful tribute to the great navigator, brought from the land which he gave to the civilized world, and which appears destined to be the last station traversed by the cycle of human perfectibility.

What a man was this sublime endurer! Too great for his age: for forty years he was deemed by it but a madman; during the rest of his life he was the victim of its hatred and jealousy, under which he sank at length in want and misery. But such is the world: and it would be enough to make us mad, did we fix our minds upon particulars, and did not reflection soon teach us that for wise Nature the individual is nothing, the species every thing. We live for and through mankind, and every thing finds its compensation in the great whole. This reflection suffices to tranquillize any reasonable man; for every seed springs up,—if not exactly for the hand that sowed it, yet be it evil or good, not one is lost to the human race.

What has often and bitterly vexed me, is to hear people lament the wretchedness of this life, and call the world a vale of sorrows. This is not only the most crying ingratitude (humanly speaking,) but the true sin against the Holy Ghost. Is not enjoyment and well-being manifestly throughout the world the positive natural state of animated beings? Is not suffering, evil, organic imperfection or distortion, the negative shadow in this general brightness? Is not creation a continual festival to the healthy eye,—the contemplation of which, and of its splendour and beauty, fills the heart with adoration and delight? And were it only the daily sight of the enkindling sun and the glittering stars, the green of the trees and the gay and delicate beauty of flowers, the joyous song of birds, and the luxuriant abundance and rich animal enjoyment of all living things,—it would give us good cause to rejoice in life. But how much still more wondrous wealth is unfolded in the treasures of our own minds! what mines are laid open by love, art, science, the observation and the history of our own race, and, in the deepest deep of our souls, the pious reverential sentiment of God and his universal work! Truly we were less ungrateful were we less happy; and but too often we stand in need of suffering to make us conscious of this. A cheerful grateful disposition is a sort of sixth sense, by which we perceive and recognise happiness. He who is fully persuaded of its existence may, like other unthinking children, break out into occasional complaints, but will sooner return to reason; for the deep and intense feeling of the happiness of living, lies like a rose-coloured ground in his inmost heart, and shines softly through the darkest figures which fate can draw upon it.

Paradoxes of my friend B—— H——. Yes, certainly the spirit rules in us and we in it; and is eternal, and the same which rules through all worlds; but that which we call our human soul, we frame to ourselves here. The apparent double being in us,—of which one part follows the impulses of sense, while the other reflects upon the nature and movements of its companion, and restrains it,—naturally arises from the (so to say) double nature and destiny of man, who is framed to live as an individual, and also as an integral part of society. The gift of speech was a necessary condition of this latter form of existence, which without it could never have arisen. A solitary man is, and must remain, nothing better than an extremely intelligent brute; he has no more a soul than any other such:—the experiment may be repeated any day. But as soon as the man begins to live with other men, as soon as the interchange of observations is rendered possible to him by speech, he begins to perceive that the individual must submit to what is for the good of the whole—of the society, that is, to which he belongs; that he must make some sacrifices to its maintenance: this is the first rise of the moral principle, the essence of the soul. The feeling of his own weakness and uncertainty next gives birth to religion; the feeling of need of others like himself, to love. Selfishness and humanity now enter upon that continual antagonism which is called, I know not why, the inexplicable riddle of life; though with my view of the matter, nothing appears to me more natural and consequential. The real problem for mankind is, merely to establish the proper balance between these two poles. The more perfectly this is attained, the better and the happier is thenceforward the condition of the man, the family, the state. Either extreme is pernicious. The individual who tries to benefit himself alone, must succumb at length to the power of the many. The romantic enthusiast who starves himself to feed others, will be called by men, (who are ready enough to admire any sacrifice made to them, though they often laugh at it too,) magnanimous, or foolish, according to their peculiar fancy: but such conduct can never be general, and can never become a norma or pattern for imitation—in other words, a duty. Martyrs who give themselves to the flames in honour of the sacred number three, or let the nails grow through the back of the hands to the glory of Brama, belong to this same class, though to the lowest step of it; and receive, according to the prevalent notions of their age, the appellation of saint or madman, but are at all events mere exceptions, (AbnormitÄten.) Not that I mean to deny that a rational abnegation and sacrifice of oneself for the good of others is noble and beautiful: by no means. It is unquestionably a beautiful, that is, a beneficent example of the victory of the social over the selfish principle, which forms a refreshing contrast to the far too numerous instances of those whose views never extend beyond themselves, and who end in becoming the pitiless remorseless criminals against whom society is compelled to declare everlasting war. But since we are bound to ourselves more nearly than to society, by that law of self-preservation which is necessary to our existence, egotists are more common than philanthropists, vicious men than virtuous. The former are the truly rude and ignorant, the latter the civilized and instructed. (An ‘avviso’ by the by to all governments who wish to rule in the dark.) But as even the most civilized have a substratum of rudeness, just as the most highly polished marble when broken exhibits the rough grain beneath, philanthropy herself cannot deny that she is the offspring of self-interest,—that she is indeed only self-interest diffused over the whole of mankind.

