a Knight Templar in disguise, is appointed leader of the expedition. A band of troubadours, who happen to be returning from the Crusades, and a company of Austrian and Prussian grenadiers returning from the Seven Years' War, are engaged as troops. The attack on the abbey is made with great success. The Count of Weimar and Gaspar, who are feasting with the prior, are seized and beheaded in the refectory. The prior is thrown into the dungeon, from which Rogero is rescued. Matilda and Cecilia rush in. The former recognises Rogero and agrees to live with him. The children are produced on all sides, and young Pottingen is commissioned to write to his father, the Doctor, to detail the joyful events and invite him to Weimar to partake of the general felicity.

The Loves of the Triangles' was the joint work of Canning, Ellis, and Frere. It was a parody of various works by Dr. Darwin, the father of the illustrious naturalist, who had chosen to clothe his extensive scientific knowledge in the inappropriate garb of the heroic couplet with such results as the following:

Gnomes, as you now dissect, with hammers fine,
The granite rock, the noduled flint calcine;
Grind with strong arm the circling Chertz betwixt

Your pure Kaolins and Petuntses mixt.
And his political views thus :

Here Time's huge fingers grasp his giant mace
And dash proud Saperstition from her base,
While each light moment, as it

passes by
With feathery foot and pleasure-twinkling eye,
Feeds from its baby hand with many a kiss

The callow nurslings of domestic bliss.
It is interesting to remember that Coleridge had written of
Pitt, not long before, thus :

Yon dark Scowler view,
Who with proud words of dear-loved Freedom came-

More blasting than the mildew from the South !

And kissed his country with Iscariot mouth

(Ah! foul apostate from his father's fame!) And, after an appeal to Justice:

Seize, Mercy! thou more terrible the brand,

And hurl her thunderbolts with fiercer hand! The 'Anti-Jacobin' parodied the style of Darwin and the sentiments of Coleridge thus, After relating the loves of ' Isosceles and Mathesis'

Where'er he moves, she sees his tall limbs trace
Internal angles equal at the base;
Again she doubts him; but, produced at will,
She sees th' external angles equal still.
Say, blest Isosceles ! what favouring power
Or love, or chance, at night's auspicious hour,
When to the Asses' Bridge entranced you strayed,
Led to the Asses' Bridge the enamoured maid-

it foretells the advent of Freedom in Britain, when

The Communes spread, the gay Departments smile,
And Freedom's plant o'erspreads the laughing isle.
Fired with new hopes the exulting peasant sees
The Gaelic streamer woo the British breeze;
While, pleased to watch its undulating charms,
The smiling infant spreads his little arms.
Ye sylphs of death! on demon pinions flit
Where the tall Guillotine is raised for Pitt;
To the poised plank tie fast the monster's back,
Close the nice slider, ope the expectant sack;
Then twitch, with fairy hands, the frolic pin,
Down falls the impatient axe with deafening din,
The liberated head rolls down below

And simpering Freedom hails the happy blow.

Much in the same strain, though more serious both in tone. and temper, is 'The New Morality,' which is not a parody, but a scathing satire on the whole revolutionary school as then existing. The principal victim is Larevellière-Lépeaux, who was not in fact the monster here depicted, but a 'pauvre imbécile à principes.' His great offence was an absurdity rather than a crime the attempt to found, or invent, a religion of Theophilanthropy,' and to impose it on the French nation. Four temples had been opened in Paris, and the services were conducted with chants and flowers. Writers whose names do not now suggest revolution are held up to execration along with the High Priest of Theophilanthropy.

And ye five other wandering bards that move
In sweet accord of harmony and love;
Coleridge and Southey, Lloyd, and Lamb & Co.,
Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux;
Priestley and Wakefield, holy, humble men,
Give praises to his name with tongue and pen;
Thelwall and ye that lecture as ye go,

And for your pains get pelted, praise Lepaux.

No one can say that the satire here is altogether just or discriminating. Lépeaux's ridiculous blasphemies were far more successfully exposed for all time by Talleyrand's advice to him to 'get himself crucified, and to rise again the third day.' But the 'New Morality' contains many fine lines-some, indeed, said to be by Pitt himself, but not, apparently, with much authority. They all, whatever their offences against strict justice, come from

He gave his consent to the coup d'état of 18 Fructidor, and then shut himself in his room so as not to witness the excesses of Augereau's soldiers.

6

the hearts of their authors. This, indeed, is the case with all the satire of the • Anti-Jacobin.' It was not written to order by literary hacks, or for the amusement of fashionable versifiers, but was the real outcome of its authors' convictions. They were not merely desirous of demolishing their opponents' theories, but had some of their own to promulgate ; and it was that which made the paper so effective a weapon. When it came to an end on July 9, 1798, after little more than six months' existence, it had accomplished the object for which it was begun. The Jacobin doctrines never made any way, and the Opposition had been laughed out of court.

