that the vicarage and rectory should be united by act of council, and permanently be made one benefice. In order to unite them it was necessary that the person having the vicarage should resign it, that both being vacant, they and might legally be formed into a union ; then the crown having the patronage of the rectory, would have the presentation to the united benefice. Mr. Thacker, therefore, to facilitate this arrangement, resigned the vicarage, and it was united with the rectory. Mr. Villiers Stuart, a supporter of government, and then member for the county, applied to the lord lieutenant to appoint Mr. Thacker to the benefice. He afterwards writes thus to Mr. Thacker :

I have received a note from the pri vate secretary of the lord lieutenant, in which he asks me to ascertain your opinion respecting the National System of education, the lord lieutenant considering it his duty in all his nominations to Church preferments to require an unequivocal support of that system.' Mr. Thacker returned for answer that he was conscientiously opposed to it. The private secretary of the lord lieutenant thereupon writes as follows to Mr. Villiers Stuart - His Excellency most sincerely regrets that he is unable to comply with your desire to have Mr. Thacker appointed to the Union of Whitechurch; but that gentleman having so unequivocally and conscientiously declared his opposition to the system of National education, it would be a violation of the principle by which the lord lieutenant has been guided, if he were to relax. I add, by desire of the lord lieutenant, his request that it may be conveyed to Mr. Thacker, that he entertains no objection to him individually, as from all he has heard, and from his conscientious avowal of his opinions, he considers that gentleman to be entitled to the highest respect.' Mr. Villiers Stuart adds for himself-"I cannot express the deep disappointment the whole parish feels at the loss of snch a pastor.' He (Mr. Hamilton) had a high respect for the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, he felt that to his ability and firmness the safety of the country might in a great degree be attributed; but he would appeal to the noble lord-he would appeal to the House, and to the justice of the English public, is this tolerable? England, continued Mr. Hamilton, you extend toleration to all classes of dissenters in matters of education. depart even from a Scriptural basis and principle in favour of Roman Catholics. In Ireland if a clergymen upholds the principle which every clergyman from one end of England to the

In

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other maintains, however highly recommended, however efficient, however pious, however beloved by his parishioners, he is proscribed by the government because of his conscientious opinions, and the Protestants deprived of the services of such a pastor. Is this doing justice to the Church in Ireland ?"

Now, we ask the intelligent people of England, is this to be any longer endured? We ask them, will they aid in promoting a miscalled system of united education in Ireland, by the corruption of the worst, and the proscription of the best, of the Irish clergy? We know it is in vain to address any such language to those by whom the Church is hated, and to whom the government education project may be recommended, because by its means the establishment may be destroyed. But such are not a majority of the honest and truth-loving people of England; and we call upon the friends of scriptural education to persevere in reiterating their reasonable demands, until their case, in its truth and in its fulness, is known through the length and breadth of the land; and we have no more doubt that the day of their triumph will come, than we have that the reflecting people of England are lovers of truth and justice.

In conclusion, we would briefly observe, that the Irish education question has been, from the first, a sad bungle. It was undertaken by Lord Stanley, with a bona fide intention of securing for all classes of her Majesty's Irish subjects a good moral and religious education. But he did not then sufficiently comprehend the entire subject, or estimate, in all their magnitude, the difficulties by which his projects were surrounded; and, accordingly, the scheme, in its early stages, was a compromise, which sometimes assumed the character of a juggle; and, to use a phrase of his own, the aim of the commissioners would seem to have been, how they might best "thimblerig" the Holy Scriptures; how they might say to the Protestant "See! it is here!" and presto, in the same breath, to the Roman Catholic, "See! it is not there!" And the end was, that the one was to be cheated with the shadow, while the other was possessed of the substance. It was first to have a colour of religion, without the reality,

which colour was gradually to become evanescent, until it now has no colour at all; and every patron of every school may stamp whatever colour he pleases upon his own fractional portion of the system.

