from open enemies. I am none of Henry's deputie: I am his foe. I have more mind to conquer than to govern; to meet him in the field than to serve

him in office. If all the hearts of Eng

land and Ireland, that have cause there

to, would join in this quarrel (as I hope they will), then should he soon aby (as I trust shall) for his tyranny, for which the age to come may lawfully scourge him up among the ancient tyrants of most abominable and hateful memory."

He then tendered his sword of state to the chancellor (Cromer). The gentle prelate, who was a well-wisher of the Geraldines, besought him, with tears in his eyes, to abandon his purpose; and might, perhaps, have succeeded, but that Nelan, an Irish bard, then present, burst out on the sudden into a heroic strain, in his native tongue, eulogistic of "Silken Thomas," and concluded by warning him, that he had "lingered there over long." The earl was roused by the fervour of this appeal. Addressing the chancellor somewhat abruptly, he renounced all allegiance to the English monarch, saying, that he chose rather "to die with valiantness and liberty."

Never was there a finer scene for poet or painter than this at St. Mary's Abbey; and never has ancient history left us a happier theme for either of them than Silken Thomas." His subsequent career fully corresponded with this commencement. For a length of time he resisted, successfully, the famous lord deputy, Skeffington, with all the support that England could afford him, or that he derived from such of the native Irish septs as had been previously hostile to the earl, or were bought over by the hope of present advantage. When, finally, deserted by the last of his allies, Kildare found himself obliged to surrender, it was upon a promise, sealed upon the holy sacrament, that he should receive a full pardon on his arrival in England. But this pledge was shamefully violated by Henry VIII. For sixteen months the earl was incarcerated in the Tower of London, and then, together with his five uncles, two of whom had always been stanch adherents of the king, was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn, on the 8th of February, 1537, being then but twenty-four years of age.

The rebellion of "Silken Thomas"

is well and ably told by Lord Kildare ; and perhaps the whole range of history produces no more affecting a story.

This unfortunate earl was," says Holinshed, "a man on whom nature poured beauty and fortune, and withal somewhat ruddy, delicately in each lymme featured; of nature flexible and kinde; a young man not devode of wit."

It is melancholy to contrast the early condition of the gay, glittering noble, "the Silken Lord," Vice Deputy of Ireland, and head of one of the most illustrious families in the world, with that bitter suffering which he described in a letter to an adherent, while a prisoner in the Tower :-"I never had eny money syns I cam unto prison but a nobull, nor I have had nethyr hosyn, dublet, nor shoys, nor shyrt, but on.

I have gone barefote dyverse tymes (when ytt hath not been very warme) and so I should have don styll, and now, but that pore prysoners, of their gentylnes, hath sometyme gevyn me old hosyn and shoys and old shyrtes. This I wryte unto you, not as complayning on my fryndes, but for to shew you the trewth of my gret nede." The generous, self-sacrificing spirit of the youth still shines through all his sufferings; and the reader will scarcely fail to be struck with the marked resemblance between "Silken Thomas" and another equally ill-fated Geraldine, of a much later periodthe amiable and high-minded Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Both were led away by the enthusiasm of their nature; both were chivalrously honourable; both displayed, throughout the contest, an unflinching spirit; and each, in the bloom of manhood, paid the penalty of his error in a violent death.

Though attainder followed, the House of Kildare was not destined to perish. Thomas's half-brother, GERALD, the eleventh Earl of Kildare, then a minor, only twelve years old, became the male representative of the Geraldines. So great was the sympathy in his favour, from one end of Ireland to the other, that the English Government became, beyond measure, anxious to get him into their power; but all their efforts were in vain to corrupt the fidelity of those to whose charge he had been entrusted. By them he was safely conveyed to the Continent, where he found a welcome

reception; and, though the English monarch was successful in having him dismissed from one place of refuge after the other, yet he could not persuade any one of his friendly allies to give the boy up. At length, he obtained a safe retreat in Rome, with his kinsman,Cardinal Pole, who caused him to be educated, and subsequently sent him, at his own desire, upon his travels. He afterwards entered the service of Cosmo de Medici, Duke of Florence, who appointed him Master of his Horse. Returning to England, after the death of King Henry, in company with some foreign ambassadors, he was present at a masque given by Edward VI., where he met, wooed, and won his future wife, Mabel, daughter of Sir Anthony Browne, K.G. Through Sir Anthony's influence, the young king gave Gerald back his Irish estates and conferred on him knighthood; and, at a later period, Queen Mary restored to him his hereditary honours. After a brilliant career, Earl Gerald died in London, in 1585, but his body was taken back to Ireland, and buried in Kildare.

