meter, we have no register of the temperature, but the weather was in all respects delightful: warmer, of course, than in the winter, but never oppres sively hot; and, with the exception of one day's continuous rain, we were never prevented from passing the greater part of the day sub dio."

From these data the climate may be defined as "mild, humid, and agreeable."

We may gather something of the state of religion in these islands from the following remarks. Speaking of one of the convents they say—

"Besides the vines, which had now left their trellises, and were growing 'at their own sweet will,' there were some quince and pear trees, and among tangled bushes, ruinous stone walls, and heaps of tiles, fuchsias were hanging their long pensile blossoms, and white and red roses were blooming, the only beautiful things there. There was no beauty in the architecture, and therefore none in its decay. It was a forlorn, naked ruin; every part reminding the spectator that at a comparatively recent date it had been inhabited. The church is to be spared; but in a few months all the rest will be razed to the ground, and the spot converted by its Roman Catholic possessor, into an orange-garden, to supply desserts for English heretics. Thus is it that Don Pedro has dealt with the convents and monasteries of Portugal. They are turned into gardens and storehouses. Then comes Chateaubriand, and tells us with a certain blindness of heart, akin to vainglory and hypocrisy, that the Catholic religion has covered the world with its monuments, that Protestantism has now lasted three centuries, and is powerful in England, in Germany, in America;' inquires what it has done?' and answers that, it will show you the ruins which it has made, amidst which it has planted some gardens and established some manufactories.'

In the instance of the convent at Villa Franca, any government would have exercised a scund discretion in putting a stop to the immoralities which were committed there; for, if common rumour is to be believed, the high stone walls which encircled this convent were insufficient for their purposes; and if they had not been so it would have been remarkable, in an island where the whole

body of the clergy openly break a vow which we Protestants think they have no business to make. In talking on this subject to a Portuguese gentleman of high official rank, he admitted that it was a notorious grievance, but attributed it to the want of superintendence of bishops over the vulgar clergy of the Azores. In Portugal, he said, there was no such open scandal.

"I was told by a friend who accompanied us over the convent, that several years ago the nuns were reported to have been in so unruly and discreditable a state as to call for the interference of the home government. Two inspectors were accordingly selected, and were despatched from Lisbon to St. Michael's, to make inquiries into the truth of the reports, and to search the convent and examine the nuns. They arrived in Villa Franca towards the close of the day, took up their abode within the convent walls, and proposed on the following morning to institute their examination.

An evening meal was prepared for them, of which it is supposed that they partook; and that they soon afterwards retired to rest. Here, however, their melancholy tale ends, for from the time that they entered the convent all trace of them was lost, and to the present moment no one certainly knows what became of them; whether they were secretly conveyed out of the island, or whether they had to choose between poison or the knife. This story may be true; I do not vouch for it; it smacks somewhat of the wonderful. The retired nuns who had belonged to this convent, whom we met with, were stout jolly personages, whose title-pages did not pourtray tragic volumes. Florian observed of the Portuguese nation, 'ils semblent nés pour l'amour; c'est la grande affaire de leur vie; les plus grands sacrifices ne coûtent rien dès qu'il s'agit de cette passion.'"

After all the Western Isles seem to want the lovely evergreen Flora of Madeira, the charming valleys of the Coural, the gay and hospitable mansions of Franchal ever to make them a much-frequented residence of invalids.

Our space, though not our inclination prevents our making further extracts from these very agreeable volumes, but we earnestly recommend their perusal to our readers.

It is now some time since we felt it indispensably necessary to treat at any length upon the subject of politics; a fact upon which we congratulate both ourselves and our readers. They know that when affairs stood "in precipiti," and when no one could tell what a day might bring forth, we were not slow to buckle on the harness, and take our stand against the formidable faction which had obtained such an evil ascendancy in the councils of the nation, and whose measures threatened such irreparable mischief. We have seen that faction deposed. We have seen a sudden arrest put to the progress of revolution; and we have felt, accordingly, that the time had come when the literature militant of the country might be put upon a peace establishment, and a warfare which we would never have engaged in from choice, might for a season give place to pursuits which fall in, more naturally, with our inclination.

