deep canker of ingratitude appears to him to have extended even to his household dogs— 'Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me.' After the king has been removed to Dover to meet Cordelia, the poet, true to nature, paints the regular course of the mental malady as marked by lucid intervals, in which, for 'burning shame, he will not see his child • Kent. Well, sir, the poor distressed Lear is i' th' town, Who sometime in his better tune remembers What we are come about, and by no means Will yield to see his daughter.' The following scenes depict that utmost degradation of madness which we have already noticed, but relieved with some touches of exquisite pathos-and equal truth. The conditions of the cure are now stated, and here too Shakspeare has been guided by the practice of the physicians of the day, who received their notions from the ancient schools. The king is lulled into repose by many simples operative, whose power will close the eye of anguish.' He is to be awakened by soft strains of music which shall not jar the disturbed senses, and then a powerful moral impression is to be produced by the presentation of Cordelia when he first wakes'Phy. Be by, good madam, when we do awake him; I doubt not of his temperance. Cor. He wakes-speak to him. Phy. Madam, do you-'tis fittest.' The thoughts which are incessantly passing in rapid succession through the heated imagination of the insane when waking, rarely subside in their sleep. The overwrought brain still labours in dreams. The potency of the drugs has, however, lulled the mind of Lear; and though the organ of thought has not altogether resumed the tranquil activity of health-though dreams too vivid and too painful have occupied the brain, still the poet indicates with beautiful art their calmer tenor. The visions in his sleep appear to have been accompanied by some soothing feelings-Lear had found that rest in the grave which was denied him on earth. His first exclamation on waking is 'You do me wrong to take me out of the grave. Thou'rt a soul in bliss. Cor. Sir, do you know me? Lear. You are a spirit I know; when did you die? The struggle between reason and insanity is exquisitely drawn. At first Lear is not assured of his condition-doubts if he be indeed alive-questions his sanity. The perceptions strengthen ing, stir the memory feebly-and Kent and Cordelia are hesitatingly recalled 'Methinks I should know you, and know this man, Yet I am doubtful.' As the memory becomes confirmed, the affections claim their full sway, and the presence of his child is made to dispel the gloom of madness Do not laugh at me ; But as I am a man, I think this lady The next scene presents Lear rushing with the dead body of Cordelia, as if by a species of instinct, to the spot where most are congregated 'Howl! howl! howl!-O ye are men of stones! She is as dead as earth-Lend me a looking-glass.' Still clinging to the least glimpse of hope, he tries whether the lingering breath may not obscure a mirror or stir a feather. The quick and expectant fancy deceives him, and for a moment the father imagines he hears that voice-soft, gentle, low.' Shakspeare closes the painful scene by tracing the steps of Lear's death as minutely as he had those of his madness. At length assured that his child is dead, a flush of exultation at having himself revenged her, lights up for an instant the sinking mindbut only for an instant. The tough frame has yielded to this last blow the sight becomes dimmed-the brain giddy-and turning to Kent, who had never quitted his master, Lear asks— Who are you? Mine eyes are none of the best.' Scarcely have the spectators of this anguish had time to mark and to express to each other their conviction of the extinction of his mind, when some sudden physical alteration, made dreadfully visible, urges Albany to cry out, O see, see!' The intense excitement which Lear has undergone, and which lent for a time a supposititious life to his enfeebled frame, gives place to the exhaustion of despair 'No, no, no life; Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, And thou no breath at all? O thou wilt come no more! Never-never-never-never-never. Pray you undo this button. Thank you, sir. Do you see this? Look on her-look-her lips— Look there-look there! (Dies.) Even here, where any other mind would have confined itself to the single passion of parental despair, Shakspeare contrives to indicate by a gesture the very train of internal physical changes which are causing death. The blood gathering about the heart can no longer be propelled by its enfeebled impulse. Lear, too weak to relieve the impediments of his dress, which he imagines cause the sense of suffocation, asks a bystander to undo this button.'