ground of their being reduced to a state of unparalleled exhaustion and lassitude. The evil demon which has raged in them is not expelled; but the preternatural efforts to which they have been instigated, have so prostrated their strength, that their faculties and limbs cannot obey immediately a new impulse, and he is compelled to let them lie breathless for a while. If it were possible for them to be suddenly replaced in the state they were in twenty years since, how soon would they begin to look abroad with airs of defiance, and talk most heroically about conquest, and glory, and national honour; and they would only want such chiefs and leaders as a righteous Providence gave them before in his anger, to rush with fury into the same career, scorning every voice of dissuasion and melancholy prediction. Man is not a creature that mere suffering will ever teach or mend. As to this infernal business of war, at least, he is no better for the lessons supplied by the experience of all his forefathers up to the beginning of the world, though so fatally enforced by his own.

Mr. Favell knows full well that many of his fellow citizens who, after having opposed him so many years, coincide with him at last, have not acceded through any radical conversion of opinion or feeling, but merely because they have at length experienced for themselves the grievous results of the system they extolled and supported. Had they been fortunate enough to avoid receiving their appropriate share, as a large proportion of the advocates and agents of that system have found means to do, they would have continued to sneer at his remonstrances against war and corruption.

Even at this melancholy period, some complacent and even enviable feelings must be the reward of the individual, who has at every stage of the career which is now come to so calamitous a conclusion, faithfully protested against the system, maintaining through evil report and good report an exemplary and manly consistency. During the last five and twenty years, Mr. Favell must have seen many once professed friends of liberty, peace, and reformation, slink away, some perhaps from timidity, some possibly from the change of fashion, and some at the lure of interest, into the ranks of the advocates of war and sycophants to power. He has beheld many professed friends of Christianity, and even of civil liberty, become servilely reverential of almost every scheme and every extravagance of the predominant party in the State; and he may have received from some of them admonitory hints to consult his peace, his reputation, or his interest. But Mr. Favell chose rather-perhaps not unwisely after all-to consult by anticipation the feelings and reflections of his last hours. He judged perhaps that at that trying season a Christian, whose situation has led him

to take a public part in national concerns, would not behold his setting sun with less complacency for having been the faithful inflexible remonstrant against ambition, corruption, and

war.

The principal article in this pamphlet, is the speech respecting what has been called the Holy Alliance.' Mr. F. was anxious to seize one more occasion of impressing on the minds of his fellow citizens the hatefulness of that wide-wasting system of destruction which has desolated the Continent, and exhausted and corrupted the people of this island; and the perniciousness and delusion of that military spirit which has thence been created among every people, and which so many horrors and miseries have not cured. In this anomalous Treaty of Alliance he found the great military monarchs solemnly declaring against this war-system and this martial spirit, and professing their earnest approbation of all the charities of the Christian religion. He had seen some of them perfectly idolized in this country; it was at least matter of etiquette in the assembly which he addressed, to hold them sincere in their professions, and it was but policy to assume that sincerity, and thus bring the highest authorities in the world in argument against that destructive system which it could not now be pretended that only cloistered monks, and moralists, and sentimentalists, and economists, joined to reprobate. The most convenient way of availing himself of these paramount authorities, was in the form of moving an address to the Head of our Government, to become a party to the league. He foresaw, undoubtedly, the fate of the motion; but he gained his substantial object, that of making a public, well authorized protest against the military spirit still too prevalent. The Speech contains a number of just sentiments and striking facts, illustrative of the character of that monster of evil, which all its ravages have not sufficed to divest of its attractions in the view of the suffering nations.

The publication is introduced by an address to the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council, inculcating the same important considerations; and it is followed by a short Address to the Christian World,' first printed in 1813. A leading purpose of this serious address, is to inculcate on good men the duty of giving a greater prominence to that view of Christianity, in which it is most specifically opposed to the military madness of the age,-in their instructions, their social religious transactions, and their public meetings. This duty, evident enough on general grounds, will have been made still more palpable to any reflecting man who shall have heard a tenth part of the pompous and elated references to heroes, martial glory, and the like, which have been made and echoed in assemblies avowedly met for the promotion of the Christian illumination of the world.

Art. XIII. 1. Monody on the Death of the Right Honourable R. B. Sheridan, Written at the Request of a Friend, to be spoken at Drury Lane Theatre. 8vo. pp. 12. Price 1s. Murray, 1816.

2. A Garland for the Grave of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. By Charles Phillips, Esq Barrister at Law. 8vo. pp. 16. Price 1s. 6d. Hailes, 1816.

MR.

R. CHARLES PHILLIPS tells us, in reference to the object of his idolatry, the unhappy Sheridan,

'That Ignorance worshipped the path which he trod.'

His meaning is rather ambiguous, it must be confessed, but the assertion is literally true. The path which Sheridan trod, only Ignorance could worship. But it has conducted him to the Grave, and therefore, whatever follies and whatever crimes characterized the man while living, whatever, to adopt the phrase of the Author of the Monody, seemed' to be' Vice,' he it appears, no longer to be spoken of, but in the language of adulation, as one of the rarest specimens of humanity. We are to sigh

is,

That Nature formed but one such man,

And broke the die-in moulding Sheridan.'

