The prevention of crime is better than its punishment, and for the prevention of crime an effective police is necessary; but, that liberty may not be endangered by the means taken to protect property, it is requisite that the people who pay that police should have something to do with its management and control. In that case the civil force cannot degenerate into a force semi-political and semi-military-in other words, a French gensd'armerie.

Cottage Allotments for the Peasantry.—Jan. 17, 1834.

It gives us great pleasure to find that the cottage-allotment system, which we advocated from the beginning as the most rational, humane, and effectual mode of reducing the poorrates, while it raised the moral and social condition of the peasantry of England, is rapidly extending itself throughout the country, and proving, wherever it is fairly tried, a source of blessing to the poor and security to the rich, while it lessens the burdens of the middle classes by a serious reduction of rates. In some parishes it produces their total abolition; as, for instance, in that of Avington, in Hampshire, where the allotments made by the Duke of Buckingham have completely relieved the parish from poor-rates. There were some prejudices opposed to the system in its commencement; but such practical proofs of utility must soon extingush those prejudices and give irresistible progress to the efforts of a wise humanity.

It is now about three years since we gave the humble testimony of our approbation in support of the exertions of the benevolent Bishop of Bath and Wells in the west of England, to improve, by small allotments of land, the comfort of the labouring classes, to restore the moral tone of which destitution and dependence had deprived them, and thereby clear the country of much of its poverty and a vast proportion of its crime. It is by such means, and not by the brutalizing exhibitions of human stranglings in the market-places of our country towns, that property is to be protected from the torch of the midnight incendiary. And though it is difficult to find

a Home Secretary who understands anything of the science of preventing crime, it is a source of great consolation to all enlightened minds that the necessity of applying a moral remedy to a moral disease, is becoming more obvious every day; and that the humane and benevolent of all political parties are zealously co-operating to raise the moral and physical condition of the labouring poor, and thereby remove the curse from the land, which frequent examples of vengeance and cruelty only aggravate.

Among the early as well as most zealous promoters of the cottage-allotment system is the philanthropic William Allen, whose cottage-colonies, as we may call them, at Lindfield, in Sussex, form, in the woodland scenery, the most beautiful and cheering picture that the eye of humanity can behold, creating comfort, happiness, and security, where there was waste, and misery, and moral desolation; reviving the recollection of England's better days, by teaching her peasantry the knowledge of manly independence, habits of sobriety, and the value of character; and, in truth, making "the solitary place glad," and "the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose."

In Buckinghamshire, the Marquis of Chandos, assisted by Mr. Robert Sutton, of Ross Way, and other humane and enlightened landowners, is indefatigably exerting himself to improve the condition of the labouring classes, by giving premiums to those who cultivate their gardens in the best manner, set the best examples to their families in temperance, cleanliness, &c., and bring up the greatest number of children without parish relief. The agricultural distress in Buckinghamshire is very great, and therefore the task of improving the condition of the labouring classes is correspondingly difficult. But perseverance in so good an object must be successful. The English peasantry have been demoralised by bad government, and by circumstances over which they had no control. The removal of those degrading circumstances and more judicious treatment will restore them to what they were when they were justly called "a bold peasantry-their country's pride," by that poet who, abhorring the sordid theories of the modern race of political economists, and foreseeing the

destructive consequences of a grasping system, which was then not so much developed as it is at present, exclaimed—

"A time there was, ere England's griefs began,

When ev'ry rood of ground maintain'd its man."

It was gratifying to us to have to record, the other day, the circumstance of his Majesty having presented Lord Chandos with £50, in furtherance of the beneficent objects of the Association over which he presides. The patronage of the KING is bestowed, in this instance, on an object worthy of a monarch who would wish to deserve the title of Father of his People. We trust the example will not be lost upon those who are in the enjoyment of power and affluence. Let them reflect that the happiness of the poor is the protection of the rich, for gratitude will induce them to guard the property which misery and the sense of oppression would instigate them to destroy.