* ART. X.-1. The Church and its Endowments; a Charge. By W. Dealtry, D.D., F.R.S. 1831. 2. On the Use and Abuse of Literary and Ecclesiastical Endowments. By Thomas Chalmers, D.D. 1827. IN N. the cheers with which the announcement of the ministers' propositions for the confiscation of a portion of the church property in Ireland was received by both sides of the House, one member, and one for whose talent, character, and honest bearing, we have a respect-one, moreover, whom we believe to be a friend to the church in his heart-professed to discover a testimony to the moderation of the reformed House of Commons. The remark, we conclude, was directed chiefly to the opposition benches, where many were found to applaud who might have been expected to resent. We confess, that we were compelled to put a different construction upon those cheers; more particularly when we coupled them with the heartless merriment which had * The small portion of Sir Henry Halford's volume which is in a dead language, appears to us equally creditable to him as his English Essays. We suspect there are few mere scholars of these days who could produce anything more elegant, as a specimen of Latinity, than the following passage respecting the late Dr. Matthew Baillie. In substance the tribute is honourable to the dead and to the living. 'In hoc dilecto nomine fas sit mihi commorari paulùm, et dolere, quòd huic excellenti viro, tot annos in eâdem nostrâ illâ laboriosissimâ vitæ ratione comiti, socio, amico, singulari in hanc domum pietate, hisce comitiis celebrioribus, huic solemnitati, huic illustrissimorum et nobilissimorum Hospitum cœtui non licuerit interesse; quamquam eum famæ satis diù vixisse scio, æternæ felicitati, quod humillimè spero, bene satis. Et enim, patre usus pio, à primâ usque adolescentiâ in explorando corpore humano fuerat versatissimus; et ex hâc studiorem ratione sapientiam et potentiam Dei maximâ admiratione, summâ veneratione contemplatus est. Posteà verò cùm ad medicinam exercendam se accinxisset, facilè sensit, quantulum corpori, morbis et ægrâ valetudine laboranti, subventurus esset Medicus, nisi qui animi quoque motus, vires, adfectus, perciperet: animi, scilicet, unius et ejusdem cum corpore, tamen diversi,— consociati cum illo, sed distincti,-in ejus compagibus inclusi et involuti, nihilominus tamen liberi-immortale quid perpetuo præsentientis atque præmonentis, et illud futurum cupientis, tamen et metuentis. Ab his contemplationibus potentiæ ac majes tatis divinæ ad debitum numini cultum præstandum incitatus est, ad fidem in Deo habendam, et ad totum se ei submittendum. Hinc pia illa vivendi regula, hinc spectata integritas. Hinc illi omnia graviter, humaniter, amabiliter mos erat cogitare;hinc, quod cogitaverat, planissimè ac verissimè dicere ;-hinc nihil alteri facere, quod sibi faciendum nollet;-hine candor, caritas:-sed me reprimo; quanquam haud vereor, Optimates, ne vobis in præstantissimi hujus viri laudibus longior fuisse videar; quippe vestrum quamplurimi sanitatem ejus judicio et consiliis acceptam refertis. Nec timeo, ne mihi succenseatis, Socii, quòd eum his saltèm accumulaverim donis, qui tantum sibi vestrum omnium amorem vivus conciliaverit ; qui industriæ, benevolentiæ, sanctitatis, innocentiæ exemplum (quod omnes utinam imitemur!) reliquerit.'p. 148-150, been been shortly before awakened in the same assembly by the history of a forlorn clergyman, one of the many who had been hunted from his house and home by a ruthless mob, for no fault of his beyond that of desiring to live by his own; by his own, to which his right was as good as that of any honourable member, who enjoyed the joke, to the property which qualified him for partaking of it in that place. And still further, were we disposed to dissent from the inference, when we observed the apathy with which Sir Robert Peel's appeal in behalf of the suffering clergy of Ireland was entertained, and the still silence in which it fell dead upon his hearers. For ourselves (in sorrow of heart we acknowledge it), we considered those ill-timed cheers as in part proceeding from men who raised the shout of triumph over the fall of an enemy; and, in part, from men who knew not what they did. To the former we have nothing to say; we shall not stoop to reason with those who would reply to us by force; but to the latter-to those who are themselves shaking the church, or consenting thereto in others, and lending them their arm, in mere ignorance, we will