Our intelligent readers do not require to be told that as are the patrons, such must be the schools. If the patrons are haters of British rule, or open or secret fomenters of sedition, the schools (no matter what the system professed, or the rules enjoined) may be easily turned into seminaries of treason. The following shows in what proportion the patrons are to be found amongst the different denominations of professing Christians:

"The appendix to the fourteenth report of the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland, contains two returns, commencing p. 173, of the number of schools in each county, and the names of the patrons, distinguishing the vested from the non-vested schools. The names of the patrons having been compared with the lists of the clergy of the different denominations, the following is the result:

Here we have 2,505 schools under the patronage of Roman Catholic priests, and in the immediate management of schoolmasters entirely in their confidence. Have recent events thrown no light upon the animus of that body so as to leave no excuse even for blindness itself to mistake their real character? And can any sane man doubt how such a state of things must operate in such a country as Ireland?

The system has now been in operation for nearly twenty years, a time amply sufficient to judge of it by its fruits. Have the results corresponded with the expectations of its framers? Has any good been done anywhere by the erection of national, commensurate with the evil which has been done everywhere by the discountenance shown to Scriptural schools? Let this test be fairly applied, and if a favourable verdict be given, we are content that our objections should be regarded as ill-founded.

Let

We do trust that our excellent University members will again, and speedily, bring this subject under the consideration of the House of Commons. them not be dispirited by defeat; although outnumbered, they are not overcome. Already they have both most admirably done their duty. By many in the house, and by multitudes out of the house, the question was never understood until they caused it to be known in all its bearings; and they have only to persevere as they have commenced, to secure a final victory. Their adversaries have succeeded but too well, by persevering and unscrupulous hardihood of assertion, in representing them as antiquated and narrow-minded bigots. Let them only evince a similar zeal in a better cause, and the day is not far distant when they will have their reward, in the triumph of the only principle which can ever ensure the moral progress, the social amelioration, and the progressive prosperity of Ireland.

THIS is a volume of no ordinary interest. To the medical inquirer it gives such details as can be now recovered of cerebral disease, extending over a period of fifty-five years-the particular symptoms described by the sufferer himself-for the most part, in confidential letters to intimate friends -that sufferer the most accurate observer of whatever came within his reach, of any man gifted with the same degree of genius that has ever used the English language as a medium of communication, and the man of all others who has, on most subjects, expressed himself with such distinctness, that we do not remember, in any case, a doubt as to the precise meaning of a sentence in his works, although those works are on subjects which actuate and influence the pas. sions, and although he has often written in a dictatorial tone of authority, which of itself provokes resistance, and therefore forces readers into something more than the unquestioning indolence in which we are satisfied to look over most books. Mr. Wilde has given us Swift's own account of Swift's distemper. But the interest of this volume is not to the medical inquirer alone. The relation of intimate friendship in which Swift and Stella lived for some five-and-twenty years, and the mystery thrown over it by a number of idle guesses which have found their way into the biographies of Swift, have led Mr. Wilde to other inquiries, in themselves not unamusing. He has brought together, from obscure and forgotten sources, some of the explanations which were given of parts of Swift's conduct, by persons who had peculiar means of information as to some of the circumstances of the case. Mr. Wilde has given us two portraits of Stella, neither of which had been before engraved; and the volume is closed by a number of poems, found in the hand

writing of Swift, and some of which are probably of his composition, in an interleaved copy of an old almanack, lent to Mr. Wilde for the purposes of this essay.

The history of this volume is this: —Dr. Mackenzie, of Glasgow, writes to Mr. Wilde to learn whether there is any record of Swift's disease known, either to Mr. Wilde or to the readers of the Dublin Medical Journal, a work edited by Mr. Wilde. It occurred to Mr. Mackenzie that there might be something preserved on the subject either in the deanery or in Trinity College. The first part of Mr. Wilde's book is a reply to this question, and was originally published in Mr. Wilde's journal.

