providing for the suitable entertainment of his grace. side down, but I am sure the Alcaid will entertain you as becomes his office." My house is quite turned up "Stop, father," said the poor traveler, coming forward, "Don Pedillo has been beforehand with you in his hospitalities to your most reverend cousin, for I am Ferdinand Montaldo, Bishop of Murcia, and having sojourned so long with this worthy gentleman, I will now retire with you to the house which has been turned upside down for my reception, as there are certain matters concerning which we can best | confer in private." Father Josas did follow the bishop to his house, and what passed between them was never made public in Saint Barbara; but there was an expenditure after it, hitherto undreamt of, about the priest's dwelling. The bishop's men were supplied with the best. There was a supper in the evening, to which the whole village was invited, and among them Don Pedillo, whom the bishop himself, no longer in the coarse poncho and wolf-skin cap, but appareled as his grace should be, conducted to the place of honor. After supper, the young people danced in the meadow, while their seniors concluded a treaty, by which Joanna got the wallet full of reals, the nephews each a fourth of Father Josas's land, the remaining quarter being left to his reverence, together with his tithes and dues, which were from that evening settled to the satisfaction of all Saint Barbara. Don Pedillo, besides their noble blood, bestowed upon his son Carlos the two-thirds of his land, and promised two hundred dollars to each of his girls. The bishop saw the festivities out before his departure; and if he did not effect a perfect reconciliation between the priest and the Alcaid, the village said that the Don was never after so proud nor the father so greedy. The most troublesome business his grace found, was to manage Don Sebastian, who vehemently insisted on demolishing Pedro; but he went back to college, and the shepherd escaped him. No one in the parish ever cared for believing any story that could be traced to Pedro Cinta, but the brides and grooms felt bound to make him presents; and as, in process of time, Carlos succeeded his father in the high office of Alcaid, his chosen staff-bearer or bailiff was none other than the shepherd of Saint Barbara. BUSI THE JESUIT. FROM A LETTER. BUSINESS calling me again to Dublin, my friend's carriage was put into requisition to convey me to Banagher, a small town on the upper Shannon, from which place there was a pleasant mode of transit, partly by steamer and partly by canal, to the metropolis. The day was fine for the season of the year, but cold. A battery, constantly full of soldiers, flanks the bridge of Banagher, from the loop-holes of which cannon-muzzles radiate toward all points of the compass. The few miles of river between that and Shannon harbor, where steam-boat passengers take the canal-boats, are not as interesting as it is both above and below those points, although it passes through a very rich grain-producing country, and is dotted here and there with superb residences. The cold soon obliged me to seek the comforts of the cabin, where was a motley group of English and foreign tourists, Romish and Protestant ecclesiastics, merchants going to town to make purchases, invalids seeking after health or medical advice, and, in fine, such a posse as is very usually met with under similar circumstances. Sitting at a table, with a large book before him, was a fine-looking young man, whose history I subsequently learned from his own lips. He had been exceedingly gay until a short time previous, when the Rev. Mr. Caughey, a Methodist revivalist from America, visited that country. My fellow-passenger heard him, and was led to seek for pardon through the atonement of Christ. He had had a good business education, but felt very much his want of scriptural knowledge, and was resolved to remedy the evil. Intending to arrive at the desired result as speedily as possible, he possessed himself of Adam Clarke's Commentary, a volume of which was before him, and which he read with avidity. One of the passengers, a smooth, sinister-looking fellow, whom I had met in Clonmel, as a seller of Romish prints and books a year previous, stepped up to him and said, "You 're a happy man, sir, reading that book so comfortably." "I am, sir," he rejoined, "a happy man, and this is the best of books; but it is not to my reading of it that I look for happiness. I look to its Author alone for that mercy which I need to make me happy; nevertheless, in reading it, I find my understanding enlightened and my heart to enable you to insinuate your sentiments purified." I loved the young man for his noble confession of Christ, so fearlessly made in presence of many adversaries, but saw at a glance that he little calculated on the wiliness of the antagonist with whom he had to deal. A very few minutes elapsed, and the combatants were fairly pitted in the heat of controversy. All eyes and ears were immediately turned toward them. The Jesuit, for such he was, very craftily obtained from his opponent the confession of his being a Wesleyan Methodist, and then absolutely refused to commit himself to the declaration of a belief in anything. He fenced about in their usual dexterous way, calling on the Methodist for his proofs of the genuineness and authenticity of the Scriptures, as also to show that he was not deceived in deriving his happiness from what might turn out to be no more than a fancy of his own; averring every now and then that he was no polemic, that no person present could tell whether he was of any religion or no religion, and that he would much rather sell a gold watch than be engaged in controversy. My poor suffering friend had simply received