312 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



[MARCH, 



that 368 parishes hnve compounded for 

 1 1 1,529 8s. 8d. ; amounting to about 300 

 a year each. Returns usually mislead. The 

 one before us is calculated directly and de- 

 signedly to do so. These 368 constitute 

 only 234 livings, and should therefore have 

 been returned as swell. This number of 368 

 is reduced, by unions, to 234 ; that i, two 

 or more livings have been from time to time 

 consolidated, for want of Protestant congre- 

 gations. This 234 brings up the value to 

 500 ; but even this is no criterion of the 

 value of the livings, which the writer before 

 us, and others, apparently on good grounds, 

 place at 800. Take the writer's particular 

 statement. We are sorry it is so prosy 

 ihe facts are worth something : 



From the evidence of Justin Mac Cartby, esq., a 

 magistrate of the county of Cork, before the 

 House of Lords, and quoted in the appendix, it 

 seems that it has been usual to fix the new in- 

 comes, under the Composition Act, lower than the 

 former incomes, on account of the additional se- 

 curity and increased facility of collection. The 

 average, therefore, of livings, which have not 

 compounded must be higher than that of the 

 livings which have. Besides, in this document of 

 compositions, there are reckoned, as districtbene- 

 fices, parishes which, it is true, are not joined in 

 an union with others ; but which, from peculiar 

 circumstances, produce so very small an income, 

 that they cannot possibly be held alone, and must 

 naturally and properly occasion pluralities. Thus, 

 for instance, the benefice of Vastinay (diocese of 

 Meath) produces only .17 a year ; and this, and 

 similar instances, tend unfairly to lower the appa- 

 rent average of clerical income. Dismissing, 

 however, these two important considerations, it 

 may be shewn even without them, that the average 

 revenue of Irish benetices is at least ,800. It 

 appears from the official document of Compositions 

 already quoted, that the averages of the benefices 

 that have compounded must be much higher than 

 .500 a year ; because many of the parishes in 

 unions have not, while others have, compounded. 

 Thus it frequently happens, that if, for instance, 

 there are six parishes in an union, and only three 

 have compounded, the incomes of these three, from 

 the official document, when added together, seem 

 to form the whole income of the living, instead of 

 which, the produce of the other three should be 

 added also. Now in these 234 benefices, there are, 

 as appears from the official returns, comprehended 

 151 parishes, which have not compounded for their 

 tithes, but of which it would be necessary to know 

 the incomes, before we can ascertain the total 

 profits, and therefore the real average of the bene- 

 fices in question. Taking these parishes at the 

 average of .300 a year (which the advocates of 

 tfie Irish Church have themselves stated as the 

 average of the total yearly income they afford, 

 would be above .45,000 ; and dividing this sum 

 among the 234 benefices, it gives each of them 

 yearly about .200. Thus it raises their average 

 to .700 a year. But we must now take into con- 

 sideration the glebes, which amount to above 

 83,000 Irish acres, that is, to more than 120,000 

 English acres. These we will assume at the very 

 low estimate of their producing only one pound for 

 each English acre, and the number of benefices in 



Ireland being about 1,250, this computation gives 

 us about .100 a year for each benefice ; that is, it 

 raises their average to 800 a year. 



Triple the average value of the livings in 

 England ! 



The wriier recommends reduction, and 

 more unions of bishoprics and deaneries 

 moreover, to abolish tithes altogether, and 

 apply the produce of superfluous episcopal 

 and chapter lands to compensate the clergy 

 for loss of tithes. This might be done as 

 lives drop. Unions of bishoprics are of fre- 

 quent occurrence in Irish history ; Denn and 

 Connor were united in 1441 ; Waterford and 

 Lismore, in 1536 ; Cashel and Emley, in 

 1568: Cork and Ross, in 1583; Leighton 

 and Ferns, in 1600; Cloufert and Kilmag- 

 dnagh, in 1602; Tuam and Ardagh, in 

 1742; and Killaloe and Killenora, as lately 

 as 1752. 



The Golden Fiolet, by L. E. L. ; 1827. 

 L. E. L. and Mrs Hemans divide the popular 

 laurel of the lady-poets of the day. They 

 are equally ubiquitous and equally intrepid. 

 No fears of exhaustion disturb or retard the 

 flow of" words that breathe" no feeling of 

 weariness in themselves, and no misgivings 

 have they of weariness in their readers ; they 

 pour forth their floods of nectar, as if the 

 sources could never dry, nor the streams lose 

 their sweetness, nor their price. They scatter 

 to change the figure there is no talking 

 of poets without figures they scatter their 

 flowers with a profusion that cares not for the 

 withering forthe loss can easily and instantly 

 be replaced. The rose-buds are yet young and 

 vigorous in the full strength of their bear- 

 ing of the Macartney kind, and bloom the 

 year round, in eternal succession. 



" Tell the same tale day after day, and 

 in a few months it will be placed beyond the 

 reach of contradiction." The ladies, of 

 whom we speak, have been zealously and 

 ably proneured. Talents far less effective, 

 might have been stimulated to successful ex- 

 ertion, and have gained almost the same 

 eminence, by the same means. Far be it 

 from us to depreciate their performances. 

 We have been delighted with the occasional 

 felicities of their smaller efforts. Short 

 flights are all they should, either of them, 

 aim ut their pinions are of too slight a 

 texture for the muscular exertions demanded 

 for towering and struggling up the higher 

 arid more ethereal regions of Olympus they 

 are of Daedalian manufacture, tastily con- 

 structed and skilfully fitted to the shape- 

 adhesive too but not of native growth 

 neither connate nor concrete, and will not 

 bear too near approaches to the sun. 



The language of poetry is become as ac- 

 cessible to common handling as that of 

 newspaper-prose. Rhymes are of the prompt- 

 est recurrence ; phrases, specific and general, 

 of every kind, are ready-turned, or wearing 

 down to smoothness, which flow from the 

 pen and glide along the paper, leaving in- 

 deed little or no impression, but yet equally 

 filling up the page ; similies accumulate by 