Of the disease itself, Mr. Wilde gives us Swift's own description :—

"Swift, writing to Mrs. Howard, in 1727, thus describes the commencement of his complaint: About two hours before you were born”—consequently in 1690-"I got my giddiness by eating a hundred golden pippins at a time, at Richmond; and when you were four years and a quarter old, bating_two days, having made a fine seat, about twenty miles farther in Surrey, where I used to read-and, there I got my deafness; and these two friends have visited me, one or other, every year since; and, being old acquaintance, have now thought fit to come together.' Overloading the stomach, in the manner described, and catching cold by sitting on a damp, exposed seat, were very apt to produce both these complaints-neither of which, when once established, was likely to be easily removed from a system so nervous, and with a temper so irritable, and a mind so excessively active, as that of Swift's. From this period, a disease which, in all its symptoms and by its fatal termination, plainly appears to have been (in its commencement at least) cerebral congestion, set in, and exhibited itself in well-marked periodic attacks which,

year after year, increased in intensity and duration."—pp. 8, 9.

While living in the country, and with his mind comparatively at ease, he made but few complaints. It is probable that his disease gave him but little trouble while at Laracor; but whether it did or not, we have little opportunity of any knowledge, as few of his letters are dated from his par

sonage.

He had not formed at that time his acquaintanceships and friendships with the great persons, in passages of his letters to whom we find these occasional notices of his health; and Stella and Mrs. Dingley were living in his immediate vicinity, so that there are no letters to them of that date. Swift was a shrewd observer of human nature, and dwelling on his deafness and giddiness to those who suffered from similar ailments, seems to have been a piece of skilful flattery. We have not time to look over the correspondence for the purpose of proving this; but the reader, who turns to his letters to Mrs. Howard, will find instances illustrative of what we mean. In the journal to Stella, we find the following entry:-"I have no fits of giddiness, but only some little disorders towards it, and I walk as much as I can. Lady Kerry is just as I am, only a deal worse. I dined today at Lord Shelburn's, where she is, and we con ailments, which makes us very fond of each other." In another note in the same journal, we find this -"Did I ever tell you that the Lord Treasurer hears ill with the left ear, just as I do? He always turns the right, and his servants whisper to him in that only. I dare not tell him that I am so too, for fear that he should think that I counterfeited to make my court." In one of Swift's letters to Archbishop King, we find him saying

"I have been so extremely ill with an old disorder in my head that I was unable to write to your grace." And in a letter of King's to him, inadvertently quoted by Mr. Wilde as a letter from Swift to King, we find King complaining, in Swift's temper, of very much the same symptoms as Swift is perpetually describing. In the journal to Stella, we find Swift again recurring to the effect of cordiality being created by identity of suffering I was this morning with

VOL. XXXIII.-NO. CXCV.

poor Lady Kerry, who is much worse in her head than I. She sends me bottles of her bitter, and we are so fond of one another, because our ailments are the same. Do you know that Madam Stell? Have I not seen you conning ailments with Joe's wife and some others, sirrah?" Mr. Wilde must have looked back almost with envy on the golden harvest of blighted ears that presented itself to the physicians of that auspicious time.

"It is remarkable that several of Swift's friends suffered from symptoms somewhat similar to his own. Thus Harley, Gay, Mrs. Barber, Pope, Mrs. Howard, Lady Germain, Arbuthnot, and others, all suffered from what is popularly termed a fulness of blood to the head.'"-p. 37.

Swift's deafness was of the left ear. Towards the close of life, at one time his left eye was fearfully affected. "About six weeks ago, in one night's time, his left eye swelled as large as an egg, and the left Mr. Nichols thought would mortify.

