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began to encroach upon the rights of the King, and claim for the Neapolitan Clergy, their clients, powers independent of the Crown. The pure doctrine of Rome, on this point, they taught at Naples, with as confident a sense of security as if they were in Westminster, and by so doing roused royal indignation. That, however, they did not scruple to appease by signing a formal profession of absolute principles, and of blind submission to the King of the Two Sicilies. That paper, contrary to their expectation, was printed. They were committed thereby, in the sight of Europe, as advocates of the most savage variety of despotism just now known to exist under the sun; and their General has consequently thought it necessary to interfere in the manner usual, and reprove them-members of the most political fraternity in Popedom-for meddling with politics. This, however, is but a pro formá document, necessary for public reasons. They kiss it, therefore, lay it on their head, and pray for him that sent it, like Persian slaves. The Pope, thankful for their services, espouses their quarrel. They did their best to serve him, and he is thankful.

A word more concerning the influence of Jesuitism in this United Kingdom, and we have done. By transfusing its own spirit into the Court, the hierarchy, the schools, and all the institutions of the Popedom, the Society gains immense power over the British Empire. The degree of diocesan or provincial independence that not even the Council of Trent could overcome, is made to give way under the stern obligation to "holy obedience," that could never be enforced so perfectly by the secular Prelates on their own Clergy. Wiseman in England, and Cullen in Ireland, were both, as we understand, alumni of the Roman College, both disciplined in Retreats and Exercises, and both, as we have shown, under the direct control of Jesuitism. Ireland, made a Jesuit province in 1829, and England, an episcopal province under the Propaganda in 1850, are equally subject to the same governing authority. Under these chiefs the two islands are ruled in strict agreement, and kept in absolute submission to the present General. With the artifice that we have already marked, the Irish Priests are now forbidden to interfere with politics, just as the French Jesuits were forbidden by Roothan to give any opinion concerning the temporal dominion of the Pope over the King. In Ireland, or in the other Jesuit provinces, when critical questions are pending, the Order is to be quiet, and give care to raising the ceremonial of the Church from "its extremely slovenly condition." Not relaxing their vigilance, not withholding private counsels, nor failing to put forth their best influence in private, the Priests are still bidden to exercise their full right as Irishmen, only without noise. The greatest care of Court and Company just now is given to seminaries, which they earnestly desire to reform

according to the Italian model, of which we have read so much in the last Maynooth Report. Dr. Cullen, in sweet accord with Her Majesty's Commissioners, was not unmindful of his duty, but, very consistently with his previous engagements, placed that Report, in manuscript, under the revision of his masters. A somewhat similar instance of educational zeal, fostered also by the British Government, occurred when the Earl of Derby, as Lord Stanley, held office for the Colonies. The Maltese Jesuits then prayed permission to establish a College in their island. His Lordship and his colleagues gave ear to the prayer, and accordingly the youth of Malta, not to say the servants of the local Government, rejoice under the shadow of the Company. In short, there now remains no possibility of emerging from that shadow; for not only in Malta, but wherever the Propaganda rules, priestly education cannot be other than Jesuitical. And not only the Priests, but the laity of all classes are gradually brought under the same tutelage. Industrial and reformatory institutions, of all things the last thought of by Cardinals, are to rival, if possible, the efforts of Protestant benevolence in our great towns; and the management of these new seminaries of Romanism, religious and political, must necessarily be given to members of that Order whose peculiar function it is to educate all classes. And yet again, lest Maynooth teaching should not be sufficiently intense, or lest some shade of English patriotism, or some infirmity of Irish impetuosity, should spoil the training of the Priests there, and because a larger supply is wanted for England than Maynooth could yield, and policy forbids many English Priests to learn their spiritual exercises in Ireland, there is to be a new English College at Rome. This College is to bear the name of Pio Nono, just as the palace of the Inquisition bears that of Urbano Ottavo; and therein the Ignatian Fathers hope to train up English youth to be their coadjutors over us. Collections have recently been made in England for this pious object.

Here we stop. The want of space forbids us to proceed any further. We cannot indulge in searching into the affairs of Belgium, where the Company is dominant; nor can we trace its doings in Austria, from the day of its return to Vienna, in 1820, up to the achievement of its recent triumph in the emancipation of the Clergy from imperial jurisdiction, and its last exploit of a Concordat, the most monstrous fruit of despotic insolence on the one hand, and of despotic imbecility on the other, that has been produced since the more compendious transaction at Dover between the Roman Legate and our poor King John. What these chosen zealots have done to rivet the chains of absolutism on Lombardy and Venice, since their establishment in those conquered States in 1836, it might be as difficult to substantiate, as it is impossible to doubt. Our whole Colonial Empire, regarded

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as a field of Jesuit enterprise, ought also to be explored; but we hope that enough has been adduced to show, that the re-constitution of Papal power, since the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte, has been largely, if not chiefly, due to the Society, now in possession of the Roman schools, the Missions, the Confessional, in great part, the Papal Closet, Papal Envoys, an incalculable multitude of conventual and literary institutions, and, to crown the whole, the two important bodies of Irish and English Ecclesiastics. The successor of Peter aforetime held the keys; they are now handled by the successor of Ignatius.

ART. IV. Noctes Ambrosianæ. By PROFESSOR WILSON. In Four Volumes. Vols. I. and II. Blackwood. 1855.

