the Pope, put under the ban of the Empire, exposed to death on every side, protected by none but God." A letter to the Elector contains almost the language of a man who contemplated martyrdom. "I am of opinion that the kindness or opposition of your Highness, and even the hatred of the whole world, ought to be only secondary considerations in the present peculiar circumstances of the Church. Your Highness is master of my body and my destiny in this world; but Christ is the Lord of souls. The Gospel which I preach, has its origin with God, and by God's grace neither persecution nor death shall wrest it from me. Neither cruelty nor terror shall extinguish this light.'

The death of Leo X. had opened Rome to the intrigues of all the cabinets of Europe. But Charles was on the spot, his dominions surrounded the Roman states; he was lord of the opulence of the New World,—and he prevailed. The tiara was laid on the brow of his former tutor, Adrian, a monk of Utrecht, created a cardinal so late as 1517, and one of the extraordinary number of thirty-one, whom the late Pope, alike the most indolent of men, and the most headlong and profligate of politicians, had raised to the hat in one day.

Adrian possessed such learning, and such Christianity, as were to be found in convents. And, with equal sincerity and feebleness, he commenced the clearance of his church. The task was Herculean. The trade of ecclesiastical preferments had long been the crying sin of Rome. By the double impolicy of avarice and fear, she had laboured to create an interest in the permanency of her establishment, by making it a resource for the high families of the provinces of her European empire. The more intelligent or intrepid sons of the nobles were destined for the prizes of the state and army. The more incapable were pensioned on the easy opulence of the immense benefices in the gift of Rome. The result may be conjectured, and the contemporary writers exhaust every power of language in describing the sensuality, ignorance, and pride, flourishing under this flagrant system. The sale of the livings was frequent,

Secken. p. 57.

and so notorious, that companies of brokers were established in Rome for their purchase; the higher Ecclesiastics were sometimes only more conspicuous examples in the Church, of the vices which they had acquired in their noble father's halls; the lower orders of the Church naturally followed the standard set before them; and public ordinances were found necessary to prohibit the priesthood from "meddling in traffic, from frequenting taverns," then the receptacles of every impurity, and from indulging in the vices, by name, to which those taverns offered the temptation. The new Pope, not improbably stimulated by the ge neral outcry for reform, published, as his first measure, a "Declaration," which had the effect of authenticating the whole of the public charge. He began with the tiara itself.

Many abominable things," said this important paper, "have been coinmitted in this holy Chair for several years past,-abuses in spiritual things,

excesses in the mandates given,in fine, every thing changed for the worse.

"No wonder that the sickness should descend from the head to the members, from the high pontiffs to the inferior prelates. In what relates to us, we shall endeavour that our Court, from which, perhaps, all this evil has proceeded, shall undergo a speedy reform. If corruption has of late flowed from it, sound doctrine and reformation shall now proceed from the same source. To this we shall account ourselves the more obliged to attend, as the whole world appears most ardently to desire such a reform.

"I have accepted the Pontificate, that I might reform the spouse of Christ-assist the neglected and oppressed-and appropriate to the learned and virtuous the money which has of late been squandered on grooms and stage players."+

This ecclesiastical confession of the vices of the Papacy, was followed by a lay declaration scarcely inferior in the rank of its authors, and altogether superior in its practical effect-the long-celebrated Centum Gravami na," or List of Grievances, drawn up by the Diet of the German Princes, to bet ransmitted to Rome. It contain

† Sleid, 1. 4.

ed a detail of the corruptions of the priesthood, and the church system, which the princes declared that the iniquity and notoriety of the facts alone compelled them to submit to the Pontiff for their speedy reform; concluding by the suggestion of a Ge neral Council for the purpose in Germany. This document is the more unequivocal, from its proceeding from sovereigns still attached to the Popish cause, one of its sections being a confirmation of the Edict of Worms against Luther, and another a demand that the preachers of the "New Doctrine," should be suspended from their functions.

These declarations were virtual pleadings on the side of Christianity, and Luther was not asleep while Popery was thus unconsciously shearing the locks in which the secret of its strength lay. He translated Adrian's Rescript into German, and sent it, illustrated by his own resistless remarks, to scatter light through the world.

