to the resolutions of the great Protestant meeting, they distinctly adopt this principle, for our readers will recollect that one of these resolutions was a vote of thanks to the peers for the rejection of the Tithe Bill. The Conservative Society have been pursuing their operations with spirit and success. On Tuesday, September the 9th, Mr. O'Sullivan, in fulfilment of his pledge, laid before the Society a magnificent statement, upon which comment is now almost superfluous, as this splendid display of eloquence and reasoning is to be reprinted in a pamphlet, in which shape it will, no doubt, be in the hands of every thinking person in the empire. On the 16th, Mr. Boyton brought forward such a mass of evidence of the existence of a conspiracy, exclusively popish in its character-having for its object among others the extirpation of Protestantism-and in intimate and confidential communication with the Romish priesthood-as must force upon every reflecting mind the conviction, that England can no longer remain neutral-that either British power must terminate this anti-Protestant and anti-English confederacy, or the confederacy will destroy both Protestantism and British connexion. The Society have resolved upon sending deputations to England, a measure which must be attended with incalculable good. We have only space briefly to allude to Mr. Cobbet's arrival; he reached the Irish metropolis on Thursday, the 18th. An attempt was made to get up a procession of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, to do honour to the man, whose only notoriety is to be found in his virulent opposition to the Christian religion; but, for the honor of our country, we rejoice to say it was a failure; and, though the mandate went forth from Darrynane, the collector and preserver of Tom Paine's bones was attended by about fifty ragamuffins, in five carriages, and about three times that number of pedestrians. Lord Brougham has gone upon a mountebank excursion through "the land of cakes," and is astonishing the natives by a series of the most extraordinary exhibitions. 9, Upper Sackville-street, September 20, 1834. A. P. SONG "The Beautiful's Away." By Robert Gilfillan CHAPTERS OF COLLEGE ROMANCE. By EDWARD S. O'BRIEN, A.M. Chap. I. A WORD TO OUR CONTRIBUTORS. Many and various have been the similitudes by which poets have endeavoured to shadow forth the idea of multitude. The croci of Tmolus-the hares on mount Homus-the sands of the sea side-the stars of Heaven-the waves of the troubled ocean the hairs of their heads-the dust of a mail-coach road-the leaves of the forest-all, and innumerable metaphors beside, have been pressed into the service of the Muse to express the idea of an innumerable multitude. All these metaphors, no doubt, are very fine; but it is quite plain that those who use them have never been with us in our Sanctum, or even had a peep into our Balaam box; for had they been thus favoured, dropping the hares, the croci, the leaves, the stars, the sands, the dust and the billows, they would have substituted for them all the contributors to the University Magazine. We use the word contributors in a large sense, to imply both those whose communications find a place in our pages, and But we must not insult the most numerous class; and so we will be classical, and employ an aposiopesis. The satirist has said that a police-office is quite sufficient to give a man an adequate idea of the wickedness of human nature; "una domus sufficit:" with more truth we may say, that one hour passed with our august selves, would be fully sufficient to impress any man or woman with a full notion of the scribbling mania of this age, terrible and interminable as it is. He would see pacquets pouring in, all prefaced with humble petitions that we would be graciously pleased to read the same, until our stout oaken table groans beneath its literary load, while we, from the bottom of our hearts, respond to its laments as each successive and more voluminous pacquet comes before our aching eyes---until human patience can endure no longer; and glancing our eye at the first line of each huge folio-by which glance we are often satisfied that it is huge nonsense-we sweep in our wrath, without pity or remorse, the whole bundle of annoyances into the Balaam box. But all this we intend as a proclamation of the simple fact, that henceforward we shall discontinue our "Notices to Correspondents," in consequence of the tremendous additions that are monthly made to that highly respectable class. Those, therefore, who wish for answers to their epistles, must provide some other means by which we can communicate with them. We may answer G. H. I.,' or 'M. G. H.,' at the moment we reeeive their communications; but to expect us to remember all these nomenclatures until the end of the month, and then cover fourteen or fifteen pages with a reprint of all possible combinations and permutations of the letters of the alphabet, this really is too much. Furthermore, we will not engage to return any short articles. Of this, all ye writers of sonnets and stanzas, ye R. G. M.'s,' and 'S. T. C. D.'s,' and 'Sizator's'— ye who write poems about Killarney and‹ Boreas' sighs,' and 'sky wearing mountains,' take due and timely notice. Furthermore, no prize poems must be sent to us, be they in Latin, Greek, or English. We saw a Latin prize poem the other day on Mr. Milliken's counter, of which the first two words contained a most egregious false quantity!! an invocation to truth, beginning with a most extraordinary Dactyl, "Tu Veritas !!! We must take this public opportunity of thanking Mr. O'Brien for his letter and his most powerful Chapter of College Romance-as, though he wrote us a very polite note, requesting an immediate answer, he gave neither date nor place of abode. This is a most strange practice, against which we caution all our correspondents. We wish particularly for a personal interview with Mr. O'Brien. We shall, at least, meet his wishes, if not go beyond them. ANTHONY POPLAR. In times of peculiar danger nothing is more important than that those who are assailed should have a clear apprehension both of the magnitude of the perils that threaten and the extent of the defensive resources upon which they have to depend. We do not covet the epithet of alarmists, but we confess we are no friends to that short-sighted policy which endeavours to keep up the spirit of a party by concealing the dangers to which their cause is exposed. This is treatment suited only for the timid and the weak-in the hour of the attack we may soothe into a false repose, the woman or the childbut it becomes the man to look the enemy in the face. Equally removed from true courage is the disposition