"Speaking not to the ear, But striking on my soul immediate, Speak thou to those with whom thou art in league And they shall drink it to the lowest lees. To be smitten with the sword and burnt with fire, For other function they can now fill none, For the evil they have done; their blood is foul; So do, and once a foot return not back, Till ye've done all-lest what ye fail 'gainst them, : Brethren this is the Lord, these are his words. They've starved us, have those men, of half our bread, And for the law, they have so fashioned it, Wounding his hand that doth solicit it, Worse than his wrong-therefore I call on ye, Go force those villains to gorge up our spoil Though it come with their hearts' blood: then slaughter them, Them and their sons on heap-and of their bones Rear up a pile high as the pyramids For a sign and wonder-thus I counsel ye For the Lord's sake, and for yourselves yet more, But slay and spare not-and O bitterly Be he cursed that comes not to the aid of the Lord Look at the men who undertake a mission like this, the characters that make up the poem. Are they not confessedly men, who from their own folly or ignorance; have brought themselves to a discontented mood of mind, and thence into contention with the world? What sort of living stones would these be, to build up the new edifice of society? We find that the old human passions were at work, in the affair between Arthur Hermann and Lucy Hess. We think that the rejected lover was used ill-very ill; and are of opinion, that it is fortunate for him at the end of the poem, where the chartist cause is described as triumphant, that he is not to be found for the purpose of being made a king. Verily, a stiff-necked generation it would have been his fate to govern. The author of Ernest adores Milton? Why learned he not wisdom from the self-confessed folly of that great man? Milton lived to refer the divine idealisms that haunt the mind of bard and sage to their own sphere-the world of the soul! Brought to bear on the impracticable masses of matter, they rebuke us, as illusionsand have accordingly been called "sublime illusions !" by the worldly experimentalist-but while acting in a moral field, they assume a reality that needs no demonstration. Milton has left on record the disappointment of his after-life, at the commencement of the third book of his History of England, in which he goes out of his way to introduce some eloquent reflections on the late civil wars in England, from the year 1640 to the year 1660." Thus he writes: 66 "Of those who swayed most in the late troubles, few words may suffice. They had arms, leaders, and successes to their wish; but to make use of so great an advantage was not their skill. "To other causes therefore, and not to the want of force or warlike manhood, in the Britons, both those and these lately, we must impute the ill husbanding of those fair opportunities, which might seem to have put liberty, so long desired, like a Bride in our hands. Of which other causes, equally belonging to ruler, priest, and people, alone hath been related: which, as they brought those ancient natives to misery and ruin, by liberty, which rightly used, might have made them happy; so brought they these of late, after many labours, much bloodshed and vast expense, to ridiculous frustration, in whom the like effects, the like miscarriages, notoriously appeared, with vices not less hateful or inexcusable." He then proceeds to describe the long parliament; how "some who had been called from shops and warehouses, without other merit, to sit in supreme councils and committees (as their breeding was) fell to huckster the commonwealth ;" and in the end, none of these upstarts was prepared to face what Milton beautifully calls, the dreaded name of Just Account." And if (he continues) the State were in this plight, Religion was not in much better; to reform which a certain number of divines were called, who were neither chosen by any rule or custom ecclesiastical, nor eminent for either piety or knowledge above others who were left-out; only as each member of parliament in his private fancy thought fit, so they were elected one by one. The most part of them were such, as had preached and cried-down, with great show of zeal, the avarice and pluralities of bishops and prelates; declaring that one cure of souls was a full employment for one spiritual pastor how able soever, if not a charge rather above human strength. Yet these conscientious men (ere any part of the work was done for which they came together, and that on the publick salary) wanted not boldness, (to the ignominy and scandal of their pastorlike profession, and especially of their boasted reformation,) to seize into their hands, or not unwillingly to accept (besides one, sometimes two, or more, of the best livings) collegiate masterships in the universities, and rich lectures in the city, setting sail to all winds that might blow gain into their covetous bosoms: by which means these great rebukers of non-residence, among so many distant cures, were not ashamed to be seen so quickly plurallists and non-residents themselves, to a fearful condemnation, doubtless, by their own mouths. And yet the main doctrine for which they took such pay, and insisted-upon with more vehemence than gospel, was but to tell us in effect, that their doctrine was worth nothing, and the spiritual power of their ministry less available than bodily compulsion; persuading the magistrate to use it, as a stronger means to snbdue and bring-in conscience, than evangelical persuasion : distrusting the virtue of their own spiritual weapons, which were given them, if they be rightly called, with full warrant of sufficiency to pull-down all thoughts and imaginations that exalt themselves against God. But, while they taught compulsion without convincement, which not long before they complained of as executed unchristianly, against themselves; these intents are clear to have been no better than antichristian: setting-up a spiritual tyranny by a secular power, to the advancing of their own authority above the magistrate, whom they would have made their executioner, to punish church-delinquencies whereof civil laws have no cognizance. And well did their disciples manifest themselves to be no better principled than their teachers, trusted with committeeships and other gainful offices, upon their commendations for zealous, (and as they sticked not to term them) godly men; but executing their places like children of the devil, unfaithfully, unjustly, unmercifully, and, where not corruptly, stupidly. So that between them the teachers, and these the disciples, there hath not been a more ignominious and mortal wound to faith, to piety, to the work of reformation, nor more cause of blaspheming given to the enemies of God and truth, since the first preaching of reformation. The people therefore looking one while on the Statists, (whom they beheld without constancy or firmness, labouring doubtfully beneath the weight of their own too high undertakings, busiest in petty things, trifling in the main,) deluded and quite alienated, expressed in divers ways their disaffection; some despising those persons whom before they had honoured, some deserting, some inveighing, some conspiring against them. Then looking on the