Yes:-he was one of those thirty thousand deities to which modern Idolatry has allotted an apotheosis; for this apparent reason, that their talents were somewhat above, and their vices somewhat below, the ordinary level of humanity. We have no pagans now in this country, except Mr. Thomas Taylor, and therefore we have no priests to bring forth the sacrifice in honour of this demi-god, and to shout, "The gods are come "down in the likeness of men." Otherwise, it would seem that had Paul and Barnabas visited us, they would have been in less danger of being saluted with Divine honours, than the poor shattered wreck of Genius, the late manager of Drury Lane Theatre. So far from being pagans, we profess to be even protestants, and the farce of canonization is justly held in derision. Otherwise, like one of the crew of the Victory who said he thought St. Nelson as good a saint as any in the Calendar, we might have our St. Pitt, St. Fox, and St. Burke,

'The wondrous Three,

• Whose words were sparks of Immortality.'

Aye, and St. Sheridan also, enrolled in the Litany of the fashionable world, and Ora pro nobis devoutly warbled at their

names.

If this be thought an extreme supposition, we need only quote a few lines from Mister Phillips's Garland.

'He is gone to the Angels that lent him their lyre,
He is gone to the world whence he borrow'd his fire,
And the brightest and best of the heavenly choir

The welcome of Paradise pour.'

But it would indeed be an insult to the age to suppose that these Monodies could be received in any other light, than that of a decent ceremonial tribute to a man of Genius, in which courtesy demanded that the utmost pomp of panegyric should be used, of which the style and titles of the deceased would admit. It is but matter of course for the herald to proclaim, when the ashes of the peer are consigned to the family vault, that the deceased was the Most Noble, or the Right Honourable, or His Grace, Duke, and Prince, or Earl, Viscount, and so forth. For they are all, all honourable men.' And would you but believe the escutcheon, and the marble, the weeping statues, the cherubs, and the achievement, there was grief on earth and joy in heaven at their departure.

Besides, in this present case, the Monody' was written to be spoken at Drury Lane Theatre. Surely, in a place where grief and madness, and prayers and imprecations, and death itself, are so often acted, it would have been out of the question to exhibit Sheridan unmasked and in bis native character. No: dresses enough were in readiness, to lend dramatic effect to the veteran of the drama, and the mimic clouds, the well-drest angels, and the unsubstantial heaven of the stage machinery, would serve to throw a fair illusion over his last scene. And if the monody was well spoken, who would think of inquiringis it true?

The Monody is in itself beautifully written. We transcribe the opening lines.

• When the last sunshine of expiring day
In summer's twilight weeps itself away,
Who hath not felt the softness of the hour
Sink on the heart-as dew along the flower?
With a pure feeling which absorbs and awes
While Nature makes that melancholy pause,
Her breathing moment on the bridge where Time
Of light and darkness forms an arch sublime,
Who hath not shared that calm so still and deep,
The voiceless thought which would not speak but weep,
A holy concord-and a bright regret,

A glorious sympathy with suns that set?
'Tis not harsh sorrow-but a tenderer woe,
Nameless, but dear to gentle hearts below,
Felt without bitterness-but full and clear,
A sweet dejection-a transparent tear
Unmixed with worldly grief-or selfish stain,
Shed without shame and secret without pain.

"Even as the tenderness that hour instils
When summer's day declines along the hills,
So feels the fulness of our heart and eyes

When all of Genius which can perish-dies.'

The following lines are a specious attempt to apologize for the immoral conduct of Sheridan, on the plea that what seemfed vice might be but woe. If the sentiment were not so utterly false in its application to a character which suffered so little injustice from calumny, one would exceedingly admire the spirit and the power with which the passage is written.

• Hard is his fate on whom the public gaze
Is fixed for ever to detract or praise,
Repose denies her requiem to his name,
And Folly loves the martyrdom of Fame.
The secret enemy whose sleepless eye
Stands sentinel-accuser-judge-and spy,
The foe-the fool-the jealous-and the vain,
The envious who but breathe in others' pain,
Behold the host! delighting to deprave,
Who track the steps of Glory to the grave,
Watch every fault that daring Genius owes
Half to the ardour which its birth bestows,
Distort the truth-accumulate the lie
And pile the Pyramid of Calumny!

These are his portion-but if joined to these
Gaunt Poverty should league with deep Disease,
If the high Spirit must forget to soar,
And stoop to strive with Misery at the door,
To soothe Indignity-and face to face

Meet sordid Rage-and wrestle with Disgrace,
To find in Hope but the renewed caress,
The serpent-fold of further Faithlessness,----
If such may be the Ills which men assail,
What marvel if at last the mightiest fail?

Breasts to whom all the strength of feeling given
Bear hearts electric-charged with fire from Heaven,
Black with the rude collision-inly torn,

By clouds surrounded, and on whirlwinds borne,
Driven o'er the lowering Atmosphere that nurst

Thoughts which have turned to thunder-scorch-and burst.'

pp. 9-10. We have given a specimen of Mr. Phillips's "Garland." It is altogether, take the prose and verse together, one of the most exquisite pieces of tawdry bombast, that ever gained a young writer's self-complacency. Putting aside the extreme folly of representing Sheridan's death as an occasion for triumph, and alleging that

He lived mid corruption, yet cloudless his name ;