Berkeley-the man who was a century in advance of his age-describes the aristocracy of his time as "Goths in ignorance," spendthrifts, drunkards, and debauchees. The result was such as might be expected; for with the exception

to a rack-rent-leases granted but for a small number of yearstenants tied down to hard conditions-and discouraged from cultivating the lands they occupy to the best advantage, by the certainty they have of the rent being raised on the expiration of the lease, proportionately to the improvements they shall make. Thus it is that honest industry is restrained; the farmer is a slave to his landlord; it is well if he can cover his family with a coarse home-spun frieze. There are thousands of poor wretches who think themselves blessed, if they can obtain a hut worse than the squire's dog-kennel, and an acre of ground for a potato plantation, on condition of being as very slaves as any in America. What can be more deplorable than to behold wretches starving in the midst of plenty? We are apt to charge the Irish with laziness, because we seldom find them employed, but then we do not consider that they have nothing to do. With due submission to Sir William Temple's profound judgment, the want of trade with us, is rather owing to the cruel restraints we lie under, than to any disqualification whatsoever in our inhabitants." The present miserable state of Ireland.

"As to the improvement of land, those few who attempt that or planting, generally leave things worse than they are, neither succeeding in trees nor hedges, and by running into fancy of grazing, are every day depopulating the country. But my heart is too heavy to continue this irony longer, for it is manifest, that whatever stranger took such a journey in Ireland, would be apt to consider himself travelling in Lapland or Ysland, rather than in a country so favoured by nature as ours, both in fruitfulness of soil and temperature of climate. The miserable dress, and diet, and dwelling of the people; the general desolation in most parts of the kingdom; the old seats of the nobility and gentry all in ruins, and no new ones in their stead; the families of farmers who pay great rents, living in filth and nastiness, upon buttermilk and potatoes, without a shoe or stocking to their feet, or a house so convenient as an English hogsty to receive them, these indeed may be comfortable sights to an English spectator. The rise of our rents is squeezed out of the very blood, and vitals, and clothes, and dwelling of the tenants, who live worse than English beggars. Ye are idle, ye are idle, answered Pharaoh to the Israelites, when they complained to his majesty that they were forced to make bricks without straw." Short View of the State of Ireland.

"A great cause of this nation's misery is that Egyptian bondage of cruel, oppressive, covetous landlords, expecting that all who live

of what tenant-right did for the North, and industrious merchants effected in the towns, and '82, that moonlight on a ruin, in one or two cities and on a few estates, the landlords have left no more traces of their presence on the Irish soil, than the followers of Genseric from their arrival in Carthage to their expulsion by Belisarius. They have had Ireland their own way during the last 200 years, but now they are like the brave Dalgais, who, on their return from the field of Clontarf, could not stand without stakes to fight a petty prince of Ossory. This language some people will call bigotry; but it is plain historic truth, told at an awful crisis, when the Irish people starve, and the empire pays ten millions to alleviate a calamity, which Ireland alone could have grappled with, if Irish proprietors (as a class), relying on the connivance and support of the people of England, had not grossly neglected their duty. But the day of retribution is at hand. Many persons were called prophets with less reason than Nicholas French, who foretold that England would one day for her own sake deal out a measure of tardy but summary justice on the heads of the offenders. When O'Daly is so severe on his own beloved Geraldines, what would he have said of the murderous Irish aristocracy?

under them should make bricks without straw; who grieve and envy when they see a tenant of their own with a whole coat, or able to afford one comfortable meal in the whole month, by which the spirits of the people are broken and made fit for slavery; the farmers and cottagers through the whole kingdom, being to all intents and purposes as real beggars, as any of those to whom we give our charity in the streets. And these cruel landlords are every day unpeopling the kingdom-by which numberless families have been either forced into exile, or stroll about and increase the number of our thieves and beggars."-Causes of the Wretched Condition of Ireland.

Elsewhere he writes, "no one builds except in towns," and "every day thousands are dying of cold and famine, and filth and vermin." Such was Ireland a century ago, as described by a Protestant minister. Such the system supported by English connivance. The world knows the little change a century has effected. It were well that some of those literary gentlemen who make public opinion, studied those elegant extracts. Of course, this censure on the present landlords, applies only to "the mob of Irish proprietory, who revel at English watering places," as they have been designated by a respectable resident proprietor,

"Nor do I know how to account for the overthrow and extermination of the Earls of Desmond, when I reflect on all that they did and endured for religion, save by attributing both to the inscrutable ways of God; perhaps some awful delinquency of theirs brought down his vengeance, for He is most just, and punishes those who transgress his laws. If you are curious enough to investigate their crime, consider how James Fitzthomas, Earl of Desmond, was murdered in his castle of Rathkeale, as some suspect by his brother John. Again, recal the horrid murder of James Fitzmaurice, perpetrated by Maurice Desmond in the days of Henry the Eighth. Should this not satisfy you, I would have you ponder on all the cruel acts of rapacity and blood committed against the McCarthy's. Now I have briefly narrated for you the history of the Geraldines, uninfluenced by love of party, solely motived by love of truth. May then this history serve as a warning to the great ones of this world, teaching them to act justly in fear of God, and love for those who are humble in the world. On these virtues you may rear that edifice, whose summit, piercing the clouds, must ultimately reach the highest heavens."-p. 122.

