If

these kingdoms. These are significant indications of a struggle to make clerical power again felt in the State -signs of the spirit of Dunstan or Beckett. In England aggression is counteracted by the overwhelming preponderance of a Protestant population, and is comparatively powerless from the small numbers on whom ecclesiastical influence can be brought to bear. In Ireland the numbers subject to such influence are not only vastly greater, but probably more servilely subject to it, and the counterpoise is proportionably weaker. measures of resistance or protection be necessary for England, how much more so for Ireland! If Ireland has been "a difficulty" to English statesmen, principally through the political influence of the Roman Catholic clergy, what will that difficulty become, if their influence is, without interference, to be worked under a system of greater magnitude, and with a more perfect organization; nay, if the legislature even now affirm the assertion, that priestly power in Ireland is such that the British Parliament dares not interfere with it?

This is not a question between two rival religions. It is a question of national rights, and the grounds on which it ought to be discussed are as applicable to Roman Catholic as Protestant countries. But every effort has been and is being made in Ireland to give it a sectarian and polemical colour. It is deeply to be regretted, that at a period when all classes of Irishmen

were so zealously co-operating in na tional objects, such an apple of discord should be thrown by the Pope and his clergy among them; but if the measure to be adopted be, as there is every prospect it will be, one purely defensive, and directed solely to the political consequences of the Pope's measure, the injustice and impolicy of excluding Ireland from its provisions is too obvious to yield to vapouring declamation, even though so doing should smooth the path of ministers; nay, though it should be thought the dexterous move of party tactics on which the existence of a ministry turned.

These cursory remarks cannot be more appropriately closed than by an extract from the pen of the most gifted, and certainly not the least zealous, of Irish Roman Catholics-Thomas Moore. In a letter to the Roman Catholics of Dublin, written in 1810, quoted in the pamphlet by Eleutherius, before referred to, he wrote thus:—

"The Catholics of England seem to feel upon the subject as they ought, and by the readiness they have shewn to exchange the Rescripts and Bulls of Rome for the blessings of a free constitution, they prove themselves worthy descendants of those founders of British liberty, who, with all their reverence for the spiritual authority of the Pope, thought freedom too delicate a treasure to be exposed unnecessarily to his influence, and, accordingly, sheltered it round with provisors and præmunire, like that fenced-in pillar at Delphi, which not even priests might touch."

THE present age is pre-eminently the age of military writers. In the days of Cincinnatus, when the campaign was over, the laurelled soldier subsided again into the country gentleman; he exchanged his weapons of war for the ploughshare or the reaping-hook, and left to others the office of chronicling the deeds he had contributed to render famous. Now he more frequently assumes this task himself; and if competent to the undertaking, there is no one on whom it can devolve with equal propriety. When a distinguished officer becomes the faithful historian of events he has himself directed, witnessed, or participated in, he doubles the value of his services, intwines another enduring leaf with his chaplet of honour, and establishes an additional claim on the gratitude of his countrymen. "Tam marti quam mercurio," is a motto of high pretension, when fairly won by

the wearer.

To wield the pen and the sword with equal dexterity; to describe clearly and truthfully with the one, what has been accomplished with daring valour by the other, requires a rare admixture of abilities; an amalgamation of opposite elements seldom concentrated in the same individual. Cæsar's Commentaries, in earlier times; the Duke of Wellington's Despatches, as compiled by Colonel Gurwood, and Sir William Napier's Peninsular War, in recent annals; may, perhaps, be cited as the most brilliant examples of this unusual combination. We shall scarcely go so far as to enrol Major Edwardes's book with this illustrious phalanx ; but if we place it in the very next rank,

"proximus sed intervallo," which position we honestly think it is entitled to and will arrive at, he will find himself surrounded by worthy rivals and confederates, with whose names he can never blush to have his own associated. Napier, in a strain of high and flattering, but not undue eulogium, has often been designated the modern Thucydides, Xenophon, or Tacitus. We once heard all this transcended by (as we think) the most brilliant compliment admiration ever tendered to genius. Arguing with a friend on the compa rative merits of the old Greek and Roman military historians, and with much difference of opinion, our opponent exclaimed, at last, in a climax of enthusiasm :

"Polybius excels them all; Polybius is the NAPIER of antiquity."