offer a few words of warning; being thoroughly persuaded that the land-owners of this country are not aware of the suicidal act they are committing in contributing to the reduction of the church, nor of the unobtrusive but most important services it renders them, in their respective neighbourhoods, by preserving to them, to the extent it does, the cordial allegiance of their tenants, great and small. However lightly the land-owners, and particularly the great land-owners, may think of the sound judgment or comprehensive views of the clergy-of this they may be assured, that they are an integral part of society that could be ill spared:-that their extinction, as an establishment, would create a much greater gap in our system, occasion a much greater falling in of its parts, than many of them imagine; and that, like the mainspring of an engine, which often lies buried in a mass of masonry, wholly out of sight, they minister to the machinery of life, in this country, more effectually than many more conspicuous parts of a higher polish. We offer our remarks, which will be very few, not so much in direct reference to the Irish Church Bill, though to this we may have occasion to allude, as with a reference to the general temper of the times, which has shown itself adverse to the church, in quarters where other things might have been anticipated; and where other feelings, we are sure, would have prevailed, had the parties been in full possession of the case, as it affected themselves. We offer them, however, not as apologists for men whose craft is in danger; for if the church is to fall, we have that opinion of its clergy, that they will not cry for quarter from any personal considerations, nor yet succumb to misfortune in any abject spirit; howbeit, they may be permitted to grieve, for the sake of the nation, and indeed of Christendom, that so goodly a fabric should be so rashly dissolved; and calling to mind. the agony of its construction, repeat with the monkish versifier,• Tantus labor non sit cassus!' The clergyman of a parish, constructed as the church now is, stands in a position the most favourable that can be imagined for bracing the upper and lower orders of society together: he has usually, from the situation he occupies, even more than from any merit of his own, the confidence of his people and the relation in which the different classes in his own district stand to one another is known to him far more intimately than to any other man in it. His domiciliary visits actually bring him into the closest possible acquaintance with the practical operation of the system upon which an estate is managed: neither the landlord nor the agent can see the consequences of their own acts, the developement of their own principles, at all so accurately, so widely, and in such full detail, as the parish priest. They are treated, however calculated may be their characters to inspire trust, with a certain degree of reserve by all the dependants of an estate; by the poorest, with that degree of it which must prevent them from knowing, with any tolerable certainty, how they are regarded by them. They may be lynx-eyed as you please, but they are not favourably placed for a good sight; and we, therefore, caution the great landlords not to be too sure that they know how they stand in their own neighbourhoods, whether they gather their knowledge from their own observation, or, what is still less to be depended upon, from their agents' reports. Were any civil commotion to arise, so that all prudential restraints upon the conduct were withdrawn, they would find themselves, we are persuaded, very often mistaken in their men; and that some, whom a nearer observer could have pointed out long before, would be the persons to cast at them the first stone-the very individuals who recommended themselves to their notice by more than common vociferations when their healths were drunk, as liberal politicians and friends of the people. We believe that few landlords, especially where the property is large, are aware of the real feelings with which a tenant accedes to a change of farm; or resigns a portion of it for an accommodation; or listens to a suggestion of an improvement in his system of cultivation; or marks, though he says nothing at the time, the influence of the landlord, direct or indirect, at a vestry; or submits to a hint about his vote; or watches the devastation occasioned by game; or with which he waits for the necessary repairs of his house, or, if it be a small tenant, of his cottagethe rain perhaps driving through his thatch, whilst he sees ten times |