they had been paying off their debts. Maconochie's system of marks and mutual responsibility would dovetail very well with such a plan as this. As to the sort of barren land to be reclaimed by the labour of these prisoner-debtors, I should especially recommend tracts of land on the sea-shore covered with shingle, the removal of which would form the first laborious step of the process of reclamation. It will presently be seen that this scheme of Prison Discipline may be made to harmonise with that of Road Reform, which I am next to propound.

No. 27. A Scheme of Road Reform. -Long before Mr. Cornewall Lewis propounded his very crude scheme of road reform in the House of Commons, I had got a far more comprehensive, and, as I venture to think, far more practical plan, among my 'Loose Leaves.' To me, a plan of road reform which leaves turnpikes standing is as great a barbarism and absurdity as a plan of poor-law reform which should leave the union workhouses where they are. I have always looked upon a turnpike as a very preposterous folly. You wish to raise a revenue for the repair of roads, and you can devise no better or cheaper plan than that of building a cottage, erecting a barrier, and hiring a man to do nothing else but stop travellers and collect tolls, which tolls are themselves a means of an enormous waste of time in the aggregate, and a temptation to thrifty men to go long distances out of their way. The true way to raise a fund for road-making is by a road-tax on horses. It has been calculated, I believe, that such a tax, to the amount of 27s. per horse per annum, would defray all costs of road-making and repair, and provide a fund for the gradual liquidation of that ugly debt of upwards of 8,000,000l. due to the extravagance of local management, with its endless multiplication of offices and turnpike-gates, with their large staff of most useless officials. It might, perhaps, be advisable to raise the necessary funds to meet the current expenditure and debt, partly by a horse-tax and partly by a carriagetax. My scheme then supposes, in the first place, the destruction of those preposterous turnpikes, and the levying of a road-tax on horses, or on

horses and carriages jointly, diminishing with the gradual extinction of the debt. In the next place, instead of a county management of roads, I would suggest a Government system of road-making and repair; and, as a check upon Government laxity, a provision by which the Central Board of Works might be made in part amenable to the local authorities. I have always looked upon roads as matters which may, with the greatest possible propriety, be placed entirely in the hands of Government, and this sentiment has been lately strengthened by the immense progress and developement of railways. Now that we can travel on railroads from one end of the kingdom to the other, without having a single toll to pay or obstacle to impede us, it does seem preeminently ridiculous to set up a turnpike-gate at every few miles of our common roads. It is a device worthy of a nation of idiots. I suppose, then, that the roads of the country are placed in the hands of a central board, that turnpikes are levelled to the ground, and a road-tax put upon horses, or upon horses and carriages jointly. We have thus a system of management and a revenue. Now as to details. I would propose that, by degrees, all the roads of the country without exception should be brought into the condition of the very best turnpike-roads. To facilitate this, it would be necessary to divide the entire country into suitable districts, and to employ in each a gang of road-makers in the pay of the Government, provided with residences in suitable localities, and working under proper superintendence. A portion of the men so employed might be discharged prisoners, who had conducted themselves well during the period of their imprisonment, but who, from the difficulty of obtaining employment, would be apt to lapse into crime. I am inclined to think that, under this more comprehensive system of roadmaking, we ought not to rest contented with roads as they are; but in the case of all the principal lines of road in the neighbourhood of populous towns, and where there is sufficient width of road to allow of it, we ought to lay down tram-roads, primarily for the cheap conveyance of material to be used in road-mak-.

ing, and secondarily as a facility for the conveyance of farming and other produce. Landowners, on paying a certain moderate sum per mile in the form of a subscription towards the laying down of the rails, might be entitled to use them in perpetuity, and to confer the right of use upon their tenants. In this manner an immense economy of labour would be effected, and the number of horses used in agriculture be largely diminished. I would further suggest that the road-makers might act as a rural police; be bound to render prompt assistance in the extinction of fires, fire-engines being kept for that purpose at all the stations; and that they should be trained, at times unfavourable to road-making, or at fixed intervals, as a militia, the men to be distinguished by a plain uniform. Promotion to take place by merit, and the superintendents of road-making in the colonies to be selected from the most deserving.