the truth in the love of it; that truth had made him free, and happy, and zealous, and he wondered that every man did not believe the warm effusions of his honest heart; but he was unable to cope with a deeply-read and dishonest controversialist, and found to his dismay that he had committed himself to a task which was too much for him. The priest fairly chuckled with delight. Thinking it time to interfere, I interposed by saying, "Gentlemen, I beg you will excuse an interruption; but I must say that you do not stand on equal footing. You, sir," addressing the Jesuit, "have taken an unfair advantage of my friend here, who has honestly avowed his principles; you have avowed nothing. Let us know what you are." Here he tried to back out, again averring that he was no controversialist, a plain man of business, and would much rather sell a watch, &c., &c. "You say you are a plain man of business, and still refuse to avow your principles. You have, too, challenged any one to discover what they are. I will tell you. You have been a Jew; you are now a Roman Catholic and a Jesuit, and your selling of watches is a mere decoy, in order unsuspected. I defy you to disavow this." He seemed astonished, and after some little hesitation, essayed to compliment me on my candor as a disputant, again alleging his unskillfulness as a debater, and positively refusing to proceed any further with the subject. "No, no, sir," I said, "you must not back out in this way; we who have heard your discussion with this gentleman, can form a pretty good estimate of your powers for debate. I cannot force you against your will to keep to the arena, but I can express my astonishment that you, an Israelite, should not only endeavor to throw discredit on the sacred Scriptures, which exhibit so fully the abounding love of God to your nation, but that you should run into idolatry, a sin for which your nation has suffered so much, and so frequent punishment at the hand of God; for, as a Roman Catholic, you must worship bread, the work of men's hands. Destroy our grounds of confidence in the Holy Scriptures, and what becomes of the promise made by God unto your fathers? what becomes even of your assumptions as a Roman Catholic, and of those claims which that Church sets up as being founded in Scripture? If the Scriptures are not of God, then any assumption founded on Scripture, even mistranslated, tortured, or misinterpreted, falls to the ground. If Popery can thus kill Protestantism, she must kill Judaism along with it, and commit the most determined suicide into the bargain." "Blow off your steam, there! stop her!" was heard on deck; the jumping of twenty or more luggage porters on board, caused a simultaneous rush of the cabin passengers up stairs, to see to the safety of their luggage. The apostate Jew and his first opponent disappeared in the scramble, and I was left to find my way on board the canal-boat which was to take us to Dublin. THE RESPONSIBILITY OF MAN.-It is starting on a false principle to suppose that a man can escape from his own deed-be it good or bad. As soon as he has committed it, he has given it an existence, an individuality, which he can never destroy. It becomes independent of him; and goes into the world, to deal its influence in widening circles far beyond his view.Kidd's Journal. MA EDMUND BURKE. in the vulgar shock of arms, with a high celestial purpose in view. He was, in fact, over the heads of the besotted parliaments of his day, addressing the ears of all future time, and has not been inaudible in that gallery. Goldsmith is right in saying that so far he "narrowed his mind." But, had he narrowed it a little further, he could have produced so much the more of immediate impression, and so much the more have circumscribed his future influence and power. He was by nature what Clootz pretended to be, and what all genuine speakers should aim at being, “an orator of the human race," and he never altogether lost sight of this his high calling. Hence, while a small class adored him, and a large [ANY imagine that Burke had no power of oratorical impression; that he was a mere dinner-bell," and that all his speeches, however splendid, fell still-born from his lips. So far was this from being the case, that his very first orations in Parliament-those, namely, on the Stamp Act-delivered when he had yet a reputation to make, according to Johnson, "filled the town with wonder," an effect which, we fancy, their mere merit, if unaccompanied by some energy and interest of delivery, could hardly have produced. So long as he was in office under Lord Rockingham, and under the Coalition Ministry, he was listened to with deference and admiration. His speech against Hast-class respected, the majority found his ings was waited for with greater eagerness, and heard with greater admiration, than any of that brilliant series, except, perhaps, Sheridan's on the Begum Charge; and in its closing passage, impeaching Hastings "in the name of human nature itself," it rose, even as to effect, to a hight incomparably above any of the rest. His delivery, indeed, and voice were not firstrate, but such things are not to be regarded much, or at least long, in a true orator; and when Burke became fully roused, his minor defects were always either surmounted by himself, or forgotten by others. The real secret of his parliamentary unpopularity, in his latter years, lay, 1st, in the envy with which his matchless powers were regarded; 2d, in his fierce and ungovernable temper, and the unguarded violence of his language; 3d, in the uncertainty of his position and circumstances; and, lastly, in the fact, as Johnson has it, that "while no one could deny that he spoke well, yet all granted that he spoke too often and too long." His soul, besides, generally