As to any immediate adjustment of the maritime rights of this country, on general principles, satisfactory to all parties, we see no reason to expect it. We think the following paragraph justifies us in this opinion. "We are told," says the Morning Chronicle," that on the day when the capture of the city of Washington, and the demolition of its public buildings reached Paris, the Duke of Wellington had a ball: not one public ambassador of the potentates of Europe, our good allies, presented himself to congratulate his grace on the event." We here see, on one side, the most absurd expectations of disinterested sympathy with our national feelings, and as little disposition to enter into them on the other. It is strange that the above paragraph should have found its way into a paper which makes an almost exclusive profession of liberal and comprehensive views.

Nor can we indulge in any serious expectations of " the immediate and general abolition of the Slave Trade." Africa has little to hope from "the prevailing gentle arts" of Lord Castlereagh, However sturdy he may be in asserting our maritime rights, he will, we imagine, go to sleep over those of humanity, and waking from his doux sommeil, find that the dexterous prince of political jugglers has picked his pocket of his African petitions, if, indeed, he chuses to carry the credentials of his own disgrace about with him. There are two obstacles to the success of this measure. In the first place, France has received such forcible lessons from this country on the old virtues of patriotism and loyalty, that she must feel particularly unwilling to be dictated to on the new doctrines of liberality and humanity. Secondly, the abolition of the Slave Trade, on our part, was itself the act of Mr. Fox's administration-an administration which we should suppose there is no very strong inclination to relieve from any part of the contempt or obloquy which it has been the fashion to pour upon it, by extending the benefit of its measures, or recommending the adoption of its principles.

There is another point, on which, though our doubts are by no means strong or lasting, we do not at all times feel the same ab

solute confidence-the continuance of the present order of things in France. The principles adhered to in the determination of some of the preceding arrangements, and the permanent views which shall appear to actuate the other powers of Europe, may have no inconsiderable influence on this great question. Whatever tends to allay the ferment in men's minds, and to take away just causes of recrimination and complaint, must, of course, lessen the pretexts for change. We should not, however, be more disposed to augur such a change from the remaining attachment of individuals, or of the army, to Bonaparte, than from the general versatility and restlessness of the French character, and their total want of settled opinion, which might oppose a check to military enthusiasm. Even their present unqualified zeal, in the cause of the Bourbons, is ominous. How long this sudden fit of gratitude, for deliverance from evils certainly brought upon them by their slowness to admit the remedy, may continue, it is impossible to say. A want of keeping is the distinguishing quality of the French character. A people of this sort cannot be depended on for a moment. They are blown about like a weathercock, with every breath of caprice or accident, and would cry vive l'empereur to-morrow, with as much vivacity and as little feeling, as they do vive le roi to-day. They have no fixed principle of action. They are alike indifferent to every thing: their self-complacency supplies the place of all other advantages-of virtue, liberty, honour, and even of outward appearances. They are the only people who are vain of being cuckolded and being conquered. A people who, after trampling over the face of Europe so long, fell down before their assailants without striking a blow, and who boast of their submission as a fine thing, are not a nation of men, but of women. The spirit of liberty, at the Revolution, gave them an impulse common to humanity; the genius of Bonaparte gave them the spirit of military ambition. Both of these gave an energy and consistency to their character, by concentrating their natural volatility on one great object. But when both of these causes failed, the Allies found

G

that France consisted of nothing but ladies' toilettes. The army are the muscular part of the state; mere patriotism is a pasteboard visor, which opposes no resistance to the sword. Whatever they determine will be done; an effeminate public is a nonentity. They will not relish the Bourbons long, if they remain at peace; and if they go to war, they will want a monarch who is also a general.

THE LAY OF THE LAUREATE, CARMEN NUPTIALE, by Robert Southey, Esq. Poet-Laureate, Member of the Royal Spanish Academy, and of the Royal Spanish Academy of History. London: Longmans, 1816.

Examiner, July 7, 1816.

THE dog which his friend Launce brought as a present to Madam Silvia in lieu of a lap-dog, was something like “The Lay of the Laureate," which Mr. Southey has here offered to the Princess Charlotte for a Nuptial Song. It is "a very currish performance, and deserves none but currish thanks." Launce thought his own dog, Crab, better than any other; and Mr. Southey thinks his own praises the fittest compliment for a lady's ear. His Lay is ten times as long, and he thinks it is therefore ten times better than an Ode of Mr. Pye's.

