came an abhorrence. Sir Walter Scott's "Lay of the Last
Minstrel," rich and romantic as it was, was nearly buried under an
overflow of heavy imitations, which drove his genius to other pursuits,
and which filled the public ear with such enormities of octo-syllabic
_ennui_, that it hates poetry ever since. The Helicon of which he drank
the gushing and pure stream, was stirred into mire by the slippers of
school-girls, city-apprentices, and chambermaid-poetesses of every shade
of character.

A new Malthus for the express purpose of extinguishing, by strangulation
or otherwise, the whole race of Annual Travellers in Normandy, Picardy,
up the Seine and down the Seine, up the Loire and down the Loire, on the
shores of the Mediterranean, and in the Brenner Alps, would be a
benefactor to society.

Whether England would be the wiser and the happier if, instead of being
separated from the Continent by a channel, she were separated by an
ocean, is a question which we leave to the philosopher; but there can be
no doubt of the nature of its answer by the historian. It will be found,
that the national character had degenerated in every period when that
intercourse increased, and that it resumed its vigour only in the
periods when that intercourse was restricted.

It would not be difficult to exemplify this principle, from the earliest
times of English independence. But our glance shall be limited to the
era of the Reformation, when England began first to assume an imperial
character.

Elizabeth was always contemptuous of the foreigner, and boasted of the
defiance; the national mind never rose to a higher rank than in her
illustrious reign. James renewed the connexions of the throne with
France, and Charles I. renewed the connexion of the royal line. It may
have been for the purpose of checking the national contagion of the
intercourse, that rebellion was suffered to grow up in his kingdom. But
whatever might be the origin, the effect was, to break off the
intercourse with France and her corruptions, and to exhibit a new energy
and purity in the people. Cromwell raised a sudden barrier against
France by his political system, and the nation recovered its daring and
its character in its contempt for the foreigner.

In the reign of Charles II. the intercourse was resumed, and corruption
rapidly spread from France to the court, and from the court to the
people. England, proud and powerful under the Protectorate, became
almost a riv