soared above his audience, and sometimes forgot to return. In honest Goldsmith's version of it, "Too deep for his hearers, he went on refining, And thought of convincing, while they thought of dining." But he could never be put down to the last, and might, had he chosen, have contested the cheap palm of instant popularity even with the most voluble of his rivals. But the "play was not worth the candle." He mingled, indeed, with their temporary conflicts; but it was like a god descending from Ida to the plains of Troy, and sharing speaking apart from their purpose; and if they listened to it, it was from a certain vague impression that it was something great and splendid, only not very intelligible, and not at all practical. In fact, the brilliance of his imagination, and the restless play of his ingenuity, served often to conceal the solid depth and practical bearings of his wisdom. Men seldom give a famous man credit for all the faculties he possesses. If they dare not deny his genius, they deny his sense; or, if they are obliged to admit his sense, they question his genius. If he is strong, he cannot be beautiful; and if beautiful, he must be weak. That Burke suffered much from this false and narrow style of criticism, is unquestionable; but that he was ever the gigantic bore on the floor of the House of Commons, which some pretend, we venture to doubt. The fact was probably this—on small matters, he was thought prosy, and coughed down; but, whenever there was a large load to be lifted, a great question to be discussed-a Hastings to be crushed, or a French revolution to be analyzed-the eyes of the House instinctively turned to the seat where the profound and brilliant man was seated, and their hearts irresistibly acknowledged, at times, what their tongues and prejudices often denied. And yet it is amusing to find, from a statement of Burke's own, that the Whigs whom he had deserted solaced themselves for the unparalleled success of the "Reflections on the French Revolution,” by underrating it in a literary point of view. Is this the spirit of real or of mock humility in which he speaks, in his "Appeal from 66 the New to the Old Whigs ?" "The gentlemen who in the name of the party have passed sentence on Mr. Burke's book in the light of literary criticism, are judges above all challenge. He did not indeed flatter himself that, as a writer, he could claim the approbation of men whose talents, in his judgment and in the public judgment, approach to prodigies, if ever such persons should be disposed to estimate the merit of a composition upon the standard of their own ability." Surely this must be ironical, else it would seem an act of voluntary humility as absurd as though De Quincey were deferring in matters of philosophy or style to the "superior judgment" of some of our American-made doctors. Pretty critics they were! Think of the glorious eloquence, wisdom, passions, and poetry, the "burning coals of juniper, sharp arrows of the strong," to be found in every page of the "Reflections," the power of which had almost stifled the ire of a nation, and choked up a volcano which was setting the world in flames; sneered at by two men, at least, not one of whose works is now read by the writer of a farrago like the Spital Sermon," or by the author of such illegible dullness as the "History of James II.," or even by Sheridan, with his clever, heartless plays, and the brilliant falsetto of his speeches; or even by Mackintosh, with the rhetorical logic and forced flowers of his "Vindicia Gallica." Surely Burke did, in his heart, appeal from their tribunal to that of a future age. To do Mackintosh justice, he learned afterward to form a far loftier estimate of the author of the "Reflections." He was, soon after the publication of his "Vindicia Gallicæ," invited to spend some days at Beaconsfield. There he found the old giant, now toying on the carpet with little children, now cracking bad jokes and the vilest of puns, and now pouring out the most magnificent thoughts and images. In the course of a week's animated discussion on the French Revolution, and many cognate subjects, Mackintosh was completely converted to Burke's views, and came back impressed with an opinion of his genius and character, far higher than his writings had given him. Indeed, his speech in defense of Peltierby much the most eloquent of his published speeches-bears on it the fiery traces of the influence which Burke had latterly exerted on his mind. The early sermons, too, and the "Apology for the Liberty of the Press," by Hall, are less colored, than created by the power which Burke's writings had exerted on his dawning genius. But more of this afterward. What a pity that Boswell had not been born a twin, and that the brother had not attached himself as fondly and faithfully to Burke, as Jemmy to Johnson. Boswell's Life of Burke would now have been even more popular than Boswell's Life of Johnson. For, if Johnson's sayings were more pointed and witty, Burke's were profounder and sublimer far. Johnson had lived as much with books and with certain classes of men, but Burke had conversed more with the silent company of thoughts; and all grand generalizations were to him palpable, familiar, and life-like as a gallery of pictures. Johnson was a lazy, slumbering giant, seldom moving himself except to strangle the flies which buzzed about his nostrils; Burke wrought like a Cyclops in his cave, or like a Titan, piling up mountains as stepping-stones to heaven. Johnson, not Burke, was the master of amplification, from no poverty, but from indolence; he often rolled out sounding surges of commonplace, with no bark and little beauty, upon the swell of the wave; Burke's mind, as we have seen before, was morbidly active; it was