churchmen, (whom they saw, under subtle hypocrisy, to have preached their own follies, most of them, not the gospel, and to be time-servers, covetous, illiterate, persecutors, not lovers of the truth, and to be like to their predecessors in most of the vices whereof they had accused them) :-looking on all this, the people (which had been kept warm a while with the counterfeit zeal of their pulpits,) after a false heat, became more cold and obdurate than before, some turning to lewdness, some to flat atheism, put beside their old religion, and foully scandalized in what they expected should be the new. Thus they who of late were extolled as our greatest deliverers, and had the people wholly at their devotion, by so discharging their trust as we see, did not only weaken and unfit themselves to be dispensers of what liberty they pretended, but unfitted also the people, now grown worse and more disordinate, to receive or to digest any liberty at all. For stories teach us, that liberty sought out of season, in a corrupt and degenerate age, brought Rome itself to a farther slavery; for liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men; to the bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own hands: neither is it completely given, but by them who have the happy skill to know what is grievance and unjust to a people, and how to remove it wisely; what good laws are wanting, and how to frame them substantially, that good men may enjoy the freedom which they merit, and the bad feel the curb which they need. But to do this, and to know these exquisite proportions, the heroic wisdom which is required, surmounted far the principles of these narrow politicians: what wonder then was it if they sunk (as these unfortunate Britains had done before them,) entangled and oppressed with things too hard and generous, above their strain and temper? For Britain, to speak a truth not often spoken, as it is a land fruitful enough o. men, stout and courageous in war, so it is naturally not over-fertile of men able to govern justly and prudently in peace, trusting only in their own mother-wit; who consider not justly, that civility, prudence, love of the public good, more than of money, or vain honour, are to this soil in a manner outlandish; grow not here, but in minds well implanted with solid and elaborate breeding, too impolitic else and rude, if not headstrong and intractable to the industry and virtue either of executing or understanding true civil government. Valiant indeed, and prosperous to win a field; but to know the end and reason of winning, unjudicious, and unwise: in good or bad success, alike unteachable. For the sun, which we want, ripens wits as well as fruits; and, as wine and oil are imported to us from abroad, so must ripe understanding, and many civil virtues, be imported into our minds from foreign writings, and examples of best ages; we shall else miscarry still, and come short in the attempts of any great enterprise. Hence did their victories prove as fruitless as their losses dangerous; and left them, though still conquering, under the same grievances that men suffer when they are conquered: which was indeed unlikely to go otherwise, unless men more than vulgar, bred-up, (as few of them were,) in the knowledge of ancient and illustrious deeds, invincible against many and vain titles, and free from partiality to friendships and relations, had conducted their affairs. But, in the late times, from the chapman to the retailer, many whose ignorance was more audacious than the rest, were admitted, with all their sordid rudiments, to bear no mean sway among them, both in Church and State. From the confluence of all their errours, mischiefs, and misdemeanors, what in the eyes of man could be expected, but what befel those ancient inhabitants, whom they so much resembled, confusion in the end? When Milton came to the composition of Paradise Lost, we find him accordingly, advocating heaven's monarchy against Satan's rebellion, and condemning, in the latter character, the specious doctrines of revolutionary discontent and democratic ambition. What hope have the Chartists that better results than those deplored by Milton, can flow from a new democratic revolution? Have they better materials to work with? We take it that they think they have for this is one of their resolutions and the ground of it :— ""Tis good the general voice should be Arbitress of the general estate, Since discipline has given intelligence Abroad, and with that gift, the right of its use." Well, then! such results have been brought about either by reason, or in spite, of existing institutions. Either assumption will answer Our purpose. If the latter, the power that has triumphed thus far against, may triumph much further with them. If the former, how unjust, as well as dangerous, to repay such benefits with destruction. Of the two assumptions, also, this is the more tenable. Before we can talk of reform either in Church or State, these institutions must exist to be reformed, and their utility besides must have preceded their corruption. Beware how, in order to reform, you attempt to destroy, lest you cut away all the wood of which your stick is to be made. You have a Church and a State now; but it is not quite so sure, that when these are removed, you will have materials to edify withal a new Church and a new State, whether worse or better. This is the point; and it is precisely the one where the physicalforce principle fails! The first and the last appeal must and should be made to moral power. Shelley had a clear perception of this; he desired for carrying out his visionary schemes none other. It is characteristic of the two bards, that Shelley was altogether ideal in his materials, and extravagantly fanciful in the composition of his poems; whereas the poet before us has gone to real men and women for his characters and events, and in his style is stern and concise as Dante. The severity and simplicity of his style is admirable-at the same time dignified and intelligible: it astonishes us with the artistic skill displayed. The description of Christopher Ernst, already given, and the speech of the Angel, are both grand and appropriate. Now take the vision itself: "I have seen visions, and dreamt dreams ere now, They were so like the truth-but not so now : And I left there to brood o'er my faint thoughts, Faint as the dying embers. Suddenly There shone a vehement light through all the room, As though a thousand suns were lit at once, So bright it did extinguish all things else, That nought was seen for its brightness. I looked round Yet was I conscious of a presence there, Being the spirit of that radiance, Clothed in its lustre—a strange consciousness That was not of this earth; nor may be told, Nor heard nor known; past wonder there I stood No sound, nor vocal utterance of words, Without all sense." There is also an equally fine specimen of propriety in the speech of a scorner, which is answered by Arthur Hermann to the effect, that the time has now come for joint action, not for separate thinking. The moral of the visions above-cited seems contained in the following lines.-Religion, says the poet, "Is a fresh soul, breathed In the old man so strong and subtle as makes New-born to spirit; that where'er he goes, |