I see the shivering, houseless wretch,
With hunger in his eye;

For life's severest contrasts meet,
For ever in the city street!

And lofty, princely palaces —
What dreary deeds of woe;
What untold, mortal agonies

Their arras chambers know!

Yet is without all smooth and fair,

As heaven's blue dome of summer air!

'Hence is it that a city street
Can deepest thought impart,
For all its people, high and low,

Are kindred to my heart;

And with a yearning love I share

In all their joy, their pain, their care!'

The engravings, thirty-six in number, are selected from the numerous illustrated works published by the Messrs. Fisher, with a few borrowed from other sources, and here reissued, in some cases, with new titles. As they have already been subjected to critical notice it is needless to descant on their merits. On the whole we have no hesitation in recording our judgment, that the present volume is every way worthy of its predecessors, and fully entitled to the same patronage which they enjoyed.

The Juvenile Scrap-Book appears this year under the editorship of Mrs. Ellis, whose recent work on 'The Women of England,' has only served to ratify the favorable judgment previously formed of her talents. Some apprehension is expressed in her preface lest the work should be thought wanting in the lighter and more amusing features of such a volume. We have no fear of this kind, for there is a happy blending throughout its pages, of the qualities best suited to fascinate and instruct the juvenile reader. We may refer in confirmation of our remark to The 'Unwilling Philosopher,' The Bark of Hope,'' Island Wonders,' and Day Dreams.' We are glad that such a work should be placed in such hands, and commend it with the sincerest goodwill to our readers. While furnishing materials for thought, it is adapted to cherish all social virtues, and to spread over the domestic hearth a cheerfulness and hilarity, which while amusing the young, may also gratify and warm the aged breast.

Art. VIII. 1. Speech of the Right Hon. Lord Lyndhurst, delivered in the House of Lords, August 23, 1839. London.

2. The Ministerial Crisis. By T. GISBORNE, Esq., jun. London.

THE

HE termination of a parliamentary session affords that kind of pause which travellers are fond of making on the brow of any isolated mountain they may have just ascended. An extensive prospect perhaps opens before,-behind,-and around them. Glances are thrown in every possible direction,-eastward, and westward, and northward, and southward; whilst more especially the road, along which their recent course conducted them, comes in for its share of their attention. Next however to this, and soon in a still greater degree, they endeavour to discern with absorbing curiosity, the labyrinth of their future journey. Maps, observations, conjectures, are all in requisition. The longest heads guess the most correctly: yet each guesses something, in the way of inference from the past, or anticipations of the morColours will be cast upon such sensations according to circumstances. If the panorama be a paradise, or even any thing like a paradise, imagination will light up the woods and vallies, the fields and the rivers, with innumerable sunbeams: overhanging clouds will only reflect irises; and hope will shower into the soul her most delicious pleasures. But if, on other hand, an illimitable wilderness lies outspread before the eye; if spectators can behold little else than wastes of sand scorching under the concave of heaven,-or mounting into pillars of smoke in the distance, whilst mirage after mirage allures to all the bitterness of disappointment;-then will the stoutest heart grow sad, and sigh for a land of rest, where labour will be exchanged for repose, and shadows be swallowed up in realities.

row.

In applying a metaphor of this kind to our present political position, we hold ourselves to be neither croakers nor alarmists. Our wish is merely to see and describe matters as they actually exist. The ultimate result is in the hands of an Almighty Providence, who beyond a question is working out the wisest ends by the best possible means. We are looking, so to speak, on that side of his wonderful processes of performance, which puzzles poor finite creatures, simply because their survey is limited to a very small portion of the whole. Yet we must use our reason, and our observation, in the best manner we can, both to prepare ourselves for the changes of human life, and learn more perfectly such passages, as God may vouchsafe to show us, of his divine and ineffable glory. Time is after all the vestibule of eternity. The present state may in many respects be considered as part of the vast temple, wherein He, who dwelleth not in houses ma de

with hands, is, or at least ought to be worshipped: and although a veil of mortality separates between things visible and those invisible, the movements of the mighty Artificer, enthroned within the Holy of Holies, flash frequently even to the outer courts, so that the province of faithful adorers is to watch, and wait, and work, according to the will of our heavenly Master. We see here through a glass darkly; but the key, which will solve every enigma, lies beyond the grave. Meanwhile one thing is irrefragably certain, as Sir John Eliot expresses himself with regard to the social trials of his own day, not dissimilar as they were from ours,-that in the revolution of Wisdom, these 'affairs are so turned,-yea, in the divine wheel of Providence, 'their conversions are so made, that all move directly to one end! The alloy and contestation of the parts work the conser'vation of the whole.'

We suppose that mere secular politicians scarcely ever anticipated more from any session of parliament than from that which has now concluded its wordy labours. The Chartists had covered the country with a webwork of affiliated societies. Their national petition was collecting signatures from the hill-sides and cottages of our rural districts; as well as from the looms, forges, and manufactories, of hives of human beings, at Manchester, Glasgow, Newcastle, Bolton, Wolverhampton, Oldham, and Ashton-underLyne. Birmingham was the capital of Feargus O'Connor,-as it was to prove a city of refuge to the Convention, in case of necessity. It must never be forgotten, that the first trains of the current agitations were laid by Toryism, anxious as it was to turn the New Poor Law into a battery of assault against government. Vainly was it reminded, that Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington had patronised the revolution which broke up workhouses, where no work but that of the devil was done, and established Unions in their stead, where industry, cleanliness, and fresh air, with a sufficiency of plain food, are inculcated and secured, just so far as to preserve sacred the distinction between the rights of labour and the rights of idleness. Vainly was it reminded of a dozen other inconsistencies, equally atrocious; with regard to which it acted, just as Jupiter is said to have done in the Greek fable,-that is carrying a wallet behind and a wallet before, the former holding every thing convenient to be forgotten, the latter every thing convenient to remember. So long as AntiPoor-Law oratory could thwart liberal measures, or seat a Conservative candidate, so long the hierarchy, squirarchy, and aristocracy clapped their gloved palms together, cheered on to their task certain agents of sedition, who would have been hanged had the Home Department been as it was in the golden days of established espionage,-and voted even a combination with ultraradicalism very pardonable, because expedient policy. An indig

