MYLOR CHURCH AND FALMOUTH HARBOUR,

CORNWALL.

BY NICHOLAS MICHELL.

'Tis not when jocund Morning walks the hills,
Scattering dew pearls, and laughing o'er the sea;
Or when bright noon the glen with sunshine fills,
And birds pipe jubilee,

That thou shouldst visit Mylor's pensive shades,
View creek and shore, and tread its leafy glades.
But when Eve, Nature's artist, paints the west
With many a ruby line and orange ray,
Striving to make a gorgeous couch of rest
For sleepy, weary Day,

And quiet lulls the hills and woods of green;
Then feels the heart the magic of the scene.
'Tis now that hour; I gaze across the wave,
Burnished and glossy in the amber light;
The pebbly beach the little billows lave,
In thin-drawn lines of white,

Making a sound most faint on Evening's air,
As if the tranquil Ocean whispered prayer.
Oh, beautiful the circling hills that gird
Fal's sheltering harbour! 'mid wild storms of fear,
Safe in her nest as sits the brooding bird,

The great ship rideth here:

Fair-walled Trelissick decks the green hill's side,
Woods on each bank down sweeping to the tide.
The castles* guard the waters far away,

But oft their stirring thunders swell the breeze;
St. Just's smooth slopes now catch the dying ray,
While gold bathes all the trees:

White cottages are sprinkled o'er each steep,
Like drifts of snow the flocks of nibbling sheep.
But Mylor's old grey church and rugged tower,
Unchanged amid a thousand changing years,
Attract my steps; how solemn, this calm hour,
The ancient pile appears!

Link between us and darkling ages fled,
A something holy watching o'er the dead.

* Pendennis and St. Mawes castles, built in the reign of Henry VIII. The former stands on an elevation upwards of three hundred feet above the sea, and commands a prospect as extensive and beautiful as any to be seen on the Cornish coasts.

The tottering belfry thickest ivies hide,
Pall woven for it by funereal time;
How often up the glens, across the tide,
Hath swung that bell's soft chime!

Yes, it hath tolled through ages; now you hear
A small, sweet trill; the redbreast carols near.
Mylor, beneath thy famed and mighty yew,

That gives death's dwellings beauty, let me stand;
The solemn and the lovely meet my view,

A charm on sea and land:

Not sad, though grave the thoughts that on me steal;
'Mid scene like this no gloom the heart can feel.
Here generations have renounced the dreams.

That filled each busy brain in long-past day;
Here grief forgets its tears, and craft its schemes,
The gleesome child its play,

The village maid her conquests, here to close
Her sprightly, laughing eyes in calm repose.
By yon rude stone where lengthening shadows fall,
The honest peasant rests to plough no more;
In that white tomb, once courted, loved by all,
The squire's career is o'er;

Beneath where leaves low whisper like a brook,
The priest for ever now hath closed his book.

Yew, venerable, sombre, stately tree!

Sure thou dost droop in grief, and vigil keep
Beside the mound where, victims of the sea,
A hundred warriors sleep:

For fields of blood, for cannon's thunder-boom,
Above their heads now white-ruffed daisies bloom.*
Sweet resting-place, past mortal hopes and fears,

Old church that sanctifies and guards the graves,
Yew, braving tempests through a thousand years,
Wide, music-breathing waves!

Green-hanging wood, brown glen, and sloping hill-
Peace on them rest, and beauty haunt them still!

Peace too with him, whose voice so oft is heard

In those grey walls, whose counsels point to heaven!
Who cheers grief, age, with many a kindly word,
Whose alms to want are given;

Well may these lovely scenes calm bliss impart,
And nearer to his Maker draw his heart.

were

*In one grave near the great yew-tree lie interred more than a hundred soldiers, who, returning from Spain at the close of the Peninsular War, most lamentably wrecked in a gale of wind on Trefusis Point.

THE POLITICAL CRISIS.

THERE is nothing a nation is more tenacious of than reference to the experience of the past-to the lessons of history in fact-in regard to foregone conclusions of policy. A people bent upon what they are agreed to designate as "progress," will neither tolerate being shown that they are only following a beaten track, or, being asked if what they term progress" is really such. There can be no question but that Great Britain has progressed under its old constitution to a very high degree of power and prosperity. This, owing to the industry, enterprise, and intelligence of the people, inspired, sustained, and developed by free institutions and the Protestant religion. A comparison with other countries, in which such a combination does not exist, is sufficient to establish the fact. The question, then, that should present itself to every thoughtful and patriotic mind is, will the carrying out the measures which are so generally associated in the present day with the idea of "progress" enhance that power and prosperity, or will it have an opposite effect? If such measures can only benefit a portion of the community, at the expense of the other, they do not constitute progress-class legislation is generally an injustice-but if they can be shown not to benefit any portion of the community, they are simply retrogressive and ruinous. To take an example. It has been proposed to cheapen poor men's luxuries and comforts by a relief from the burdens of taxation; and as certain expenses must be borne by any form of government, it has been further proposed to make up the difference by a reduction in crippling, or altogether doing away with the army and navy. Now in what does the prosperity of our country chiefly lie? În our manufactures.