Where this feeling, therefore, displays itself in a very grand and energetic manner, though it be for the sole advantage of the individual, the possessors of it, such as are commonly called great men and heroes, compel the admiration even of those who disapprove their course of action. Nay, experience teaches us, that men who, with consummate indifference to the good of others, have heaped innumerable sufferings on their fellow men, if they have at the same time manifested a gigantic and over-mastering power, and been favoured by fortune, have invariably been the objects of the high admiration even of those who suffered under them. This shows what I said before, that necessity and fear are the germs of human society, and continue to be the mightiest levers under all circumstances; and that power, (or strength,) is always the object of the greatest reverence and admiration. Alexander and CÆsar cut a greater figure in history than Horatius Cocles and Regulus, (admitting the latter not to be fabulous personages.) Disinterestedness, friendship, philanthropy, generosity, are flowers of rarer growth; they generally unfold themselves at a later season, and with a more delicate fragrance. To the philosophic mind the highest power manifests itself in perfect goodness: and devotedness to others in the end becomes the highest enjoyment to the individual himself.

Another, and, as it seems to me, a striking proof that what we call Morality is entirely the growth of social life, is, that, as it appears to me, we recognise no such principle in our conduct towards other beings. If it were in our power, we should willingly enough pluck a star from heaven and analyse it for the benefit of our science; nor, if we had an angel in our power, should we be very scrupulous in our treatment of him, were we certain we had nothing to fear from him. That our treatment of the lower animals, and in too many cases of the negroes, is utterly and purely selfish, and that we must have reached a high point of civilization before even we cease to torment them or to let them suffer uselessly and wantonly, is but too obvious a fact. Nay more; men, even among each other, throw off the positive moral principle, as soon as a power which they recognise as competent partially dissolves the obligations of society. As soon as war is declared, the most virtuous soldier kills his fellow man ‘ex officio,’ though perhaps he be but the compulsory servant of a despot whom in his heart he regards as the scum of the earth: or the Pope, in the name of the religion of love, absolves men from every sentiment of truth, rectitude or humanity; and immediately the pious burn, torture, kill, lie, ‘con amore,’ and die satisfied and blessed, in fulfilment of their duty, and to the glory of God!

The lower animals, which are destined to live for themselves alone, know no virtue, and have, therefore, no soul, as it is truly said. Yet in the domestic animals, notwithstanding the low order of their reasoning faculty,—from education and from the sort of social intercourse in which they live with man, we may perceive very obvious traces of morality, and the gradual creation of a perception of right and wrong. We see that they are capable of disinterested love; capable even of great self-sacrifice without the motive of fear:—in short, they enter upon the same path as men, their souls begin to germinate and expand; and had animals the faculty of speech, it is possible they would advance to a level with ourselves.

Our best and most useful study would be, to endeavour to see what we are, and wherefore we are so, without vain hypotheses or tedious discussions:—this is the only road to a permanent spread of clear and enlightened ideas, and consequently to true happiness. It may be questioned whether German philosophy has not chosen too poetical a path; whether it do not rather resemble a rocket, which soars into the heavens in a thousand sparkles and tries to assimilate itself to the stars, but soon vanishes into nothing,—than a fire which gives out beneficent light and heat. How many eccentric systems of this kind, from Kant to Hegel, have glittered their moment, and then either rapidly expired, or lived on, divided into obscure and unprofitable fragments!

It is very problematical whether society have reaped so much practical advantage from them as from the now so little valued French philosophers, who stuck to what was near at hand; and in the first place so effectually divided the main nerve of the boa of priestly superstition with their sharp operating-knives, that it has never since been able to do more than feebly drag itself about. The philosopher ought surely to embrace actual life in his speculations, (the greatest of all sages was not less practical, than comprehensively intelligent;) and men who instruct mankind in this manner stand higher in the history of its benefactors than the most astonishing of the firework-makers above mentioned.