Yes, the change from the destructive to the conservative government is one that, in the first instance at least, is felt more in the remission of all painful anxiety respecting our present and future prospects, than in the desire for the achievement of any great measures by which the statesmanship of our friends in power may be distinguished. We feel as if we were suddenly brought into safety out of the extremest danger; and that the perils which beset the institutions of the country, and those which menaced its foreign prospects, have given place to a well-grounded hope, that they will all be speedily and effectually removed. And in proportion as our anxiety was intense, and our alarm great, while profligate men held the reins of power, who had neither the fear of God before their eyes, nor any love of the ancient institutions of the country rooted in their hearts, so is the disposition strong which we feel to abandon ourselves to a perhaps too supine security, now that the plighted champions of Conservative policy have been called to the councils of the Queen, and are sustained in office by

triumphant majorities in both houses of parliament.

There is no more remarkable feature in the character of the human kind than the suddenness with which they become forgetful of passed dangers. In other animals there is a degree of caution inspired by perils with which they have once been beset, which renders them perpetually alive to the possibility of their recurrence, and inspires them with an instinctive alarm, by which they are put upon their guard against them. "In vain is the net laid in the sight of any bird," but expresses, in particular, a general truth, applicable to the whole of what are called the irrational creation ; and its converse is almost equally true as applied to their lord and master, man. To illustrate this to the extent to which we might be tempted, if we were to indulge in our peculiar bent, would carry us far beyond the limits to which we must necessarily confine ourselves on an occasion like the present, when the thought is merely suggested by the illustration which presents itself in the singular indifference which seemed to have taken possession of the public mind when the late ill-omened administration were overthrown, and the empire was thus saved from calamities more threatening and more tremendous than ever before loured upon its prospects. It is true, the great and good men by whom they were succeeded, were such as to inspire a very universal confidence that all will now be done that can be done, to repair the disasters that have occurred, and to prevent those that might be apprehended. But this apathy, to which we allude, is discernible in the fact, that the bulk of us are content to leave to ministers our extrication from a state of peril such as seldom before beset any nation but for its ruin, while we conceive that our own duties are best discharged by sharply criticising the means employed for our deliverance, and rendering difficult, if not impossible, the only course by which any statesman can achieve our safety. The crisis was peculiar when Sir R,

Peel was called to the helm of power. A ministry the most reckless the country ever saw, had exhausted every wicked device which could be imagined for their longer retention of office; and having reduced the finances of the country to the verge of bankruptcy, and involved us in angry relations with France and the East, which might have produced at any moment an universal war, as a last desperate expedient had recourse to a project for the raising of additional revenue, by which the landed interest is to be sacrificed to the grasping cupidity of short-sighted manufacturers, and a state of things produced which must, in the language of Lord Melbourne himself on a former occasion, embroil the whole country in inextricable confusion. If they succeeded, we were undone. If they succeeded, never again would England have raised her head as a nation. If they succeeded down would go the monarchy and the church, those firmest bulwarks of social order, and in would rush the promiscuous tide of low, levelling radicalism, and malignant dissent, by which a speedy obliteration would be made of every institute by which the ancient greatness of the country was characterised; and the wretched, blinded tools by whom the work of destruction had been begun, would soon find, like the Girondists of France, whose history had been written in vain for their instruction, that they themselves were only doomed to be trampled under the heels of more daring and triumphant wickedness, and that in conspiring for the destruction of their country, they were but preparing the scaffold for themselves.

Do not talk to us of the interest of such men in the preservation of social order. Such an interest may exist as an abstract truth, but all sensible men well know that in such cases it is utterly inoperative as a practical reality. What such a man as Lord John Russell thinks of, is, how he is to defeat Sir Robert Peel; how he is to secure the spoils of office; how it is he is to lead his party to parliamentary victories. In all these he and his colleagues feel the interest of one who is playing a great game. That it is which predominantly actuates and influences them; and the interest which, as quiet members of the community, they feel, or

should feel, in the conservation of those laws and usages which guarantee to them and to every man the security of their possessions, is utterly forgotten in the presence of that more absorbing feeling which possesses them as partisans, and causes them to regard the triumphs of their party as paramount to every other consideration by which, as statesmen or as patriots, they should be guided. Such is Lord John Russell, because such is human nature; and such must be every natural man in whom party views and objects are not overruled by higher and deeper convictions which subordinate the strivings and the doings of the mere politician to the attainment of those ends which should never be lost sight of by the true philosopher or the practical Christian.

