affect it; but it has no real existence in nature or society. Man is always man; and he who pretends to be more, is rarely placed by nature at the head of his species-he is in fact usually less."

Before Mr. De Vere could reply, a question from a sailor interrupted the conversation, which was one of many held in the same tone and spirit. The Commodore was the next moment busied in giving orders for tacking. He addressed his mate in pure Spanish, chided the French valet out of his way in good French, and fell foul of a lubberly sailor in broad nautical English.

"There is somewhere," said Mr. De Vere, turning over the pages of Spencer's Ireland, and resuming his conversation with the commander of the vessel, as he returned to his station at the helm-"there is somewhere, through the quaint pages of Spencer, an admirable description of the natural advan

tages of Ireland, which I cannot find." "Look around you," answered the Commodore: " you will find them here." "I prefer looking through the spectacles of books. I like the prismatic

hues thrown by authorship upon places and facts."

"Indeed! that is strange! but in viewing Ireland through Spencer's pages, you will see it, as children do an eclipse, through a smoked glass. He was one of those, whose policy it was to revile the country he preyed upon, to spoil, and then to vituperate. No Englishman can fairly estimate this island who comes not unshackled by his own interests. Spencer, the deputy of a deputy, the secretary, whose servile flattery of the viceroy, his master, was rewarded with a principality (soon lost, indeed, but most unfairly won), is no author for impartiality to judge by; and when he stoops to eulogize the dreadless might

of his ferocious patron, Grey, one of Ireland's Herods, when he defines power to be

"The right hand of Justice truly hight," however he may please as a poet, he is contemptible as an historian, and infamous as a politician."

"Oh! as an historian or politician I give him up, because both characters are equally ridiculous: the politician always guided by prejudice and interest, the historian always immersed in ignorance and error. Time discovers and shames both: and thus it is with all that bears upon human facts. The imagination alone is always right; its visions are alone imperishable. The Fairy Queen of Spencer will thus survive, when his State of Ireland shall be wholly forgotten: and, for my own part, so much do I prefer the visions of his fancy to the historical relations of any period connected with the history of men, that I would go a thousand miles

to visit the ruins of his Irish Kilcole

man,* where once

"He sat, as was his trade,

'Under the foot of Mole, that mountain hoar,' Where Allured by his pipe's delight, 'Whose pleasing sound y-shrilled far about,'

the gallant Raleigh found him. But I am not sure that I would turn one point out of my way to tread upon the spot where legitimate despotism signed the fiat of its own destruction, and gave Magna Charta to an emancipated nation.

* Originally the principality of the Macarthies More; afterwards the palatinate of the Fitzgeralds, Earls of Desmond; forfeited by them, and given to new spoliators, among whom was the thriftless adventurer Raleigh, who in Ireland (*) acted the part of a freebooter. The spoils which fell to the poet Spencer, as secretary to Lord Arthur Grey, (the Sir Artigall' of his dreary legend of that name) were three thousand acres of rich land in the County of Cork, with the beautiful Castle of Kilcoleman, the seat of the Earls of Desmond.

(*) See Notes, at the end of this Volume,

The delicious strains of Spencer are now fresh and true as when they were first breathed; but where is the spirit that commanded and produced an English Magna Charta ?"

66

Suspended, perhaps," interrupted the Commodore," not extinct. For its essence exists in the temperament of an Englishman. You must first give him another position on the globe, or employ ages of misrule to change his national character, before you can reconcile him to slavery-circumstances may lull him in false security, or force him to temporary acquiescence; but no combination can ensure his permanent obedience to unequivocal despotism."

The vessel at that moment touched the pier.

The Commodore had sprung upon land; and he stood for a moment on the spot that had received the first pressure of his footstep. To judge by the darkling of his eye, and the motion of