the various causes assigned 'for the decay of the land,' concludes with the prophecy England shall put this land in such order that all the wars of the land, whereof groweth all the vices of the same, shall cease for ever; and after that God shall give such grace and fortune to the said king, and he shall with the army of England and of Ireland subdue the realm of France to his obedience for ever, and shall rescue the Greeks, and recover the great city of Constantinople, and shall vanquish the Turk, and win the Holy Cross and the Holy Land, and shall die Emperor of Rome, and eternal bliss shall be his end.'

All prophecies about coming prosperity for Ireland seem to have been doomed to fail. The happy change which the correspondent of the Isle of Wight Magazine anticipated from the Act of Union has not been verified any more than the vision which rose before the author of this Tudor State paper, along with the many practical and sensible suggestions for the bettering the condition of an unhappy country which appears to have baffled the plans of even far-seeing and patriotic statesmen. Under the strong monarchy of Queen Elizabeth and her council, after a disuse of about two hundred years, the authority of the English Government was nominally recognized throughout Munster and Connaught. In the reign of her predecessor, Mary, certain districts in Leinster were made shireland by the names of King's and Queen's counties. It was reserved for James I to prepare a final establishment of the English power upon the basis of equal laws and civilized customs. The judges of assize went their circuits everywhere. The king's writ was obeyed, at least in profession, throughout Ireland. During the reign of a Scotsman as King of Great Britain and Ireland an emigration from Scotland, to which the northern coast of Ireland closely approaches, had a powerful influence on Ulster, rendering that province, which under native rule had been most barbarous, the most prosperous and law-abiding part of Ireland. Thus in Ireland there were three nations-the original natives, the Anglo-Irish, and the new settlers, partly Scotch, partly English. These Ulster colonists, to whom the native Irishman was what the Canaanite was to the Jew, never degenerated through adopting the usages of the van

quished. Ulster, which is the great seat of manufacture in Ireland, has always been faithful to the Act of Union. If now the contemplated divorce between Great Britain and Ireland should be averted, it will be mainly owing to the resolute stand made by the people of the North of Ireland, backed up by the sturdy and fervid population of Scotland, who, with their national proverb about 'blood being thicker than water,' are determined not to abandon the cause of their own compatriots and coreligionists in Ulster to a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland. The English democracy at the present crisis are carried away by a notion that the central authority of the English Government is injurious to Ireland. This feeling is fanned by such politicians as wish to float into repute and power by paying careful heed to the shifting breeze of popular opinion. Under the high-sounding Greek name of 'autonomy,' they would allow the Irish to do what seems best to them in their own eyes, without any check from the central authority. What Ireland needs is the iron hand in a velvet glove of a strong government which will make her people feel that obedience to law and public order are essential to her best and highest interests. Feeble, vacillating governments have been, such is the teaching of history, the curse of a nation endowed with many qualities which deserve admiration. Speculation on unfulfilled contingencies,' it has been said, 'is not invariably barren.' It is interesting at any rate to consider what would have been the consequences to the people of the two islands, if the central administration of England had been regularly exercised over Ireland, and the Union made more binding. God's Providence brings good out of evil. It is to be hoped that the full discussion of the subject of the Union between Great Britain and Ireland may tend, not to a divorce, but to draw closer the ties which should unite the smaller and the larger island. July 17, 1886.

་

ECHOES FROM AN OLD ISLE OF WIGHT MAGAZINE, A.D. 1799.

WHEN the late Mr. Thackeray was composing some of those life-like stories, in which the past appears to us as clear as, if not indeed more clear than, the present, he was in the habit we are told of making careful extracts from the Annual Register, the Gentleman's Magazine, and the like, so that his fictions should move in an atmosphere of historic truth. With his powerful and fiery genius he fused these scraps of old metal and poured them into the mould created by his own fancy, so that these creations came forth in living form before his readers. The items of information which go to make up a magazine are not history, but they serve to make our conceptions of history more distinct. To a local historian few books are more precious than an old provincial magazine. Take up for instance Albin's Magazine for 1799, and after you have read it for some time, gradually, out of what at first sight appeared to be without form and void, a glimpse is gained of what the Isle of Wight was in those days, and a faint echo is heard of the sayings and doings of those who lived before us in this fair Island.