There is less of romance, but scarcely less of historical interest, in the lives of the succeeding Earls of Kildare; but the details are suited rather to the genealogical than the general reader. In this brief sketch our purpose has been to shadow forth the career of as noble a race as ever graced the page of history; but, to be felt and comprehended in its full extent, the tale should be read in the delight ful pages of Lord Kildare's own book. There is abundant evidence of research in his lordship's labours. It is, however, to be regretted that the manuscript sources, locked up and unknown in the public offices of Dublin, and loudly calling for a new Record Commission, to give their treasures to the world, could not be more thoroughly ransacked. Mention is made of a

"chest or secure place in the Castle of Mainothe," for the custody of family papers, to which three locks, were, for their better safety, to be affixed during the minority of George, sixteenth earl. We trust the "secure place," was not robbed of its deposit at the ruin of the castle by Preston and the confederate Catholics, who plundered "the library of great value" in 1642, and dismantled the building in 1646, since which time it has remained uninhabited.

Though there thus seems, unfortunately, but too good grounds for apprehension that the muniment room of Carton is less rich than that of the great rival race of Ormonde, in Kilkenny Castle; still report states that many valuable manuscripts are preserved at the former mansion, as, for instance, the "Book of Kildare" (perhaps the manuscript mentioned at page 113, as "the Earl of Kildare's Red Book"), and the "Book of Obits of diverse gentlemen of the Geraldys," which would, if given in an appendix, have been a valuable document in illustration of the collateral branches of the family. The history of those offshoots, in many instances deduced by Lodge, does not enter into the plan of the present work. This we regret, as the Duke of Leinster, however times have changed, is still a great Chief, the head of a widely-spread and powerful clan, who still look to him with all the respect given to the ancient leader, though he no longer calls on them to follow his feudal banner to the field.

In conclusion we will only add, that few will rise from the perusal of Lord Kildare's memorials of the great race from which he springs, without cordially coinciding in the remark that the family of the Geraldines is "so ancient, that it seems to have no beginning, and so illustrious that it ought to have no end." Record Tower.

B. B.

A WEEK WITH

"TIME," says the Archbishop of Dublin, after Dr. Copleston, "is no agent. When we speak of such-and-such changes being brought about by time, we mean in time." Several hundred years before either of these clever writers, the elder Scaliger had pointed out this distinction to Cardan. "You say that all things are originated, and destroyed by time, a sentiment as trite as it is deficient in subtlety. When Aristotle for a moment assumes a similar saying, he carefully guards it by his "as they are wont to say, time destroys all things." "Time is a measure to the mind, and does nothing. Time in this way becomes what some philosophers call a symbolical cognition; and it stands for the sum total of unknown multiplied causes which have produced a given effect.

Without further refinement, it may be said that in the silent lapse of events, old political influences have become effete, and new influences come to the birth, quite as remarkable as any which have distinguished the tumult of public revolutions. No salvo of artillery, no tramp of excited myriads, have hailed the noiseless dawning of the birthday of agencies that wield a more than imperial power. The historian cannot note the day or the hour when the child came into the world. We have an instance of this in the imperceptible growth of opinion, which has wrested the guidance of popular sentiment from the isolated dictatorship of the political writer, and committed it to the republic of a newspaper. There was a day in England when parties were moulded by the essays and pamphlets of some great hand," who primed the prime minister and led the town. Only turn to Swift's Journal to Stella, covering those busy years of political intrigue from 1710 to 1713. He who reads those strange papers will be fascinated by the play of wit, and giddied by the whirl of change from our society," which blackballs dukes, to beefsteak and bad wine with the printer in the city. He will feel almost awfully the life and stir, the ever-thronging and

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passionate pursuit of those gallant lords and splendid ladies, the youngest of whom has been cold in the grave for more than a hundred years. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished." But the anxious spirit of Harley; the careless and magnificent genius of St. John; the subtle-witted ladies who met to play ombre at Lady Betty Germaine's, or Masham's, or to talk in the anteroom of some "lady, just after lying in, the ugliest sight, pale, dead old, and yellow, for want of her paint, but soon to be painted and a beauty again"-are alike susceptible to the spell which has been cast over them by that mysterious parson from Ireland. If the Whigs are to be lashed into fury; if the profligacy of Wharton or the covetousness of Marlborough, are to be made odious-if the war is to be rendered unpopular, and brought out from the blaze of glory with which it is illuminatedDr. Swift flings off an "Examiner," or goes to Barber with a "Conduct of the Allies." The town rings with the pamphlet. The young bloods and Mohocks of the opposite party vow personal vengeance against the author. The tantivy High-church Tory squires of the country party rant out its arguments in the House. Dr. Swift thinks for the Tory party, writes the Queen's speech (or at least retouches it), and to a certain extent leads the country.

