1827.] 



Domestic and Foreign. 



311 



who do not possses a certain annual income, 

 from attending the literary institutions of his 

 kmgdoir. 



So much for sovereigns meddling with 

 education ! 



Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary ; 

 1826. This is tbe first time Voltaire's Phi- 

 losophical Dictionary has been translated; 

 and some of our readers' will think, perhaps, 

 it would have been better left alone now. 

 We are not precisely of that opinion, 

 though we do not think the translation was 

 called lor. Thosa who can taste Voltaire, 

 will prefer him in the raciness of his own 

 inimitable language. But there is more 

 good than harm in the work; and we are not 

 for suppressing good, because it happens to 

 be mixed up occasionally with what is less 

 acceptable. Every thing requires sifting. 

 What good is unaccompanied with evil ? Or 

 what so bad from which good may not be 

 extracted ? If Voltaire is to be proscribed 

 how many scores of admitted denizens should 

 share in the proscription? Voltaire was a 

 man eminently/ree from prejudice bad as 

 well as good. He looked with a direct and 

 searching eye through the institutions of so- 

 ciety; his keen and penetrating glance de- 

 tected absurdities, perversions, cruelties ; 

 and his impetuous activity compelled him 

 irresistibly to expose them. The ardour of 

 his temperament hurried him frequently be- 

 yond the point of discretion, and the desire 

 of victory, no doubt, occasionally beyond 

 the bounds of truth and propriety. He made 

 war upon hypocrisy, as openly as he dared. 

 The power of the hypocrites be attacked, 

 forced himself into hypocrisy, but it was hy- 

 pocrisy of another cast a different texture. 

 The object of his hypocrisy was not to de- 

 ceive the world, but to screen himself from 

 a formidable party. But in how many in- 

 stances did he not dare the worst resentments 

 of his enemies; and how much did he not in 

 reality suffer from them ? Were thesepersecu- 

 tions encountered in the pursuit of self-in- 

 terest? No, but of general humanity. He had 

 faults enough of character, perhaps ; and has 

 offended in his writings, sometimes, against 

 truth, and delicacy, and accuracy, but never 

 against the charities and kindly feelings of 

 mankind. Uniformly he inculcates huma- 

 nity, and freedom, and intelligence; and if 

 he attack the priests of his country, it is 

 because he believed, and he found them to be 

 hostile to these, the noblest qualities of our 

 nature. 



He blunders, npw and then; but looking 

 to the mass, and ths variety, the wonder is, 

 that he is so often as he is, just, discerning, 

 original, and sometimes profound. The ar- 

 tiples on religions subjects some of them, at 

 least might, and should have been omitted ; 

 to the believer, they are offensive ; and to 

 the unbeliever, surely superfluous 



" The Philosophical Dictionary," says the 

 translator, who has sketched the character of 

 Voltaire with a good deal of discrimination, 



" is one of the most lively, amusing, and 

 various books of fact and illustration now in 

 existence; comprising information, adapted 

 to every taste and line of study, delivered 

 with the wit, animation, ease, and perspi- 

 cuity, for which its gifted author was unri- 

 valled. There is scarcely a topic, which has 

 instructed or amused the world of letters, 

 which is not treated of, nor any part of the 

 varied shores, which bound the ever-revol- 

 ving tide of human opinion, left unexplored." 



Three Months in Ireland, by an Engliss 

 Protestant; 1827. This "Three Months 

 in Ireland" has very much disappointed us 

 not but that the writer has very correct no- 

 tions of the state of Ireland, and very be- 

 coming feelings on the subject of her 

 wrongs ; but, because the materials, on which 

 he builds his opinions, might have been rea- 

 dily obtained at home. The volume contains 

 nothing which might not have been com- 

 piled in Albemaile-street, where, after all, 

 perhaps, the materials were obtained, and 

 tbe book elaborated. It absolutely has no- 

 thing to mark the individual observer. We 

 have indeed seldom seen such a specimen of 

 mere book-making from Mr. Murray's la- 

 boratory. If the statements put forth really 

 be the result of a three months' residence, 

 and of l( very favourable opportunities, 1 ' the 

 writer must be regarded as a new convert to 

 liberal sentiments relative to Ireland ; for 

 this supposition alone can account for his re- 

 capitulating, at this time of day, the grounds 

 on which he forms the opinions put forth, on 

 tithes, and absentees, and orangemen, and 

 charter-schools opinions, on which others 

 have made up their minds long, and long 

 ago. He is in the case of those, who make 

 discoveries, which prove to be what every 

 body knows. 



These novel sentiments, expressed in tole- 

 rably plain and unobjectionable prose, we 

 found, to our surprise, again appearing in 

 another style of prose obscure and unread- 

 ablewith a pair of rhymes for every twenty 

 syllables. What could induce the writer 

 to trouble himself, and plague his readers 

 with this metrical rechauffe, is beyond all 

 explanation. Facit indignatio versus, was 

 Juvenal's excuse, and verses followed, or 

 at least there was no want of the fervour 

 that indignation generates. But here we 

 have neither one nor the other indignation, 

 nor verses the indignation evaporates in 

 the preface, and the verses are the laborious 

 result of the shadows of indignation the 

 recollections of spent enthusiasm, and not 

 the promptings of natural feelings. The 

 lines are utterly without passion or vigour ; 

 and yet quando uberior vitiorum copia? 

 The writer must look to other quarters for 

 inspiration indignation fails him. 



In the appendix the book is all preface 

 and appendix tbe verses occupy thirty or 

 forty pages only is given a return of the 

 compositions for tithe, made in consequence 

 of Mr. Goulburn's bill, by which it appears 