The great recommendation of such a plan as that now suggested is, that without making any treacherous contract with the unemployed to give them work, which could not be fulfilled without throwing other men out of employment, and without professing to give all starving people food, which can only be done by taking food out of the mouths of their neighbours, the Government I would create a demand for labour varying with the actual condition of the country, increasing through increased activity in road-making as other employment diminished, and diminishing as the natural demand for labour increased. The Government management of the roads of the country, especially if it was combined with a similar system in the colonies, would thus form a species of safety valve for the escape of superfluous labour. The objection against centralisation in this, as in other matters, might be obviated by providing some simple machinery for bringing local complaints before the Central Board, and by placing a member of the Central Board in either House of Parliament to stand the brunt of complaints. The public press will do the rest.

No. 28. A Scheme for the Regeneration of Ireland.-The Irish Poorlaw having brought about the only result which a Poor-law is calculated

to effect with certainty-the ruin of an idle people and the impoverishment of an industrious one-it behoves us to consider whether this instrument of mischief may not be converted into an agent of good. As I am one of those who believe that there can be no regeneration of the south of Ireland which does not spring from the absolute ruin of its present landed proprietors, I advocate the continuance of the Irish Poor-law with a view of consummating that ruin. Let the poorrates be levied with all the rigour of a war-contribution; let all defaulting estates, or such portions of them as may be sufficient for the purpose, be sold for the benefit of the Poor-law authorities, and confer on the purchasers a valid title. At this point bring to bear the plans suggested under the heads of Road Reform' and Prison Discipline:' that is to say, lay out the land as estates for sale; build good farmsteads, with decent cottages for a minimum of labourers; drain; lay down tramroads and pipes for the conveyance of liquid manure; obtain, if prac ticable, a supply of sewerage from the nearest town or village; erect a temporary workhouse; bring the land into a state of high cultivation; sell the estate in the open market, and appropriate the proceeds to the poor-rate. Combine with this system that of Road Reform as already sketched out, and crown these wise measures with an efficient Sanitary Act. If you have not the courage to do this, or something similar, have the candour to state openly and without reserve that the Irish race, like all barbarous nations, must be suffered to die out. But, in the name of common-sense and common decency, do not parade your Poorlaw as a boon and a blessing. Think over it well, and you will see that a Poor-law is, at the best, a socialistic attack on property, directed by Government; and a union workhouse an English atelier national, without the one saving element of work. Had our agricultural interest been as shrewd as it is obtuse, it would have proclaimed war against this heavy burden upon property; and it would have secured, what it has not at present, the sympathy and co-operation of that large and struggling class of

rate-payers in town and country whose mouths have been hitherto stopped by the unaccountable prejudice in favour of that most cruel and unjust of imposts, a Poor-rate -cruel and unjust, if rightly considered, to the rate-payer whom it plunders, and to the pauper whom it tempts, impoverishes, and degrades.

Such are a few of the 'Loose Leaves' of a well-stocked portfolio of schemes, which, if bound into a volume, would have made up as feasible an Utopia as ever issued from the fertile fancy of a Plato or a Bacon. They have, probably, disappointed many an imaginative and inventive reader, startled many a timid one, and, possibly, outraged the tender feelings of many a kind and compassionate one. To the first class I would simply recommend a perusal of the New Atlantis, and ask them for their candid judgment, whether there is not at least as much insight into the future in these dreams of mine as in the speculations of the great philosopher, whose labouring fancy spent itself in figuring a high tower and a deep well for the

observation of the heavens and of the earth, and a swimming-jacket for the use of drowning men? The second

class of the timid readers-I would remind of the many bold changes and startling innovations which we have recently witnessed, in the shape of the repeal of the Corn-laws and the establishment of County Courts. But I would especially address myself to the kind and compassionate readers, whose tender feelings my schemes for suppressing mendicancy, abolishing Poor-laws, and reviving corporal chastisement, may have outraged, and beg them to believe, if they can, that I have sincerely at heart the greatest good and the greatest happiness of the greatest number; but that I cannot suffer the grace of Christian charity to be degraded to the low level of carelessness or selfindulgence, the dropping of pence in the streets to be dignified with the name of almsgiving, the thief to be discharged of his just debts, and dear John Bull, the very beau idéal of generous good-nature, to be pointed at by the whole tribe of mendicants and idlers as a concrete 'soft Tommy,' shewing a mischievous mercy to the worthless, but dealing out to the industrious and deserving the heavy discouragement of Poor-laws, with their sham humanity, but real injustice and cruelty.

