Years rolled on, and a new party came upon the stage, without finding Brougham either declining in energy, improving in judgment, or fixed in principle. He coalesced with Lord Stanley (Derby) in 1849, to prevent the repeal of the Navigation Laws, and actually moved the rejection of the Bill in a speech which he published in a pamphlet. The Bill was carried, and the ministerial crisis, which he anticipated, did not come off. It was on this occasion that Lyndhurst went up to him and said: 'Brougham, here is a riddle for you. Why does Lord Brougham know so much about the Navigation Laws? Answer. Because he has been so long engaged in the Seal fishery.' The only excuse for his reverting to Protection after having zealously advocated Free Trade is that political economy was not amongst the subjects which he had studied or understood. There are speeches of his at an earlier period in which he spoke of cheap corn as an evil resulting from excessive cultivation, which should be checked by the legislature. Lord Campbell died on the 21st June, 1861; Lord Brougham on the 7th May, 1868, having survived his biographer seven years wanting six weeks. The Life stops in 1859: 'I here stop for the present. My memoir cannot be considered complete without some further account of his writings; an estimate of his character; and a survey of the influence he has exercised upon the times in which he lived.' What the formal estimate of character and influence would have been, may be inferred with little risk of error; and the world has no reason to regret the loss of a detailed account of the works. As we have already intimated, what Brougham did in and for literature and science must be taken in the block, not judged individually or by the piece. His multifarious writings were the wheels and cogs of the machinery by which he upheaved prejudice and bigotry, the slings and arrows with which he assailed ignorance, the aqueducts and sluices by which he diffused knowledge. The real aim of the essay or article was attained by the inquiry it stimulated or the example it set. He led the way and others followed, who without him would not have moved at all. When a man has been constantly waging war with tongue and pen against abuses, it is no slight praise to say of him what was said of Flood, the rival of Grattan, that his foot was always in the stirrup, his lance always in the rest. Brougham may not have contributed the best papers published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, though we can hardly believe Lord Campbell's story that the Society was made bankrupt by publishing at its own risk his 'Political Philosophy,' 'the copyright of which he had generously presented to it." But But he set the Society afloat, and under his auspices it flourished for several years, and, selling excellent treatises at a low price, was of essential service to the middle and lower orders.' Again, admitting the scheme of the London University to have originated with Thomas Campbell (who was undoubtedly entitled to this honour), the odds are that it would have been dropped, delayed, or much less efficiently carried out, unless it had been taken up and hurried forward to completion with his wonted eagerness by Brougham. Whatever other maxim or principle he abandoned, he never once, during his long life, ceased to act upon Benjamin Constant's aphorism: the press is the mistress of intelligence, and intelligence is the mistress of the world.' He thus attained great ends by means worthy of them. If in one sense it had been better for his reputation to have remained quiet during the last fifteen or twenty years of his life, when he was the apostle of Social Science, his very restlessness proves his unabated zeal in the cause of progress; and neither the commonplaces he spoke nor the foolish things he did in his decline, will be remembered a hundred years hence, or, if remembered, will dim the lustre of his fame. If 'blushing glory' cannot hide the fears of the brave and follies of the wise,' these are thrown into a hardly distinguishable background by time. When the muse of history is compelled to pause upon the meanness of Bacon, the dotage of Marlborough, the drivelling of Swift, or the disreputable old age of Erskine, it is only to drop a tear. It is from the apex of the pyramid that men calculate its height. Viewed from afar off, nothing is seen or known of a lofty object but its towering proportions,nothing of the irregularities, inequalities, cracks or slimy stains on the surface, and Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, ART. II.-Realities of Irish Life. By W. Stewart Trench, Land Agent in Ireland to Marquis of Lansdowne, Marquis of Bath, and Lord Digby. London, 1868. THIS HIS work is different from any other book on Ireland we have met with. Its title Realities of Irish Life,' faithfully describes its contents. There is scarcely a word about politics or the Church in it from one end to the other. Whigs and Tories are never so much as named, nor Protestants and Catholics as distinct and hostile sects. The so-called ecclesi astical astical grievance is absolutely ignored-not from any wish of the author to avoid it, but because in his life-long experience of the Irish people it does not appear to have once crossed his path as a practical consideration to be recognised and dealt with. The whole volume is occupied with the great question and the great difficulty of Ireland, which throw every other question and difficulty into the back-ground-namely, the peculiar character of the people, and their ideas and feelings in reference to the land. For treating of these topics Mr. Trench has been more favourably placed than any one who has yet appeared before the public. Himself an Irishman, a cousin of Lord Ashtown and of the Archbishop of Dublin, having resided all his life in Ireland, thoroughly knowing his countrymen, and cordially liking them, he early embraced the profession of a land-agent, besides being a considerable landed proprietor on his own account; and naturally, therefore, his work-which is simply a graphic and truthful narrative of his experiences in that double capacity-is at once the most deeply interesting, and the most instructive and illustrative we have read for many years. We shall be much mistaken if it do not go far to enable us both to understand the Irish far better, and to sympathise with them far more discriminatingly than we have ever done before. The work, too, is singularly opportune, appearing at this conjuncture; for, perhaps, the first and clearest impression it leaves upon the reader's mind is, how utterly beside the mark are the proceedings of those statesmen who fancy they are grappling with the Irish difficulty when they are surrendering the Irish Church. It is significant that in this faithful record of the experiences of upwards of thirty years in various portions of the south and centre