impurity and the venom of his impiety. We were once startled at hearing a sentimental young lady, who penned stanzas about love and friendship when she should have been "mending her stockings," speak in praise of "Rochester's Poems." We did not ask her if she had read them. Will Lady Morgan venture to state that she has read the " Poems" of Parny? We are acquainted with Miss Owenson's poetical abilities: will Lady Morgan venture to say that she will translate Parny?

Among the female writers of France, the author particularly selects Madame de Stael, as a writer" from whom she has received infinite pleasure, and as a woman, infinite pride." To the talents of Madame de Stael we have ourselves borne witness: but we fancy she had an additional claim to the admiration of Lady Morgan, as the satirist of English manners, and the author of the infamous Delphine. The author, on inquiring for Madame de Genlis, was told that she "s'est jettée dans la religion." "The throwing oneself into religion, conveys an excellent idea

of a French woman's devotion:

"A youth of pleasure, an old age of beads."

For Madame de Genlis, however, we have not a little respect: her talents have been often rendered subservient to purposes of moral utility: but she is still a Frenchwoman; and we are tempted to copy the scene of her religious retirement, which the author describes with evident admiration, and with congenial

taste:

"Her apartment (in the convent of the Carmelites) might have answered equally for the oratory of a saint or the boudoir of a coquette. Her blue silk draperies, her alabaster vases, her fresh-gathered flowers, and elegant Grecian couch, breathed still of this world: but the large crucifix, (that image of suffering and humility,) which hung at the foot of that couch; the devotional books that lay mingled with Lay works, and the chaplets and rosaries which hung suspended from a wall where her lute vibrated, and which her paintings adorned, indicated a vocation before which genius lay subdued, and the graces forgotten. On showing me the pious relics which enriched this pretty cell, Madame de Genlis pointed out to my admiration a Christ on the cross, which hung at the foot of her bed. It was so celebrated for the beauty of its execution, that the Pope had sent for it when he was in Paris, and BLESSED it, ere he returned the sad and holy representation to its distinguished owner; and she naturally placed great value on a beautiful rosary, which had belonged to Fénelon, and which that ELEGANT SAINT had worn and prayed over till a few days before his death.

We can supply a comment on the edifying retraite of Madame de Genlis, in the intelligence that this elegant recluse has since

"thrown herself" back into the world, and is no longer employed in "copying all the plants mentioned in the Bible."

The

We cannot stuff our pages with gossip, or aid this airy lady's vanity by trumpeting her intimacies with people whom she thinks great persons: and we are willing to spare her the mortification, and ourselves the drudgery, of hunting her through her odd blunders of historic dates, and stripping her pretensions bare by the exposure of her school-girl ignorance of names. best part of the book (for we would be "candid where we can ") is the chapter on the French drama: and we do not think the worse of her judgment of Racine, because it offends against the canon of continental taste. But even here-on a subject where she certainly shows a degree of taste and cleverness, she cannot. help being now and then superficial and absurd: and talks dogmatically of "comedy being founded on the truth of nature, and tragedy on her violation and extravagance:" and this is the same person who really appears to have some feeling of Shakspeare's excellencies in poetic imagery and sentiment, and the philosophy of human passion. How Lady Morgan came to ap→ preciate Shakspeare we are excessively at a loss to understand; and we almost entertain a hope that she may at last be brought to read the lamentation of David over Jonathan and Saul, with other purpose than that of ribaldrous and unfeeling parody. "This admirable author," says the excellent Addison of Shakspeare,

as well as the best and wisest men of all ages and all nations, seems to have had his mind thoroughly seasoned with religion: as appears from many passages in his plays that would not be suffered by a modern audience." Can Lady Morgan suffer them?

Such is "France;" a work prefaced by indignant complaints of imputations cast upon the excellent author's character, as a writer of " licentiousness, profligacy, irreverence, blasphemy, libertinism, disloyalty, and atheism." We have no appetite for the doctor's Appendices,

The habit of scribbling and publishing is wonderfully favourable to confidence. Lady Morgan had scribbled and published some showy novels, into which she sometimes contrived to throw a certain interest of plot and grotesque wildness of character: but which were full of mincing affectations in language, and of sentiments and descriptions which were sometimes, to speak soberly, a little, or not a little, meretricious. Intoxicated with the increase of her own petty woman's vanity, and fluttering in every nerve with the ambition of blazing forth in print as a philosophical tourist, she posts to France with her tablets in her hand, under an engagement to make a book in the shortest possible time; and casting a giddy eye around her, imagines

that she has thoroughly read the character of a foreign nation, and acquired a right to vilify and asperse the manners and insti tutions of her own. Her flippant and frivolous loquacity, and the conceited jargon of her style, would not alone have led us to contribute towards lifting her into consequence: but she has dared to pollute with the drivellings of her folly that venerable book, whose words that "breathe and burn" have never impressed her imagination, and whose inner sense has failed to awaken her heart. She has written for the meridian of that country, where to be ashamed of the name of Christ would be a natural passport to fashionable and scientific society; and she has deserved its approbation. She has fallen down before the feet of the French BAAL: and renounced the faith and feelings, the lovely national predilections, the amiable prejudice and graceful patriotism, of a British woman. Fashion and busy idleness, and the fondness for gossiping anecdote and calumnious jest, have given her book a momentary reputation: but it has nothing in common with the literary habits, the tastes, and the principles of that domestic circle whose privacy she has profaned, and whose national and chastened enjoyments she has covered with unseemly ridicule. Therefore it is-that we have held her book up to the disgust of the modest, the horror of the pious, and the ridicule of the wise.