But how do our manufactures find a market? By means of our vast mercantile marine. And our mercantile marine is indebted for its security to our army and navy, and to our colonial and other foreign possessions. The mercantile marine brings us back tropical and other produce in return for our manufactured goods. Our very manufactures depend in part upon a foreign or colonial supply of raw material. Take away, then, or diminish the efficiency of the army and navy, and there would be no security for our merchant service, and, consequently, no outlet for our manufactures. To reduce the duty upon tea, sugar, coffee, and other colonial produce, it is thus proposed to ruin capitalist and working-man alike; nor would the said colonial produce be cheaper, for, as it would then come via America or Russia, or by some other route, it would be far dearer than with the existing

duty. And yet this is what a portion of the community are pleased to designate as progress!

There are those, again, who maintain that Great Britain would be more prosperous without colonies than with them. Our colonies not only opening a wide field for our merchant navy, our commerce both in exports and imports, but also affording a home for a superabundant population. The same theorists would do away with the law of primogeniture, and convert even our parks into arable land. Suppose, as in France, a farmer to have a freehold of a hundred acres and ten children. He must leave ten acres to each child. But suppose each child to have ten children, then, in one generation, each is reduced to a pittance of one acre. In the practical working of the law this is not the case, because as one cannot live on ten acres, he makes over his legacy to another, and becomes a working-man, or a soldier; but it is the logical deduction to be derived from the proposed legislation. Laying aside, then, the mischief done to the agricultural interest by doing away with farming upon a large scale, and converting it into market gardening and potato plots, the land would be covered in the course of a few generations with the cottages of poor people. Not that the poor are in any way to be despised or disregarded as such, but that it is unwise and unnecessary that there should be more than can be avoided. The advocates of a theoretical progress meet the difficulty by insinuating that limits should be placed upon the procreation of the species. This, when in our colonies, left by a wise Providence, purposely to meet the demands of an excessive population, there are millions upon millions of acres of fertile soil, as yet untenanted, for want of roads and means of approach or outlet for produce. Which system of legislation has really the welfare of the poorer classes at heart, that which would ensure them employment, or, failing that, would do its best to open to them new regions for maintenance and even prosperity, or that which arrives by the irresistible force of its own logic, to the most repulsive conclusion, that the only remedy for existing social evils and abuses is in limiting procreation? It is not in Great Britain as it is in France, where the multiplication of the species is opposed by a general enlistment of adults and the immorality and monasticism of barrack life; or as in America, where there are boundless prairies and backwoods where to retire before the pressure of a superabundant population. Great Britain has only its colonies and foreign possessions to depend upon; do away with these (and they cannot be held without an army and navy), and we not only do away with our manufactures, our commerce, and our power and prosperity, but we fill the country (except in the case of such as would seek a home in foreign states) with a redundant population, over and above its means, and a poverty that would be common to all.

In the mean time a sop is thrown out to the multitude who toil with their muscles, as opposed to the minority who toil with their brains, that they shall be relieved of taxation at the expense of the latter class; that indirect taxation shall indeed be relieved not only by the peace-at-any-price reduction in expenditure, which will place Great Britain at the mercy of France, Russia, and America, and every merchantman in peril of swarthy Chinese or Malayan pirate; also by throwing a larger burden upon realised propertyin other words, by the confiscation-as used to be practised in Turkey-of the profits of superior thrift, intelligence, or wisdom.

One would suppose that this was going far enough in the modern system of pandering to the school of muscle, but it by no means goes so far as to meet the views of the practical disciples of the school. "What we want," we heard a bricklayer say to another, during the recent elections, "is a division of property." "But," observed the other, "there are so many of us that if that was done there would be no one to build houses." "Some have too much and others too little," remarked another advocate of progress upon being canvassed for his vote, "what I want is a fairer division of property." "If such a division could be effected," it was explained to the theorist, "there would be just the same inequality after a short lapse of time as at present. Some would be thrifty and industrious, others extravagant and idle." He could not see it. No more can many. The great mass of the poorer classes vote for the "Liberals," as they are called, simply because they look upon them as stepping-stones to a social and financial revolution. That whilst the great fallacy of such ideas of progress lies in the fact that it would last so brief a time that another and similar revolution and redistribution would be soon required, and these would succeed one another so rapidly, that none but would repudiate the system upon trial. The attempt of trades unions to limit the development of man's industry and intelligence, by restraining him from the advantages of success over idle or incapable competitors, is one of the most notable instances of the false, pernicious, and ruinous ideas that are becoming current in this hitherto happy and free country, and which, under the most erroneous title of "Liberalism," are threatening us with the worst of all tyrannies-that of a selfish, ignorant, and misled democracy. As an old Indian officer remarked to us, the supposed unenlightened Easterns understand their social position and appreciate the limits of personal liberty better than the lower classes in England.

It is not so much, however, what the majority venture to hope for and anticipate that it is necessary to discuss at the present moment, as what they actually profess and hold forth. The first point is a diminished expenditure and taxation. Now, all experience has shown that the Conservative party has been able to