THE same man in different circumstances, and what then? Postpone his birth, translate his home, alter his social grade, and, in all outward things, reverse his destiny; will his character be developed into the same substantial form? Can the imagination rightfully supply the features of his life in any given position? To do so would be a matter of the highest difficulty, but perhaps it is not quite impossible. Yet, if we endeavour to estimate the results of this hypothetical combination, our conclusion must remain unverified: it is only a conjecture at the best. With persons of ordinary stamp, who accept their destiny as infants receive their breath and children daily bread, it is easy to conceive how little alteration would be made in their lot by their birth happening in other lands or earlier ages. To know the habits of their age and country is to know the quality and tenor of their lives. A postman of the present day may not have been a letter-carrier in the period of the Commonwealth; but, so far as his lot depended on himself, it would not have ranged much higher. But what if Cromwell had been the son of some modern Barclay? Would he have followed the genius of command to the borders of revolution, or been content with the parliamentary position, say, of Sir Fowell Buxton, taken arms against the accursed Slave-trade, and crowned his reputa tion in our own day by a single-handed contest with public abuses of every kind and shape? Alas! there is none in whom we can recognise the re-animated soul of Cromwell. And then, Alfred, the Saxon Monarch,-suppose him to have been born in a humbler sphere, but a brighter age, emerging from the middle class on this side of the struggling millennium of the modern world, instead of shining at the moment of its grim beginning. Shall we style him author, politician, or prosperous merchant? He might have been one or all: he would have been eminent

for large views in some department of national or social policy: he must have commanded the respect and admiration of all wise men in the sphere selected by his will and illustrated by his genius and resource.

We know not if these speculations may seem to the reader plausible, or otherwise. But there is one ancient character for whom we have no difficulty in finding a modern representative; and this we do set forth with greater confidence. Suppose that one of those yellow-haired and lawless sea-kings who disturbed the Heptarchy, and sang the wild songs of Scandinavia as he sailed in quest of plunder or in pure love of conquest and renown; who stood only in fear of Thor, the Thunder-god, and gave constant praise and worship to Balder, the blue-eyed deity of love and music,-suppose the destiny of such an one postponed to our well-regulated age, and his first breath drawn in modern Edinburgh, instead of his last sigh breathed in defiance on the shore of the stormy Hebrides; how then shall all his powers, physical and moral, develope and attach themselves? It seems to us that such a phenomenon has really occurred. The strong, fierce, generous Viking wakes to unseasonable life at the dawning of the nineteenth century. He brings with him all the adventurous daring of a pirate's nature, in union with all the passionate affections of a poet's heart. He grows up to the royal stature of humanity, his yellow hair falling in untamed profusion about his massive brows. He leaps a distance so gigantic that the lowland carle stares in metaphysical astonishment. With equal ease he will knock down a bullock, or drink down a baillie. His mirth is more uproarious than the laughter which shakes Olympus; his wisdom and serenity more mellow than the sun which sets behind the hills of Morven. There is no due outlet for his active enterprise, and so his busy mind goes out after all knowledge,-lifts itself up on the wings of poesy, and darts forth its eagle vision into the cloudland of philosophy. Untrained as a marauder, he becomes terrible as a critic. Denied the murderous club of his forefathers, he seizes eagerly upon a trenchant weapon of offence,since caught up into heaven, and known as the constellation of The Crutch, and becomes henceforth the terror of all feeble poets and conceited cockneys, and tyrant over all the foes of Torydom.

In this sketch of the character of the late Professor Wilson we have briefly indicated the strength, variety, and affluence of his natural gifts; and we have no doubt that when we are furnished with a detailed narrative of his life and several performances, it will more than justify our summary description. But the reader is not called upon to wait for such a proof. It was as the "Christopher North" of Blackwood's Magazine that Professor Wilson earned his splendid reputation;

and the fulness and maturity of his athletic powers were all put forth in the composition of the Noctes Ambrosianæ, now before us. In these admirable papers the man as well as the author, the humourist as well as the philosopher, the citizen as well as the moralist, appears in the utmost freedom of undress; and from them, more truly perhaps than from any circumstantial memoir, may be drawn the fairest estimate of his character, opinions, and career.

Some of our readers may remember the time,-now thirty years gone by,-when these papers began to attract the attention of the public; and we ourselves can recall the pleasure which (ten years later) the last few numbers of the series, then just brought to a triumphant conclusion, produced in our minds, in that opening stage of youth when the love of reading is a passion the most eager and predominant. But many will require to be told, and others to be reminded, that the Noctes Ambrosianæ assume to be the record of convivial mirth and rational discourse occurring at certain imaginary suppers, under the roof of one Ambrose, in the city of Edinburgh. The principal interlocutors are three, Christopher North, Editor of Blackwood's Magazine; Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd; and Timothy Tickler, a gentleman of the old school, standing six feet four in his stocking feet. None of these characters are purely imaginary; yet as they appear in the work before us, in eminent relief and due proportion, they are all the masterly creations of Professor Wilson.

Tickler is supposed to adumbrate, in certain personal traits, ́ the character of Robert Sym, the author's maternal uncle, who, as the editor informs us, "died in 1844, at the age of ninety-four, having retained to the last the full possession of his faculties, and enjoyed uninterrupted good health to within a very few years of his decease." He was formerly a Writer to the Signet, but retired from business at the commencement of the present century. He does not appear to have been a literary character, in the stricter sense of the phrase, and had no further connexion with Blackwood's Magazine than that arising from an interest in its success, and a friendship with its chief contributors. We may readily conclude with Mr. Ferrier, that the Tickler of the Noctes is almost entirely a creature of the imagination, or, at least, a faint but noble outline worthily filled in. In the figure of Christopher North, the author has sketched himself,-not strictly in his own. character and person, and not in his professorial robes, but in his editorial capacity, as seated in the chair of "Maga," and swaying the critical sceptre in the northern capital. We recognise the likeness as conditionally true. In some notable particulars the Christopher North of "Maga" and the Noctes differs from the Professor Wilson of private life. The former