were obliged to reject numerous applications for tickets, to the great disappointment of hundreds of their Conservative brethren.

The speeches were such as would have done credit to any assembly. We have read them carefully, and can only regret our want of space to do them justice.

We cannot, however, resist presenting our readers with a few short and pithy extracts from the published report:

"When we see so many around us combined together, in one common confederacy against the venerable and matchless institutions of our country-when it appears to have become the fashion of the present day to be disloyal, to speak evil of dignities and the powers that be, it is a source of great gratification to see so many of my brother-operatives who have not prostrated themselves before the false god of the present day, that has been set up in the land under the specious name of Reform; but which, instead of being a reformer of real abuses; a redresser of real grievances, has hitherto assumed the aspect only of a disturbera destroyer of every thing that is good and noble in the land, and a willing ally of the wild demagogues of sedition, revolution, and infidelity. I rejoice that the poor operative, as well as the rich man, has now a standard, around which he may rally, take fresh courage, and strengthen the good old cause of Church and King." "Our enemies shall see that we have but the same objects in view, wherever we may be situated,the continuance of social order and good government - the maintenance of our holy religion, by preserving the con.. nexion between Church and State."

The wisdom of our ancestors consecrated a certain portion of their wealth to provide for our instruction in the blessings of a religious ministration,-to give spiritual consolation to the poor man-to provide him a friend in distress, a counsellor in difficulty and doubt.' "National Protestantism is the only title of the house of Hanover to rule over us; and if the Whigs disannul this, they make the government of William IV. an usurpation. When England ceases to be Protestant, the act of settlement and the coronation oath are null and void. The Whigs, not satisfied with the Reformbill, must revolutionise our corporations and the church. This property is ours; it was left by our ancestors for our use, as a body collectively. If the Whigs confiscate this property, they are

"We sound the trumpet, and call upon every Briton who loves his country, who would prolong its glories and its blessings, its independence and its existence, to unite with us in preserving himself and his children from spoliation, beggary, and ruin. But you will naturally ask, Who are our enemies? There is leagued against us a mighty phalanx, imposing in its appearance, and mighty in its power. There is the settled depravity of human nature,-there is the treacherous Whig, the uprooting Radical, and the Destructive; against these you must take your stand. We know that victory is not to be gained but by persevering efforts. But if they derive power from numbers and ignorance, we derive power from our knowledge, and the righteousness of our cause.'

"We would put the history of our country into every man's hand; there he will find that, from the period when the great charter of our rights was obtained from King John, the Lords have always been the best friends of the people's liberties. They will read in the history of the country that a House of Commons once expelled the bishops from parliament, murdered the King, abolished the House of Peers, and then declared their own sittings permanent,-destroying at once the whole electoral franchise of the kingdom. This House of Commons kept the citizens of London down by billeting soldiers in every house, till the populace rose up and burned the members in effigy at Temple Bar; and Cromwell came and turned the villains out, writing upon the door, This house to let.' They had got rid of the King and the Lords previously, or they durst not have acted in this despotic manner; and it would appear that we have now many honourable members who wish to play the same game over again." "We will oppose to the utmost any encroachment on the constitution the British constitution which gives the empire the blessings of monarchy without despotism,- the advantage of a hereditary legislature, identified with the well-being of the nation, -a national church, where the poor have the Gospel preached unto them,— and a house of representatives possessed of sufficient power to look after the rights of the people, their trade, their agriculture; and this is what we wish to preserve from democratic anarchy and despotism." It is now forty-two years since the French people murdered their king; and, after being cursed with republicanism, and despotism in various forms, they are seemingly as far from obtaining freedom as ever.

parte in

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The same

skies, now tell us, that if the citizen king and his ministers succeed in their designs, the French will be the most abject slaves upon earth."

