And conscious that to find in martyrdom
The stamp and signet of most perfect life
Is all the science that mankind can reach,
Rejoicing fights, and still rejoicing falls.
It may be that to Spirits high-toned as these
A revelation of the end of Time

Is also granted; that they feel a sense
Giving them firm assurance that the foe
By which they must be crusht (in Death well-won
Alone to find their freedom) in his turn

Will be subdued, though not by such as They.

This is nobly expressed, and the views of life such as are natural to a clear-headed and pure-minded Conservative. Of all persons living, such a man has the fewest illusions left as to the amount of evil in the world. When times are quiet, and men's minds settled, the unbroken respect for rules and ordinances (seldom questioned even when transgressed), and the reverence still ostensibly maintained towards those superiors, who are the representatives (however unfaithful) of all that is most venerable to man, keep the worst parts of human nature under a veil; mankind in such times seem better than they are, and are somewhat better than their genuine dispositions would prompt. In proportion as this respect wears off, and the actions of mankind become the expression of their real feelings, the veil is gone, and they appear as they are: to a Conservative, worse than they are; for to him the sham which they have discarded is still a holy truth. He has not the consolation of thinking that the old Formulas are gone because the time has come for something better; no hope and faith in a greater good beyond, tempers to him the sense of present evil.

For a good man to live healthy and happy in a world which presents to him so dreary a prospect, he requires to have a clear view at least of his own path in it; but few of the men whom we speak of seem yet to have attained this; they believe, doubtless, that they are in the right road, but we question whether most of them feel quite sure of it—as indeed in these days it is not easy that any open-minded Conservative should. In proportion as they shall arrive at full unclouded certainty respecting the course which duty marks out for themselves, a vigorous and healthful development of their active faculties will correct what may now be unduly preponderant in the merely passive part of their moral sensibility; and, whether they are destined to aid in infusing another spirit into old beliefs and institutions, or in calmly substituting others, we shall be disappointed if some of them do not play a noble part in that "combat of life" which

one of them has so feelingly described. We cannot better close these remarks than by extracting a poem, in which Mr Milnes has painted with great truth the feelings of a deeply religious mind-not lamenting to itself its own insufficiency, and the vastness of what it has to do-but, while it feels all this, still pressing on to do what it can, with that strong and living faith in its own impulses, the almost necessary condition of high and heroic deeds.

THE DEPARTURE OF ST PATRICK FROM SCOTLAND.

(From his own "Confessions.")

Twice to your son already has the hand of God been shown,
Restoring him from alien bonds to be once more your own,
And now it is the self-same hand, dear kinsmen, that to-day
Shall take me for the third time from all I love away.

While I look into your eyes, while I hold your hands in mine,
What force could tear me from you, if it were not all divine!
Has my love ever faltered? Have I ever doubted yours?
And think you I could yield me now to any earthly lures?

I

I

I

go not to some balmier land in pleasant ease to rest,

go not to content the pride that swells a mortal breast,
go about a work my God has chosen me to do;

Surely the soul which is his child must be his servant too.

I seek not the great city where our sacred father dwells,-
I seek not the blest eremites within their sandy cells,-
I seek not our Redeemer's grave in distant Palestine,-
Another, shorter pilgrimage, a lonelier path is mine.

When sunset clears and opens out the breadth of western sky,
To those who in yon mountain isles protect their flocks on high
Loom the dark outlines of a land, whose nature and whose name
Some have by harsh experience learnt, and all by evil fame.

Oh, they are wild and wanton men, such as the best will be,
Who know no other gifts of God but to be bold and free,
Who never saw how states are bound in golden bonds of law,
Who never knew how strongest hearts are bent by holy awe.

When first into their pirate hands I fell, a very boy,
Skirting the shore from rock to rock in unsuspecting joy,

I had been taught to pray, and thus those slavish days were few,
A wondrous hazard brought me back to liberty and you.

But when again they met me on the open ocean field,

And might of numbers prest me round and forced my arm to yield,

I had become a man like them, a selfish man of pride,

I could have curst the will of God, for shame I had not died.

And still this torment haunted me three weary years, until
That summer night,-among the sheep,-upon the seaward hill,
When God of his miraculous grace, of his own saving thought,
Came down upon my lonely heart and rested unbesought!

That night of light! I cared not that the day-star glimmered soon,
For in my new-begotten soul it was already noon;

I knew before what Christ had done, but never felt till then
A shadow of the love for him that he had felt for men!

Strong faith was in me-on the shore there lay a stranded boat,
I hasted down, I thrust it out, I felt it rock afloat;
With nervous arm and sturdy oar I sped my watery way,
The wind and tide were trusty guides,-one God had I and they.
As one from out the dead I stood among you free and whole,
My body Christ could well redeem, when he had saved my soul;
And perfect peace embraced the life that had been only pain,
For Love was shed upon my head from everything, like rain.
Then on so sweetly flowed the time, I almost thought to sail
Even to the shores of Paradise in that unwavering gale,
When something rose and nightly stood between me and my rest,
Most like some one, besides myself, reflecting in my breast.

