on the national fates,-potent and lofty spirits, made to wield the elements of disorder, and awing men into a brief admiration even of their violence by its splendour. But our disturbance is fated to come from a lower source; we are to have none of the excuses of a vague wonder at the noble influences convertible to our misfortune. We are not to be withered by the lightning; no generous future superstition is to dignify our raiments, as of the victims of what in the moral world might be looked on as little less than a resistless destiny,-a stroke of the lightning that makes the spot memorable, if not hallowed. We are to be consumed by the steams of the marsh, that nothing but our own indolence suffers to remain offending Earth and Heaven. It is this strange submission to an influence which it requires only the common feeling of a manly mind to extinguish, this shrinking before baseness, disgrace, and imposture, that marks the peculiarity of the moment, and with it makes the necessity for the union of all honest men. The keys of our Citadel are not to be given up to the requisition of the first insolent outlaw that comes with a troop recruited from the jail and the highway, and dares to beard the armed and lawful strength within. The value of such associations is clear, on the simple ground that the first necessity of the loyal is to know each other; thus gaining the strength that belongs to a knowledge of strength, and a knowledge of those in whom confidence is to be placed in the hour of difficulty.

Another result is the operation of combined force, the mutual thought of intelligent minds, the united vigour of brave hearts. If Associations in this spirit had been fixed in the more important towns, it is impossible to doubt that the libel, outrage, and treason against church and state, which have for the last two years covered a large portion of England with all but open insurrection, would have been crushed at once. Would the corrupting and infamous caricatures against the King have stared upon us from every stall in every village? Would the missionaries of plunder and massacre have made their regular visitations through the land, not simply untouched by authority, but in its defiance? Would the whole Host of Rebellion have been suffered to muster and equip itself in the face of

day, and receive its hourly orders from the Staff in London, without the seizure of a despatch? If those things have been done, and are doing, even while my pen is tracing this paper, it is because there have not been Associ ations to put a stop to the system at once. Government have been vigilant, but it must again be said, that the direction of its services must be rather to suggest than to act. They are the grand jury of the constitution. They examine in the first instance; but beyond that brief office, the greater part of their duty is devolved into other hands. The true court is the nation; and there is passed the only sentence that can be enforced without reproach or fear. We have before our eyes a remarkable instance of the superior advantage with which the rights of the community may sometimes be vindicated by an Association. The government prosecutions for blasphemy had failed to an alarming extent; something scarcely less than a conspiracy to acquit, seemed to have grown up in the jury box, and the officers of government were avowedly repelled from prosecutions where no verdict was to be found, and where the simple fact of having been thought culpable by the legislature made the fortune of the culprit. There is a fashion in all things; the fashion of acquittal in all cases of blasphemy was advancing into an established rule; and the outrageous menaces, mixed with outrageous panegyrics, which were used to break down the timid, or bring over the fools of popularity, were on the eve of destroying all confidence in the administration of the laws. The whole transaction is matter of history, and of the most instructive nature to those who would judge of the force of fanaticism, and of its fitting remedy. The evil of the blasphemy was notorious, it glared upon the public eye from every corner of the realm. The Hydra had ten thousand heads, all alike armed and active, but not one was cut away.

To the remonstrances against this course, and some of those remonstrances were made by the very men who had "fed the dragon, and worshipped before it ;" the answer, even in Parliament, was given by asking, "Are we to throw down the law before this new madness? Are we to assist in raising bankrupt villainy to wealth and popular notice? Are we

to give loathsome imposture and brutal atrocity a direct claim to the subscriptions of Radical Baronets, Peers, and Dukes, by proving the criminal to be deserving of the severest exercise of justice? No, we must wait for better times, the delusion of the day will expire with the day. We will not hazard all that remains of dignity to British Legislation, by committing it in a struggle with offences which look to our prosecution as their necessary seal of reward."