We must hasten to the close of this great man's labours. Luther, in 1545, had reached his sixty-second year, with a frame, never of peculiar vigour, much exhausted by perpetual application, and the numerous cares which hourly thickened on the leader of the Reformation in those days of increasing peril. His chief associates had died round him, or were yielding to age. Zuinglius had perished in battle, and Ecalampadius had died of grief for the loss of his admirable friend. A painful complaint, probably the result of his sedentary habits, had some years before tortured Luther, and under its paroxysms he seems to have sometimes abandoned the hope or the wish to live. But by temperance he continued to retain vigour sufficient to employ himself in the revision of his numerous writings, and chiefly of his translation of the Scriptures.

But in this year his complaint became more decided, and his constitution, long racked by the stone, bɛgan evidently to give way. Violent headachs, and the decaying sight of one of his eyes, gave symptoms of an event which must soon deprive Protestantism of its first and ablest friend. It

was speedily complete. He had taken a journey to Eisleben, his native place, on the application of the Count of Mansfield, to arbitrate a dispute relative to the mines. In full consciousness of his own infirmities, he had undergone this harassing journey, as a promoter of peace.

"I write to you," said he, in a letter to a friend, a few days before he set out, "though I am old, decrepit, inactive, languid, and now with but one eye.

"When drawing to the brink of the grave, I had hopes of obtaining a reasonable share of rest: but I continue to be overpowered with writing, preaching, and business, in the same manner as if I had not discharged my part in these duties in the early period of life."

The journey was in the depth of a German winter. And by the overflowing of the river Issel, it was prolonged to five days. The effort was too much for his feeble frame; and after various changes of his disorder through three weeks, Luther, on the 18th of February, 1546, breathed the last breath of life, gifted with the most glorious donative and the proudest duty that Providence gives to man,the promulgation of its own eternal truths, in simplicity, holiness, and power.

The highest honours were paid to his memory. His body, after lying in state in the principal church, was escorted by the principal nobility of the Electorate on horseback, and an immense concourse of the people, on its way to Wittemberg. Wherever it stopped, the population of the towns received it with tears and prayers; hymns were sung and sermons delivered over the remains of their common father in the faith. At Wittemberg, the whole university, the magistracy, and people, came out to meet the procession; and the funeral ceremony was begun by an oration of Pomeranus, a celebrated divine, and closed by a pathetic sermon from Melancthon. His picture was afterwards hung up in the hall of the university. But his true and imperishable monument is-THE REFORMATION.

12

RUMOUR will have it that Lord Anglesea is about to be recalled; and, moreover, that he is the last of the Nobles destined to enjoy the honours of Vice-royalty in Ireland. Events have, of late, been so ordered as to render such a consummation devoutly to be wished. The immense annual expenditure necessary for the support of an Irish Court, has not been compensated by any such solid, or even seeming advantages, as would justify its continuance; and the present Premier, whose sound good sense is, on all hands, allowed, and whose spirit of economical retrenchment has been, in much smaller matters, apparent-will unhesitatingly sacrifice the patronage connected with the appointment of the representative of royalty, for the discontinuance of an idle and expensive pageant, which is only calculated to foment local discontent, and to generate national antipathy.

Lord Wellesley, the late King of Brentford, has done much to reconcile the minds of sober and loyal men to this event, whenever it may take place. He was sent to Ireland as a star of the first magnitude, and proved the most insufferable little swaggerer that ever was stilted by self-conceit into a lofty idea of his own personal importance. He really is, or rather was, a man of abilities. His Indian administration was distinguished by master-strokes both of policy and conduct. But a gormandizing vanity conspired with an epicurean self-indulgence in undermining the strong foundations of a character that might have been great; and the morbid sensibility with which his proud flesh winced under insults, which, to any mind in a healthy state, were absolutely below contempt; and the feeble and tremulous energy, by which he betrayed the will without the power of vengeance, so effectually unhorsed him in the opinion of his most thorough-paced admirers, that, even if he were capable of becoming his former self, he never could again fill a high public station with credit or advantage.

It is said for him, that his greatest mistakes were owing to the advice of his principal Law Officer, in whose character and abilities his confidence was too unbounded. The secret, however VOL. XXV.

of Lord Plunkett's influence consisted in a skilful application to his great ruling passion-vanity. That adroit and wily personage is not more famous for wounding with a tomahawk, than for tickling with a straw: and, accordingly, he applied himself to Lord Wellesley's weak point, with a degree of skill and perseverance that secured him an ascendency in the Irish Cabinet, and enabled him to fill his family and connexions with more lucrative places, in the course of four years, than fairly fell to the share of his honest and single-minded predecessor during so many administrations.