to overlook the danger that it dares not meet, with the timorous apprehension of imaginary terrors. We look always with suspicion upon the cry that proclaims "peace! peace! where there is no peace." They are not the true friends of a cause who lull its supporters into a false security from which the presence, not of danger but ruin, must speedily awaken them. No, when we call on all for their services, all should be told honestly that they are indispensablelet every man be apprised of the necessity of exertion, and then we may expect that every man will do his duty. The Church is in danger-how often has this been stigmatized as a Tory cry got up to influence the prejudices of the nation-it is now the watchword both of her enemies and her friends when the one are no longer anxious to conceal their hostility, VOL. IV. the other can have no motive for sup pressing their apprehensions-when infidelity and popery, united in unholy and unnatural combination, have already raised the shout of prospective triumph at the anticipated downfall of our Christian institutions, it is time for the friends of religion to put forth the language of manly and unyielding determination in their defence. It is now impossible to conceal-it is madness to dissemble-that national Christianity is openly assailed by a numerous and influential party, and the struggle is at this moment going on, that must quickly decide whether religion is any more to have a place in our councils; or Christianity any longer a title to our respect. In this struggle the friends of religion must depend upon the King, the people, and the Lords-in the King's government and the House of Commons, they must place no confidence whatever. Thanks to the reform bill and the reform mania, the present House of Commons no more represents the feelings of the British nation than do the tenpound householders the respectability of the country-and the King's speech to the bishops leaves no question that the ministers do not represent the feelings of their royal master; and thus are we placed in the most anomalous position that has ever characterised any national crisis-with two of the great constitutional elements of the legislature in favour of religion and of our Protestant establishments, and yet their constitutional and recognised organs unequivocally 2 K opposed to the sanctions of religion and the support of our institutions. We have a king bound by the obligations of a most sacred official oath and by the tye of a voluntary declaration, the circumstances attending which made it sacred as an oath, to maintain and support the Church-we have a ministry wielding that King's prerogative to destroy the Church. The people still look with affectionate veneration to the establishment that gives them the ordinances of religion and the word of God; but, alas, "the commons in parliament assembled are no longer one, and the same thing with the commons at large," and the infidel representatives of a religious people are even outstripping a profligate government in their zeal for unhallowed spoliation. Seconded by the rabble shouts of the Destructives out of doors, whose noisy ruffianism they affect to mistake for the expression of the popular voice, the lower branch of legislature are pursuing their course of reckless and unprincipled aggression upon all that is venerated by the national heart. The peers alone remain true to their God, the nation, and themselves; and to the peers we must look for protection until, as on the ever-memorable occasion of 1783, the spirit of the constitution triumphs over its perverted forms, and the king and the people are again supported by the lords in crushing the attempted despotism of a profligate ministry and a corrupt House of Com mons. Our intention, at present, is to endeavour to show the utter madness of the confidence which rests, in ever so remote a degree upon either the ministry or the House of Commons. From neither must Protestants expect any countenance or support. By both the Irish Church is doomed to extinction; and this being the case, it is well that it should be understood; and we trust that we may not be altogether unprofitably employed in submitting to our readers the grounds upon which we have formed our opinion as to both. Let every Irish Protestant be assured, that it would be extremely difficult to overestimate the hostility of the present House of Commons to the church established in this part of the united kingdom. In that assembly everything, humanly speaking, is against her. First, there is her presumed physical weakness, and accessibility to attack; for too long have the government mistaken the conscientious obedience of the Irish Protestants for the submission of cowardice, and imagined that they submit to their tyranny because they dare not resist; then the great amount of influence exercised by the Romanist party, through burnings and massacres out of doors, and that scarcely less iniquitous policy pursued by the leaders of that party within the walls of parliament, that skilful mixture of kicking and coaxing, by which Mr. O'Connell knows he must defeat a feeble and unprincipled ministry; add to all this the ingrained habit of the English Whigs and Radicals, who have been taught, from their very infancy upwards, to make the Irish Church the butt of their patriotism—and in these several but converging causes, who does not see enough to be convinced that an immeasurable hatred has coalesced with an immeasurable cowardice for the destruction of the Protestant Church! But another cause remains-the deep and general, though secret and unacknowledged, conviction in the minds of the reforming members, that the bill has not had its perfect work-that they have but inadequately served that ferocious and turbulent spirit, by whose agency they were summoned into political existence-that unless by some splendid and costly sacrifice they appease its voracity, they, individually, must be speedily discarded and disgraced. Terrors from behind urge them onward. They remember but too well-what, we believe, many of them would but too gladly forget-the words which they have spoken in the face of their supporters-words which they deemed to be spoken idly and to no purpose, save that of exalting them to stations which they were incompetent to fill, but which fell upon intent and eager ears and minds, where they dwell, as though graven with a pen of iron on a rock. Upon a deliberate estimate of all these causes, we deem it impossible to avoid the conviction that the zeal and hatred of the majority of the House of Commons is now fixedly concentrated upon the Irish establishment; and were it within the possibilities of things that that majority were com |