In this exigency, and nothing could be more pregnant with alarm to the well-wishers of English freedom, an Association, unconnected with Government, honourably came forward, and, with whatever hopelessness, dragged a notorious trafficker in impiety and sedition before the tribunal. It can be no aspersion to a jury who did their duty, to say, that the private nature of the prosecution was of advantage to the soundness of their judgment. Politics were not standing on the table to overawe or corrupt. It was a decision of scarcely more than private quarrel. Carlile, after an attempt to earth himself in the old refuge of rabble passions, was dragged out, and, upon the clearest evidence of wilful and boastful villainy, convicted. But this sentence was not upon a solitary ruffian. It struck the whole tribe at once. The fact that a blasphemer could be convicted, broke the spell both of the inactivity of the friends of order, and of the impunity of its enemies. From that hour every prosecution (I believe without a single exception) succeeded. The dungeon or banishment has relieved the country of the burthen of nearly all the original malefactors. But the breed is not extinguished. While the union of passion with ignorance is to be found in the heart, it will find room for discontent. In that mighty mine of the national spirit, there will be the material of explosions mixed with its nobler products; and it is to make these innoxious, by the letting in of light and air, that human science may be most wisely employed. Popular ignorance of the Truth is the natural stimulant, as it is the common security of the disturbers of civilized life. The cavern shelters the robber, and sometimes the robber is tempted by the cavern. There will be evil, perhaps, at all times, or till that higher dispensation in which religious men

hope that all enormous error will die before the crowned glory of Christianity; and it may be, that all our human diligence will not be able to conquer the malignant influences that are made to desolate and destroy. But it is something to be able to remove the evil from our doors, to sit in the midst of our families without seeing the spirits of our children tainted by infidelity, to lay our heads on the pillow without dreading in every sound of the night, the footsteps of massacre. If there must be a reserve of evil to show the future age the contrast, produced by religion and the laws, to that fearful period when the moral world was a waste, abandoned to the domination and wanderings of savage nature; it must be our honour to raise the great fence against this rabid appetite for blood; to appoint to the lion and the tiger its wilderness, beyond which it must not stray; and as our strength grows, push into the thicket and the swamp, and subdue their sterility, and drive their monsters farther within their place of desolation.

A feature of the highest importance in the objects of the "Constitutional Association," is new, or has been but feebly shadowed out before. It is the 3d Resolution, "That they will encourage persons of integrity and talent in the literary world, to exert their abilities in confuting the sophistries, dissipating the illusions, and exposing the falsehoods, which are employed by wicked and designing men to mislead the people."

Under what forms this service may be summoned, is yet to be developed. But the establishment of the principle is invaluable. The feeling against the abuse of the press is universal. But the abuse is not to be checked by impotent alarm. The press is not to be put down by power. As well might we attempt to put down the pestilence by imprisoning the air. The abuse is to be purified by the use. The same instrument, that " pastorale signum," which the lips of sedition inspire with sounds of discord and bloodshed, must be taught the sounds of peace. It will echo the one as truly as the other. The activity of the public mind cannot be extirpated, but it is the part of wisdom to turn this weedy and pernicious exuberance into productiveness and beauty. The press must be taught to speak the truth, no less to the people than to the King.

Hitherto the instances have been few, in which it has spoken the truth to either. This subject is extensive, and it may be resumed. The literary resources of England are of incalculable variety, opulence, and vigour. The number and talent of her public writers, admirable as a class, and as such fully justifying her claim to a new Augustan age, may give but a faint impression of the means which she hides within her bosom for the day of soliciting her treasures. What she now shows, are perhaps but the indications, the jutting fragments of silver that are to lead the eye to the inexhaustible ore buried in the caverns of the intellectual Potosi.

For the general purposes of the Association, it has been determined,

1. To establish a Fund, by the vo luntary contributions of the members, at such rate as each individual may think fit.

2. To appoint a Committee for conducting the business of the Society. 3. To adopt a system of Correspondence with those members who live at a distance, and with such Associations as may be willing to co-operate in promoting the same objects.

The purpose of the plan is beyond all praise. It has already succeeded in obtaining a large portion of public confidence, and the diffusion of the principle may be among the highest hopes of national preservation.

