all the late miserable exhibitions in the western counties, it is as yet in no man's power to see with his own eyes the full and living proofs of the depravity of this spirit, whose luxuriant growth, throughout many of the widest districts in England, has for these several years past formed the continual subject of lamentation to the wise and the good. We have been often reproached by our neighbours with being a cold and a slow people-it is well at least if it be so, that neither our slowness nor our coldness desert us when we are addressed by the voice of seduction. Speaking largely, however, the people of Scotland are neither slow of perception nor cold of temperament-but there is that about them which renders them averse to losing sight of what they have once perceived, and slighting, or contemning, or discarding, what they have once felt and loved. The opinions, moreover, and the feelings which have of late been most grievously assaulted among us, have resisted heretofore the attacks of far more dangerous enemies than any with whom our people are now, for the first time, called upon to contend. For nearly half a century the tone of our popular philosophy has been at open war with our national faith; and for the last twenty years our popular literature has been almost entirely in the hands of a set of men, who have, with the most unrelenting perseverance, devoted powerful talents to the destruction of the national character, in regard to both religion and politics. And yet how small is the impression which has been made on the broad face of Scottish mind and Scottish feeling, by all the efforts of these men-by all their cunning in the choice, and all their skilfulness in the use of their weapons. In some of our towns, indeed, and, above all, in this city, they have reared and fostered a small race of puny and shallow pretenders-by whose clamorous tongues their sophistries are echoed till every ear is disgusted with them-by whose stupidity they are continually disgrac ed-and in whose utter and hopeless imbecility they can scarcely fail to foresee the near extinction of the whole of that uncongenial tribe of thoughts and sentiments which it has cost themselves so much labour to introduce upon the soil of Scotland. But look abroad over the wide and healthful surVOL. VI.

face of the land-and see upon what ungrateful earth the evil seed has fallen-how stunted, and dwarfish, and deserted are the few miserable shoots that have sprung up-how they have pined and dwindled beneath that keen and vigorous air which they want power to contaminate with their own sickly breath-how they are overshadowed and killed on every side by the true stedfast children of the soilpale, sapless, and pithless-doomed, in their inevitable decay, to furnish only new food and strength to that which it was their evil ambition to exterminate. In spite of all that has been done, by artful and able men, to make them ashamed of the inheritance of their fathers, the people of Scotland have adhered with pride and affection to that inheritance; and it may be doubted whether one hundredth part of our population is at this moment a whit less loyal or less religious than it would have been, although neither Mr Jeffrey nor any of his brethren had ever admitted either Disloyalty or Infidelity into the number of their client age. After witnessing the total failure of these giants, and all their attempts, is it to be wondered at that we are slow in bringing ourselves to entertain any serious apprehensions concerning the issue of a warfare essentially and in spirit akin to their'swaged by Black Dwarfs and Yellow Dwarfs, and aided with all the philosophical artillery of peripatetic warpers and stoical steam-engine-men. can never be expected to receive the plans of our Utopias from the meditative heads of Anderston and the Calton-nor to submit the old broad cloth of our prejudices to be tamboured and open-stitched as may seem good to the fanciful fingers of a Paisley muslin-weaver. Neither is it at all likely that the colliers of Camlachie shall succeed in undermining that edifice whose rocky foundations have so long baffled the zeal of the " wee reekit deil" himself, and the whole of his pioneering Pandemonium.

We

We have no wish to carry the thing too far ;-but, in solemn sadness, we do think the gentlemen to whom we have been alluding must, in secret, have some very disagreeable misgivings of mind when they see the style in which so many of their own most favourite dogmas have been adopted by the present blind and despicable 2 D

We do not remember any period, not excepting even the darkest or the brightest ones of the late war, in which the prospects and condition of our country were represented in more opposite points of view by the zealots of political partizanship than in the present. It appears to us, that the greater part of the adherents of Government, on the one hand, and by far the greater part of its ancient enemies on the other, take and express at this moment such views of the situation of this great empire, as could not fail to excite a mixture of wonder and derision, since we must say so, in the breast of any unconcerned and impartial foreigner, who might have enjoyed any tolerable opportunity of making himself acquainted with the real character of this nation-above all, of any one who had surveyed with a diligent eye the manifestations of national feeling evoked and maintained among us with so much beautiful zeal and perseverance during those years of dread and peril from which England and Europe have so recently escaped. And yet, different as are the opinions circulated, and different or rather diametrically opposite as are the wishes entertained, there is no doubt both the great parties are agreed so far (more than they have used to agree on any subject whatever), in thinking that something must be done, and that speedily, to rid us from this nuisance of mere plebeian insolence and profligacy, which has been gaining strength for the last two or three years-and which would appear to have now arrived at such a measure of audacity, as to render silence and forbearance on the part of Government no longer possible, even were these things desirable in themselves. Whatever one may suspect of the hidden purposes and motives of some of those whose voices have been lifted up against the political and religious blasphemies of the lower order of demagogues-it is at all events comfortable to see, that those miscreants are left without any visible or avowed protection from any whose protection could be entitled to the smallest respect. At the same

