getic? We accuse them of grossly indolent inexertion. For this we challenge their whole array; and some of the parties we charge with the additional count of ingratitude. "There's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half-a-year. But, by-'r-lady, he must BUILD CHURCHES, then!" We entreat those members of parliament, who moved in this matter last session, to supply this glaring deficiency which the conduct of Lord Byron's personal friends presents, and never to desist from efforts so pure and so honourable till those efforts are crowned with success. But Byron was "an Atheist," and "the character of his writings is immoral." Nay, "an' they will mouth, we will rant, too!" Why is that lying inscription upon the tablet erected in the opposite aisle to Warren Hastings' memory, permitted by these holy men to pollute their walls? His "glorious administration" of the affairs of India is lauded with as much effrontery as if his tyrannous cruelty had never subjected him to an impeachment. Obtrusively lengthened as the noisome inscription is, not one word has the lapidario breathed of the "Begum charge." Not one! All is couleur de rose. Never was so amiable, so excellent a governor,-if you believe the tablet; and the unblushing impudence of the recorded lie is rendered complete by the total omission of the slightest reference to the notice which was taken in parliament of this Halcyon Administration. Not even the honesty to allude to proceedings with which the world rang! Not even the decency to attribute them to misrepresentation or calumny! There stands the monstrous cheat the adamantine falsehood, the ridiculous allegation-that Warren Hastings' was a pure adminis tration, to be accredited by all future ages, but for the fortunate circumstance that Truth has recorded its villanies in contemporary history. Apply pickaxe and lever, then, to the removal and demolition of this infamous living lie, so utterly degrading to the character of a sacred edifice; or let us hear no more of your trumpery objections to the admission of the statue of a mighty poet, whose works, if you cannot appreciate, the people of England and of Europe can. Why, amongst the poets whose monuments have been already admitted, there are many with whose productions the worst of Byron's will, in a moral point of view, bear a favourable comparison. But we protest against the assumption that religious professions are to be looked to in this matter. The western aisle of Westminster Abbey we can look upon in no other light than as a Pantheon of godlike mind, for the apotheosis of British genius. We maintain, moreover, that "a strong and abiding sense of religion" (the Bishop of Exeter's expression, in his letter to Lord Lansdowne), was not only impressed upon Byron's mind, but lay deep in the sources of his inspiration. And we shall not wander out of the last Canto of Childe Harold to prove this abundantly. Messieurs Minor Canons! did such thoughts as these, upon surveying the magnificent, and, through its loftiness, soul-elevating temple above you, ever penetrate your infitesimal minds-ever find their way into the very small bore of your intellectual structure? The scene is St. Peter's at Rome:-The passage is one with which all the rest of the world is familiar. We reprint it for your especial enlightenment: But, lo, the dome, the vast and wondrous domeTo which Diana's marvel was a cell! Christ's mighty shrine above his martyr's tomb : Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell I have beheld Sophia's bright roofs swell Their glittering mass i' th' sun, and have surveyed Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem prayed. But Thou of Temples old, or altars new Power, glory, strength, and beauty, all are aisled Enter its grandeur overwhelms thee not; and cassock, since the earliest ages There is a pleasure in the pathless woods; Calm or convulsed, in breeze or gale or storm, Of the Invisible! Ev'n from out thy slime ward soaring thence to Nature's "No shadow of man's ravage, save his own, groan, unknown." What frightful depravity to write in this strain! and yet, there be those who would find in the last line a most pious recognition of the comforts to be derived from the rites of Christian sepulture. Oh! impious and profligate versifier! Terribly irreligious all this! Distinctly "contrà fidem, et bonos mores. Indeed, we doubt not that a "politic convocation" of Oxford Divines would pronounce the doctrine here inculcated "proxima hæresi!" Nevertheless, if the Dean of Westminster were but to deliver the passage weekly "with good emphasis and discretion," and take care not to spoil it with the aforesaid nasal twang, we have a slight suspicion that the choir of the cathedral would not be so regularly emptied as it now is every Sunday, when the music is over, and the sermon begun. Let us also recommend the passage for recitation by the boys of Westminster school, as a very judicious substitute for the Eunuchus of Terence, which is annually performed by them, under the Dean's own nose. The sublime invocation of the Christian Poet is, we imagine, rather better calculated for the cloistered meridian than the foul impurities of the Pagan, though classical, writer; and we had rather see a son of ours addressing the "Image of Eternity," and the "Throne of the Invisible," than personating aye, even in attire, the shameless and degraded prostitute and this, too: Thais! Prithee, Monsieur le Doyen! reform all this! having first hunted through your library for another Pagan writer, QUINTILIAN, fortified your resolution by a reperusal of that beautiful passage: polluant mentes juvenum!" and Ne We can scarcely believe that