ART. XVII.-ON THE POOR LAWS.

1. Report of the Lords' Committees, on the Poor Laws; with Minutes of Evidence. Ordered to be printed 10th July, 1817. 2. Report from the Select Committee on the Poor Laws: with the Minutes of Evidence taken before the Committee; and an Appendix. Ördered by the House of Commons to be printed 4th July, 1817.

3. Dissertation on the Poor Laws. By the late Rev. Jos. Townshend. Republished, 1817.

THE general distress of the last two years, which perhaps never was equalled in a country civilized like ours, and spared by Providence from the devastations of war, has naturally turned all eyes upon the causes, moral or political, which appear to have contributed towards it; and the result has been a very ge- . neral conviction that the Poor Laws, as now administered, are

"At the present

the main source and root of the mischief. moment every one feels how much they aggravate the other difficulties of the country. But great as it is, this evil is not the greatest which these laws produce. They are still more pernicious in their moral than in their financial operation. They have already done much to vitiate the habits, disposition, and character, of a very large portion of our people; and they have disordered the frame of society itself, by weakening among its different parts the mutual relations and feelings of benevolence and attachment." (Preface to Townshend's Dissert. p. vi.)

Partaking strongly of these sentiments, which we have expressed on former occasions; and trusting that the time. now approaches, when, owing to the revival of trade and confidence, and the decreasing price of the necessaries of life, some remedy may be safely applied to the radical and growing disease; we shall make no apology for entering somewhat fully upon the subject, and availing ourselves of those lights which the wisdom of parliament, by publishing the Minutes of the Evidence laid before them, has held up for the use of the community.

We do not however agree with those writers who disapprove in toto of all legal provision for the impotent or destitute poor. In a simple state of society, or in a thinly peopled country, the primitive custom of voluntary contributions at the church-door might suffice for the relief of its indigent members. But, as we find observed by the Committee of the General Assembly in Scotland (where this custom is still laudably maintained), it is clear that in extensive parishes and crowded towns, in which the accommodation provided for the inhabitants in the parish-church bears no proportion to the population, a legal assessment seems to be inevitable, as long as, in defiance of repeated calls from the public, and in neglect of the best interests of the people entrusted to their direction, government allows this state of things to continue unredressed. Neither does it appear to us that either principle, or experience, would lead to the belief that the evils which we now feel and lament, and attribute to the operation of the poor laws, arise actually, or must arise necessarily, from the continuance of a legal and compulsory assessment in favour of the infirm, or aged, or orphan poor. In all populous countries we must be prepared to expect a large amount of distress, disease, and indigence: some the consequence of unavoidable misfortunes, and much more the consequence of vices, upon which the general laws of Providence infallibly inflict a temporal as well as a future chastisement. Without stopping then to argue, whether it is best that this distress should be entitled to legal relief, or be left to exercise the virtue of

voluntary and individual charity, we are content to take that part of our laws as we find it established, and interwoven with the habits of the community. In fact, we are of opinion, though a strong case might be easily made out on the other side, that, before the commencement of the revolutionary war, the evils and advantages of the poor-rates were pretty equally balanced; that the objections against them were very much the consequence of mismanagement of one sort or other; and that if nearly the same attention had been employed upon the subject which their subsequent increase and present magnitude have rendered indispensable, and no alteration had taken place in the general mode of administering relief, most of the existing evils would have been obviated, and there would have been no just foundation for complaints like those we now hear, no pressure like that which now threatens to involve the richest country of the world in universal pauperism.

Until the period to which we have alluded, the parish workhouse was a resource for the aged, and impotent, and destitute; was a place of confinement for the disorderly and idle: and an object of terror to the able and industrious. The out-door relief was confined to occasional assistance during temporary illness, or the woman's confinement; to the payment perhaps of a third or half the rent of the cottage in cases of large families; and to a small weekly allowance to a few infirm persons of good character, who made up the rest of their support by such trifling works of industry as they were able to perform. Some encroachments no doubt were made from time to time, and in peculiar situations, on these general principles of public relief: but no man in health and work ever thought of applying for regular parochial pay; and no artificial encouragements having disturbed in any material degree the general adaptation of the supply to the demand for labour, want of work was not a common case. Thinking people, it is true, even then foresaw that the principle of the poor laws was fundamentally wrong, and had a tendency to create the distress it professed to remove; and particularly, they argued that the idea of providing employ at the public expense was contrary to the soundest rules of justice and policy. But in fact this part of the act of Elizabeth had not then been called into extensive operation, and went little further than the wholesome purpose of keeping those collected in the workhouse employed; while the discipline, the disgrace, and we may add the misery of the workhouse itself,.acted the useful part of stimulating industry, and encouraging independence, as long as the alternative of entering it, or of providing self-support, was left by the legislature, enforced by the parish, and required by the magistrate. The principle of the poor laws, no