the givers it came with a grudge, for it was an admission of growing weakness. It had lost much of its virtue. It failed to conciliate. It were needless to say that the errors of Sir Arthur Wellesley's administration have not been uncommon in the history of the government of Ireland. They have steadfastly followed and marked, with few notable exceptions, the current of its history. They have taught the lesson fruitful of distrust, and deep seated disaffection, that concessions to Ireland are concessions made not from a sense of right and justice, but yielded to necessity. That very wretched policy has left much to do and much to undo, a fact which even in our own days points with grave significance to the moral to be gathered from Sir Arthur Wellesley's Irish correspondence. It is a moral worth the consideration of all whom it concerns as powers that be in the days we live in.

ART. VIII.-Evenings on the Thames; or, Serene Hours and what they require. By Kenelm H. Digby, Esq. London: Longman, 1860.

E have seldom met with a work which more comWE pletely realized the expectations which its title led us to form, than the one before us. We could hardly fancy a more suitable companion for the "serene hours" which the author advocates; suggestive of thought, harmonious in spirit, and in expression soft, light, and genial. Although much amplified, the original idea is very simple. The author secks to apprehend, to fix before the mind's eye the subtle essence of happiness, the best which this world has to give; that which youth in all ages, and of every class, has delighted in; that which the world-wearied man, if untainted in heart, has most gladly fallen back upon. Simple as this may appear in theory, it is not easy of execution. To teach us the full zest of enjoyment to be found in the "common things" by which we are surrounded, is in itself difficult; to how many they are absolutely indifferent; never noticed but when lost; to how many again they are trivial, wearisome, distasteful, so as always to require re-fashioning and disguising before they can be even palatable. In a thousand different ways, poets

have felt, and moralists have deplored the artificiality of the character to which simple pleasures are no pleasure at all. Whether it arise from the corroding presence of evil, or the absence of sweet natural qualities, it has always been considered a symptom of "something wrong," when man was not in harmony with the daily bread,' the homely enjoyments which a bounteous Providence has scattered so profusely for his use. But we must not

moralize upon our own sore, nor must we seek to condense into a few words the "large thought" which our author has so profusedly and so happily illustrated. Very happily, we think; for what could better fulfil all the conditions of his subject than the River Thames? Out door life and hardy exercise, freedom from control and from ceremony, sweet home-like scenery, a pleasant alternation of solitude and of the company of cheerful, honest, unassuming holiday-makers;-the harmless adventure and the cheap, well-earned refreshment; all these requisites for simple pleasures were to be found upon the river Thames, where thousands daily enjoy them, and few more, we doubt not, than the author himself: accordingly, his "eight-oared boat" is a great part of his subject. He assembles his characters, dismissing all who cannot enjoy the row, or let others do so. Who, then must be the companions suitable for a long afternoon upon the River? men, with real work to do, which shall give a motive and a zest to relaxation, not too much engrossed by the world's pursuits to take it with an easy mind, prepared to enjoy their holiday with boyish elasticity; and with such qualities of mind, that the gloss shall not easily wear off, from the pleasure of their companionship. The author has set himself to describe, rather than to make us acquainted with such men, and with such states of mind, by innumerable delicate and poetic touches to which we cannot do justice except by extracts. Perhaps as comprehensive a one as we could find is the following description of Englishmen, found in a manuscript of the 17th century, now in the royal library at Brussels: "Here is no extravagant or faultless portrait, but it is a natural

* Alas! while we correct this notice, how sadly is our nearly forty years friend and spiritual benefactor struck down by the heaviest of earthly calamities. May she rest in peace! May he be comforted!

likeness, and notwithstanding the defects that are acknowledged, not to say because of them, I think you will feel disposed to admit that such a people in their collective capacity, irrespective of their modern institutions, forgetting their press,' and let the coldness and pride of a few be ever so great, are very loveable.

"After observing that generally the Italians are cautious and civil, the Spaniards haughty and grave, the French prompt and light, the Dutch jealous and slow, this curious observer adds, 'that the English are generally of no one nature, or humour, or custom, and consequently not to be comprised within one rule; but they walk by several ways, as if they all were almost of several nations. For you shall find thousands of them who love the sober, and as many who love the giddy way. Some love the gravity and state of the Spaniard; some the reservedness and cleanliness of the Italian; some the levity and alacrity of the French; and some the slowness and jealousy of the Dutch; and many, in a word, are prodigal, many miserable, many confident, many jealous; as if there were not only no sons of the same mother, but not so much as men of the same nation. The English nation abounds much with a kind of great ingenuous simplicity and goodness of nature; and it makes itself appear very easily in them from the mind into the body. I take it they possess natural virtue, or rather inclination of nature. in a very high degree; for which they well deserve both love and praise. For of all nations in this world, I think really they are the fullest of compassion. They are exclusive, however,' he adds, 'in their admiration. If some Englishman will follow the court, he thinks presently he were to be damned if even he should spend a month in the country. And if another should have set up a pack of dogs, or come once to keep a cast or two of hawks in the country. or else, if he be wont to meet weekly with his neighbours at some bowling green near his next market-town,-he presently falls to pity the great men at court, instead of envying them; and he would not for the whole world even become a bed-chamber man to the king. With respect to their inconstancy, I think that it is not final in respect of any object. I mean, they do not usually pitch and fix irremovably upon a change; but if they go, they come again, and so have many turns and returns; wherein, indeed, they do but show themselves to be men a little more than perhaps some others do. For mau is created in this life to consist, as St. Austin saith, of disagreements and reconciliations, that is, of varieties and vicissitudes, by the continual use of free-will, according to his own pleasure or humour; whereas the angels were all created with an intention in Almighty God to establish and fasten them for ever according to that election which they would make by that one first single act which their free-will should produce. But since men are made changeable by their very nature of being men, I hold it for a vain and false and foolish affectation of pride for any one to affirm that naturally he delights not in any change of some