time, however, we ought to guard ourselves against giving too implicit confidence to the fair professions of those whose previous history has entailed suspicion on them as a birthrightwho were the enemies, not the friends, of their country during all her former times of danger-and who can therefore have no just reason to complain although that country preserves some jealousy of them now and hereafter, both in days of evil and in days of good.

we

As to the danger, the existence of which is acknowledged on all hands, but the immediate extent of which is studiously magnified by people who would fain turn it and every thing else to their own advantagethink those who have really studied the history and the character of this country will have no difficulty in seeing, that it is in our own hands to make it either small or great, by the manner in which we choose to meet and combat it. The danger is great, if England be false to her ancient character;-it is small-it is nothing-if she remain true to herself. The danger consists in the existence of a spirit which is essentially at variance with every part of the old spirit of our country-and which, therefore, must be put down, not by any fanciful devices of novelty-but by a summoning up and strengthening of that very spirit against which its war has been proclaimed. And our chief complaint against the more important enemies of administration at this crisis is, their neglecting the opportunity now afforded them of shewing, for once, something like a truly English superiority to selfish views and coming forward with heart and hand to assist those who are actually at the head of affairs, in repressing, by the only means which their conscience must tell them can be effectual ones, a spirit and a danger which, even by their own confession, do not threaten parties or party-principles, but the land itself, and all the old principles avowed and cherished in common by all the old parties in the land.

Here, in Scotland, notwithstanding

all the late miserable exhibitions in the western counties, it is as yet in no man's power to see with his own eyes the full and living proofs of the depravity of this spirit, whose luxuriant growth, throughout many of the widest districts in England, has for these several years past formed the continual subject of lamentation to the wise and the good. We have been often reproached by our neighbours with be ing a cold and a slow people-it is weli at least if it be so, that neither our slowness nor our coldness desert us when we are addressed by the voice of seduction. Speaking largely, how ever, the people of Scotland are neither slow of perception nor cold of temperament-but there is that about them which renders them averse to losing sight of what they have once perceived, and slighting, or contemning, or discarding, what they have once felt and loved. The opinions, moreover, and the feelings which have of late been most grievously assaulted among us, have resisted heretofore the attacks of far more dangerous enemies than any with whom our people are now, for the first time, called upon to contend. For nearly half a century the tone of our popular philosophy has been at open war with our national faith; and for the last twenty years our popular literature has been almost entirely in the hands of a set of men, who have, with the most unrelenting perseverance, devoted powerful talents to the destruction of the national character, in regard to both religion and politics. And yet how small is the impression which has been made on the broad face of Scottish mind and Scottish feeling, by all the efforts of these men-by all their cunning in the choice, and all their skilfulness in the use of their weapons. In some of our towns, indeed, and, above all, in this city, they have reared and fostered a small race of puny and shallow pretenders-by whose clamorous tongues their sophistries are echoed till every ear is disgusted with them-by whose stupidity they are continually disgraced-and in whose utter and hopeless imbecility they can scarcely fail to foresee the near extinction of the whole of that uncongenial tribe of thoughts and sentiments which it has cost themselves so much labour to introduce upon the soil of Scotland. But look abroad over the wide and healthful surVOL. VI.

over

face of the land-and see upon what ungrateful earth the evil seed has fallen-how stunted, and dwarfish, and deserted are the few miserable shoots that have sprung up-how they have pined and dwindled beneath that keen and vigorous air which they want power to contaminate with their own sickly breath-how they are shadowed and killed on every side by the true stedfast children of the soilpale, sapless, and pithless-doomed, in their inevitable decay, to furnish only new food and strength to that which it was their evil ambition to exterminate. In spite of all that has been done, by artful and able men, to make them ashamed of the inheritance of their fathers, the people of Scotland have adhered with pride and affection to that inheritance; and it may be doubted whether one hundredth part of our population is at this moment a whit less loyal or less religious than it would have been, although neither Mr Jeffrey nor any of his brethren had ever admitted either Disloyalty or Infidelity into the number of their clientage.