nant patriot might well have asked, what the opponents of even the smallest iota of parliamentary reform could really and honestly mean to do with those who were clamouring for nothing less than Universal Suffrage, Annual Parliaments, Vote by Ballot, and the abolition of property-qualification? Meanwhile a previous failure in our harvests was sending up the price of corn to ten shillings a bushel; when, as might naturally have been expected, the great capitalists of the north began to sound an alarm. Committees were organized, large sums of money subscribed, interminable speeches spoken, and last though not least, magnificent dinners eaten, for the purpose of overthrowing the absurdest and most pernicious monopoly which Europe, not to say England, has ever tolerated. It was demonstrated, that the corn laws imposed a tax of fifteen millions sterling upon the prime necessary of life,that commerce and manufacturing superiority were deserting our shores, through the greater cheapness of the loaf, and therefore of labour, in other countries,- that the only gainers in the juggle were the members of an oligarchy, calling themselves the Landed Interest, and that these were only apparently so, since they, as well as others, would participate in the general relief derived from strangling this Old Man of the Mountain. Truth for a time took its customary course; that is, it was admitted and acknowledged by all who were not purblind or biassed. Had our lower classes stepped forward at this moment, and supported the mass of the middle ones, they would have delivered themselves from a burthen equivalent to twenty-five per cent upon every crust consumed by themselves, their neighbours, or their children; besides averting from Great Britain that commercial catastrophe, which must sooner or later arrive, should no modification ensue. But no, it was an opportunity too good for faction to lose. Moreover a vast majority of the monopolists mustered under conservative banners. It is idle to deny this statement of the case, because here and there occurred not a few honourable exceptions. Just as in the question of National Education a cry was raised of the Church in danger; so for the preservation of high rents, the proprietors of land, headed by the aristocracy, vociferated Agriculture, agriculture! They roundly asserted, that Manchester manufacturers wanted to render our fields desolate,-to lower the rate of wages,--and drive our rustics into their factories. They affirmed that the rate of wages would sink in proportion to the income of the landlord, and the money-price of grain which it is now well known is not, never has been, nor ever will be, the fact. The falsehood however passed current for just a sufficient number of weeks to deceive the Chartists into swelling the force of conservative clamour against altering the corn laws. Political partizanship makes strange bedfellows, as the late Mr. Sadler remarked and it was illustrated on this occasion.

with hands, is, or at least ought to be worshipped: and although a veil of mortality separates between things visible and those invisible, the movements of the mighty Artificer, enthroned within the Holy of Holies, flash frequently even to the outer courts, so that the province of faithful adorers is to watch, and wait, and work, according to the will of our heavenly Master. We see here through a glass darkly; but the key, which will solve every enigma, lies beyond the grave. Meanwhile one thing is irrefragably certain, as Sir John Eliot expresses himself with regard to the social trials of his own day, not dissimilar as they were from ours,-that 'in the revolution of Wisdom, these 'affairs are so turned,-yea, in the divine wheel of Providence, 'their conversions are so made, that all move directly to one 'end! The alloy and contestation of the parts work the conser'vation of the whole.'

We suppose that mere secular politicians scarcely ever anticipated more from any session of parliament than from that which has now concluded its wordy labours. The Chartists had covered the country with a webwork of affiliated societies. Their national petition was collecting signatures from the hill-sides and cottages of our rural districts; as well as from the looms, forges, and manufactories, of hives of human beings, at Manchester, Glasgow, Newcastle, Bolton, Wolverhampton, Öldham, and Ashton-underLyne. Birmingham was the capital of Feargus O'Connor,-as it was to prove a city of refuge to the Convention, in case of necessity. It must never be forgotten, that the first trains of the current agitations were laid by Toryism, anxious as it was to turn the New Poor Law into a battery of assault against government. Vainly was it reminded, that Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington had patronised the revolution which broke up workhouses, where no work but that of the devil was done, and established Unions in their stead, where industry, cleanliness, and fresh air, with a sufficiency of plain food, are inculcated and secured, just so far as to preserve sacred the distinction between the rights of labour and the rights of idleness. Vainly was it reminded of a dozen other inconsistencies, equally atrocious; with regard to which it acted, just as Jupiter is said to have done in the Greek fable, that is carrying a wallet behind and a wallet before, the former holding every thing convenient to be forgotten, the latter every thing convenient to remember. So long as AntiPoor-Law oratory could thwart liberal measures, or seat a Conservative candidate, so long the hierarchy, squirarchy, and aristocracy clapped their gloved palms together, cheered on to their task certain agents of sedition, who would have been hanged had the Home Department been as it was in the golden days of established espionage,-and voted even a combination with ultraradicalism very pardonable, because expedient policy. An indig