They who are verging on threescore years and ten find the world much changed since the days of their own youth, but when we are carried back to the last century, even though it is the closing year of that century, the difference between then and now is all the more striking. When Albin was public-spirited enough to publish his magazine, the only town of any size or repute in the Isle of Wight was Newport. Ryde was a struggling village on the shore, Cowes indeed showed signs of life and vigour; its shipbuilding yards were already famous; and as a commercial harbour it was then better known probably than even Southampton. At Ventnor a few fishermen earned a precarious subsistence. Scattered along the southern coast were some small hamlets where the people employed themselves in smuggling, fishing, or in plundering the ill-fated vessels wrecked on its dangerous

shores. So much was this the case that the troops had to line the coast with a strong detachment to prevent depredations,' when H. M. schooner Les Deux Amis, of sixteen guns, struck on a sunken rock at Grange Chine, and the captain and crew were with difficulty saved. Our war with France made the Island a valuable military post, and in 1799 Parkhurst Barracks and the neighbourhood were a gay and busy scene. Lord Bolton, the Governor of the Island, was in residence at Carisbrooke Castle. Major-General Don, who was an officer of considerable distinction, commanded the regular troops, consisting of two regiments of the line, and a squadron or more of cavalry. Lord Cawdor, a Welsh nobleman, who had actually crossed swords with the French, when in 1798 they made their strange and unaccountable invasion of Pembrokeshire, was now in the Isle of Wight with his Carmarthenshire Militia. At the West Medina Barracks were quartered the Dutch soldiers of Count Bentinck's regiment, as also the Birmingham Fencibles. A serious affray broke out between these foreign soldiers and the Birmingham men, when some of both parties were wounded, one of the Dutchmen in a dangerous way. Lord Cawdor with a party of the Carmarthen and North Hants Militia marched from Parkhurst Barracks and restored tranquillity.' Constant changes were going on, militia and regulars being sent either to or from Ireland. Major-General Piggott succeeded Major-General Don when the latter's term of service in the Isle of Wight expired. Children were born to these soldiers, and baptized, as appears in the Carisbrooke registers of that year. Officers and soldiers are married and buried. Among the latter we find, for instance, Ivan Tacks, a Dutch soldier,' Dirk Hoomings, another'; also John Clegg, of the Lancash. Mil., Sergt., aged 32, a man of talent and great learning,' 'Richard Jackson Wall, an ensign' in the same regiment, with many others.

The presence of three thousand or more soldiers must have caused a large expenditure of money in Newport. Many camp followers accompanied them, among these latter some, no doubt, of that motley assemblage which is called the fashionable world. The streets of the capital town of the Island would be paraded by some, who were called, in

the language of our forefathers, ' fops,'' bloods,' 'bucks,' who while assuming a kind of military swagger were dressed in stand-up collar, pantaloons, and Hessian boots, with their chins buried in their muslin cravats. Others displayed a more startling costume, such as that worn by the great surgeon, Sir Astley Cooper, as told in his life, published by his nephew, who represents him, when a young student at the hospitals, returning from a dancing academy dressed in a scarlet coat, a three-cocked hat, a black glazed stock, nankeen knee-breeches, and silk stockings. Such men of wit and letters as sought admission into fashionable circles also came here. The house of the Hon. Thomas Fitz Maurice, who resided in the Isle of Wight, was the resort of guests such as David Garrick, the actor; John Wilkes, the demagogue; and Dr. Hawksworth, who trimmed up in literary style the voyages of the great circumnavigator, Captain James Cook. These were dead in 1799, but Albin's Magazine in a biographical sketch of a now almostforgotten dramatic writer, Thomas Morton, says: 'he is at present in the Isle of Wight collecting, we hope, materials for another addition to the few respectable productions of the modern stage.' The Isle of Wight was popular then as now with graver and more dignified authors than the fashionable littérateurs of the day. Dr. Johnson wished he had been with Boswell to the Isle of Wight. What a misfortune it is that there is not a tour in the Isle of Wight after the fashion of Johnson's tour in the Hebrides, written as Boswell would have put it together in his loosely-flowing style. Thomas Pennant, the naturalist, who spent almost the whole of his life as a retired country gentleman at his seat of Downing in Flintshire, and who wrote a tour in Wales, which contains much interesting matter on antiquities and natural history, travelled from London to the Isle of Wight, and gave an account of the journey. Hassall painted its scenery, Tomkins drew its churches, and Wyndham made some effective sketches of its landscape. George Morland, a far greater artist than any of these, employed his brush in painting its farm-houses and their accompaniments of horses, dogs, and pigs, in a loose but very skilful manner. Unhappily he spent his evenings in reckless dissipation in its