We

After witnessing the total failure of these giants, and all their attempts, is it to be wondered at that we are slow in bringing ourselves to entertain any serious apprehensions concerning the issue of a warfare essentially and in spirit akin to their'swaged by Black Dwarfs and Yellow Dwarfs, and aided with all the philosophical artillery of peripatetic warpers and stoical steam-engine-men. can never be expected to receive the plans of our Utopias from the meditative heads of Anderston and the Calton-nor to submit the old broad cloth of our prejudices to be tamboured and open-stitched as may seem good to the fanciful fingers of a Paisley muslin-weaver. Neither is it at all likely that the colliers of Camlachie shall succeed in undermining that edifice whose rocky foundations have so long baffled the zeal of the reekit deil" himself, and the whole of his pioneering Pandemonium.

wee

We have no wish to carry the thing too far;-but, in solemn sadness, we do think the gentlemen to whom we have been alluding must, in secret, have some very disagreeable misgivings of mind when they see the style in which so many of their own most favourite dogmas have been adopted by the present blind and despicable 2 D

rest of the world have, on this occasion, contemplated themselves.

disturbers of the public peace.So long as they conceived themselves to be writing for "the philosophical world," (to use an old phrase of their own) we can suppose them to have proceeded in their task with some little self-complacency -but now that they have found of whom this philosophical world consists, we really hope and trust they begin to be heartily ashamed of themselves. Do they ever ask themselves sincerely what it is that they have been wishing to bring about by their twenty years work of wit? They can at least have no difficulty in seeing what they have assisted to bring about. If they go to any of the Glasgow or Paisley reform meetings, their ears are sure to be regaled with the crambe recocta of their own delicate and metaphysical sneers, served up in all the gaudy colours of imagery and similitude which the glowing imaginations of those deeply read and deeply thinking mechanics can suggest. Their elegant diatribes concerning the vices of priestcraft, find a broad echo in the Camlachie orator's sarcastic phrase of "Norlan Tam"*-and their profound speculations on Hume's doctrine of miracles, and their beautiful catalogue of " the Holy Places,"† are gracefully terminated by the same accomplished person's consolatory assertion, that " many delusions have had their day!" These, and the many similar expressions which they may meet with in all the accounts of those assemblages, must satisfy them that, although the crop has failed, a few of their handfuls at least have taken effect -but it is possible that the appearance of this strong produce may have something to displease as well as to gratify them, and that, upon the whole, the northern philosophers would have been as well contented although their dogmas had never been exposed to the derision of their countrymen in the language of the loom-shop. But whatever may have been the mixture of feelings with which these gentlemen have contemplated some late sayings and doings of those who aspire to be their adherents, we suppose, on the whole, there has been no great mixture in the feeling with which the

They, and a large proportion of the party to which they belong, have assuredly lost a noble opportunity for redeeming some share of their credit in the eyes of their countrymen. But the truth is, they were deceived by the gradual nature of the encroachments which now they cannot in seriousness avoid deploring-and having been so far committed by the malevolent zeal of their own inferior instruments and organs, they have found it very difficult to seize on any feasible pretence for stopping short in a race of which they cannot be otherwise than ashamed. It is thus that folly inflicts its own chastisement upon itself-and that short-sighted men are so often found engaged in digging the pit over which their own feet are destined to stumble.

Much, however, as we have been distressed with what has just occurred in some of the manufacturing districts of Scotland-and still more with the support which unwittingly, perhaps in a great measure, has been afforded to the actors in these disgraceful scenes by the conduct of some of their superiors among us-it is still in England alone that the evil has really attained to a tragical pitch of seriousness—and it is in like manner in the character of the people of England that we look for the sure and perfect safeguard against this tragedy being brought to a catastrophe as melancholy as those less acquainted with that character might be inclined to augur from its commencements. We are afraid, we must confess, of nothing so much in this whole matter as of any unworthy distrustfulness being allowed to go abroad and gain ground-any fear becoming prevalent among those who contemplate the signs of the times, lest the days of national confidence in national character were about to be at an end-any suspicion lest the means and the elements of selfvindication were no longer to be found surely and abundantly in the very heart of that mighty population, a part of which has been-and is so grievously deluded. The greatness of the contrast exhibited to the eyes of any traveller who passes from the neighbour