and that beneath the savage
vandalism of his act, every lineament of the artist was obliterated? I
ask you, would not mere robbery be a virtue beside such a deed as
this? Who could compare the sinful promptings to which want and
starvation give birth to, to the ruffian profligacy of such
barbarity? And now, when I tell you, that not content with this, not
satisfied to desecrate the work, the wretch goes a step farther and
stabs its author--what shall I say of him now, who, when he had
defaced the picture, marred every effect, distorted all drawing, and
rendered the whole a chaotic mass of indistinguishable nonsense, goes
forth to the world, and announces, "This is a Rembrandt, this is a
Vandyke: ay, look at it and wonder: but with all its faults, and all
its demerits, it is cried up above our native artists; it has got the
seal of the old world's approval upon it, and in vain we of younger
origin shall dare to dissent from its judgments." Now, once more, I
say, can you show the equal of this moral turpitude? and such I pledge
myself is the conduct of your transatlantic pirates with respect to
British literature. Mr. Dickens, no mean authority, asserts that in
the same sheet in which they boast the sale of many thousand copies of
an English reprint, they coarsely attack the author of that very book,
and heap scurrility and slander on his head.

Yes, such is the fact; not satisfied with robbery, they murder
reputation also. And then we find them expatiating in most moving
terms over the superiority of their own neglected genius!

A NUT FOR THE SEASON--JULLIEN'S QUADRILLES.

[Illustration]

A very curious paper might be made by any one who, after an absence of
some years from Ireland, should chronicle his new impressions of the
country, and compare them with his old ones. The changes time works
everywhere, even in a brief space, are remarkable, but particularly so
in a land where everything is in a state of transition--where the
violence with which all subjects are treated, the excited tone people
are wont to assume on every topic, are continually producing their
effects on society--dismembering old alliances--begetting new
combinations. Such is the case with us here; and every year evidences
by the strange anomalies it presents in politics, parties, public
feeling, and private habits, how little chance there is for a prophet
to make a character by his predictions regarding Ireland. He would,
indeed, be a skil