tly knows so
little as of the Romish question, or the state of Ireland. Nothing is
easier than to be at once solemn and superficial on such topics; and
when a writer of this order flings his epithets of "bigoted, harsh,
and impolitic," and the other stock phrases of party organs, he only
enfeebles our respect for his authority in the immediate matters of
his work, and rather lowers our respect for his faculties in all. The
question of Popery in Ireland, is not a question of religion but of
faction. Religious controversy on Romish doctrines has long ceased to
exist. Romanism has no grounds on which a controversy can be
sustained. It cannot appeal to the Scriptures, which it shuts up; and
it will no longer be suffered to appeal to its mere childish pretence
of infallibility. Its only ground in Ireland is party; and the present
unhappy condition to which it has reduced Ireland, exhibits the
natural consequences of indulgence to Popery, and the only means by
which its spirit can be rendered consistent with the order of society.

* * * * *

MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN.

PART X.

"Have I not in my time heard lions roar?
Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind,
Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?
Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,
And Heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?
Have I not in the pitched battle heard
Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"
SHAKSPEARE.

On reaching the prison, I gave up all for lost; sullenly resigned
myself to what now seemed the will of fate; and without a word, except
in answer to the interrogatory of my name and country, followed the
two horrid-looking ruffians who performed the office of turnkeys. St
Lazare had been a monastery, and its massiveness, grimness, and
confusion of buildings, with its extreme silence at that late hour,
gave me the strongest impression of a huge catacomb above ground. The
door of a cell was opened for me after traversing a long succession of
cloisters; and on a little wooden trestle, and wrapt in my cloak, I
attempted to sleep. But if sleep has not much to boast of in Paris at
any time, what was it then? I had scarcely closed my eyes when I was
roused by a rapid succession of musket-shots, fired at the opposite
side of the cloister, the light of torches flashing through the long
avenues, and the shouts of me