impatient of circular movement round an idea, or of noise and agitation without progress: his motto ever was "Onwards," and his eloquence always bore the stamp of thought. Johnson looked at all things through an atmosphere of gloom; Burke was of a more sanguine temperament; and if cobwebs did at any time gather, the breath of his anger or of his industry speedily blew them away. Johnson had mingled principally with scholars, or the middle class of community; Burke was brought early into contact with statesmen, the nobility and gentry, and this told both upon his private manners and upon his knowledge of human nature. Johnson's mind was of the sharp. strong, sturdy order; Burke's of the subtile, deep, revolving sort; as Goldsmith said, he "wound into every subject like a serpent." Both were honest, fearless, and pious men; but, while Burke's honesty sometimes put on a court-dress, and his fearlessness sometimes "licked the dust," and his piety could stand at ease, Johnson in all these points was ever roughly and nakedly the same. Johnson, in wit, vigor of individual sentences, and solemn pictures of human life, and its sorrows and frailties, was above Burke; but was as far excelled by him in power of generalization, vastness of range and reading, exuberance of fancy, daring rhetoric, and in skillful management and varied cadence of style. Johnson had a philosophical vein, but it had never received much culture: Burke's had been carefully fed, and failed only at times through the subjects to which it was directed. Johnson's talk, although more brilliant, memorable, and imposing, was also more set, starched, and produced with more effort than Burke's, who seemed to talk admirably because he could not help it, or, as his great rival said, "because his mind was full." Johnson was, notwithstanding his large proportions, of the earth earthy, after all; his wings, like those of the ostrich, were not commensurate with his size; Burke, to vast bulk and stature, added pinions which bore him from peak to peak, and from one gorgeous tract of "cloudland " to another. Boswell and Prior have preserved only a few specimens of Burke's conversation, which are, however, so rich as to excite deep regret that more has not been retained; and a profound conviction that his traditional reputation has not been exaggerated, and that his talk was the truest revelation of his powers. Every one knows the saying of Dr. Johnson, that you could not go with Burke under a shed to shun a shower, without saying, "this is an extraordinary man." Nor was this merely because he could talk cleverly and at random, on all subjects, and hit on brilliant things; but that he seemed to have weighed and digested his thoughts, and prepared and adjusted his language on all subjects, at the same time that impulse and excitement were ever ready to sprinkle splendid impromptus upon the stream of his speech. He combined the precision and perfect preparation of the lecturer, with the ease and fluency of the conversationist. He did not, like some, go on throwing out shining paradoxes; or, with others, hot gorgeous metaphors, hatched between excitement and vanity; or, with others, give prepared and polished orations, disguised in the likeness of extempore harangues; or, with others, perpetually strive to startle, to perplex, to mystify, and to shine; or, with others still, become a kind of oracle, stereotyped prophet, coiled up in the corner of a drawing-room, and uttering voces ambiguas. Burke's talk was that of a thoroughly furnished, gifted, and profoundly informed man, thinking aloud. His conversation was just the course of a great, rich river, winding at its sweet or its wild will—always full, often overflowing; sometimes calm, and sometimes fretted and fierce; sometimes level and deep, and sometimes starred with spray, or leaping into cataracts. Who shall venture to give us an "imaginary conversation" between him and Johnson, on the subject referred to by Boswell, of the comparative merits of Homer and Virgil, or on some similar topic, in a style that shall fortunately represent the point, roughness, readiness, and sense of the one, and the subtilty, varied knowledge, glares of sudden metaphoric illumination crossing the veins of profound reflection, which distinguished the other-the "no sirs" and the "therefores" of the one, with the " buts," the " unlesses," and the terrible "excuse me, sirs" of the other? We wonder that Savage Landor has never attempted it, and brought in poor Burns-the only man then living in Britain quite worthy to be a third party in the dialogue; now to shed his meteor light upon the matter of the argument; and now, by his wit or song, to soothe, and calm, and harmonize the minds of the combatants. Burke's talk is now, however, as a whole, irrecoverably lost. What an irrepressible sigh escapes us, as we reflect that this is true of so many noble spirits! Their works may remain with us, but that fine aroma which breathed in their conversation, that wondrous beam which shone in their very eyes, are for ever gone. They have become dried flowers. Some of the first of men, indeed, have had nothing to lose in this respect. Their conversation was inferior to their general powers. Their works were evening shadows, more gigantic than themselves. We have, at least, their essence preserved in their writings. This probably is true even of Shakspeare and Milton. But Johnson, Burke, Burns, and Coleridge were so constituted, that conversation was the only magnet that could draw out the full riches of their transcendent genius; and all of them would have required each his own Siamese twin to have accompanied him through life, and with the pen and the patience of Bozzy, to have preserved the continual outpourings of their fertile brains |