Well, the country stood upon the brink of revolution; and it was when we were upon the point of passing under the yoke of an infidel radicalism, which would have caused the sun of the empire to set in blood and for ever, that it pleased Divine Providence to give us that change of rulers by which we have experienced at least a reprief of our doom as a nation, and have had one more opportunity afforded us of maintaining our proper place amongst the states of Europe. We talk of the triumphant majority by which Sir Robert Peel was installed in power, and we talk of it as though that majority in so doing laid that eminent politician under great obligations. But this is absurd and childish. The post of honour is the post of danger. The place of power and office is one of responsibility and labour. And we tell the furious and factious Conservatives, for such there are, who are venting their spleen against the right honourable baronet, for departing in the slightest degree from what they would prescribe as the rule of his government, that the nation should feel infinitely more indebted to him for assuming, than he to the nation for conferring upon him, his present power; and that no exercise of the privileges of office could possibly afford to a man circumstanced as he was, any, even the slightest compensation for the sacrifice which he has consented to make, and the toil, and labour, and distracting anxiety, and harassing responsibility which he has consented to undergo, solely, we believe, under a constraining

sense of public duty, that he was called upon to do so for the good of the country.

No sooner were the late wretched occupants of office ejected, than they called upon the right honourable baronet to declare at once his measures. He said, give me a little time. I am only a few days in my place as prime minister; I have not as yet had time to acquaint myself with the official documents that belong to my office, and that have been so long in your hands. I will promise to use all due diligence in making myself acquainted with them, and then I will not delay both to form and express my opinion as to the course of government and of legislation which it becomes her majesty's ministers to recommend to the consideration of parliament. Such were the reasonable demands of Sir Robert, against which the whole Whig-Radical press and opposition angrily and vociferously protested, saying, we will suffer no delay; you must come to the point at once. You have heard what we proposed to do; you have objected to it, and turned us out. Tell us now what you propose to do, or quit office, and leave the government again to ourselves. But the prime minister's calm good sense taught him to despise this turgid rhetoric. He took the time to deliberate which the Whig opposition would not give him; and the result has been the development of a system of policy the most straightforward, effective, and statesmanlike that could possibly, in the very difficult circumstances in which he was placed, be adopted with any practical benefit to the country.

We ask any reflecting man, who contemplated the perils and the embarrassments of the empire before Sir Robert made his financial statement, whether our condition as a nation did not appear almost hopeless? A debt of one thousand millions augmenting instead of diminishing after seven-andtwenty years of peace. A deficit of not less than ten millions upon the annual revenue. Expenses to an interminable extent contracted by foreign operations of which no one could see the end. The trading and commercial portion of the empire in a state of almost unexampled embarrassment. A population which had outgrown the means of subsistence from the resources of the country itself. And a