THIS is a collection of verses, chiefly of the lighter kind, on the various occasions that stimulate writers who have other employment in the world than the discussion of their own objects and opinions, under the form of couplets or stanzas. Mr Gent's brief and neat preface tells us something of this, in his allusion to previous publications. "I cannot omit this opportunity of thanking those writers who have honoured me by reviewing my verses. I owe them my warm acknowledgments for measuring my poems by their pretensions. They have looked at them as they really were as the amusements of the leisure hours of a man, whose fortune will not favour his inclination to devote himself to poetry; and, conceiving a favourable opinion of them in that character, have kindly expressed it." There are sixty of those poems in the volume; and they of course give considerable opportunity for display. A few graver topics are honoured with an occasional sonnet; and there are some very graceful and expressive stanzas to the memory of the Princess Charlotte, a sainted memory, and worthy of all the offerings of national sorrow and national genius. But the writer's spirit seems to turn with a natural propensity, to the joyous and the poignant. His sallies are in that style of lively simplicity which is perhaps the true

tone of written wit, and he evades the grossness that is the besetting sin of humorous poetry, with the tact of a gentleman. It would be no honour to inherit the morals or the manners of Peter Pindar's poetry; but its humour

that natural quaintness, unlaboured jest, and unwearied ridicule of the affected-the common-place and the presuming, has hitherto had no successor, or has found it in the present writer. None of the poems before us are in the peculiar measure of that ingenious profligate; but our impression is strong that Mr Gent would be secure of popularity in that career.

We give our extracts as the book opens. The very first poem supplies an instance of the sly and easy satire of the author's vein. It is a lucubration on the dreams of an inexperienced candidate for the laurel. After some lines in which the young aspirant details his ambition, he thus proceeds to enjoy its fruits in vision:

Then while my name runs ringing through reviews,

And maids, wives, widows, smitten with my

muse,

Assail me with platcric billet doux;

From this suburban attic I'll dismount, With Coutts or Barclay open an account; Rang'd in a mirror, cards with bright gilt ends,

Shall shew the whole nobility my friends;

That happy host with whom I chuse to dine,

Shall make set parties, give his choicest wine;

And age and infancy shall gape to see, Whene'er I walk the street, and whisper, "That is he !"

Poor youth! he prints and wakes, to sleep

no more,

The world goes on indifferent as before; And the first notice of his metric skill Comes in the likeness of his printer's bill; To pen soft notes, no fair enthusiast stirs, Except his laundress, and who values her's? None but herself; for though the bard may burn

Her note, she still expects one in return. The luckless maiden, all unblest shall sigh; His pocket tome hath drawn his pocket dry; His tragedy expires in peals of laughter; And that soul-thrilling wish to live hereafter,

Gives way to one as hopeless quite, I fear, And far more needful-how to live while here.

Where are ye now, divine illusions all! Cheques, dinners, tomes, admirers great and small!

Chang'd to two followers, terrible to see, Who dog him when he walks, and whisper, "That is he."

The subject of the following extract is rather citizenish, for it is nothing more remote or romantic than Hornsey Wood, eminent for tea-gardens and trellises, and all the calamitous clippings of shears, educated east of Temple-Bar. Yet there is beauty in trees, and green shrubs, however they may be tortured, and the poet for a while discusses their captivations with obvious partiality. He then runs into pleasant

ry.

Oh! ye who pine in London smoke immur'd,

With spirits wearied, and with pains uncur'd,

With all the catalogue of city evils, Colds, asthmas, rheumatism, coughs, blue devils!

Who bid each bold empiric roll in wealth, Who drains your fortunes, while he saps your health;

So well ye love your miry streets and lanes, Ye court your ailments and embrace your pains.

And scarce ye know, your spectacles between, If corn be yellow, or if grass be green. Why leave ye not your smoke-obstructed holes,

With wholesome air to cheer your sickly souls?

In scenes where Health's bright goddess wakes the breeze, Floats on the stream, and fans the whisp 'ring trees,

As some raw squire, by rustic nymphs admir'd,

Of vulgar charms, and easy conquests tir'd; Resolves new scenes and nobler flights to dare,

Nor"waste his sweetness on the desert air,"
To town repairs, some fam'd assembly seeks,
With red importance blustering in his
cheeks;

But when, electric on th' astonish'd wight,
Bursts the full floods of music and of light,
While levell'd mirrors multiply the rows
Of radiant beauties and accomplish'd beaus,
At once confounded into sober sense,
He feels his pristine insignificance;
And blinking, blust'ring from the general
quiz,

Retreats" to ponder on the thing he is."
By pride inflated, and by praise allur'd,
Small authors thus strut forth, and thus get

cur'd.

But critics, hear! an angel pleads for me, That tongueless, ten-tongued cherub-Modesty.