kind or other. For such persons would fain make us think that they are rather angels than men whereas, indeed, herein they are not so much men as they are beasts; for they know not the first ground of their own creation.' 'My Lord of Bristol,' he then adds, alluding to the ancestor of one of our crew, whose words are the more noticeable as coming from a convert to the ancient faith, 'was thus saying once to me, and it was in Flanders, You and I have spent many years in seeing many parts of the world, but yet there is one fruit that grows in your country and mine with which we never met any where else.' I asked him what that might be, and he bade me guess. I thought he had meant of some real fruit; and so I fell to speak first to him of damsons, and wardens, and afterwards of pearmains; for I had never seen any of these abroad. 'I will take you off from the rack,' said my lord, for it is none of these, nor any thing like them; but it a certain fruit called good-nature, which grows no where but in England, or at least I never met with it but there.' I said so too, and I say so still. Others have great virtues, as well as we; but we have good. nature much more than they. And the professing of this truth shall be the end of this character."-pp. 338-40.

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We object to the headings of the chapters,-" To the Lock at Teddington. Subject: That an absence of worldliness is requisite for the enjoyment of serene hours." "To Eton Meadows. Subject: That a recognition of the Supremacy of mind is conducive to the same object" and so on. There is something of bathos in this which makes one smile; moreover it suggests a certain ponderosity' which really is not the character of the book.

Yet we must refer to these 'headings' to show the author's idea, which, indeed, once suggested, becomes obvious to every one's mind, who is capable of following it at all. In the first place, the disposition to enjoy idleness; upon this subject the author is very strong,-he rightly distinguishes it from laziness, or sloth. He says:

"Possibly, though this is any thing but certain, men may lose some results that occasionally attend an inordinate industry by preserving a taste for serene hours. What then? In this world we must always lose in gaining, part with something to acquire some thing else; but what is your loss in this instance, and what your gain? Is any thing of value lost if it could never have been used or enjoyed? No one should disparage business; but if you will give it an exclusive and undue importance, you drive us to remind you of the experience and the lines of Cowley:

Thou wouldst, forsooth! be something in a state,
And bus'ness thou wouldst find, or wouldst create:

Business! the frivolous pretence

Of human lusts, to shake off innocence;

Business! the grave impertinence;

Business the thing which I of all things hate;
Business! the contradiction of thy fate.'

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Your gain by discarding such notions is the ability to use and to enjoy what partly is of earth in a way compatible with the everlasting and unmixed gain of heaven. This aggregate of gain the Christian Church, as well as reason, permits; for she only prays that we may so pass through temporal goods as not to lose eternal. The idea of this gain is accepted by the holy as typical of that which is for ever. How will they not rejoice in their own country,' exclaims Richard of St. Victor, who can thus exult in a foreigu land? What joy will they not have at home who can be so exhilarated in banishment? This gain involves that sort of calm which, as was said of a great poet, when once achieved lasts for ever. In fact, to have a taste for serene hours is to have a taste for heaven; and this is so true that we find some distinguished men disrelishing the idea of the latter on this very ground; for the thought of this calm and serenity lasting for ever in the durability of the future state is actually a fresh offence to some self-tormented advocates of progress,' who find the immutability of the promised beatitude of heaven as objectionable as the duration of punishment for the guilty, the need of an eternal rest being thought by them contrary to the essential activity of human nature; but it can hardly be expected of us that we should be swayed by what the new partisans of the metempsychosis may choose to affirm in defiance of experience, and of the very observation of nature that is pretended, which in spite of their assertions does always aspire, amidst its greatest activity, to the realization of an ultimate and eternal rest. De Quincey saw further than these people when he spoke of a tranquillity that was no product of inertia, but as if resulting from infinite activities and infinite repose. The objections of men who seem to find in action only the interest of action itself, are not worth being taken into account, unless it be, indeed, on a very raw day in February, and certainly are inadequate to furnish an argument in spring or summer time against the general object that is here kept in view. One has only to lament that any mortal should be capable of so mistrusting the resources of infinite love and wisdom as to turn aside from the great oracles of truth, and by that very act lose the sentiment of human things while fancying that the peace of heaven must be a lethargic immobility. They have fopason to fear,' says a recent author, lest the activity which they one it upon may be granted them one day and for ever in that men arible circle of illusions, of sterile efforts, and of painful obstihold it fohich the periodical evolutions of error in this world figure one to affirge."-Vol. i. pp. 46-7.