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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
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