The true and only object of philosophy is unquestionably the investigation of truth;—of such truth, be it observed, as can be investigated, for such alone can give any results. To inquire into the incomprehensible is to thrash straw. The most direct way to the attainment of discoverable truth is in my opinion now, as in the days of Aristotle, only that of experiment. At a later stage of science we may venture to say with justice, because the law is so, experience must confirm my conclusions; but this law could only have been discovered by means of prior experiment. Lalande might very fairly maintain that such and such stars must stand in such and such relations, although the most accurate observation seemed to prove the contrary, because he already knew the unalterable rule; but without Newton’s falling apple, &c.,—without the previous and long-continued observations of individual phenomena, and the truths thence elicited,—the secrets of the heavens were still a book with seven seals.

But if philosophy would seek out truth, she ought above all to seek it in relation to the human species. Histories of mankind, in the widest sense, and whatever can be deduced from them for the behoof of the present and the future, must ever be her chief object. By following this direction, we may gradually succeed in arriving, from the knowledge of what has been and is, at the knowledge of causes; i. e. why things are so, and not otherwise: and then again, going back from fact to fact, may approach to fundamental laws, and thus find out a norma or rule for the future. Although the first causes of all existence should forever remain undiscoverable by us, it were sufficient, could we clearly and distinctly ascertain what were the original powers of our being, what they have become, and what direction we ought to endeavour to give to their further growth. Here the reflection will forcibly present itself, that a further progression and improvement are only possible in the element of freedom, and with an unrestrained interchange of ideas. The most noble and important invention by or for mankind, was therefore indisputably that of printing. Happily, it was born quick and active, for the human intellect was at its birth sufficiently matured to employ this mighty engine for the furtherance of the greatest ends. This invention alone has since rendered it possible to call into life that gigantic power, which nothing will long be able to withstand—public opinion. By this I do not mean the clamours of the mob, but the judgment of the best and wisest, which, since they have found an organ, have penetrated to all, and in the end must effect the destruction of those mere clamours.

Without printing, there would have been no Luther;—and until that epoch, had Christianity really been able to make its way? At the time of the thirty years’ war, at the time of the English Queen Mary, at the time of the Inquisition, ‘horribile dictu!’ had Christianity rendered men more merciful, more moral, more benign? I see little evidence of it. Freedom of the press was the great step which at once brought us infinitely nearer to the grand end—the universal diffusion of intelligence; and has given such an impulse to human affairs, that we now learn and accomplish more in ten years than our ancestors did in a hundred. The mass of information and intelligence thus accumulated, is what we must look to for the amelioration of the condition of mankind. In every age there have been illustrious men,—men, perhaps, whom no succeeding age will surpass or equal: but they stood alone; and although their effect on the world was not utterly lost, they could generally diffuse but a partial and momentary light, which the lapse of time dimmed or quite obscured. Let us take as an instance Christ, who, as Gibbon has shown, appeared under peculiarly favourable circumstances. How many men have called, and do call, themselves after his name; and how many are true Christians? He, the most liberal, the most tolerant, the most sincere and benign of men, has served for nearly two thousand years as a shield to despotism, persecution, and falsehood, and lent his exalted and sacred name to a new form of heathenism.

It is therefore, I repeat, only the mass of knowledge, the intelligence which has pervaded a whole nation, which can form the basis of permanent, solid and rational institutions, through which society and individuals may be made better and happier. Towards this the world now tends. Politics, in the highest signification of the word, is the religion of the present time. For that, all the enthusiasm of mankind is awakened; and should crusades now be undertaken, that alone would be the object. The notion of representative chambers has now-a-days a more electric effect than that of a ruling church; and even the fame of the warrior begins to grow pale, by the side of that enlightened statesman and citizen.

“Prove all things, and hold fast that which is good!”

But now ‘trÊve de bavardage.’ In the mountains I should not have bored you with so much of it; but within the dingy walls of a city I feel as Faust did within those of his study. But a little breeze has sprung up. To-morrow a fresher gale will swell my sails. Wherever I am,—in prison, or under the blue sky,—I am, and shall ever be,

Your true, heartily devoted,

L——.

P. S. This is my last letter from Dublin. I have had my carriage packed and sent to S——; dismissed my Englishmen, and shall travel under the ‘nom de guerre’ you know of,—which is now become ‘romantic,’ by Bath and Paris with one honest Irish servant. I shall neither hurry, nor stay longer than necessary. The most difficult business—taking leave of friends—is done, and nothing now detains me.