In Suffolk, the efforts of Lord Suffield to better the state of the labouring poor, by cottage allotments, are no less assiduous and successful than those which we have mentioned. Here, then, we have men of various political opinions, such as the Duke of Buckingham, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, Lord Chandos, Messrs. W. Allen, Robert Sutton, John Smith, and many others whose names do not occur to us at present-all, in their several districts, promoting the most humane and enlightened plan that has yet been devised for raising the peasantry of England from pauperism and moral debasement, into a state of comparative comfort, independence, and moral respectability. This is a very different plan from that which the Malthusian philosophers and political economists recommended-of getting rid of the poor, by either refusing relief, or cutting down the relief given on the most refined calculation of a starvation allowance; also, by burning down the cottages, as if it were possible to smoke them out of the land, or as if rendering them houseless would not make them still more desperate and depraved. If, indeed, such inhuman suggestions had been extensively acted upon, instead of local burning and outrage, the kingdom, in spite of all the sanguinary examples that have been made and are making, would have been in a flame

from one extremity to the other. We rejoice that such doctrines, in spite of the countenance which they lately received from authority, are rapidly on the wane; and, that in the higher ranks of society, the great truth is beginning to be extensively understood, that judicious benevolence to the poor is, in the truest sense of the terms, conservative wisdom.

Character of CoWPER, as a Poet.-Written 1820-21.

Of all our great Poets, CowPER was perhaps that one who most enriched poetic thought and language, while ambitious. only to advance the cause of simple truth. Capable, by his original power, of discovering new regions in the ideal world, he disdained the fame which was not connected with practical services to humanity. He vindicated the splendid usefulness of poetry, by enhancing its charms, while he moralised its purpose; for he regarded his talents but as a gift from heaven for the improvement of society.

MILTON raised upon sacred knowledge a fabric of splendid fiction; he blended the fabled superstitions of Greece with the sublime realities of our Divine Revelation, and brought into poetic communion images whose alliance reason could never sanction. Hence, while we admire the grandeur of his imaginative faculty, we lament the erring weakness of its unguarded ambition; we feel sorry that a genius like his, that could so illustrate truth, should ever have recourse to error, however fascinating, to gather needless ornament for the simple majesty of his subject. SPENCER cultivated the moral virtues, and endeavoured to extend their dominion by the cabalistic power of allegory. His intention was good, but his means were injudicious. He made fanciful pictures which he wished should have the force of divine instruction; but the heart, untouched by their moral force, looks on them only as beautiful dreams or splendid chimeras. They play like gay visions round the mind in the softest hours of indolence, and shed on it the delicious languor of sweet and enervating reveries. CowPER, unlike those two great bards, made truth charm like fiction,

without giving up the austerity of fact. He made religion and morality dear to the heart, and brilliant to the imagination, without mixing fabulous glories with the one, or decorating with the paintings of an abstruse fancy, the palace or the hermitage of the other. MILTON is the more sublime, SPENCER the more ingenious poet; but CowPER, more useful in his inspired character than either, gave to real subjects the attractiveness of romantic inventions, and placed upon the brow of severest wisdom the chaplet of the graces.

:

Such is COWPER, where he treads upon the sacred ground of religion like the prophet in the wilderness, he worships only that living and authentic fire which fills the heart with awe, and the mind with inspiration. But there is nothing of spiritual pride in his elevated piety; nothing of the cold austerity of the anchorite in his moral admonition. He looks upon the world as one whose human charities received a warmer glow from that divine communion. He unites the poetic and holy fervour of Isaiah to the eloquence of Paul; and a disposition gentle as his, who reposed on the sacred bosom of ONE, greater than either. His virtues had a noble but meek persuasion; his temperament, a melancholy grace: but his genius was as bold as his subject was glorious. Grandeur of thought, and novelty of language distinguished him: the one effortless, like the result of natural magnanimity-the other, powerful without violence; rich without excess; of chastened ardour, and of liberal precision.

As a descriptive poet, CowPER, equally great in his way, has yet a very distinct character from that of THOMSON.-The latter is more elaborate in his examination of Nature-more accurate in the arrangement of his thoughts, and the composition of his subject. The former prefers a few striking and rather obvious traits, freely sketched, to a finished landscape admirably wrought, and glowing with all the harmonious varieties of light and shade and colour. The one graduates his descriptions from some light tints of distance, to the bold and vigorous richness of his foreground. The other touches with a milder hand, a less artificial pencil, the varieties of his subject; he impresses them strongly on the memory; but he