I cannot put it into words, I only know it came,
A sense of self-abasing weight, intolerable shame,
"That I should be so vile that not one tittle could be paid
Of that enormous debt which Christ upon my soul had laid!"

This yielded to another mood, strange objects gathered near,
Phantoms that entered not by eye, and voices not by ear,
The land of my injurious thrall a gracious aspect wore,
I yearned the most toward the forms I hated most before.

I seemed again upon that hill, as on that blissful night,
Encompast with celestial air and deep retiring light,

But sight and thought were fettered down, where glimmering lay below

A plain of gasping, struggling, men in every shape of woe.

Faint solemn whispers gathered round, "Christ suffered to redeem,
Not you alone, but such as these, from this their savage dream,—
Lo, here are souls enough for you to bring to him, and say,
These are the earnest of the debt I am too poor to pay."

A cloud of children freshly born, innumerable bands,
Past by me with imploring eyes and little lifted hands,
And all the Nature, I believed so blank and waste and dumb,
Became instinct with life and love, and echoed clearly "Come!"

"Amen!" said I; with eager steps a rude descent I tried, And all the glory followed me like an on-coming tide,

With trails of light about my feet, I crost the darkling wild,
And as I toucht each sufferer's hand, he rose and gently smiled.

Thus night on night the vision came, and left me not alone,
Until I swore that in that land should Christ be preacht and known,
And then at once strange coolness past on my long fevered brow,
As from the flutter of light wings; I feel, I feel it now!

And from that moment unto this, this last and proving one,
I have been calm and light at heart as if the deed were done;
I never thought how hard it was our earthly loves to lay
Upon the altar of the Lord, and watch them melt away!

Speak, friends! speak what you will-but change those asking looks forlorn,

Sustain me with reproachful words-uphold me with your scorn;
I know God's heart is in me, but my human bosom fears
Those drops that pierce it as they fall, those full and silent tears.

These comrades of my earliest youth have pledged their pious care
To bear me to the fronting coast, and gently leave me there :
It may be I shall fall at once, with little toil or need,—
Heaven often takes the simple will for the most perfect deed:

Or, it may be that from that hour beneath my hand may spring
A line of glories unachieved by hero, sage, or king,-
That Christ may glorify himself in this ignoble name,
And shadow forth my endless life in my enduring fame.

All as He wills! now bless me, mother, your cheek is almost dry :

Farewell, kind brothers!-only pray ye may be blest as I;

Smile on me, sisters,-when death comes near each of you, still

smile,

And we shall meet again somewhere, within a little while!

S.

321

ART. IV.-1. Observations on an Autograph of Shakspere, and the Orthography of his Name. Communicated to the Society of Antiquaries by Sir Frederick Madden, R.H., F.R.S., F.S.A., in a Letter to John Gage, Esq., F.R.S., Director. London, 1838. 8vo.

2. De la Servitude Volontaire, ou le Contr'un, par Estienne de la Boëtie (1548), avec les Notes de M. Coste, et une Préface de F. de la Mennais. Paris, 1835. 8vo.

3. Essais de Michel de Montaigne, avec des Notes de tous les Commentateurs. Paris, 1834. 1 vol. large 8vo.

THE

HE first of these works is a kind of modern sucker from the ancient root of Florio's translation of Montaigne's Essays,' printed in the year 1603. Sir Frederic Madden brings forward, in his pamphlet, evidence, which appears sufficient, that the particular copy under his consideration was the property of Shakspere-for so it appears we are to write the name. And the title-page of this little Essay' bears a fac-simile of the poet's signature. It is to be lamented that this cannot be copied here also. But our readers must for the present take it on our testimony that the name is in characters as crabbed as if Shakspere, as well as Hamlet, had held it, "as our statists do, a baseness to write fair." There is a passage in the Tempest' well known to contain several expressions identical with those of Florio in his translation of a part of one of the Essays.' And it would, at all events, have been highly improbable that Shakspere should not have read them. On the whole the celebrated soliloquy in • Hamlet' presents a more characteristic and expressive resemblance to much of Montaigne's writings than any other portion of the plays of the great dramatist which we at present remember; though it would doubtless be easy to trace many apparent transferences from the Frenchman into the Englishman's works, as both were keen and many-sided observers of mankind in the same age and neighbouring countries. But Hamlet was in those days no popular type of character; nor were Montaigne's views and tone familiar to men till he had himself made them so. Now the Prince of Denmark is very nearly a Montaigne, lifted to a higher eminence, and agitated by more striking circumstances and a severer destiny, and altogether a somewhat more passionate structure of man. It is not, however, very wonderful that Hamlet, who was but a part of Shakspere, should exhibit to us more than the whole of Montaigne, and the external facts appear to contradict any notion of a French ancestry for the Dane, as the play is