*

Five persons could scarce hold him for a week from tearing out his eyes." This is Mrs. Whiteway's language, who adds "He is now free from torture; his eye almost well," thus showing that but one eye suffered. In many passages, where he speaks of tottering, we find nothing to fix the fact of whether the one side was affected more than the other; but this, too, is established by a passage which Mr. Wilde quotes from the journal to Stella" My left hand is very weak and trembles, but my right side has not been touched." It seems plain, then, that there was paralysis of the left side.

It would seem, from several passages, that Swift took too much wine and that he poisoned himself with snuff

"By Dr. Radcliffe's advice, he left off bohea tea, which he had observed to disagree with him frequently before." We suspect, therefore, that in this luxury he had indulged too much.

Mr. Wilde does not think there is any evidence of Swift's being subject to epileptic fits, as is stated by many of his biographers. The mistake, if it be such, he thinks, arises from the frequent recurrence in his letters of

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"fits of giddiness," &c. The language is equivocal, and we think there is something to be said for the interpretation put upon it by non-medical readers. Take this sentence, for instance:-"I dined with the secretary, and found my head very much out of order, but no absolute fit; and I have not been well all this day. It has shook me a little."

We wish we had room for extracts from this most interesting volume. It is really a wonderful thing to see, after an interval of a century, a scientific man inferring the true character of a disease, that baffled the eminent men of Swift's own day:

:

"In answer to a recommendation of Mr. Pulteney's on the subject of physicians, the Dean, in his answer of the 7th of March, 1737, writes: 'I have esteemed many of them as learned and ingenious men: but I never received the least benefit from their advice or

prescriptions. And poor Dr. Arbuthnot was the only man of the faculty who seemed to understand my case, but could not remedy it. But to conquer five physicians, all eminent in their way, was a victory that Alexander and Cæsar could never pretend to. I desire that my prescription of living may be published (which you design to follow), for the benefit of mankind; which, however, I do not value a rush, nor the animal itself, as it now acts; neither will I ever value myself as a Philanthropus, because it is now a creature (taking a vast majority) that I hate more than a toad, a viper, a wasp, a stork, a fox, or any other that you will please to add." -p. 40.

Nothing can be more affecting than the exhibition of the gradual decay and deterioration of the instruments by which the mind acts. Insanity, in the proper sense of the word, Mr. Wilde does not regard as having existed in Swift's case. There was the weakness of old age, and the childishness that accompanies it. He would, at times, utter incoherent words and syllables. "But," says

*

Mr. Deane Swift, writing to Lord Orrery, "he never yet, as far as I could hear, talked nonsense, or said a foolish thing." There was a long period, we believe of more than a year, in which he was wholly silent, with but one or two recorded interruptions. A negligent servant girl blew out a candle in his chamber, and the smell offended him; she was told by him she was "a nasty slut." A servant man was breaking a large, stubborn coal, and he told him, "That's a stone, you blackguard." On another occasion, not finding words to express something he wished, he exhibited much uneasiness, and said, "I am a fool." When insanity is spoken of, it is not possible to be very accurate, and we suppose that in denying the existence of insanity in this case, Mr. Wilde does not, in reality, mean very much more than Hawkesworth had long ago expressed. "Some intervals of sensibility and reason, after his madness, seemed to prove that his disorder, whatever it was, had not destroyed, but only suspended, the powers of his mind." The question is, after all, but one of language. Mr. Wilde has shown, almost to demonstration, that Swift's was organic disease of the brain; and many writers -we believe, among others, Dr. Conolly-would say that in this consisted insanity, calling mere functional disease "mental derangement." In Swift's life and conduct-in his ca price in his violent passions-in his oddities even in his vindictive patriotism-in his misanthropy, whether it be regarded as a pretence or a reality in the morbid delight with which he dwells on disgusting images, we see very distinct traces of incipient disease. We exclude from our consideration, in coming to this conclusion, the language of his epitaph in St. Patrick's Cathedral, breathing resentment" Hic depositum est corpus Jonathan Swift, ubi sava indig natio ulterius cor lacerare nequit." We exclude the strange humour exhibited in the half-serious bequests in his will.