"No man can stand more perfectly free from the imputation of being a bigot than Sir Robert Peel. By his own powers, and by his talents and character, he has advanced to the highest offices of the state: his transcendent ta lents acknowledged even by his most unwilling witnesses; yet he stands exIcluded from the councils of the nation! Why is it so? Is it that he wants the confidence of his sovereign? We have the best reasons to believe this is not the case. Is it that he wants the confidence of his country? The country has testified the reverse. The country, satisfied with the choice of their sovereign, waited with patience for his return. The eyes of all Europe were bent upon him. The declaration of principles on which he was to conduct the government were such as even his enemies could not object to; and the sincerity of that declaration was proved by the measures he introduced. Why, then, is the country deprived of his services? The Whigs call the reason public principle;' but I call it a spirit of faction-thirsting for power, and determining to quench that thirst at any hazard to the constitution."

These plain, unadorned, but expressive sentiments, shew that the speakers are a class of men whose aid is not to be slighted; that they are sound and vigorous thinkers-that they can see through the flimsy parade of liberal opinions which the Whig-Radical has borrowed from Gallic pride and Jacobinical tyranny. They view, with unmitigated horror, the faded bloody wreath which the Whigs have snatched reeking from the revolutionary clubs of France; adorning themselves, to their everlasting shame, in the red night-cap of civil liberty, like the devoted Louis, whose fate was sealed from that hour.

The conservatives of Great Britain have a formidable ally, too long neglected, in the people; too long they have been left to the fatal delusions of those who are now in power. The great promises of their pretended friends have been fully tested; and, like other mighty boasters, they will inevitably be driven away amidst the scoffs and jeers of their disappointed dupes,

An address, which we understand has been extensively circulated, has been put into our hands. It contains a few simple and concise rules, plain and practicable, capable of being put in force without delay, and is a useful and valuable little manual for the organisation of these societies. The declaration, signed by each member, we have given elsewhere. It is the one originally adopted by the South Lancashire Conservative Association, and now, generally, by conservative associations throughout the kingdom.

Before concluding, we hope a few words of friendly advice to members of Conservative Associations will be kindly received.

In the first place we say, do not imagine that with your anniversaries, dinner speeches, and so forth, or with your unremitting attention to the registries, your work is finished. Far higher, more important, more selfdenying duties, claim your attention ere "the plague is stayed." Attention, sedulous, unceasing, must be paid to the registrations; but the poorer of the labouring classes must not be neglected. Let them be instructed in "the right way." Teach them to " fear God and honour the king”—to "meddle not with them that are given to change." Teach them, by acts of kindness and sympathy, to look up to and lean upon you for assistance and advice. If you keep aloof from them, courting and conciliating only "the ten-pounders," you will leave a combustible magazine behind you-a reservoir full of the most inflammable materials - an explosive mixture which a spark may ignite, overwhelming in a moment every trace of moral beauty, destroying every vestige of past greatness, and leaving on the whole surface of society only the fearful witness of that desolation which has swept over it. If the minds of the labouring classes are not previously fortified by sound conservative principles, the political incendiary will step in, his inflammatory doctrines poisoning the very sources of their happiness, and rendering them discontented and disloyal. Teach the poor man to regard those above him, not with envy, but respect to be subject to the higher to reverence dignities-to

feel the value of domestic happiness to seek the consolations of that religion which is equally his birthright with that of his sovereign-to shun, as he would a pesthouse, the haunts of the demagogue and the infidel, whose poison becomes pernicious in proportion as the system is not previously strengthened and occupied by the great principles of moral rectitude and habitual submission to the precepts of revealed truth.

To the members of Operative Conservative Associations we say, obey the laws-seek no unconstitutional redress, no dishonest advantages. In all things be guided by your attachment to the true interests of your country—that real liberty which springs from constitutional principles. Leave the arts and practices of the revolutionary section to your adversaries; cultivate a peaceable, a teachable spirit. Your enemies they who ought to be your protectors -are on the watch: give them no cause of rejoicing. Beware of their emissaries, who will doubtless be sent to sow the seeds of sedition and disturbance amongst you. Listen not to the tempter, he will leave you when he finds no likelihood of success.

Above all things, beware of being led into secret assemblages, the taking of unlawful oaths, using mystical symbols, and the like. Let your proceedings be open, and of such a nature as to bear investigation. Let each association be individual, not ramified, as parts of one great whole. Avoid any thing by which the laws yet in force against "Corresponding Societies " might be made to bear upon you.

