1831.] Dublin Sainls. 311 



at night raving about the Millenium, Antichrist, and the plains of Ar- 

 mageddon. Many a fair lady, too, thinks she is fearfully in arrear with 

 Heaven, if she lays her cheek on her pillow, without teaching at three 

 infant schools, traversing the diameter of Dublin twice on the business 



of the City Mission, assisting at the prayer-meeting at Lady 's, 



hearing a lecture of two hours from one of the domestic divines of that 

 consecrated mansion, officiating at a bazaar, reading the last number of 

 the " Evangelical Magazine," and so many other pious offices and un- 

 dertakings, that but for the words et cetera, we should never conclude 

 the sentence. The same comprehensive expression must serve to help 

 our article to a close. A thousand other notabilia of the religious world 

 in Dublin must be recorded in an et cetera, for we want leisure to pre- 

 sent them to the reader in a more expanded form. Besides, the space 

 that is yet left us must be employed in anticipating criticism. We trust, 

 in the foregoing remarks, we have not lost sight of the boundaries be- 

 tween Fanaticism and Religion ; and that none of the shafts we aim 

 only at enthusiasts and mountebanks have fallen even by reflection on 

 the rational professors and unostentatious practisers of the Gospel. If 

 any thing has been said, that can be construed without violence into a 

 slight upon Christianity, the error has been unintentional. Our wish 

 has been to expose the conduct of those, whose wild fancies, and extra- 

 vagant projects, have done much to prejudice the cause of real piety 

 whose religion is merely fashion and their sanctity nothing, but a cloak 

 under which they cater for the gratification of a busy humour and over- 

 weening vanity. We think a system deserves to be exposed, which 

 annually exports vast sums of money out of a country so impoverished 

 as Ireland, to supply the Chinese and South Sea islanders with tracts 

 and Bibles, as if the first principles of cur religion did not direct us to 

 make the physical and moral wants of our own people the first objects 

 of our solicitude. As long as ignorance and hunger the famine of 

 mind and body disgrace and devastate our own villages and fields, so 

 long will our charity be more Christian in proportion as its character is 

 more domestic so long at least may we venture, without incurring too 

 heavy a responsibility, to trust the Greenlander and Otaheitan to Him 

 " who feedeth the young ravens when they cry unto Him/' As to the 

 style and tone of our observations, which may be thought sometimes too 

 light for a subject of so much importance as even the abuses of religion, 

 we think it sufficient to repeat a question that was put long ago (f Quid 

 vetat ridcntem dicere verum ?" 



DRAMATIC COPYRIGHT THEATRICAL AFFATRS, AT HOME 



AND ABROAD. 



To understand France is quite out of the question in this country. 

 We hear of the most unbridled republicanism; the most unshackled 

 press, and so forth : yet scarcely a day passes without arrests, of which 

 no one must inquire the motive ; and the liberty of the press is signa- 

 lized by prosecutions once a week. But of all liberties, the liberty of 

 the theatre was the dearest to a Frenchman, and accordingly, by the 

 national rule of contraries, a code has been established within the fort- 

 night for the theatre in France, that would be no discredit to the legisla- 

 tion of Turkey. We have our licencer, it is true, and he exercises a 



