THE 



MONTHLY MAGAZINE. 



No. 383.] 



JULY 1, 1823. 



[6 of Vol. 55. 



MR. THRALE'8 HOUSE AT STREATHAM. 



These premises, which have acquired so much celebrity through the notices of them 

 in the Letters and Memoirs of Dr. Johnson, constitute one of ten thousand similar 

 merchantile retreats within a few miles of the metropolis. In the room on the right- 

 hand hung, till lately, the portraits by Sir Joshua (now dispersed,) of the literary men 

 who formed Mr. Thrale's coterie. In the gardens behind, Johnson used to indulge in 

 morbid melancholy, and in fits of devotion in its recesses ; while, in the hospitable man- 

 sion, he was enabled to gratify his love of table luxuries, to an excess which little 

 accorded with the self-denial of religion and the temperance of rigid morality. 



For the Monthly Magazine. 



TOPIC OF THE MONTH. 



Erin and her Wrongs. 



AMONG all the enigmas and puz- 

 zles in the present state of the 

 United Kingdom, the case of Ireland 

 is, without doubt, the most incompre- 

 hensible. Scotland was long the 

 enemy of England, and the Union was 

 received with scowling and dislike by 

 a \ery large portion ol the .Seottisli 

 p('0[)le ; yet that Union, ere the lapse 

 of hall-a-eentury, blended the Scots 

 with the I'/nglish as one people, whose 

 inter(;sts, whose pursuits, and whoso 

 feelings, are the same, and who are ra- 

 pidly becoming one, in manners and in 

 langnagc. The Welch are a eon- 

 MONTHLY Mau. No. 383. 



quered people : they were first driven 

 from the luxuriant plains of England to 

 the mountain fastnesses of the Princi- 

 pality, their princes were made cap- 

 tives, and their lords were slain ; and 

 yet the Welch have not the smallest 

 disposition to visit, upon the present 

 race of Saxons, the sins of their forefa- 

 thers. The whole island of Britain is 

 in short one, one in heart, in conduct, 

 and in manners ; and an Englishman's 

 throat is to the fnll as sale, unarmed 

 and unguarded, on the wilds of Lo- 

 chaber, or the precipices of Snowdon 

 and Plinlimmon, as it is in the metro- 

 polis, notwithstanding all the safe- 

 guards of the police. In those parts 

 of the country, too. infornialioii has 

 3 y not 