So far from being alarmed at the publication of these works, men should thank the editor and translator for reviving and popularising the grand memories and endearing associa tions of the Anglo-Irish ages, when the mere Irish, the liege English, and the degenerate English, though always at war, and even carrying their hostility into the sanctuary, yet looked upon Ireland as their home, and in one half-century founded more valuable public institutions than their Elizabethan successors during 300 years. If there be one calamity to be deplored at this terrible time, it is, that the young gentlemen of Ireland, who have anything to lose, do not take a lesson from that party which some people call "Young England," and import their principles into Ireland. But Mr. Watson proposes the repeal of some obsolete statutes and insulting restrictions, and the great lights of the "Irish party"-the Hamiltons, Grogans, and Lefroys-they, wiser than Peel, Bentinck and Russell, insist that the Catholic Irish must still be flouted with the Orange rag-Irish party, indeed! "Sire, qu'est que ce que l'Etat?" "L'Etat c'est MOI," dit Louis Quatorze. The Irish party, in plain English, is imperial money in the pockets of Messrs. Hamilton and Lefroy, with letters of marque against the Irish peasant. "L'Etat? c'est moi," says Mr. Lefroy.

One passage from Dr. French looks very like a pro

phecy. It was written after the confirmation of the "Act of Settlement" by Charles the Second.

"Your religion, noble countrymen, your religion is the sole crime for which you suffer; blessed for ever be the name of God!-Do not therefore fear all that men can do against you, while, with tears and patience, you march under the purple standard of crucified Jesus; for in the end, the day and victory will be yours. Fear not the power of men in this glorious trial, there be more with you than against you-legions of Angels, though you see them not, whose heavenly hosts are pitching their tents round about you. He that led the children of Israel out of Egypt in wonders through the Red Sea, never wants power to deliver you: wait for his good time, for he will come.'

There is nothing in Dr. French's writings which would lead us to think that, even in his day dreams, he had any presentiment of what his beloved country was destined to do in extending his Church. Ireland alone-the green isle of the West-preserving the Faith, in spite of persecution, was the grandest vision that cheered his exile. Little could he imagine the day when the Catholic student in a royal college in Ireland, could count up his class-fellows preaching the Catholic faith in every quarter of the globethose who knelt with him before the same altar, and partook, side by side, of the same sacred bread; now toiling in the snows of Canada, or the tropical regions of the East and West Indies, or the New Europe of the South Sea, or numerous other settlements on which commerce or ambition has planted the British standard. He could not have anticipated how his poor countrymen, exiled by misery or persecution, would aid in Catholicising America, and founding Catholic churches in England, thus binding Ireland to the empire by that very principle which conquered persecution-the most active, the most tender, the most enduring principle that has ever swayed the Irish heart-the love for the Church. And least of all, could he have hoped that the descendants of his prostrate confederates would recover their liberty without the sacrifice of their ecclesiastical independence, and be proposed as a model to Europe by the preacher appointed by Pius IX. "You shall not go to Rome on the canonization of the Saints," says Austria to her bishops; "You shall not hold a council, nor stir from your diocese, without my leave," says France; "You shall live on a poor pension,

like the policeman," says Spain; "You shall be nominated or vetoed by us," say all. But the Irish Church is free-in a land of constitutional freedom. May her liberty be immortal! Her missionaries once diffused the light of literature and piety over a great portion of Europe-may she not, in this Erastian age, be destined for a still more noble European mission-a more brilliant wreath for the imperial diadem than all the trophies from Cressy to Waterloo?

ART. VII. - The Catholic Christian's Guide to the Right Use of Christian Psalmody and of the Psalter. By the REV. H. FORMBY. London, Richardson, 1847.

WHATEVER side a person may be inclined to take in the "vexata quæstio" of ecclesiastical music, the very great interest which that subject is exciting at the present moment, is at any rate a circumstance from which those who love the Church will be disposed to draw comfort and encouragement. And this for more than one good reason. How thankful may we Catholics well be, that our own little internal controversies are of so useful, and that they are, at the same time, not of a more vital, character; that they steer clear of all which touches the precious deposit of the Faith, on the one hand; on the other, that they actually do relate to matters of great practical and abiding interest, and are such as can hardly fail to issue in results to the Church which all good men must be delighted to anticipate. What a contrast in both these respects do our own "internal controversies," so to call them, present to those by which a neighbour-communion has now for a length of time been agitated! When an impartial observer hears of the questions which rend the Established Church of England in pieces, he is at a loss whether most to wonder at their greatness or at their littleness. That a religious body should go on being "divided against itself" upon points of such sovereign moment as the nature and office of the Church, or the essential character of the Sacraments, this fact to any