But a change has passed over the political writers, akin to that which has passed over the political leaders of England. Mr. Gladstone has subtlety enough to admit of his being split into two premiers, one for either side of the House. Lord Palmerston has exquisite tact, invincible audacity, and an oratory whose occasional hesitation only adds a barb to the sting in the tail of every sentence. But thoughtful men often ask with some impatience for the first-rate figures of other days. They demand the Foxes and Pitts, or even the Cannings and Peels. Yet the demand is somewhat unreasonable. In a regiment of Ghoorkas, an English heavy dragoon

passes for a giant; among his own comrades he is no more than up to regulation height. And so in an age of little reading, when political economists were merely calculating in rude and imperfect schemes the nativity of their science, it was comparatively easy for a man of genius to appear a giant. Adam Smith and Ricardo have supplied stilts which put the most unequal statures more nearly on a level. And in the same way we shall never again hear of political writers like Swift, or Junius, or Burke; not that such pens will never again be found, but that too many are at work for any one to be so conspicuously pre-eminent.

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a

We have sometimes regretted the waste of talent in the papers of the day, and more especially the Times. A leader appears. It flashes the keen blade of its wit, or thunders with impetuous eloquence over every house in England. But its coruscations are as meteoric in their rapidity as in their splendour. Very few know the author. Only one here or there can clearly recall its drift after many days. They can only speak of it, as little Peterkin did of the great battle of Blenheim. "A famous article-splendid such a stunner; but I cannot recollect what it says." "And then there is the weary and unsuccessful hunt through old files and crowded drawers, and those other receptacles to which the muse of Dryden has followed the poems of MacFlecknoe. There is a culinary machine called by good housewives digester." We are tempted to wish for "a digester," which, every month or every year, might reduce the bones of the Times articles into portable compass, and keep them for future use. Then, when the ingredients are good, they might enrich the stock of literary and historical food; when the chemists detect any deleterious mixture, the pernicious stuff may be exposed: whereas, at present, the good is too hastily swallowed, and the bad circulates extensively, because no one has time to analyse it. We make a very humble commencement by giving a hasty abstract of the articles in the Times for a single week. This will give us an opportunity of saying some things, chiefly about politics, in our own way. We shall conclude by some general observations on the office and character of the great newspaper.

The week which we select is that which commences with Thursday, December 3, 1857.

There is an article which anticipates the programme of the Queen's speech. It sneers at the time when the communication of a few garbled extracts of the intended speech from the throne was made the subject of official mystification, and of special favour.' predicts, what it needs no prophet to foresee, that the subject of India will be the political Aaron's rod to swallow all others. There has been a Roman Catholic, a Reform, an Income Tax, a Corn Law session; the one now about to open will be an Indian session. It may be supposed that there will be a paragraph to announce the determination of ministers to redeem their pledges upon Parliamentary Reform. Now, seeing that the Times of the next day is driven to confess that the introduction of this topic is inconsequent and inopportune, it may be hard to convince the world that the editor has not received "the special favour" of which he speaks so slightly. There is one point which will "necessarily be recommended to Parliament, the distressed condition of the operative classes." On the whole, this is a slow and pompous article, couched in the vapid mysteriousness of semi-official reserve, and reminds one of Talleyrand's famous account of words, that they were given to conceal thoughts.

The same paper contains an article on India of better calibre. Though the question of the Bank Charter Act may be the first to present itself, "the Indian discussion will be the chief business of the session." The out-andout apology for Government which follows, contains the somewhat startling admission, that "it was slow to credit the true meaning of the mutinies; but in its incredulity it did but follow its natural guide, the Government of India. The Calcutta authorities believed the Bengal officers, and our home Government the Calcutta authorities; so that troops which might have sailed from England in April or May did not sail till July or August.' Three broad general conclusions are deduced from our recent experience: first, that the military strength of the Indian Government must be no longer based upon a dominant Sepoy army next, that the personal capacity of