The Theatrical Riot, with which the public were dosed " usque ad nauseam,' was the pivot of the Marquis of Wellesley's administration. He was so infatuated as to suppose that his life was aimed at. No one who knows Lord Plunkett could, for one moment, believe that such was his persuasion. Yet he played his part so well, and practised the "make-believe" so effectually upon the Viceroy, as to confirm him in that most ridiculous delusion, which ended in the frustration of his policy, and the overthrow of his reputation. The rioters were thrown into prison; bail for their appearance was refused; they were threatened with a capital prosecution; the sword of justice was suspended, by a single hair, over their devoted heads; the public were hushed in expectation of the deep and solemn tragedy which was about to commence;

66

when, lo! the principal performer stands before them, with a command of muscle, and a presence of countenance," of which no one but himself has ever been possessed, and tells them that he is not prepared to proceed with the performance that had been announced; but that, if a farce or a pantomime will serve their turn, they shall have it. Is it any wonder, in such a case, that" tabulæ risu solventur?" Would it not, the rather, be wonderful if Lord Plunkett ever after held up his head as a public prosecutor? In fact, from thenceforward his official usefulness was at an end. He was alike despised and abhorred by the Orangemen and the Papists. The miserable failure of his proceedings against the theatrical rioters was a sig

E

nal that the law, in his hands, had lost its salutary terrors for the seditious, as was speedily evinced by the frequent and unusual eruptions of " the Association," which continued, without intermission, to throw forth its lava, until the agitators became patriotically apprehensive of consuming themselves. Had Lord Plunkett's first prosecution been directed against O'Connell or Shiel, he must have succeeded. The ass would have been stripped of the lion's skin; and the "Fee-faw-fum" which has since " frighted the Isle from its propriety," would have been converted into a craven peccavi," which must, for a considerable time, have prevented the vapouring of Irish impudence from imposing even on Irish credulity. But he did not unmask his crown batteries against the real traitors, until his unfortunate prosecution of the theatrical rioters left him a bankrupt in public confidence; and the Grand Jury who ignored his bills but acted over again the part of the shepherds in the fable, who thought fit to leave the graceless urchin to his fate, by whom the cry of "the wolf" was in good earnest raised, because he had so frequently sported with their credulity when there was no danger.

While we write, the Marquis of Anglesea has been recalled! Peace to his manes !-more peace than it was his lot to confer upon Ireland! He is now politically no more. Let us do him justice. He went to Ireland under peculiar disadvantages. He had been a favourite, and, if we mistake not, a pupil of Canning, and was the Viceroy-elect of Lord Goderich. He was therefore in a manner pledged, if not by avowed predilection, certainly by a feeling of political honour, to principles which have marred his administration. He undertook the arduous office of governing a country, in which a faction had already proved itself stronger than the laws, with a predetermination to abet and encourage that faction, until this avowed object was obtained, and, perhaps, with no less strong a predetermination to repress and coerce them, should they prove turbulent after the concession of their claims. It is more fortunate for the empire, than disgraceful to him, that he failed, utterly failed, in this his Quixotic enterprise; and deeply grateful must the nation feel to the Noble Duke, who, by his timely interference,

prevented him from making so perilous an experiment upon the Constitution.

The Marquis of Anglesea was well received in Ireland. The Protestants, although apprehensive of his princi ples, were admirers of his gallantry; and there was so much of dignified condescension, so much urbanity and true politeness, in his whole demeanour, as won for him golden opinions from all sorts of people; except indeed those whom he was most especially anxious to conciliate, and by whom he was, without hesitation, ferociously denounced as an enemy in disguise, and proscribed as a mere retainer of the Peel and Wellington administration.