the pious fervour, which complacently hurls its anathema against a man of Byron's mould, and tramples in derision on his dust, is of that descrip tion which "Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in every thing!" And, yet, this is precisely the sweet and truly Christian character of the passage which we have last quoted from his works : "I love not man the less, but nature more In these our interviews, in which I steal, Then, again, what shocking impiety characterises this passage: "Thou glorious mirror where the Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests!" and this : "The image of Eternity! The throne Of the Invisible !" " Even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made!" Oh, go to, Reverend Fathers! Transfer these passages to your sermons: or, since faith can move mountains (and verily yours must be strong as death, if bigotry be its standard of admeasurement), occupy your learned leisure with something profitable, and try to better them! There are, undoubtedly, passages throughout Byron's works indicative of doubts, in which many of the greatest minds that England has ever produced have shared-of a dread shrinking at the mysterious contemplation of that "undiscovered bourne, from whence no traveller returns," -there are, we repeat, indications of doubt, but not one of derisive denial. Sound Protestants as we are, we cling to the Protestant rule of faith, and shall submit to no Papistical dictation, while the right of private judgment secures to us freedom of Communing with Nature, and up- inquiry as to the truth or falsity of &c. To mingle with the universe!" "Twas when dame Nature made the earth, and roofed it with the sky, The Arch-Deceiver swore he 'd thrust his finger in the pie; So, the fruits to spoil of all her toil, 'twas water the villain made; Then a crime 't would be, brave boys, if we with water our mouths degrade! II. When Noah, who loved a cheering glass, implored till he was hoarse, III. At sea you are drowned-aye, ten to one! if long to water you trust! Then swamped should we, brave boys, too, be, if water our mouths degrade! IV. What of our Wooden Walls, my boys, if they were water-logged? ས. Success to every gentleman, that loves his liquor still! No sponges we, brave boys, shall be, nor water our mouths degrade! P. PHRENOLOGY A DETECTOR OF MURDER; A Tale of the Fortieth Century. Dedicated (by permission) to Mr. Wakley, M.P., in his capacity of Coroner; to the Fellows of the Antiquarian Society; and to all who are interested in the advancement of Science. BY ANTI-HUMBUG. Toto surget gens aurea mundo!-Virg. "A capital subject!"-BUBBLES, &c. By Sir Francis Head. PHILOSOPHY We hold to be a fine thing, and Kantism its perfection, though there be many more (and not a few less) matters in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by its professors. Deductions etherealised by the utter absence of basis or first principles, are clearly entitled to the highest position amongst mental discoveries. When a certain splenetic individual named Byron, who lived somewhere in the dark ages, and whom certain infitesimal criticules imagined a poet, indulged, while scribbling a singular psychological and Pan-diabolic production called "Manfred,' now quite forgotten, save amongst learned antiquarians, in the following invective: "Philosophy! The merest word that ever fooled the ear, From out the schoolman's jargon!" we imagine that he must have been either drunk (a habit to which the learned German commentator, Von Schwartzenbüngler, proves him to have been greatly addicted), or that, according to the well-sustained theory of another accomplished antiquarian, Doctor Dusty of Brasenose, this very misanthropic individual, who is believed to have been distantly related to the celebrated navigator of the same name, but certainly not (as was once foolishly broached), either a member of the peerage, or returned for any county, city, or borough, to We trust that the Pantheists will permit us the use of this derivative, formed by their own rules; and that the commentators generally will appreciate our humble imitation of their lucid style and methodical arrangement. that ancient, but now derided institution, called Parliament-(query, may he not have been one of those Irish adventurers with which history informs us that London at that time swarmed-and his name "C 'Byrne," anglicised into "Byron "-then a common imposture, as many of the kinsmen of the great meteorologist, Murphy, softened down their bogtrotting and barbarous designation into the euphonious and respectable name of Murray;-probabiliter sic "Murray," whose name we see prefixed as publisher to the rare copy of this Byron's works, which not ill printed in the singular antiquated type, so much in use in the nineteenth century, occupies, as so remarkable a specimen should, no mean position in our Bibliophilistic Repository;-sed probabilius quoad Byron, he was a Scotchman, bearing for his genuine appellation the name of Burns, and the father or the uncle of another poet of the same name, of whose lyrical productions only two have reached us, viz. "Sic a wife as Willie had!" (supposed to be a lampoon on QUEEN ADELAIDE, the consort of GULIELMUS QUARTUS, who figures in our annals as the stultified sanctioner and assenter, contrary to the strenuous reclamations of his spouse, to that exploded quackery, yclept the "Reform Bill," introduced at the period when Wigs* *Wigs-otherwise written Whigs. Assuredly this word could only have meant those extraneous hirsute appendages, traces of which we find in some old portraits. We treat as ridiculous the idea that such a designation could ever have been given to |