Though the promotion of peace, obedience to the laws, and the support of our constitution, the altar, and the throne, are the great objects you have in view; yet such is the anomalous condition under which we are placed, that those who ought to be the guardians of the faith are now its subvertersthose who have sworn to defend the constitution are become its destroyers. You cannot, therefore, be too careful to use no weapons that may be turned

to your own destruction. Look at the dark and infamous projects meditated against the Orange Societies, and take caution.

Rest assured the victory is ours ;let no rash measures impede or delay the glorious, the inevitable result. The miserable degraded remnant, the dregs, of the Whig cabinet, goaded to desperation by reiterated defeat, are at their wits end-any measures, however base, will be resorted to-any expedient by which they may cling to office. Finding too late, what every body else has known long ago, that the country will not be sold, as they are, to an Irish adventurer, they now cry, "We hate O'Connell !" For once we believe them;--they are not the only servants who " hate," cordially hate, their master, and yet are bound either to do his bidding or quit his service. Some of them have subscribed their paltry hundreds each to the Protestant clergy. Despicable hypocrites!-courage, even in a bad cause, may be respected, but cowardice will always be despised. Let them restore these hundreds to the national exchequer, whence they were purloined by a base conspiracy, a swindling process, that would have brought lesser rogues to the cart's tail or the pillory. The trick is seen through, and heartily laughed at; but we have reason to suspect that some more destructive stroke of policy will be tried--we know it is meditated. We hope they will attempt the worst. O'Connell has all but kicked and spat upon them;--should they go on, nothing shall save them even from this offence. Sooner or later "the voice of the people" will indeed speak in a voice of thunder. There are signs abroad which none but the most infatuated, none but this besotted faction, could mistake. A Conservative majority, if we mistake not, is already in the House; and if the people are but true to themselves, another lunar revolution, another periodical return of our own bright orb shall arise upon another era-another ministerial dynasty!

THE asses of Algiers, as we have been kindly and disinterestedly informed by Tom Campbell, are of two kinds,-one of the old Biblical size, that might take Saul upon his back-the other very diminutive, and most wretchedly treated. We know not whether our readers recollect a certain paper,† in our January No. for 1833, in which we vindicated, in connexion with several dramatic aspirants, the dignity of the ass. Our own attention was only the other week called to it, by the receipt of a letter from one of the same aspirants therein named, who thought it not too late in the day, though more than two years after publication, to remark on our remarks, to criticise our criticisms. Another proof of the truth of Hamlet's saying, "There's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year;" or of some other proverb, equally germain, or otherwise, to the matter.

Yes, we have vindicated the dignity of the long-eared creature, whose delight is in braying-that dignity which was felt by the Biblical penmen, by Spenser, by Wordsworth, by Coleridge, and by Cornelius Agrippa, with whom we profoundly" discoursed the mysteries of the ass." Who shall call him again a stupid brute? If any be so stupid as to commit this great offence against good manners, let him betake him to some field, wherein ass and horse suffer unwilling imprisonment from the surrounding hedges. Which of these twain will contrive the means of escape? The ass! and the horse, the apparently nobler animal, will contentedly follow his leader through the breach which he has made in the

proud limitary bushes. See, then, how goodly it is not to judge according to appearances, but to judge a righteous judgment.

Many of those who ride or drive

Paracelsus. By Robert Browning.

change. 1835.

these poor miscalled brutes, are less intelligent than they. Many an ass is percipient of the opposing augel, to whom the false equestrian Balaam is blind. Many an assherd also rides a nobler creature than himself,-as the Irelands, the Malones, the Boadens, sought to rise to power and profit on the reputation of Shakespeare; and many a dull writer, like them, seeks to lash, and spur, and saddle, and curb the public with similar designs, and probably, for a while, not without

success.

"The ass," says Miss Sarah Stickney, in her Poetry of Life," is certainly less poetical than picturesque; but still it is poetical, in its patient endurance of suffering, in its association with the wandering outcasts from society, whose tents are in the wilderness, and whose 'lodging is on the cold ground,'— in its humble appetites, and in its unrepining submission to the most abject degradation. Let us hope that the patience of the ass arises from its own insensibility, and that its sufferings, though frequent, are attended with less acuteness of sensation; but they are sufferings still, borne with a meekness that looks so much like the Christian virtue, resignation, that, in contemplating the hard condition of this degraded animal, the heart is softened with feelings of sorrow and compassion, and we long to rescue it from the yoke of the oppressor.

