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happiness too vast for earth; woman, with her beauty, and grace, and gentleness, and fulness of feeling, and depth of affection, and blushes of purity, and the tones and looks which only a mother's heart can inspire;-these are all poetical. It is not true that the poet paints a life which does not exist. He only extracts and concentrates, as it were, life's ethereal essence, arrests and condenses its volatile fragrance, brings together its scattered beauties, and prolongs its more refined but evanescent joys. And in this he does well; for it is good to feel that life is not wholly usurped by cares for subsistence and physical gratifications, but admits, in measures which may be indefinitely enlarged, sentiments and delights worthy of a higher being. This power of poetry to refine our views of life and happiness, is more and more needed as society advances. It is needed to withstand the encroachments of heartless and artificial manners, that make civilization so tame and uninteresting. It is needed to counteract the tendency of physical science, which being now sought, not, as formerly, for intellectual gratification, but for multiplying bodily comforts, requires a new development of imagination, taste, and poetry, to preserve men from sinking into an earthly, material, Epicurean life.

19.-MAGNA CHARTA.

HENRY HALLAM.

[Henry Hallam, the greatest historical writer of his age, was born in 1778. He was educated at Eton, and Christ Church, Oxford. Having been called to the bar by the Inner Temple, he was early appointed a Commissioner of Audit, a post which afforded him ample leisure to indulge in literary pursuits. Mr. Hallam was an Edinburgh Reviewer, and one of Sir Walter Scott's first critics. In 1818 he published his "Europe during the Middle Ages," in two quarto volumes, and in 1827 his "Constitutional History of England." His greatest work, perhaps, "An Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the 14th, 16th, and 17th Centuries," in four volumes, appeared in 1837-38. It is admitted on all sides to be a masterpiece of rhetorical graces, and "a great monument of his erudition."-Died January 22nd, 1859, at the age of eighty-one.]

IN the reign of John, all the rapacious exactions usual to the Norman kings were not only redoubled, but mingled with other outrages of tyranny still more intolerable. These too were to be endured at the hands of a prince utterly contemptible for his folly and cowardice. One is surprised at the forbearance displayed by the barons, till they took arms at length in that confederacy which ended in establishing the Great Charter of Liberties. As this was the first effort towards a legal government, so is it beyond comparison the most important event in our history, except that revolution without which its benefits would rapidly have been annihilated. The constitution of England has indeed no single date from which its duration is to be reckoned. The institutions of positive law, the far more important changes which time has wrought in the order of society, during six hundred years subsequent to the Great Charter, have undoubtedly lessened its direct application to our pre

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sent circumstances. But it is still the key-stone of English liberty. All that has since been obtained is little more than as confirmation or commentary; and if every subsequent law were to be swept away, there would still remain the bold features that distinguish a free from a despotic monarchy. It has been lately the fashion to depreciate the value of Magna Charta, as if it had sprung from the private ambition of a few selfish barons, and redressed only some feudal abuses. It is indeed of little importance by what motives those who obtained it were guided. The real characters of men most distinguished in the transactions of that time are not easily determined at present. Yet if we bring these ungrateful suspicions to the test, they prove destitute of all reasonable foundation. An equal distribution of civil rights to all classes of freemen forms the peculiar beauty of the charter. In this just solicitude for the people, and in the moderation which infringed upon no essential prerogative of the monarchy, we may perceive a liberality and patriotism very unlike the selfishness which is sometimes rashly imputed to those ancient barons. And, as far as we are guided by historical testimony, two great men, the pillars of our church and state, may be considered as entitled beyond all the rest to the glory of this monument; Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, and William, Earl of Pembroke. To their temperate zeal for a legal government, England was indebted during that critical period for the two greatest blessings that patriotic statesmen could confer; the establishment of civil liberty upon an immovable basis, and the preservation of national independence under the ancient line of sovereigns, which rasher men were about to exchange for the dominion of France.

