to all this. To make this United Italy, it would seem that I must work more and eat less than heretofore." And this is perfectly true. I have not a word to say against Liberty. I only premise that it is a thing to be paid for. Occasion ally it is well worth the money. As we deem it in England, and occasionally as America shows us, it is one of the veriest shams and humbugs that has ever misled humanity.

Now, the assertion is not perhaps pleasant to make or to listen to, but it is a fact, that corrupt governments are generally cheap ones -that is to say, that oppressive rulers are often disposed to conciliate their subjects by the diffusion of material benefits, while they grind them down by restrictive laws and tyrannical edicts. The duchy of Modena, for instance, was more arbitrary in its sway-more insolently irresponsible in the exercise of its wayward rule-than any country of modern Europe, and yet no people ever paid less taxes than the Modenese.

How lightly were the Neapolitans taxed under the Bourbons! and so we might proceed upwards and show that for every concession to freedom there came a price, till we reached Tuscany, where enlightenment and civilization stood certainly highest in the peninsula, and where, at the same time, taxation was heaviest, and men saw that liberty was just as much a luxury as plate-glass, or jewels, or champagne: that is to say, it was a charming thing if you could afford it, but was by no means a positive necessity; and, like all luxuries, it had only charms for those who had tasted of it, and felt its attractions.

Liberty has very fine things in her gift, it is true. Personal freedom, immunity from arrest without sufficient cause shown and legal authority invoked, free discussion, free speech, religious toleration, untrammelled education,-are no small boons; but there is not one of them

whose due appreciation does not exact either a certain amount of reflection, or of information; whereas the humblest and the most narrowminded can comprehend the hardship of increased taxation, and there is no intelligence so limited but can take in the fact, that it is less pleasant to pay ten centimes than five.

Liberty, besides, was always represented to be as much a man's birthright as the air he breathed. Our reformers told us that we are only, in asking for it, demanding our own: how came it then that it was so costly? Why, if it were the inalienable possession of humanity, should it be paid for? This certainly is capable of explanation, but we are not to be surprised if the masses have not, hit on the solution as readily as we might wish.

The organized pressure which we call Liberty requires policemen, and magistrates, and jails, and penitentiaries, and courts of law to punish libel and repress slander, not to speak of all the appliances to prevent religious freedom from degenerating into blasphemy, and free speech becoming a scandal and a shame; and these are all parts of a very costly machinery.

Irresponsible governments work cheap, just because they can dispense with all this mechanism. The Pacha who says, "Cut off his head," does not cost the State he serves one-fiftieth part of a ChiefJustice, before whom the culprit comes after five months' imprisonment, to be arraigned by an Attorney-General with four thousand ayear, and a corps of witnesses like an army. I don't say I prefer Ottoman justice to English; but if I want the latter, I must be content to pay for it. Now the Italians at this moment are in that crisis which all people must pass through, and they want all the benefits of good government and all the cheapness of the bad.

The misfortune is, there are nations that would positively prefer tyranny, oppression, and cruelty, if they only came accompanied by cheapness and an easily-provided existence, to all the benefits of the highest civilization, if linked with a high tariff; just as the Irish peasant liked his old lawless, reckless, devilmay-care landlord, that sometimes took a shot at him, sometimes forgave him his rent, better than the modern agriculturist with his Scotch steward, who will neither overlook

arrears nor weeds, and who, if he is never cruel, is equally far from any impulsive generosity in his behalf.

Naples, like Ireland, is just in this state of awakement. They have each of them emerged from barbarism, but it was a barbarism so congenial and so cheap withal, that they'd almost rather have it back again, than all this newfangled Freedom, that makes bread so dear and saints' days so seldom.

What should we say if an order came forth from the Master of the Mint, or some such competent authority, "That all the copper coinage of the country should be submitted to a most searching test to ascertain its purity-that pennypieces and halfpennies were no longer to pass current without a new certificate of their genuineness, while gold and silver were to circulate as usual-all warranty of their unadulterated value being deemed needless"?

I ask, would not the commonsense reading of such an edict be, that it was exceedingly absurd and ridiculous?

Would not men of ordinary intelligence say, "It is not of very great moment to me that I am now and then imposed on by a 'rap halfpenny I can sustain the loss with composure, and bear it without fretting; but if I constantly find a number of bad shillings in my change, and if occasionally I detect some spurious sovereigns in my purse, the affair is more serious, and I am certainly disposed to resent it"?