vastly increased and increasing party in favour of such a change respecting the laws which regulated the admission of foreign corn, as must, at one fell swoop, have prostrated the agricultural interest, and transferred to the foreign corn-grower the wealth of the British empire. Such was the aspect of affairs when Sir Robert Peel assumed the reins of power. Such were the difficulties with which he had to deal. And when he had made his financial statement, and fully developed the ministerial plans, we ask, did not all these difficulties seem on a sudden to have vanished? Did not resources stand revealed which were before unthought of or unknown? Did not every honest and right-thinking man feel, and proudly feel, that there was still vigour in old England to combat against and overcome the difficulties by which she was beset: and that, under the auspices of the enlightened statesman, to whose honesty, industry, and ability we were thus indebted, all these difficulties would, in no long time, be triumphantly surmounted? That, we say advisedly, was the effect produced upon the mind and the heart of the nation by Sir Robert Peel's financial statement. He surprised both his friends and his enemies. The latter felt that their last hope of disturbing him in office was extinct. The former, that a career of tranquillity, prosperity, and happiness was still before us, of which, even the most sanguine of us never until then entertained an expectation. The national debt was no longer felt as a mill-stone. Extrication from financial embarrassment was no longer regarded as hopeless. The means were made apparent for supplying the deficiency in our revenue. Instead of proceeding, as by an irresistible necessity, from bad to worse, it was now clear, that under prudent management, things might be made to progress from good to better. And such an arrangement respecting the corn-laws and the commercial duties by which the admission of raw and manufactured foreign commodities might be adınitted, was shown to be practicable, as would at once silence the fears and satisfy the reasonable expectations of the reflecting portion. of the nation; securing that competent supply of food which the increasing demands of the population required and that supply of foreign manufac

tured articles, of use or of luxury, at reasonable prices, by which consumers would feel themselves compensated for their increased taxation.

Yes; we seemed to have come out of the hands of bankrupt burglars, who could only keep up a fire in one part of the house, by breaking up the floors of another, into those of men who were both able and willing to detect their knavery and repair their blunders, and who had discovered an unexpected mine of wealth, by the honest and laborious working of which, a remedy would soon be found for all our financial evils.

Such, most undoubtedly, did appear to the mind of the nation the probable upshot of the statesmanlike proposal of Sir Robert Peel. No one could be insensible to the evil of an income tax. As an abstract proposition, the notion of it could not be entertained. It is, confessedly, both oppressive and inquisitorial. As a war tax it might be endured, as long as our existence as a nation was in peril; but the very first breathing hour of peace was longed for, chiefly for the remission which it was sure to bring, of an impost the most grinding and distasteful. Το what, then, are we to ascribe the almost universal acquiescence of the nation, in the leading measure of the prime minister, by which a war tax is proposed in a time of peace? Any acquiescence on the part of the opposition leaders? No. These factious men are not wanting in a due fidelity to the master whom they serve. have exhausted every device of faction in endeavouring to raise a cry against it. In the power and the unanimity of the Conservative press? Never was a minister less cordially supported by those whom he might have regarded as his allies. The ablest of the organs of the great party whom he represents, has exhausted a world of ingenuity in fishing up captious objections against it. Neverthe

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less, it stands fast in the tacit approbation of the reflecting men of all parties, who constitute the thinking majority of the nation; and who, in deciding for it, can only be understood as deciding, that ten years of misgovernment under the Whigs is worse than twenty years of actual war; that the nation has suffered more waste and dilapidation under their protection, than it could have incurred of loss or VOL. XX. No. 116.

Some opposition the measure has encountered, and from a quarter whence we should have looked for better things. Sir Richard Vivian, who has given a silent support to the minister in parliament, has, out of doors, in a letter addressed to his constituents, thrown away not a little very good indignation in declaiming against his measures in such a way as to make the profligate and seditious laugh, and the judicious and considerate to grieve. He objects to the income tax as a war tax, and as inquisitorial; and, having rung the usual changes upon these topics, he refers, with an air of triumph to the repeal of it in 1815, when all the efforts of a strong government were baffled by the formidable opposition in which men of all parties joined against it. Now we must tell Sir Richard Vivian, that to our minds, that very opposition constituted one of the most damning sins of the aristocracy of England. It betrayed what the late Lord Londonderry justly stigmatized as "an ignorant impatience of taxation," most reprehensible in a class whom wisdom should have taught to look beyond present convenience to future safetyupon whom it could have pressed but as a very inconsiderable burden; while it is demonstrable, that its continuance, even in a modified form, to the present day, would, by this time, have extinguished the national debt. We therefore regard the factious movements which led to its remission as one of the most grievous errors of the unreformed parliament, even as that acquiescence in a similar measure which has now received the royal assent is to be regarded as the most favourable specimen of legislation which has as yet been afforded by the reformed House of Commons.

When Sir Richard Vivian states that

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