gisterial interference. All this shows the quantity of work you ladies have set up against the poor and industrious fair trader, whose hands is his or her support, and which, evidently, you are not borne out in any interference with for any object whatsoever; or to lay the foundation of your charities, at the expense of the poor.

"And it is presumed, from the non-attendance of our gracious vice-queen at your bazaar, that though a stranger to our country, she has had that consideration in the benevolence of her heart, which, either through inadvertency or the fashion of the day, appears to have escaped yours. And believe the want of emporium for sale of female works, has occasioned much trouble to her grace, by many of those starving creatures who have had no other hope of trying to get their productions off their hands, has led them to seek that commiseration from the stranger, which they have failed to receive at home. So contrary is all this to the natural goodness of heart, so wound up in our national female character, that it is indeed with pain it is adverted to, and is only attributed to the immediate desire of doing good; having, in the impulse of the moment, banished that more general, reflecting, and feeling consideration. Your hearts, when thus strongly appealed to, will, I am convinced, receive in the charity and benevolence, so characteristic in the fair daughters of Erin,

"Whose obedient servant I am,
"PENELOPE,

**DUBLIN, 23d March.

"Out of work."

LIBERAL ILLIBERALITY.

I REMARKED, with pain, in many of my Italian friends, who have distinguished themselves by every species of sacrifice in the cause of liberality, an affected illiberality with respect to the arts. I have seen them turn with apparent disgust from the finest works of the greatest masters, when accompanying me to the Brera, the gallery at Florence, or the Vatican. They used to say, "There is the cause of our ruin: we have preserved the elegant, at the expense of the useful. Raphael and Michael Angelo keep us under the Austrian yoke! Had the Russians loved the enfeebling arts, as we have done, they would never have burned their Moscow! The Venus de Medicis alone would have saved the Kremlin !"

Going one day to visit the now greatest sculptor of the age, Chantry, the gallant and celebrated General P, having accompanied me to the door, made his bow, observing, "I have made a vow against the arts---the more perfect they are, the more mischievous."

British utilitarianism, like Italian patriotism, has sometimes taken the alarm at the unproductiveness of the arts, and asserted that they are not physically necessary to our existence. Yet if the arts do not lessen positive evil, they at least augment the number of our sensitive enjoyments; and after the first necessaries are supplied, all improvements in manufactures go but to that. Bread and water will support life a hole in the earth will bid defiance to the

elements-and a seal-skin in winter, and a few cockatoo feathers in summer, supply the coldest and the hottest regions with an adequate toilette. All beyond this is luxury, or means adopted to increase the sphere of pleasurable sensation, and to support a greater number of the species.

In this point of view, the fine arts are equally objects of statistic value with the useful manufac tures. Their moral influence is an additional benefit. All declamation against the arts is folly, simply because they belong to the organization of man

to his love of pleasure and his tendency to imitation. He who produces a fine picture, still produces; and under that utilitarian consideration, his labour is at least as valuable as that of a goldsmith. These modern utilitarians are the Calvinists of political economy, and they strip their doctrine of so many graces, and render it such a "Praise-GodBarebones" sort of thing, that they will soon leave their church without a female disciple: and wo to the church, or the system, that is deserted by the women! They who would legislate for the world, must live in the world; and the best intentions, aided by the best talents, will be found inadequate to serve the great cause of humanity, if its schemes, though perfect in the abstract, are inapplicable in practice to the actual state of society.

AT THE HEAD OF HIS PROFESSION.

DOCTOR **** now so celebrated and so wealthy, served a hard probation to success. I knew him in his obscurity, and thought him then a better and an abler man, than I think him now. I saw him struggling, through all the hopeless drudgery of his profession, up to his present eminence: haunting hospitals, and bowing to Nurse Tenders. For years, he read, wrote, and lectured, and did every thing but get on--still he laughed, and talked, and was agreeable: at last he looked solemn, wore black silk stockings and creaking shoes, walked on tiptoe, and turned Methodist: his success was rapid and complete; and he is now what is called-at the head of his profession!--Le savoir faire vaut bien le savoir!"

RELIGIOUS AUSTERITY.

It is quite deplorable to see how many rational creatures (or, at least, who are thought so) mistake suffering for sanctity, and think a sad face and a gloomy habit of mind, propitious offerings to that Deity, whose works are all light, and lustre, and harmony, and loveliness.

I have just had a visit from a pair of papistical pietists, in such a state of attenuation, that they look

as if they had escaped from a besieged town after a month's famine. They had been keeping black lent (a fast, I believe, now peculiar to Ireland), which it would be difficult to persuade a Roman cardinal to observe. I began to quote Swift's well known stanza

"Who can believe, with common sense,
That bacon fried gives God offence?
Or that a herring has a charm,

Almighty anger to disarm?

Wrapped up in majesty divine,
Does he regard on what we dine?"

This was an impertinent interference; and they answered me very sensibly, by alleging that a special providence is a dogma in all religions; and that, at all events, they were bound to obey their church, or leave it! They had made their election. As they took their leave, Mrs. came in from early service, with her prayer-book in her hand, and all the anathemas of exclusive perfection in her sour face. Mrs. is a high-church-evangelical protestant-ascendancy lady-once well known in the caste of Dublin gayety, though now no less distinguished in the album sanctorum of "the serious." What a look she cast on my poor little papists, as they passed her! Excommunication by bell, book, and candlelight, and death without benefit of clergy, in every scowling lineament.

"I did not know these little bigots visited you," said the good Mrs. ;" you are such a notorious

heretic, to say the least."

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"O! I assure you the Catholic saints are much more tolerant than you Protestant saints. My attacks on Catholicism, as I found it restored in

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