524 MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 



social domestic comfort, and good citizenship. It is on the lowest 

 class, that the comfort and safety of the whole state depends, and it 

 is upon this that the influence of animal excitement is so dangerous. 

 Again, we repeat, that putting phrenology out of the question, Mr. 

 Coornbe's arguments are of considerable value, as tending to demon- 

 strate how a people may deteriorate, both morally and physically. 

 The efforts which are perpetually making to curb in, and interfere 

 with, the amusements and recreations of the poor, are most cruel 

 and most unwise. What good or noble feeling can be expected from 

 men who are ground to the dust by excessive labour, cooped up in 

 crowded towns or manufactories, amidst a miasma of vice, and 

 deprived equally of the fresh breath of Heaven, and the cheering 

 influences of the green and sunny face of Nature ? or from a pau- 

 perized and half idle agricultural population, whose only intercourse 

 with their superiors is through the medium of the parish rates or the 

 workhouse ? " 



MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 



History of Ireland. By THOMAS MOORE, Esq. Vol. I. 

 Lardner's Cyclopaedia. Longman and Co., London. 



Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland, &c. By HUGH 

 MILLER. Adam and Charles Black, Edinburgh. 



IRISHISM and bardisrn have, we grieve to say, spoiled Mr. Moore's 

 work as a history. We should not have thought it possible, had not the 

 proof been before us, that any man at the present day could have brought 

 before us, with a sober brow, the fables and legends which have been con- 

 nected with the early history of Ireland. Why this island should have 

 been sought by the earliest voyagers, as a second Samothrace why it 

 should have been called the Sacred Island why, when the neighbouring 

 shores of Britain and all western Europe were buried in the profoundest 

 barbarism why Ireland should at this time have been so much in advance of 

 her fellows, as to have priests, round towers, bards, legislators, and a high 

 state of civilization, it is impossible to imagine, and certainly quite im- 

 possible to believe. Indeed a little attention on Mr. Moore's part would 

 have convinced him, that he is writing a long series of contradictions, if 

 not in direct terms, at least in substance. Thus Mr. Moore says, 

 p. 190 : 



" Notwithstanding this clear and authentic evidence of Ireland, having 

 been not merely in the first century, but in times preceding our era, in 

 possession of a foreign commerce, it appears equally certain that neither 

 then, nor for many ages after, had the exterior trade of the country 