This is precisely what our Government is at this moment enacting in England with respect to CivilService employment. The men who are to fill all the inferior offices of the State are to be rigidly and

severely examined, while all those who succeed to the higher employments are to enter upon them untried, untested, and unproven. Το be a Gauger, you must be a historian, a geographer, an arithmetician, and a naturalist. To be the Governor of a colony, you may be a "Cretin"! To convey a despatch across Europe, you must prove your efficiency in French and decimal fractions, and such other knowledge: to be the writer of that same despatch, no such test is asked of you. The bearer of the message is put through his parts of speech. The writer may-and very often does, too-revel in all the unrestrained freedom of bad gram

mar.

Perhaps you will say that the system is progressive, and that, these initial tests once submitted to, the man proves his fitness for the highest office. To this I simply say, When did you ever hear of a penny-piece growing into a crown; or have you any experience of a farthing that became a sovereign? No; the whole system is based on this great principle, Take care of the pence, the pounds will take care of themselves; and certainly so they have done. This legislation is all theirs. It is they who have decreed it. They have declared aloud that shocking abuses are

abroad. The poor are hourly defrauded. "No one can tell the number of base penny-pieces that are in circulation. This must be looked to' at once." It is thus the pounds have spoken, and God help the pennies! Gold and silver legislato for bronze and copper, and of course bronze and copper have nothing to say to it. Now, if I know anything about myself, I am not a Radical not, perhaps, so much because these people have not occasionally a show of reason in what they ask, as from the dislike I have ever felt for their company. They are an overbearing, dogmatical, obtrusive class, loud of speech, coarse of manner, and insolent in bearing; but, without any Radicalism whatever, I would in all humanity ask, Why keep all your tests for the coppers? Why not now and then analyse a sixpence? If I could screw up courage enough, I would add, Why not put a halfsovereign in the crucible? Surely it is of more moment that these be genuine than the others. Would not the nation have more patience for a penny-postman that missent a letter, than for a governor who lost a colony? and yet it is for the pennypostman's education we are so vitally concerned; and the governor may be anything, only a shade above the requirements for Bedlam.

Have able and efficient public servants by all means; even in the lower walks of office take care that you are not served stupidly or ill. Let the penny-pieces be genuine copper; but, in heaven's name, don't ask them to be more, and do not submit them to the test applicable to bullion, while you let the same bullion go free unquestioned.

But this is not all. The pennies are not merely required to be good pennies, worth four farthings, but they are asked to be useful in various other ways foreign to their original intention as ounce weights, letter-pressers, and heaven knows what besides; that is, the Tidewaiter is examined in acoustics, and

the War-Office clerk probed in comparative anatomy and numismatics. Like the Irishman's pig, you want him to go to Cork, and you turn his head to Fermoy.

In the name of all that is Chinese, what is this for? Why must a man bring to one pursuit in life forty acquirements that would adapt him for another? If you go to a dentist to relieve you from the pangs of a toothache, is your first inquiry whether he has ever operated for cataract, or how often he has tied the subclavian artery? And yet this is not all; for if the dentist, being a bungler, should smash your jaw, and then tell you it is a satisfaction to you to know that the man who makes his artificial teeth is thoroughly up in osteology, and a deep proficient in animal chemistry, he would be exactly carrying out the present system. Are we, I ask once more, to take all the gold and silver on trust, and only scrutinise the brass?

I

What amount of shamefacedness could omulgate such a plan, is hard to conceive. I have heard from a Secretary of State, French so execrable that it would reject the veriest unpaid attaché. have read despatches from similar hands that would have "plucked" an exciseman; and are those to enjoy high place and station and salary, and yet some poor devil clerk go out a beggar and houseless because at the age of forty he cannot render Bonnycastle's Algebra,

or

"mention all the one-eyed men of distinction since the days of William Rufus?" I implore most eagerly that there should be some test for the bullion. Let us have a Secretary for the Colonies put through his physical sciences. I'd like to examine the Senior Lord of the Admiralty on the best mode of "footing turf" in a wet bog; and with all his varied acquirements, I'd like to take the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the merits and demerits of the Bauchet system of horse training. The "Pounds"

they are resolved to "take care of themselves." Perhaps the theory is that they are too elevated for observation that if the base of the pyramid be ornamented, it is no matter what is at the top.

At all events, the abuse is now unbearable. If the crown - piece shirk the crucible, you have no right to throw the penny into it. If we must become Prussian or Pekinite for they are about the same-make a free trade in office

to competitive examination, and let the first Lord of the Treasury go up to Burlington House, and be put through his Colenso like the rest of us. But, above all, let us not keep all the scrutiny for the small people-all the prizes for the big ones. Do not stamp education, in fact, as you do "cheap broth"-a very good thing for the poor; and do not be, as the adage says, "Penny wise and pound foolish."