THE
HE poetry of various ages, races,

and countries, is marked by broad characteristic differences; but these differences are again diluted, modified, and complicated, by the intercourse of different nations, and their influence on each other through colonization, imitation, and conquest, so that in the end it is by no means easy to discern what were the original and independent fountains of poetry which thus mingle their waters in a network of streams, flowing on from the earliest times to our own day. Yet, looking at the matter in a large and general way, it does not seem too bold to assert,

that we can point out some half-adozen kinds of poetry entirely different in their original spirit, each closely entwined with the history and character of the nations to which it belongs, and far surpassing all other composition in its popularity; each peculiar in its influence upon the progress of poetry in succeeding times, and the parent of a vast progeny of poetical works. We speak of the religious, or, we ought rather to say, the devotional poetry of the great historical divisions of the human racee-Hebrew, Ionian, Dorian, Latin, and modern European-exemplified respectively in the Psalms

of David, the Homeric Hymns, the Tragic Chorusses, the Saturnian verses of the Romans, and the Psalmody of Protestant Europe. To complete this great cycle of the original popular and living form of poetry which fills up the history of the world, what have we in the middle ages-those ages which intervene between the ancient and the modern world? Plainly we must have, in that part of the series, the devotional poetry of that time: and accordingly we find that the religious poetry of the middle ages has a character as marked, as distinct from the others, as they are from each other, and not less impressive than any of them in its effects upon the nations among whom it prevailed. The rhymed Latin hymns of the Catholic Church sound in our ears with a solemn majesty and idiomatic force, which no hexameters or alcaics on Christian subjects ever possess. When we hear such strains as Dies iræ, dies illa Solvet seclum in favillâ,

or,

Stabat mater dolorosa

Juxta crucem lacrymosa,

we feel that we have something not less really fitted to touch the depths of man's religious nature, than a psalm of David or a hymn of Luther. Every one is aware that of these strains, the Ages of Faith' produced a great quantity: though few, perhaps, are aware how large, how varied, and how beautiful this body of poetry is. Several persons have, at different times, made and published collections of works of this kind; and, availing himself of their labours, and selecting but a small portion of their treasures to serve as a specimen of the whole, Mr. Trench has compiled the volume now before us. He has brought to his task, as was to be expected from him, piety, discretion, and taste, as well as learning and industry; and has produced a book which, for all lovers of poetry whose taste is catholic, will have a charm which they may hardly expect to find in a collection of a class of poems which are often spoken of, with indiscriminate slight, as puerile or offensive in substance and barbarous in form.

For all lovers of poetry, we say, whose taste is catholic-using the

term in its literary sense, not its religious-meaning by it that spirit which can discern poetical truth under many diverse forms, not that belief which excludes as untrue all that deviates from its own type. Undoubtedly an admiration for the religious poems of the middle ages, to the extent to which we judge them worthy of admiration, implies a sympathy with the religious feeling of those ages, so far as the feeling is expressed in the poems. Nor, in truth, is there any reason whatever why such a sympathy should not be felt by those who are most deeply impressed with the value of the gain which religion acquired when the abuses and superstitions which had accumulated during the middle ages were cast off by the growing energy of modern European life. As religion was presented to the popular mind by those who composed the popular devotional poetry of which we now speak, all the great points of Christian truth, all the great interests of the human soul, all the strongest appeals to the heart of man through his religious affections, were those which belong to Christianity through all ages, from its announcement on earth to the present time. The most evangelical Christian may fully sympathise-indeed, be will commonly most sympathise— with the hymns of Ambrose and Augustine, of Bernard and Bonaventura, of Bede and Hildebert. The real devotional spirit-the spirit of dependence upon a Divine power-the habitual, practical appeal to such a power for aid against sin and sorrow, weakness and despondency— the realisation of the facts of Christian revelation as the elements of the Christian's being, and the fountains of his hope these dispositions were active in the hearts of men in the age of unquestioning faith, as well as in the age of searching reformation. And these dispositions, widely pervading the Christian world, found their utterance, in the one case as in the other, in a vast multitude of hymns of a most earnest and touching character. The Hymnologies of the Catholic Church in the middle ages contain a genuine religious poetry-a rhythmical expression of the deepest feelings of man--no less than Bunsen's great Collection of the

