themselves aloft, as in a proud consciousness of being more associated with what has been than with what is. Within, also, there was much to strengthen fancies of this complexion. There were the gloomy stairs, with their dark walls, their long worn steps, and their railwork of massy oak. Apartments, with their antique panellings, their faded tapestry, and their concealed doorways. At night, the birds, who chose their lodgment amidst the ancient masonry of the chimneys, failed not to send their tokens of inquietude into the chambers below, as the gale from the neighbouring channel came with tumultuous force upon the land. Part of the building, also, had become a ruin, thickly mantled with ivy, where owls might have pleaded their long holding as a right of tenantry, and from which they sallied forth at such times, as if glad to mingle their screams with the night storm, or to flap their wings against the casement of the sleeper. To one apartment in that interior a special mystery attached. It bore the name of the book-room. Of that room the master of the house always retained the key. It was a part of his tenure that the contents of the book-room should on no account be disturbed. Among those contents, beside a curious library, were many other curious things-such as a bonnet, said to have been worn by Queen Elizabeth when visiting those western parts of her dominions; also a fan, which had been wielded by that royal hand; a whole suit of kingly apparel, reported to have been worn by Charles II., and to have been left at the mansion by its royal visitor. Above all, a skull was there. It was the skull of a murdered man. The mark of the death wound was visible upon it. Tradition said that the victim of human violence was an African-a faithful servant in the family which once found its stately home beneath that venerable roof. Amidst so much pointing to the dim past, we may be sure that the imagination of the dwellers in the old hall on the hill-side was not by any means unproductive. Of course we must not confess to any participation in such susceptibilities in our own case. It was, however, a dark night, and a rough one too, when we obtained our first admission to the mysterious book-room. By the aid of our lamp, we explored the matters of virtu which it contained; examined the dreaded cranium, and found the mark of the wound upon it, strictly as reported. But our attention was soon directed from the curiosities to the literature. The contents of the library we found in no very orderly condition, and not a few of its treasures had evidently suffered much from the state of uselessness to which the whole had been for so long a time reduced. The books were partly on shelves and tables, and partly in heaps upon the floor. Among them were many existing in all the venerableness of the times before the invention of the printing-press. One of these sets proved to be an illuminated vellum transcript of the epistles of Innocent III.-a pontiff who, in common with many of his race during the middle age, conducted a correspondence exceeding that of all the princes of Europe taken together. Many such works were there, and many learned volumes which had strayed from their fellows, and which bore upon them the marks of having suffered much in their wanderings. But the point which has brought the old Dorset hall on the hill-side, in this manner to our memory is, that, among the printed works in this long-neglected library, was a number of tracts, and pamphlets, and small publications, relating to the countries of the new world, and to the marvels of recent voyaging. Some of them bore date as far back as the time of Elizabeth, but most of them were of the time of James I., and a little later. Some hours passed, and we were still beguiled by the perusal and comparison of these remains, which, like some newly-discovered fossil bed, pointed our imagination to a former condition of society, if not to a former world. We felt as though drifted back to those times. We thought we saw good Mr. White, the puritan minister of the neighbouring town of Dorchester, as he went forth the spiritual leader of the little band, who, more than two centuries since, sought their spiritual as well as their natural home on the shores of New England. We seemed to listen to the talk of such men as the brave John Smith, and the governor Winthorp; and to be witnesses to the conferences of such men as the lords Say and Brooke, Harry Vane, and John Hampden, as they cogitated their schemes of settlement for injured and free-hearted men on the other side the Western Ocean. We remembered Queen Elizabeth, too - the grave men who were honoured as her counsellors, her own stately presence, her own pliant but masculine temper, and the skill with which she dispensed the tokens both of her pleasure and of her pride. Her arts of cajolery to-day, her haughty invective to-morrow, her ambition-her innate love of rule at all times, and in all things. Her successor, also, we remembered-the king whose flesh gave signs of fear at the sight of a drawn sword. One of the most timid among men, having the place of chief over the bravest of nations. The monarch who presumed that he was born a great king, and who supposed that he had made himself a great clerk. The ruler whose soul was below all feeling of enterprise, presiding among a people with whom that feeling was strong, irrepressible, almost boundless. The frivolous imbecile, whose days were spent at the chase or at the cock-pit, and whose nights ARTICLE PAGE 7. Heads of Consideration on the Case of Mr. Ward. By 8. Revise the Liturgy. By a Peer. VI. History of the House of Commons, from the Convention VII. Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Third VIII. 1. Petition of the Merchants of the City of London, to the House of Commons. May, 1820. 436 472 2. Report of the Select Committee of the House of 3. Speech of the Right Honourable Sir Robert Peel, in 4. Speech of the Right Honourable Sir Robert Peel, in 6. American Corn and British Manufactures. 1845. 1845. IX. Imagination and Fancy; or, Selections from the English Poets, illustrative of those first requisites of their Art; with Markings of the best Passages, Critical Notices of the Writers, and an Essay, in answer to the Question "What is Poetry?" By Leigh Hunt. Second Edition. 1845. 514 563 X. Past and Present Policy of England towards Ireland. 1845 582 " THE BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW. FEBRUARY 1, 1845. Art. I. History of the Colonization of the United States. By GEORGE BANCROFT. Vols. i. ii. iii. Boston and London. It is instructive to observe how much is done in the government of the world by the ignorance of men more than by their knowledge. What we do from design is of small amount compared with what we do beyond our forethought. In all our plans we prophesy in part. The action of to-day generates the action of to-morrow. The scheme widens as it advances from purpose towards accomplishment. The one thing intended, brings along with it a host of things not intended; and as our vision takes in a wider compass, consequences and contingencies are seen to multiply. One man creates the void, and another gives it occupancy. One agency unlocks the stream, and a multitude are in waiting to affect its course and issue. Evil comes from good, and good comes from evil. Thus mockery is cast over all human foresight. In this twilight of perception the greatest men have laboured-Wycliffe and Luther, Columbus and Bacon. Much that was in their heart they have done, but much more which their heart never conceived have they accomplished. Being dead, they still speak, and they still act-but the further the undulations of their influence extend, the less is the semblance between the things which are realized and the things which were expected. They have done less than they hoped, and more-much that they would have done, and much that they would not have done. In short, in the providence of our world, enough is plain and fixed to give pulsation to virtue and hope in the right-hearted; but enough is obscure and uncertain to rebuke impatience, and to suggest many a lesson of humility. It was the pleasure of Elizabeth, and of her successors James and Charles, to take upon them the office of the persecutor. In that honourable vocation they found coadjutors of suitable capacity and temper, in Whitgift, Bancroft, and Laud. The sovereign and the priest gave themselves to such employment, in the sagacious expectation that the opinions of men were matters to be shaped according to the royal pleasure, with little more difficulty than the order of a court ceremonial. But the policy intended to secure an abject submission at home, became the unwilling parent of an enlightened independence abroad. Intolerance of freedom forced it upon new experiments, and proved eminently favourable to its development and power. The seed cast out found a better lodgment, and sent forth a richer fruit. The new world afforded space for its germination and growth which the old could not have supplied; and the new world has re-acted upon the old in the cause of freedom, as the old could not have acted upon itself. Even now, also, we are only in the beginning of that great outburst of enterprise and improvement which we trace to those memorable times, and in great part to the narrow and selfish policy of the agents above named. The mind of the people of England two centuries since teemed with thoughts and excitements, of which the men of our time have no just conception. Our knowledge in this respect must depend on the force of our imagination, hardly less than on the extent of our reading. The great questions, both in politics and religion, which then agitated society, were comparative novelties. The wonders of the new world, and of the whole southern hemisphere, were discoveries of yesterday. National questions, accordingly, were debated with a degree of passionateness and earnestness, such as we seldom feel; while distant regions loomed before the fancies of men in alliance with everything shadowy, strange, and mysterious. The old world seemed to be waking at their side, as from the sleep of ages; and a new world rose to their view, presenting treasures which seemed to be inexhaustible. The wonder of to-day was succeeded by the greater wonder of to-morrow, and the revelations seemed to have no end. At the same time, to very many their native land had become as a house of bondage, and the waters of the Atlantic were the stream which separated between them and their promised home. That feeling is now among the bygone in our social history. But the traces of it are still at times discoverable. The broader and deeper stream, now rolling on, leaves its nooks and eddying points, where something of the past still retains a place, and still |