of Ireland, the Church grievance is only once touched upon-and then in a discussion among the peasantry over their whisky, and in the following terms: "Some says it's the land laws that's mighty bad," observed another; "that it's them that's crushing us down, and that they are going to bring in a bill-as they call it-to alter them." "and all con "A curse upon the land laws," cried the president, cerned in them. It's the land itself we want, and not all this bother about the laws. The laws is not so bad in the main, barrin' they make us pay rent at all. What good would altering the laws do us? sure we have tenant-right, and fair play enough, for that matter, for Trench never puts any one off the land that's able to pay his rent, and stand his ground on it. But why would we pay rent at all? That's the question, say I. Isn't the land our own, and wasn't it our ancestors' before us, until these bloody English came and took it all away from us? My curse upon them for it--but we will tear it back out of their heart's blood yet." "In troth then ye'll have tough work of it before ye do," rejoined another. "Them Saxons is a terrible strong lot to deal with. They beat down ould Ireland before, and I doubt but they'll hold on the land still, and beat her down again, rise when ye may." "None of your croakin'," cried the president. "Sure it's not more than three hundred years since they took it all from us, and many a country has risen and held its own again after a longer slavery than that. I say The Land we must have, and cursed be the hand and withered the arm that will not strike a blow to gain it!" "Some say it's the Church that's crushing us," suggested one of the party who had not spoken before. "Damn the Church, and you along with it," cried the president in a passion. "What harm does the Church do you or any one else? The gentlemen that owns it are quiet dacent men, and often good to the poor. It's the land, I say again, it's the land, we want. The Saxon robbers took it from our forefathers, and I say again we'll wrench it out of their heart's blood; and what better beginning could we have than to blow Trench to shivers off the walk?" "True for ye," said another, "so far as that goes, but ye are wrong about the Church for all that. Sure isn't it what they call the dominan' Church, and what right has it to dominate over own clargy, who are as good as them any day. Up wid our clargy, and down with the dominan' Church! say I. Besides," continued he more softly, "may be if we had once a hold of the Church lands, the landlords lands would be 'asier come at after." "Why then that may be true too," said the president; "down with the Church, down with the landlords, down with the agents, down with everything, say I, that stands in the way of our own green land coming back to us again." "What wonderful grand fun we'll have fightin' among ourselves when it does come!" said a thick-set Herculean fellow at the lower end of the table. "Well, now, I often thought of that!" replied his neighbour in a whisper. "It'll be bloody work then in earnest, as sure as you and I live to see it. Anything that has happened up to this will be only a joke to what will happen then." "Sure "And what matter?" cried the advocate for fighting. wouldn't it be far better any day to be fightin' among friends, than have no fightin' at all, and be slaves to our enemies? By the powers," cried he, and he gave the table a salient stroke with his shilelagh that made the punch-glasses leap, "but I would rather go out as our ancestors did before us, with the skeine in our hands, and the skins of wild beasts upon our backs, and fight away till the best man had it, than be the slaves we are now, paying rint in the office, and acknowledging them Saxons as our landlords!"'. -pp. 191-193. Mr. Trench is, or has been, agent for four of the largest absentee proprietors in the country, some of whose estates exceeded 30,000 or 40,000 acres. Three of these he has managed for twenty twenty years, and has raised them from an almost desperate condition to a state of prosperity, comfort, and content. He describes, simply but very clearly, and often dramatically, the various measures adopted for the purpose, and the difficulties, and dangers, and strange adventures he encountered in the process. The barony of Farney (Co. Monaghan), when he took the management of Mr. Shirley's half of it, contained 41,000 Irish acres, and a population of 44,000 souls, or more than one human being per acre, the people having been permitted for generations to multiply and squat ad libitum, and being "Celts in all their purity'-wild, uneducated, usually docile and kindly, but liable to phrenzied outbreaks of excitement. After a year or two of the most laborious and perilous labour, by a mixture of sagacity, firmness, and fair dealing, and having been nearly torn in pieces (literally) at the outset, Mr. Trench succeeded in reducing this mass of farmers and cottiers to something like manageable numbers and regularity of life; and then turned his attention to other fields of labour. When he undertook the management of Lord Lansdowne's estates in Kerry in 1849, the people had been decimated by the famine, scarcely any rent had been paid for years, and 10,000 persons were receiving relief in the union of Kenmare, in which the estates were situated; in fact, more than the whole income of the property was eaten up by poor rates. The following is Mr. Trench's picture of the state of affairs: 'The estate of the Marquis of Lansdowne in the Union of Kenmare had at this time been much neglected by its local manager. It consists of about sixty thousand acres, and comprises nearly one-third of the whole union. No restraint whatever had been put upon the system of sub-division of land. Boys and girls intermarried unchecked, each at the age of seventeen or eighteen, without thinking it necessary to make any provision whatever for their future subsistence, beyond a shed to lie down in, and a small plot of land whereon to grow potatoes. Innumerable squatters had settled themselves, unquestioned, in huts on the mountain sides and in the valleys, without any sufficient provision for their maintenance during the year. They sowed their patches of potatoes early in spring, using sea-weed alone as a manure. Then as the scarce seasons of spring and summer came on, they nailed up the doors of their huts, took all their children along with them, together with a few tin cans, and started on a migratory and piratical expedition over the counties of Kerry and Cork, trusting to their adroitness and good luck in begging, to keep the family alive till the potato crop again came in. And thus, in consequence of the neglect or supineness of the agent, who-in direct violation of his lordship's instructions, and without his knowledge-allowed numbers of strangers and young married couples to settle on his estate, paying no |