In

"I have often thought there was something peculiarly affecting in the character of the young ass-something almost saddening to the soul in its sudden starts of short-lived frolic. its appearance there is a strange unnatural mixture of infant glee, with a mournful and almost venerable gravity. Its long melancholy ears are in perfect contrast with its innocent and happy face. It seems to have heard, what is

London; Effingham Wilson, Royal Ex

seldom heard in extreme youth, the sad forebodings of its latter days; and when it crops the thistle, and sports among the briers, it appears to be with the vain hope of carrying the spirit of joy along with it through the after vicissitudes of its hard and bitter lot."

Shew us a man of genius any where, in history, biography, or living presence, and this shall be his picture. Such shall be his endurance, his sufferings; and yet through all such, whether by choice or compulsion, his resignation, simplicity, cheerfulness. But to the

world he shall seem a fool-and by the dunces of the world shall be called one. "A man of genius no sooner appears, but the host of dunces are up in arms to repel the invading alien." Why, to the present day, Paracelsus, to whom the science of chemistry owed so much, is described in all orthodox books, and heterodox too, as a quack of the first water; yet, undoubtedly, he was a man of great genius, as were many of the astrologists, and alchemists, and mystics, whom the world still looks on with a jaundiced vision. It has now, however, been given to a poet to vindicate the character of Paracelsus in all its phases.

All hail, Robert Browning! Verily, thou art a man after our own heart! and to the ass Paracelsus thou hast been, like poor dear departed Coleridge, "wonderous kind." And may a "fellow feeling," which we are not ashamed to confess, make us as kind to thee for "the merciful man is merciful to his beast"-and, like one, we will ride thee as true critic should ride true poet, and not, in ignoble imitation of certain beggars on horseback, to the devil.

:

Heavens! what a veritable ass was Paracelsus! "As Paracelsus," says the Biographie Universelle, "displays every where an ignorance of the rudiments of the most ordinary knowledge, it is not probable that he should have ever studied seriously in the schools: he contented himself with visiting the universities of Germany, France, and Italy; and in spite of his boasting himself to have been the ornament of those institutions, there is no proof of his having legally acquired the title of doctor, which he assumes. It is only known that he applied himself long, under the direction of the wealthy Sigismond Fugger, of Schwartz. to the

What a basis is here for an aspiring character! The level was so low from which he started, that an ordinary soar would seem sublime. The lark, for this reason, appears to ascend higher than he does; and there would be something majestic in the plunge of the ass, but that he kicks up his heels behind. This is certainly awkward to the bystander; but we hold that to the creature itself it is the most natural and easy way of manifesting his own importance, and of making a clear stage and no favour. And Paracelsus himself, according to our beloved Robert Browning, deems such an act worthy of illustration by no mean comparisons:

"Are there not, Festus, are there not, dear Michal,

Two points in the adventure of the diver: One, when a beggar he prepares to plunge? One, when a prince he rises with his pearl?

Festus, I plunge."

Previous, however, to this daring experiment, he takes sweet counsel, while quietly cropping the thistle, with his friends, this same Festus, and the fair betrothed Michal; and thus, accordingly, the drama opens : "SCENE-Würzburg; a Garden in the Environs. 1507."

Hallo! we are driving too hard, and have not let Robert Browning say what he ought for himself. His poem or drama, or poetic or dramatic dialogue, "is an attempt, probably more novel than happy, to reverse the method usually adopted by writers, whose aim it is to set forth any phenomena of the mind or the passions, by the operation of persons and events; and, instead of having recourse to an external machinery of incidents to create and evolve the crisis I desire to produce, I have ventured to display, somewhat minutely, the mood itself, in its rise and progress, and have suffered the agency, by which it is influenced and determined, to be generally discernible in its effects alone, and subordinate throughout, if not altogether excluded." Moreover, he is careful to tell us-and it behoves us to listen well-that a work like his depends more immediately on the intelligence and sympathy of the reader for its success: indeed, he eloquently adds, "were my scenes stars,