Hymns of the Protestant Churches in more recent times. Of a body of poetry so extensive, and springing from so deep a root, it must be interesting, even to the general reader, to know something directly; and this Mr. Trench's volume enables him to do in a very agreeable manner.

Mr. Trench has with laudable care excluded from his collection every thing which could be objected to on the ground of doctrine, or of propriety. We presume it is on some account of this kind that he has left out the Stabat mater, which otherwise its celebrity alone would have made us desire to see among his specimens. We are aware that not only does Protestant feeling shrink from fastening our devotional feelings too long and too vehemently upon her who is in this hymn made the principal figure, but that writers, even of the body which has no such scruples, have blamed the ascription of hopeless grief to her. The other equally celebrated hymn, the Dies Iræ, Mr. Trench inserts; ascribing it, for reasons which he gives, to Thomas of Celano. Mr. Trench notices that of this hymn sixty translations have been collected and published in one volume. And apparently the power which this grand strain has of attracting translators is not yet exhausted; for we have before us a still more recent translation by Mr. Irons. We notice this, because it has the merit of imitating the double rhymes of the Latin original; a feature which Mr. Irons says has not been attempted before in English, and which is very requisite, in order that there may be an echo of the original melody. These are the first stanzas :

Day of wrath! O day of mourning!
See once more the cross returning,
Heaven and earth in ashes burning.
O what fear man's bosom rendeth
When from heaven the Judge descendeth,
On whose sentence all dependeth!
Wondrous sound the trumpet flingeth,
Through earth's sepulchres it ringeth,
All before the throne it bringeth.

It will be seen that Mr. Irons has adopted the reading Crucis expandens vexilla for the second line, instead of Teste David cum Sibyllâ for the third. Mr. Trench observes, that this is undoubtedly a very late alteration; and has added an interesting

note, in which he shews that it was not uncommon in Christian writers to refer to the two parallel lines of testimony, the Jewish and the Gentile. The Sibyl is the representative of the latter, as David is of the former.

We will give one or two examples of the hymns in Mr. Trench's collection; and we trust that our readers will bear with the imperfections of the translations which we have appended. It is difficult, when the ear is once possessed by these solemn and measured strains, not to attempt to prolong them in our own language; although the want of the compact constructions and parallelisms of grammatical forms which give its main character to the Latin and fail us in the English, condemns the translator to a perpetual inferiority. The majesty of the Latin language, which its admirers so much boast of, nowhere appears more conspicuously than in its religious uses; and the rhymes resulting, as they commonly do, from the construction, seem to set a stamp upon the completeness of the expressions. We must, however, as we have already said, aim as far as may be at an imitation of the movement of the original strain; without this a rendering hardly deserves to be called a translation. The first example which we shall give is in a measure which is very common in such hymns, and of which the recurrence of rhymes has been extensively adopted in English. The subject is the Thorn Crown' (p. 131):

Si vis verè gloriari,
Et a Deo coronari
Honore et gloriâ,
Hanc coronam contemplari
Studeas, atque sectari

Pōrtantis vestigia.

The reader will of course understand that the measure in these is marked by accents; in order to point out how little this has to do with quantity, we have noted the last syllable of honorē, atque, portantis, as strong.

Hanc cœlorum Rex portavit,
Honoravit et sacravit

Sacro suo capite;
In hac galeâ pugnavit
Cum antiquum hostem stravit,
Triumphans in stipite.