Mr. Southey in this poem takes a tone, which was never heard before in a drawing-room. It is the first time that ever a Reformist was made Poet-laureate. Mr. Croker was wrong in introducing his old friend, the author of "Joan of Arc,” at CarltonHouse. He might have known how it would be. If we had doubted the good old adage before, "Once a Jacobin and always a Jacobin," since reading "The Lay of the Laureate," we are sure of it. A Jacobin is one who would have his single opinion govern the world, and overturn every thing in it. Such a one is Mr. Southey. Whether he is a Republican or a Royalist,

whether he hurls up the red cap of liberty, or wears the lily, stained with the blood of all his old acquaintance, at his breast, -whether he glories in Robespierre or the Duke of Wellington, -whether he pays a visit to Old Sarum, or makes a pilgrimage to Waterloo,—whether he is praised by The Courier, or parodied by Mr. Canning, whether he thinks a King the best or the worst man in his dominions,-whether he is a Theophilanthropist or a Methodist of the church of England,-whether he is a friend of Universal Suffrage and Catholic Emancipation, or a Quarterly Reviewer,-whether he insists on an equal division of lands, or of knowledge, whether he is for converting infidels to Christianity, or Christians to infidelity,-whether he is for pulling down the kings of the East or those of the West,-whether he sharply sets his face against all establishments, or maintains that whatever is, is right,-whether he prefers what is old to what is new, or what is new to what is old,-whether he believes that all human evil is remediable by human means, or makes it out to himself that a Reformer is worse than a house-breaker,—whether he is in the right or the wrong, poet or prose-writer, courtier or patriot,-he is still the same pragmatical person-every sentiment or feeling that he has is nothing but the effervescence of incorrigible overweening self-opinion. He not only thinks whatever opinion he may hold for the time infallible, but that no other is even to be tolerated, and that none but knaves and fools can differ with him. "The friendship of the good and wise is his." If any one is so unfortunate as to hold the same opinions that he himself formerly did, this but aggravates the offence by irritating the jealousy of his self-love, and he vents upon them a double portion of his spleen. Such is the constitutional slenderness of his understanding, its "glassy essence," that the slightest collision of sentiment gives an irrecoverable shock to him. He regards a Catholic or a Presbyterian, a Deist or an Atheist, with equal repugnance, and makes no difference between the Pope, the Turk, and the Devil. He thinks a rival poet a bad man, and would suspect the principles,

moral, political, and religious, of any one who did not spell the word laureate with an e at the end of it.-If Mr. Southey were a bigot, it would be well; but he has only the intolerance of bigotry. His violence is not the effect of attachment to any principles, prejudices, or paradoxes of his own, but of antipathy to those of others. It is an impatience of contradiction, an unwillingness to share his opinions with others, a captious monopoly of wisdom, candour, and common sense. He is not an enthusiast in religion, but he is an enemy to philosophers; he does not respect old establishments, but he hates new ones; he has no objection to regicides, but he is inexorable against usurpers; he will tell you that "the re-risen cause of evil” in France yielded to "the Red Cross and Britain's arm of might," and shortly af ter, he denounces this Red Cross as the scarlet whore of Babylon, and warns Britain against her eternal malice and poisoned cup; he calls on the Princess Charlotte in the name of the souls of ten thousand little children, who are without knowledge in this age of light, "SAVE OR WE PERISH," and yet sooner than they should be saved by Joseph Fox or Joseph Lancaster, he would see them damned; he would go himself into Egypt and pull down "the barbarous kings" of the East, and yet his having gone there on this very errand is not among the least of Bonaparte's crimes; he would "abate the malice" of the Pope and the Inquisition, and yet he cannot contain the fulness of his satisfaction at the fall of the only person who had both the will and the power to do this. Mr. Southey began with a decent hatred of kings and priests, but it yielded to his greater hatred of the man who trampled them in the dust. He does not feel much affection to those who are born to thrones, but that any one should gain a crown as he has gained the laureate-wreath, by superior merit alone, was the unpardonable sin against Mr. Southey's levelling Muse!

The poetry of the Lay is beneath criticism; it has all sorts of obvious common-place defects, without any beauties either obvious or recondite. It is the Namby-Pamby of the Tabernacle ;