By the Magna Charta of John, reliefs were limited to a certain sum, according to the rank of the tenant, the waste committed by guardians in chivalry restrained, the disparagement in matrimony of female wards forbidden, and widows secured from compulsory marriage. These regulations, extending to the sub-vassals of the crown, redressed the worst grievances of every military tenant in England. The franchises of the city of London and of all towns and boroughs were declared inviolable. The freedom of commerce was guaranteed to alien merchants. The Court of Common Pleas, instead of following the king's person, was fixed at Westminster. The tyranny exercised in the neighbourhood of royal forests met with some check, which was further enforced by the charter of forests under Henry III.

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But the essential clauses of Magna Charta are those which tect the personal liberty and property of all freemen, by giving security from arbitrary imprisonment and arbitrary spoliation. "No freeman" (says the twenty-ninth chapter of Henry III.'s charter, which, as the existing law, I quote in preference to that of John, the variations not being very material), "shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his freehold, or liberties, or free customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any otherwise destroyed; nor will we pass upon him, nor send upon him, but by lawful judgment of his

peers, or by the law of the land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny, or delay to any man judgment or right.' It is obvious, that these words, interpreted by any honest court of law, convey an ample security for the two main rights of civil society. From the era, therefore, of King John's charter, it must have been a clear principle of our constitution that no man can be detained in prison without trial. Whether courts of justice framed the writ of Habeas Corpus in conformity to the spirit of this clause, or found it already in their register, it became from that era the right of every subject to demand it. That writ, rendered more actively remedial by the statute of Charles II., but founded on the broad basis of Magna Charta, is the principal bulwark of English liberty; and if ever temporary circumstances, or the doubtful plea of political necessity, shall lead men to look on its denial with apathy, the most distinguishing characteristic of our constitution will be effaced.

As the clause recited above protects the subject from any absolute spoliation of his freehold rights, so others restrain the excessive amercements which had an almost equally ruinous operation. The magnitude of his offence, by the fourteenth clause of Henry III.'s charter, must be the measure of his fine; and in every case the contenement (a word expressive of chattels necessary to each man's station, as the arms of a gentleman, the merchandize of a trader, the plough and waggons of a peasant) was exempted from seizure. A provision was made in the charter of John, that no aid or escuage should be imposed, except in the three feudal cases of aid, without consent of parliament. And this was extended to aids paid by the City of London. But the clause was omitted in the three charters granted by Henry III., though parliament seems to have acted upon it in most part of his reign. It had, however, no reference to tallages imposed upon towns without their consent. Fourscore years were yet to elapse before the great principle of parliamentary taxation was explicitly and absolutely recognised.

A law which enacts that justice shall neither be sold, denied, nor delayed, stamps with infamy that government under which it had become necessary. But from the time of the charter, according to Maddox, the disgraceful perversions of right, which are upon record in the rolls of the exchequer, became less frequent.

From this era a new soul was infused into the people of England. Her liberties, at the best long in abeyance, became a tangible possession, and those indefinite aspirations for the laws of Edward the Confessor were changed into a steady regard for the Great Charter.

20.-CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.
CHARLES P. PHILLIPS.

[Mr. Phillips was born at Sligo, 1787; he went to Dublin University (1802), where he took the degree of B.A., and was called to the Irish bar 1811. In 1821 he was called to the English bar, and, the fame of his eloquence having

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preceded him, he soon rose into note. In 1842 he was appointed a Commissioner of Bankruptcy, and in 1846 a Commissioner of Insolvent Debtors, which office he held until his death.]

He is fallen! We may now pause before that splendid prodigy, which towered amongst us like some ancient ruin, whose frown terrified the glance its magnificence attracted.

Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon the throne, a sceptred hermit, wrapt in the solitude of his own originality.

A mind bold, independent, and decisive-a will, despotic in its dictates an energy that distanced expedition, and a conscience pliable to every touch of interest, marked the outline of this extraordinary character the most extraordinary, perhaps, that, in the annals of this world, ever rose, or reigned, or fell.

Flung into life in the midst of a Revolution that quickened every energy of a people who acknowledged no superior, he commenced his course a stranger by birth and a scholar by charity!

