perty and worth, and ensure the final subversion of law and order in this unhappy land." We subjoin the list of names as it appears in "The Evening Mail:"

"Let us write down at random the Dukes of Leinster and Manchester, Marquises of Clanricarde and Downshire, Headfort and Westmeath, Donegal and Waterford, Sligo and Thomond, Kildare and Londonderry; Lords Charlemont and Roden, Leitrim and Enniskillen, Lismore and Glengall, Listowel and Donoughmore, Riversdale and Farnham, Dunally and Charleville, Lurgan and Erne, Steuart de Decies and Clare, Kenmare and Bandon, Fingal and Caledon, Gormanstown and Wicklow, Southwell and Clancarty, Carew and Muskerry, Cunningham and Dunraven, Meath and Ranfurley, Besborough and Dungannon, Howth and Clanwilliam, Guillamore and Mayo, Trimleston and Dunsany, Rossmore and O'Neill; Fitzstephen French, George Alexander Hamilton, the O'Conor Don, Honourable James Maxwell, Sir Montague Chapman, Mr. Gregory, Sir Robert Ferguson, Mr. Bateson, Mr. Redington, Captain Jones, Sir W. Barron, James H.

Hamilton, Mr. Wyse, Captain Taylor, Mr. Archbold, and Lord Bernard."

We should wish much to learn, that a deputation such as could be formed from this list, had waited on the minister of the day, whoever he may be, and demanded of him in the 'name of a suffering country, that law be executed, and life respected. We are much inclined to believe, that few ministers would scoff at such a deputation with replies like those which some of the best men in the land have had the mortification to endure.

We must conclude, and without inserting, as we would wish to do, some passages from the prospectus issued by the National Club. But we must return to our subject in the ensuing month, and hope to do it more justice. Our sense of the deep importance of the one subject which has mainly engaged our attention, may be seen in our abstinence. The unprecedented condition of our country-the anomalous aspect of parties-the mysterious break up of the cabinet-has not had power to draw us from it.

"Dublin, 26th November, 1845."

"RICHARD PURDY.

THE appearance of Mr. Paton's book on Servia has given us real pleasurenot so much from the intrinsic merits of the work itself, as from its being symptomatic of an awakening curiosity in matters of cotemporary history, whose importance a later period will, probably, have cause to estimate far higher than this present.

The efforts by which Servia freed herself from the withering influence of a foreign despotism-by which she shook off the cramping weight of an inferior order of civilization, and struggled into the purer atmosphere of European life these efforts, occurring among co-religionists, and in our own day, have hitherto remained almost unnoticed among us; and yet, there was in them enough to awaken the interest of noble and generous mindsthere was in them much of the heroism which springs from man's higher nature; there was something, too, of that divine instinct which esteems life's worthiness, before life's worth; there was self-sacrifice, true-heartedness, faith-firm, earnest, and longsuffering. And even for minds less open to warm impulses-even for those whose reason has been pampered at the expense of the heart-for the mere politician, and the mere philosopher, that struggle presents a high interest. It presents this interest in its character of a revolution-the profoundest study of the politician, as of the philosopher, no matter under what latitude, what shade of civilization, or

what form of government it may occur; since, in its stronger emotions, humanity is ever true to itself, and the question here is still the ever-renewed strife between self-love and selfrespect, between justice and injustice, between the oppressor and the oppressed.

Nevertheless, all these grave claims to attention have hitherto proved but feeble for us. True, this Servian affair may possess certain romantic attractions-may, perhaps, have shown humanity under some of its finest, or, as they say, poetic aspects-but what then? It did not affect our commercial position, it offered us no new field for speculation, no important market for our manufacturing produce. In the community of nations, Britain represents the practical man; and to the practical man, what signification had all this? None and yet the practical man is not always the far-seeing.

too

While practical Britain was much engaged to give more than a passing thought to the Servian war of freedom, Germany, the theoretical, made a different estimate of the same events; she found them worthy of gravest note, worthy to occupy the time and talents of one of her most deep-thinking men-of Leopold Ranke; and Leopold Ranke has produced a work on the subject, which, brief as it necessarily is, must take an unquestioned place among the chefs d'œuvre of modern historic composition.

A history is simply the biography of

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a nation; a good history, therefore, like a good biography, will discover not only the external, but the internal life of its "hero;" will show not only the form and the manner, but also the motive of his actions; will lay before us, as far as may be, not only the idiosyncracy of the individual, but also the influences, moral and physical, among which this idiosyncracy has developed itself-for, without knowing these, what true judgment can we form either of the man or of the nation? How know through what either has struggled how measure the inner strength, otherwise speaking, the worth of either? In the nation more especially, where the biography is but of an epoch, how, if this knowledge be wanting, may we presume to estimate its endurance for the future-the life which lies within-the destiny which lies before?

It is almost superfluous to say, that Ranke's history fulfils all these requisites of goodness.

In a former number of this periodical, (March, 1843,) the reader will find a summary of the leading events of the Servian Revolution-a sketch unshaded, but accurate, of the external life of Servia during that critical period. Referring him to this, we shall avoid, as far as possible, treating our subject from a similar point of view, and shall endeavour to present rather the inner life, of which those events were but, as it were, the sign, and the expression.

Here Professor Ranke's admirable work must be our text-book.

The

The Serves, as every one knows, are a branch of the Slavonic family, the most formidable of the later barbarian invaders of the empire. epoch of their abandoning their nomadic habits, and entering on a political existence, seems doubtful, and the solution of the doubt, is not, perhaps, of material importance. It is certain, however, that in the latter half of the ninth century, they were established as a nation under their their own rulers, (Zupans,) in nearly the same territory which they occupy at the present day. This ter ritory (the ancient Masia superior) being Roman, they did not hesitate to acknowledge the supremacy of the empire, adhering still to its eastern division on the restoration of the

western, by Charlemagne, and embracing Christianity towards the end of the ninth century, through the mission of Methodius and Cyrillus.

We must not conclude, however, from this, that they yielded entire submission either to the empire, or to the Church of the Greeks.

The common characteristic of the barbarian tribes which inundated Europe, during the earlier centuries of our era, was a sentiment of independence, merely personal in their nomadic state, but gradually expanding, as they settled down to a political existence, into that safeguard of nations, the love of liberty. When, therefore, the Servians decided upon acknowledging the supremacy of Constantinople, they did so under the express condition of never being subjected to an administration emanating from thence, thus rendering their apparent vassalage a mere matter of form.

In the eleventh century, however, the Greeks, in spite of their engagements to the contrary, made an attempt to bring Servia under their direct rule, and actually dispatched a governor thither with that object; but his appearance was the signal for a general rising, and he was compelled to fly for his life. A numerous army sent by Constantine Monomachus, (1043,) with directions to force its way into the interior, and reconsolidate the tottering supremacy, was met by the Serves in their mountain defiles, and completely annihilated.

:

As in the individual, the consciousness of personality is elicited and fortified by the struggle, so to speak, with the foreign principles around him, so is it with nations in the resistance which the Servians were, from that period, compelled continually to oppose to the attempted encroachments of the Greeks, they learnt to know their own strength to concentrate themselves to become, in short, an independent people; and the growth of this self-consciousness was favoured by indirect influences. Attached from the beginning to the oriental Church, Servia remained apart from the mortal contest then raging in the West, between the spiritual and temporal powers, and had thus increased opportunity for independent development. Accordingly, in the fourteenth century, while Russia had fallen

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