It has been often objected that autobiographies of every kind are suspicious documents, to be received with ample qualification, inasmuch as the fallibility of man inclines him to lean with undue favour to his own views and opinions, and to embellish his personal actions with an exaggerated colouring. But this, fairly examined, is rather a cavil than a sound objection. He may not exactly, when writing of himself, tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as if every sentence was delivered on oath in a court of justice; or lay bare the entire machinery of his mind, as if dissected by the scalpel of the anatomist; but he knows more of himself, and has a more distinct impression of the agencies which sway him, and the causes which impel him to act, than any other person can pos

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sibly obtain by indirect communication at scattered intervals. He has more at stake, and a greater interest in not mis-stating facts, than the posthumous compiler, who writes from the materials supplied to him, repeats what has been disclosed by the performers in the drama, and guesses at what they have withheld. The autobiographer, on the whole, is the best evidence in the case he speaks to; his testimony is direct rather than circumstantial; he is a primary witness, and not a secondary one.

Another feature is, to a certain extent, inseparable from writings of this class: the appearance of egotism, most difficult to suppress when the relater is at the same time the subject of his story. If a modern writer endeavoured to escape from this Scylla, as Cæsar does by assuming the less pretending third person, instead of the more offensive first, the chances are, he would founder on a more entangling Charybdis, and incur the charge of intolerable and ludicrous presumption.

No author can divest his mind entirely of prejudice, or notions peculiar to himself. This is impossible. The human faculties are too active, too varied, and discursive, to become mere reflecting mirrors, presenting only the object placed before them, in rigid identity. No matter whether the writer is treating of his own res gestæ, or recording the achievements of others, his personal feelings and opinions will, in his own despite, obtrude themselves into his works. Lord Byron, who, with all his eccentricities, was a keen judge of almost everything-a sort of English Horace in the nineteenth century, commends prejudice in an historian. In a note on Mitford's Greece, he says:"Having named his sins, it is but fair to state his virtues: learning, labour, research, wrath and partiality. I call the latter, virtues in a writer, because they make him write in earnest." This is prejudice with a vengeance in Lord Byron himself, unless he merely meant it as a smart saying. All men indite according to their "gifts." Lucan, with republican bias, in his "Pharsalia," deifies Cato, and depreciates Cæsar. Hume's palpable leaning to the Stuarts forces his acute mind on weak reasoning, while it disfigures and invalidates his history. Doctor Johnson, one of the best and wisest of men, distorts, by violent prejudices, his

most valuable work, the "Lives of the Poets," in more than one remarkable instance; while, on the other hand, his personal regard for Savage has invested with undying interest the history of an ungrateful sensualist, who, though persecuted and unfortunate, there is good reason to think, was an impostor also.

Then we are assured frequently, although it sounds a little paradoxical, that eye-witnesses, particularly of battles, are unsafe authorities, as they seldom agree in their accounts of the same event; and that a dozen persons, each describing the one action, will furnish as many different versions. These ingenious reasoners maintain, that the officers engaged, whether in command, or subordinate, from the incessant smoke of artillery and small arms, the inequality of the ground, the vast extent of space occasionally occupied, and the complicated nature of the manoeuvres, can see or know very little beyond what passes in their immediate vicinity. This may be true, as regards minute details, but not as to results, or decisive features. The general-in-chief must know, better than any one else, what were his own exact combinations, and how far they have been frustrated or carried out. Marlborough, at Oudenarde, announced to his staff the complete success of all his movements, and the certain issue of the battle, before those about him could dis tinguish that it was fairly begun. His eagle-eye saw everything at a glance. Who but himself could have described,

with equal accuracy, the operations of the day? The rapid and perpetual

motion of the commander takes in a wider range of the field than belongs to the more stationary post of the general of brigade, the colonel of a battalion, or the regimental subaltern; but not one of these can be mistaken as to the leading facts. Every one knows, when the affair is decided, whether he is in pursuit or retreat; whether he holds the ground he stood on in the morning, or has been driven from it; whether he has changed front or flank, voluntarily, or by compulsion; and finally, whether he has carried the breach he was led up to storm, or has been hurled back, and left half-smothered in the ditch.

Sir Walter Scott, in a letter to Miss Joanna Baillie, quoted by Lockhart, says, "I don't know why it is, I never