With no friend but his sword, and no fortune but his talents, he rushed into the lists where rank, and wealth, and genius had arrayed themselves, and competition fled from him as from the glance of destiny. He knew no motive but interest; he acknowledged no criterion but success; he worshipped no god but ambition, and with an eastern devotion he knelt at the shrine of his idolatry. Subsidiary to this, there was no creed that he did not profess, there was no opinion that he did not promulgate; in the hope of a dynasty, he upheld the crescent; for the sake of a divorce, he bowed before the Cross: the orphan of St. Louis, he became the adopted child of the Republic: and with a parricidal ingratitude, on the ruins both of the throne and the tribune, he reared the fabric of his despotism.

A professed Catholic, he imprisoned the Pope; a pretended patriot, he impoverished the country; and in the name of Brutus he grasped without remorse, and wore without shame, the diadem of the Cæsars!

Through this pantomime of his policy, Fortune played the clown to his caprices. At his touch, crowns crumbled, beggars reigned, systems vanished, the wildest theories took the colour of his whim, and all that was venerable, and all that was novel, changed places with the rapidity of a drama. Even apparent defeat assumed the appearance of victory; his flight from Egypt confirmed his destiny -ruin itself only elevated him to empire.

But if his fortune was great, his genius was transcendant; decision flashed upon his counsels; and it was the same to decide and to perform. To inferior intellects, his combinations appeared perfectly impossible, his plans perfectly impracticable; but in his hands simplicity marked their development, and success vindicated their adoption.

His person partook the character of his mind-if the one never yielded in the cabinet, the other never bent in the field.

Nature had no obstacles that he did not surmount; space no

opposition that he did not spurn: and whether amid Alpine rocks, Arabian sands, or polar snows, he seemed proof against peril, and empowered with ubiquity! The whole continent of Europe trembled at beholding the audacity of his designs, and the miracle of their execution. Scepticism bowed to the prodigies of his performance; romance assumed the air of history; nor was there aught too incredible for belief, or too fanciful for expectation, when the world saw a subaltern of Corsica waving his imperial flag over her most ancient capitals. All the visions of antiquity became commonplaces in his contemplation; kings were his people, nations were his outposts; and he disposed of courts, and crowns, and camps, and churches, and cabinets, as if they were the titular dignitaries of the chess-board!

Amid all these changes he stood immutable as adamant. It mattered little whether in the field or the drawing-room-with the mob or the levee-wearing the Jacobin bonnet or the iron crown— banishing a Braganza, or espousing a Hapsburg-dictating peace on a raft to the Czar of Russia, or contemplating defeat at the gallows of Leipsic-he was still the same military despot!

Cradled in the camp, he was to the last hour the darling of the army and whether in the camp or the cabinet, he never forsook a friend or forgot a favour. Of all his soldiers not one abandoned him, till affection was useless, and their first stipulation was for the safety of their favourite.

They knew well that if he was lavish of them, he was prodigal of himself; and that if he exposed them to peril, he repaid them with plunder. For the soldier he subsidized everybody; to the people he made even pride pay tribute. The victorious veteran glittered with his gains; and the capital, gorgeous with the spoils of art, became the miniature metropolis of the universe. In this wonderful combination, his affectation of literature must not be omitted. The gaoler of the press, he affected the patronage of letters-the proscriber of books, he encouraged philosophy-the persecutor of authors, and the murderer of printers, he yet pretended to the protection of learning!-the assassin of Palm, the silencer of De Staël, and the denouncer of Kotzebue, he was the friend of David, the benefactor of De Lille, and sent his academic prize to the philosopher of England.

Such a medley of contradictions, and at the same time such an individual consistency, were never united in the same character. A Royalist―a Republican and an Emperor-a Mahometan-a Catholic and a patron of the Synagogue-a Subaltern and a Sovereign-a Traitor and a Tyrant-a Christian and an Infidel-he was, through all his vicissitudes, the same stern, impatient, inflexible originalthe same mysterious, incomprehensible self-the man without a model, and without a shadow.

His fall, like his life, baffled all speculation. In short, his whole history was like a dream to the world, and no man can tell how or why he was awakened from the reverie.

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