I fervently hope that no indiscreet but enthusiastic admirers of mine in some future age will ever think of honouring me by a centenary. I know the temptation will be strong. I feel that a grateful posterity will be eager to repay what contemporaries have been so lax in acknowledging. In imagine, too, how the words O'Dowd COMMEMORATION would read on a placard; and I can fancy the "snobs" of another century running about with "original portraits" and "curious manuscriptal remains" of what they will doubtless call "Our Immortal Humorist." Now I hereby desire to place on record my formal protest against the whole proceeding. It is not that the great Shakespeare sham has giving me a hearty disgust to such celebrations, but that I feel that they are false in logic as in taste; and there never was, and probably never will be, a reputation high enough to stand above the ridicule that attaches to such vulgar and low-lived adulation.

Had the great Bard's bust been anything but plaster-of-Paris, it would have blushed at the company by which it was surrounded. In the first place, these people start with something very like a vote of censure on their ancestors, who, having had a great man amongst

them, were stupid enough not to recognise his genius or admit his greatness. Now, for my own part, I suspect that the ordinary vice of every age is in over-estimating itself, and consequently thinking far too highly of its own products, whether the same be enormous gooseberries or great generals. I am strongly disposed to believe that our present-day gods and goddesses will be thought very little of by our next-century successors, and we ourselves held proportionately cheap, for the intense admiration we have accorded them. There is this, however, to be said for the judgments of contemporaries, that they could recognise and appreciate the fitness of the man to his time; and this, of course, no opinions of a remote posterity could pretend to vie with.

I remember hearing how congregations used to cry at Dean Curwen's sermons. I bought the book, and I vow I almost cried too over the ten-and-sixpence I paid for it; and yet there is no denying the power this man wieldetl. The scenes his churches witnessed of enthusiastic feeling-of benevolence, exaggerated to a perfect hysterical passion transcended by the records of Mrs. Siddons in Lady Macbeth. The offertory - plate was filled with brooches, rings, bracelets:

are not

what

ever of ornament adorned the brow or breast of beauty, was thrown half-frantically to swell the sum that went to assuage the sorrows of wretchedness, or save from destitution the widow and the orphan. Read one of these appeals now, and if it will move you to contribute a sixpence, you must have a heart open as day to melting charity; and yet this was the subject of Grattan's beautiful eulogy-this was he who, in feeding the lamp of charity, exhausted the lamp of life, &c.

Now, we have nothing to induce us to believe that our grandfathers and grandmothers were a softhearted generation. From all that we can learn of them, they were pretty much like ourselves. They had the same sort of pomps, vanities, and temptations as we have, and doubtless met them in a spirit like our own. I am willing to admit that they were not worse, but I do not believe that they were better than us. How came it, then, that this preacher, whose eloquence, to our thinking, is anything but impassioned, and whose appeals we can read now as coolly as we con over our Bradshaw,' moved enraptured audiences at his will, and made even those who came to deny his powers remain to testify, by solemn acts of benevolence, to his persuasiveness! Take what is before our eyes at this moment: is there any one bold enough to say that Spurgeon's sermons, to which twenty thousand persons weekly listen in rapt wonder and

wor

ship, will some fifty years hence have fifty readers-ay, even five? And not that the man has not power and ability-his success has put that much on record; but that there is a species of power and ability that must come aided by the individuality, and that they who have not witnessed the exercise of these gifts, when so accompanied, are not fair judges of the effect.

We are often wrong, then, in saying that this or that man who achieved a celebrity in some by

gone day would not have been distinguished had he lived in our own era. The chances are we should have taken him at the same price as our forefathers did. Let us be slow to disparage the age in which a charlatan was made much of-not only because there never yet was a time without such examples, but also because the charlatan was undeniably a cleverer fellow than we are willing to believe him. There are, however, now and then instances of men so transcendently great, that what they have done remains an authority for future ages, and becomes an eternal possession to the land that bore them. These men, if they be writers, imbue the language with their own genius, enriching the humblest who talks with the bright flashes of their soul, the charming vagrancies of their fancy, and the heart-stirring eloquence of their passion. Such men commemorate themselves. What can you do for them?-how exalt them, how honour them? Let your homage take what shape it will, it must ever be in its proportions absurdly unequal to the object of its devotion. A statue has its meaning, certainly, but beyond that we can do nothing. Of the success of commemoration festivals, processions, concerts, monster dinners, brass bands, and brass orators, let that sad spectacle in honour of Shakespeare testify.

A small town in the east of Italy, where Rossini had once passed some time, conceived the idea of commemorating the great Maestro's sojourn amongst them by a statue. The zeal was unhappily greater than the wealth, and after some months of unwearied toil the managing committee announced the sad fact, that although one high spirited individual had of himself contributed the pedestal, which was already built, and ready to receive the statue, the moneyed contribution only reached twelve hundred francs. In this dilemma they, with a courage that all must commend, waited on the illustriou