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admiring and assisting, rather than of professing. We just as much disclaim any assumption in it before the wise, as we disclaim any false modesty before all classes. All that we mean is, that we are advocates of every species of liberal knowledge, and that, by a natural consequence in these times, we go the full length in matters of opinion with large bodies of men who are called LIBERALS. At the same time, when we say the full length, we mean something very different from what certain pretended Liberals, and all the Illiberals, will take it to be; for it is by the very reason of going to that length, in its most liberal extremeAy, ay," interrupts some old club-house Gentleman, in a buff waistcoat and red-face,-" Now you talk sense. Extremes meet. Verbum sat. I am a Liberal myself, if you come to that, and devilish liberal I am. I gave for instance five guineas out of the receipts of my sinecure to the Irish sufferers; but that is between ourselves. You mean, that there are good hearty fellows in all parties, and that the great business is to balance them properly;to let the people talk, provided they do no harm, and to let Governments go on as they do, have done, and will do for ever. Good,-good. I'll take in your journal myself;-here's to the success of it ;-only don't make it too violent, you rogues ;-don't spoil the balance. (God! I've spilt my bumper!) Cut up SOUTHEY as much as you please. We all think him as great a coxcomb as you do, and he bores us to death; but spare the King and the Ministers and all that, particularly Lord CASTLEREAGH and the Duke of WELLINGTON. D-d gentlemanly fellow, CASTLEREAGH, as you know; and besides he's dead. Shocking thingshocking. It was all nonsense about his being so cold-hearted, and doing Ireland so much harm. He was the most gentlemanly of men. Wars must be carried on; Malthus has proved that millions must be slaughtered from time to time. The nonsense about that is as stupid as the cry about the game-laws and those infernal villains the poachers, who ought all to be strung up like hares and as to Ireland, it is flying in the face of Providence to think that such horrible things could happen there, and

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be prevented by earthly means,-earthly means, sir. Lord CASTLEREAGH himself referred us to Providence in all these unavoidable matters, and he was right;—but to think of his cutting his own throat-Good God! so very gentlemanly a man, and in the height of his power! It is truly shocking! As to WELLINGTON, he's not so gentlemanly a man, certainly; but then neither is CANNING, if you come to that. He cannot make speeches, I own; but no more can the King or my Lord MARYBOROUGH, or a hundred other eminent characters; and he does not make such cursed awkward blunders as poor CASTLEREAGH used to do. He has not got a very wise look, they say; but-I don't know,-it's soldierlike, I think; and if you come to that, what a strange fellow old BLUCHER looked, and SUWARROW, and all those; and between ourselves, the reigning Monarchs are a set of as common-looking gentry, as you'd wish to see in a summer's day; so I don't know what people would have. No-no-you really mustn't speak against WELLINGTON. Besides, he prosecutes."

We beg the reader's pardon in behalf of our worthy interrupter. Whatever may be his right estimation of his friends, we need not say that he misinterprets our notions of liberality, which certainly do not consist either in making the sort of confusion, or keeping the sort of peace, which he speaks of. There are, if he pleases, very silly fellows to be found in most parties, and these may be good enough to be made tools of by the clever ones; but to confound all parties themselves with one another, which is the real end of these pretended liberalities, and assume that none of them are a jot better or worse than the other, and may contain just as good and generous people,-this is to confound liberality with illiberality, narrow views with large, the instincts of a selfish choice with those of a generous one, and in the best and most imposing instances, the mere amenities and ordinary virtues of private life (which may be only a graceful selfishness, unless they go farther) with the noblest and boldest sympathies in behalf of the human race. It is too late in the day to be taken in with this kind of cant, even by the jolliest of placemen in all the benevolence of

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his bumpers. The Duke of WELLINGTON is a great officer, after his kind." We do not mean at court, where he is a very little officer, and condescends to change his Marshal's staff for the stick of a Lord in Waiting. But he is a good hunting captain,—a sort of human setter. We allow him all his praise in that respect, and only wish he had not confounded the rights of nations with those of a manor. What does he mean too by treating public meetings with contempt? and above all, what did he mean by that extremely odd assumption of the didactic, about teaching a "great moral lesson!" As to Lord CASTLEREAGH, he was one of the most illiberal and vindictive of statesmen, if we must use that word for every petty retainer, whom a bad system swells for a time into a part of its own unnatural greatness. Look at his famous Six Acts! Look at his treatment of BONAPARTE, his patronage of such infamous journals as the Beacon, his fondness for imprisoning, and for what his weak obstinacy calls his other strong measures. But he is dead, and people are now called upon to be liberal! Let us be so, in God's name, in the general sense we have of the infirmities of human nature; but it is one thing to be liberal in behalf of the many, and another thing to be exclusively so in behalf of the few. Have the consequences of Lord CASTLEREAGH's actions died with him? Are the Six Acts dead? Are thousands of the Irish living? We will give a specimen of the liberality of these new demanders of liberality. The other day, when one of the noblest of human beings, PERCY SHELLEY, who had more religion in his very differences with religion, than thousands of your churchand-state men, was lost on the coast of Italy, the Courier said, that “Mr. PERCY SHELLEY, a writer of infidel poetry, was drowned." Where was the liberality of this canting insinuation? Where was the decency, or, as it turned out, the common sense of it? Mr. SHELLEY'S death by the waves was followed by Lord CASTLEREAGH'S by his own hand; and then the cry is for liberal constructions! How could we not turn such a death against the enemies of Mr. SHELLEY, if we could condescend to affect a moment's agreement with their hypocrisy? But the least we can do

is to let these people see, that we know them, and to warn them how they assail us. The force of our answers will always be proportioned to the want of liberality in the assailant. This is a liberality, at all events, upon which our readers may reckon. The rest, which we were going to say, is this;-that although we condemn by wholesale certain existing demands upon our submission and credulity, we are not going to discover every imaginative thing even in a religion to be nonsense, like a semi-liberalized Frenchman; nor, on the other hand, to denounce all levity and wit to be nonsense and want of feeling, like a semi-liberalized German. If we are great admirers of VOLTAIRE, we are great admirers also of GOETHE and SCHILLER. If we pay our homage to DANTE and MILTON, we have tribute also for the brilliant sovereignties of ARIOSTO and BOCCACCIO.

Wherever, in short, we see the mind of man exhibiting powers of its own, and at the same time helping to carry on the best interests of human nature, however it may overdo the matter a little on this side or on that, or otherwise partake of the common frailty through which it passes,-there we recognise the demigods of liberal worship ;-there we bow down, and own our lords and masters;-there we hope for the final passing away of all obscene worships, however formalized,-of all monstrous sacrifices of the many to the few, however "legitimatized" and besotted.

THE

LIBERA L.

No. I.

THE VISION OF JUDGMENT,

BY QUEVEDO REDIVIVUS.

SUGGESTED BY THE COMPOSITION SO ENTITLED BY THE Author OF
"WAT TYLER."

"A Daniel come to judgment! yea, a Daniel!

I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word."

PREFACE.

Ir hath been wisely said, that " One fool makes many;" and it hath been poetically observed,

"That fools rush in where angels fear to tread."-Pope.

If Mr. Southey had not rushed in where he had no business, and where he never was before, and never will be again, the following poem would not have been written. It is not impossible that it may be as good as his own, seeing that it cannot, by any species of stupidity, natural or acquired, be worse. The gross flattery, the dull impudence, the renegado intolerance and impious cant of the poem by the author of Wat Tyler, are something so stupendous as to

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