sudden and unaccountable Indian appointment of Francis; the extraordinary familiarity of Junius, which had not altogether escaped notice, with the secrets of one particular office-viz., the War Office; the sudden recollection, sure to flash upon all who remembered Francis, if again he should become revived into suspicion, that he had held a situation of trust in that particular War Office; all these little recollections would begin to take up their places in a connected story: this and that, laid together, that and this, spelled into most significant words, would become clear as daylight; and to the keen eyes of still surviving enemies-Horne Tooke, "little Chamier," Ellis, to the English houses of Fitzroy and Russell, to the Scottish houses of Murray and Wedderburne-the whole progress and catastrophe of the scoundrelism, the perfidy and the profits of the perfidy, would soon become as intelligible as any tale of midnight burglary from without, in concert with a wicked butler within, that was ever sifted by judge and jury at the Old Bailey, or critically reviewed by Mr John Ketch at Tyburn.

Francis was the man. Francis was the wicked butler within, whom Pharaoh ought to have hanged, but whom he clothed in royal apparel, and mounted upon a horse that carried him to a curule chair of honour. So far his burglary prospered. But, as generally happens in such cases, this prosperous crime subsequently became the killing curse of long years to Francis. By a just retribution, the success of Junius, in two senses so monstrously exaggerated-exaggerated by a romantic over-estimate of its intellectual power through an error of the public, not admitted to the secret, and equally exaggerated as to its political power by the government, in the hush-money for its future suppression-became the self-avenger to the suc

cessful criminal. This criminal was one who, with a childish eagerness, thirsted for literary distinction above all other distinction, as for the amreeta cup of immortality. And, behold! there the brilliant bauble lay, glittering in the sands of a solitude, unclaimed by any man; disputed with him (if he chose to claim it) by nobody; and yet for his life he durst not touch it. Sir Philip stood he knew that he stood-in the situation of a murderer who has dropped an inestimable jewel upon the murdered body in the death-struggle with his victim. The jewel is his! Nobody will deny it. He may have it for asking. But to ask is to die; to die the death of a felon. "Oh yes!" would be the answer, "here's your jewel, wrapped up safely in tissue paper. But here's another lot that goes along with it no bidder can take them apart-viz., a halter, also wrapped up in tissue paper." Francis, in relation to Junius, was in that exact predicament. "You, then, are Junius? You are that famous man who has been missing since 1772? And you can prove it? God bless me! sir, what a long time you've been sleeping: everybody's gone to bed from that generation. But let us have a look at you, before you move off to prison. I like to look at clever men; particularly men that are too clever; and you, my dear sir, are too clever by half. I regard you as the brightest specimen of the swell-mob, and in fact as the very ablest scoundrel that at this hour rests in Europe unhanged!"-Francis died, and made no sign. Peace of mind he had parted with for a peacock's feather; which feather, living or dying, he durst not mount in the plumage of his сар.

PROTESTANTISM.*

THE work whose substance and theme are thus briefly abstracted is at this moment (1847) making a noise in the world. It is ascribed by report to two bishops-not jointly, but alternatively-in the sense that, if one did not write the book, the other did. The Bishops of Oxford and St David's, Wilberforce and Thirlwall, are the two pointed at by the popular finger; and, in some quarters, a third is suggested-viz., Stanley, Bishop of Norwich. The betting, however, is altogether in favour of Oxford. So runs the current of public gossip. But the public is a bad guesser, "stiff in opinion," and almost "always in the wrong." Now let me guess. When I had read for ten minutes, offered a bet of seven to one (no takers) that the author's name began with H. Not out of any love for that amphibious letter; on the contrary, being myself what Professor Wilson calls a hedonist, or philosophical voluptuary, murmuring, with good reason, if a rose leaf lies doubled below me, naturally I murmur at a letter that

I

This little paper, founded on a Vindication of Protestant Principles"-by Phileleutherus Anglicanus-might perhaps sufficiently justify itself by the importance of the principles discussed, if it replied to a mere imaginary antagonist. But this was not so. "The Vindication" was a real book, and, as a startling phenomenon, made a sudden and deep impression.

puts one to the expense of an aspiration, forcing into the lungs an extra charge of raw air on frosty mornings. But truth is truth, in spite of frosty air. And yet, upon further reading, doubts gathered upon my mind. The H. that I mean is an Englishman; now it happens that here and there a word, or some peculiarity in using a word, indicates, in this author, a Scotchman; for instance, the expletive "just," which so much infests Scottish phraseology, written or spoken, at page 1; elsewhere the word "shortcomings," which, being horridly tabernacular, and such that no gentleman could allow himself to touch it without gloves, it is to be wished that our Scottish brethren would resign, together with "backslidings," to the use of fieldpreachers. But worse, by a great deal, and not even intelligible in England, is the word thereafter, used as an adverb of time; i. e., as the correlative of hereafter. Thereafter, in pure vernacular English, bears a totally different In "Paradise Lost," for instance, having heard the character of a particular angel, you are told that he spoke thereafter; i. e., spoke agreeably to that character. "How a score of sheep, Master Shallow?" The answer is, Thereafter as they be." Again, "Thereafter as a man sows shall he reap"-i. e., conformably or answerably to what he sows. The objections are overwhelming to the Scottish use of the word; first, because already in Scotland it is a barbarism transplanted from the filthy vocabulary of attorneys, locally called writers; secondly, because in England it is not even intelligible, and, what is worse still, sure to be mis-intelligible. And yet, after all, these exotic forms may be a mere blind. The writer is, perhaps, purposely leading us astray with his "thereafters" and his horrid “shortcomings." Or, because London newspapers and Acts of Parliament are beginning to be more

sense.

66

and more polluted with these barbarisms, he may even have caught them unconsciously. And, on looking again at one case of "thereafter "”—viz., at page 79—it seems impossible to determine whether he uses it in the classical English sense, or in the sense of leguleian barbarism.

This question of authorship, meantime, may seem to the reader of little moment. Far from it! The weightier part of the interest depends upon that very point. If the author really is a bishop, or supposing the public rumour so far correct as that he is a man of distinction in the English Church, then, and by that simple fact, this book, or this pamphlet, interesting at any rate for itself, becomes separately interesting through its authorship, so as to be the most remarkable phenomenon of the day; and why? Because the most remarkable expression of a movement, accomplished and proceeding in a quarter that, if any on this earth, might be thought sacred from change. Oh, fearful are the motions of time, when suddenly lighted up to a retrospect of thirty years! Pathetic are the ruins of time in its slowest advance! Solemn are the prospects, so new and so incredible, which time unfolds at every turn of its wheeling flight! Is it come to this? Could any man, one generation back, have anticipated that an English dignitary, and speaking on a very delicate religious question, should deliberately appeal to a writer confessedly infidel, and proud of being an infidel, as a "triumphant settler of Christian scruples? But if the infidel is right-a point which I do not here discuss; but if the infidel is a man of genius-a point which I do not deny-was it not open to cite him, even though the citer were a bishop? Why, yes-uneasily one answers, yes; but still the case records a strange alteration; and still one could have wished to hear such a doctrine, which ascribes human