It may be doubted whether Canning's wit was a boon to him in his political career. The British public does not really like its leaders to be witty; it always suspects them of laughing at it in their sleeve. It would be easy to point to-day to two statesmen who suffer irreparably from being too gifted with witty tongues. It must be remembered, too, that Canning's satiric muse did not close her career with the ending of the 'Anti-Jacobin.' In Addington's time his jests upon the Doctor' were even more bitter than those on the Jacobins, because there was more personal feeling in them; but, like the satire of the 'Anti-Jacobin,' they have lost little of their flavour through lapse of time. They astonish us by their absolute modernness of touch. Perhaps there is nothing very new in politics, and, with a change of names, circumstances vary little. There are always politicians who boast good intentions and moderation, having no great achievements to parade; and there are always distinguished statesmen who feel more at home when surrounded by their personal dependents.

There are discontented supporters of Government who might sing with Canning to-day, as they did a century ago :

Praise to placeless, proud ability,

Let the prudent man disclaim,
And sing the statesman, all civility,

Whom moderate talents raise to fame.
He, no random projects urging,

Makes us wild alarm to feel,
With moderate measures gently purging

Ills that prey on Britain's weal.
Addington with measured motion

Keeps the tenour of his way;
To glory yields no rash devotion,

Led by burning lights astray.

Splendid talents are deceiving,

Lead to counsels much too bolà ;
Moderate men we prize, believing

All that glitters is not gold. Some poet below the gangway might adapt the following for use to-day, with a slight change regarding the characteristics of the central figure, and a great difference in the description of his oratory :

How blest, how firm the statesman siands !

(Him no low intrigue can move.)
Circled by faithful kindred bands,

And propp'd by fond fraternal love.
When his speeches hobble vilely,
What · Hear hims !'burst from Brother Hiley !
When his faltering periods lag,
Hark to the cheers of Brother Bragge;
When his speeches hobble vilely,
Or the House receives them drily,
Cheer, oh, cheer him, Brother Bragge!
Cheer, oh, cheer him, Brother Hiley !
Each a gentleman at large,
Lodged and fed at public charge,
Paying (with a grace to charm ye)
This the Fleet, and that the Army.
Brother Bragge and Brother Hiley,
Cheer him when he speaks so vilely!
Cheer him when his audience flag,
Brother Hiley, Brother Bragge !

Both the unfortunate gentlemen thus commemorated had been writers in the 'Anti-Jacobin'—from which, however, we have wandered in considering the subsequent fortunes of its chief contributor.

Canning's reputation for intrigue may have done him as much harm as his wit. Croker said, “He could not take a cup of tea without a stratagem.' But undoubtedly his capacity for seeing the comic side of politics was the unforgivable if unacknowledged offence in the eyes of his party. Neither his majestic oratory nor his splendid services to liberty abroad saved him from affording an example to British statesmen not to joke overmuch. “Il est rare,' said a great observer of life, 'que celui qui fait rire se fasse estimer;' and it is true of statesmen as of lesser folk, however little the visitation be deserved. If Canning killed Jacobinism in England by ridicule, it found its avenger in the Tories, who worried him to death.

W. B. DUFFIELD.

THE ETCHINGHAM LETTERS.

CHIEF PERSONS OF THE LETTERS.

SIR RICHARD ETCHINGHAM, lately retired from Indian service (political department), widower.

MARGARET, his daughter, keeping house for him at Tolcarne, Much Buckland,

Wessex.

ELIZABETH, his sister, spinster.

HARRY (Major, R.A.) and CHARLES (of the Equity Bar), his brothers. LAURA, LADY ETCHINGHAM, second wife and now widow of the late Sir Nicholas Etchingham.

REV. EDWARD FOLLETT, Vicar of Much Buckland.

JAMES ETCHINGHAM, assistant tutor of Silvertoe College, Oxbridge, cousin to Richard and Elizabeth.

I.

From Miss Elizabeth Etchingham, 83 Hans Place, London, S.W., to Sir Richard Etchingham, Bart., Tolcarne, Much Buckland, Wessex.

MOST EXCELLENT RICHARD,-As much of your sister's mind as remains when painters, carpenters, bellhangers, electric lighters, sanitary engineers, chimneysweeps, and 'men about the kitchen. range' have done their worst and their work-or rather done their worst and left their work undone-now proposes to address you.

Harry very kindly met his stepmother, his sister, and a pyramid of luggage, which included a bicycle and a bath-chair, at Paddington. (Cynthia only joined us yesterday after three days spent at Oxbridge with the Gainworthys.) Trelawney, Tracy, and the bullfinches were more en évidence than conventionality permits certainly, and perhaps the sight upon a platform of a flustered cat and dog and a cage of fluttering singing-birds, proved too much. for my brother-greatly as he appreciates the creatures in private -for he vanished from among us as instantaneously as if he were a conjuring trick, and, though I heard his foot upon the still uncarpeted stair at midnight, we saw him no more till the next morning. (I was surprised, M'm, and so was Grace and Mrs. Baker, that Trelawney did not catch the Major's eye at the station; set off so, as he was too, by his blue riband, and the cat looking for notice,' was Blake's comment on the platform episode-the episode not of defective vision but of cutting dead.)