Then came the Clare election,—that unequivocal demonstration of Popish baseness, bigotry, ingratitude, and folly, that confirmed the worst suspi cions of their enemies, and should have separated from them every friend, who was not also the friend of their creed, and whose direct object was not to bring us again into moral and mental bondage. That was the moment for the Noble Marquis to have spoken out. Had he done so, and stood for ward,-not so much in defence of the Constitution as it is, as in opposition to that most nefarious attempt, by a flagitious abuse of the elective franchise, to effect an alteration,—he would have deserved well of his country. He should have told the Roman Catholics, (for it was really a "dignus vindice nodus,") "that it was for no such purpose the elective franchise had been conferred upon them; that they were pledged, at least by the declarations of their friends, to make a different use of it; that, had Parliament enter tained the slightest apprehension that the influence of the priest would su persede that of the landlord, and religion be polluted by being mixed up with political considerations, they never would have conferred upon them a power that was ultimately to be turned against themselves; that by their present conduct, they were discrediting, not only the past, but the future representations of their advocates, and refuting, by anticipation, the only arguments that could be constitutionally advanced in support of their claims; and that, for his part, he must abandon such support, and even take a hostile attitude, until their conduct rendered it possible to be favourable to their cause, without being,

at the same time, and in the same de gree, unfavourable, if not hostile, to our Protestant institutions."

Had the Noble Marquis used this language, and followed it up by some vigorous measure for the suppression of that bane of the land-the Catholic Association, he would have done well and wisely; and might have escaped the disgrace of being numbered amongst the emancipators, without the charge of inconsistency or tergiversation. But he chose the warier part. His precocious conclusions respecting the indispensable necessity of a Relief Bill were not either to be modelled or moderated by experience. Accordingly, O'Connell and his gang met with no discountenance, and the "rhetorical artificer" flourished away, ringing the changes through the whole gamut of sedition, without any dread of an "ex-officio" or of incarceration. The office of Attorney-General Joy was a perfect sinecure. That right-hearted man sickened of being idle during such doings, and went to the continent for the benefit of his health. The franking “member for Clare” had repeated interviews with the Viceroy, and did not fail to lay before his Excellency his views of the state of the country, and to pray that the Government would be pleased to co-operate with "the Association" in its laudable exertions for the tranquillity of Ireland. Is it any wonder, therefore, that the seditious took heart, and that the loyal and well-affected were filled with unwonted alarms? "Could such things be, and overcome us like a summer cloud, without our special wonder?" Thank God, a stronger feeling than wonder was excited by them; even that to which the country is indebted for the associated Brunswick Confederacy, the very life and soul of which is centred in a holy resolve for the preservation of our venerable institutions in Church and State, and which, while it exists, will continue to be the evidence of their vigour, and the guarantee of their stability.

Sir Anthony Hart has been playing sad pranks in the appointment of the Irish magistrates. His promotion to the scals in that country was owing, we believe, to the recommendation of Lord Lansdowne, and was one of the blessings of Lord Goderich's administration. The Papists are now, thanks to him, largely invested with

the commission of the peace; and he seems as fully resolved upon governing Ireland by a spalpeen magistracy, as ever Lord Plunkett was by a spalpeen priesthood.

We only, however, allude to that exalted functionary at present, for the purpose of vindicating him from a charge very generally accredited by the public, and deriving all its plausibility from the general character of his appointments. Mr O'Gorman Mahon was nominated to the commission of the peace, not by Sir Anthony Hart, but by Lord Manners, and upon the recommendation of Mr Vesey Fitzgerald!! There is something like retributive justice in the treachery and ingratitude with which he requited his patron, who, for a paltry popularity, was willing to compromise his dignity, and betray the Thermopyla of the Constitution. But Mr O'Gorman Mahon was destined to do a higher service to the Protestant cause than that of expelling poor Vesey from the representation of the county of Clare, and exhibiting a full-length portrait of Popish bigotry and superstition.

This person, on an occasion where the sheriff of the county of Clare found it necessary to call in the military to the aid of the civil power, told the soldiers they were disgraced by being under such a fellow's command. This language the officer on duty very properly reported to Sir John Byng, who lost no time in laying it before the Lord Lieutenant. But O'Gorman Mahon was one of O'Connell's "Liberators," and was not to be molested! Sir John, however, thought it right to give the Duke of Wellington an opportunity of forming a judgment upon the subject. The Duke, as usual, formed a prompt and a sound one, the result of which was the withdrawing from "the Liberator" the commission of the peace; and the event will, it is hoped, convince Sir A. Hart that the person intrusted with so sacred and important a charge should possess, if not the principles of a loyalist, at least the manners of a gentleman.

This was the event which, it is believed, brought the Marquis of Anglesea into roughest collision with the cabinet. He felt hurt that so strong a measure should be taken, not only without his concurrence, but against his judgment. It was, in fact, a censure upon him, after the passing of which any Ministry must have been