and less toil. How to answer them! A new Agrarian law even would not satisfy them. Understanding no economy, no moderation, no virtue, they would dissipate in a few days, the riches of pillaged provinces, for incapacity to make profitable use of well-being and repose is the frighful result of a material and brutal existence. Thus civilization has created new scourges; industry has given birth to unheard of monsters. Utopians dream vainly; the promisers of destiny vainly rock humanity in their hammocks woven of silken phrases; our original misery exhibits itself always, exacting from us vigilant care, attentive prudence, and forcing us constantly to repair the bark of civilization which is no doubt triumphant, but triumphant only by courage and labor. To show the bright side of things only; to issue to the people bulletins of victory as false as those of conquerors are; to affirm that certain magic words are enough for social happiness; thus to dupe the cars of men by that flattering song which pleases the weaknesses of Hope, is perhaps a lucrative business, but it is also a dangerous and an alarming one. Let us not seduce a civilization grown old by a wretched and perpetual caress; nor resemble the courtizan, who turns to her profit the shameless passions, and grows rich by the profusions and follies which she encourages.

Every epoch has its diseases; every new epoch sends out its unknown discases which we cannot study, but must guess at. You need not be a pessimist because you are a physician; you do not assassinate the man whose wound you probe. There are minds, at once thoughtful and practical, which see all the consequences of a situation: Do not call them misanthropic Misanthropic! Bacon, Montesquieu, Machiavel, Pitt, minds of the same order, did not desire to be esteemed dupes by their century, and they were right. They saw that advantages have their inconvenience, and a conquest its

perils; and they were right! They would have told you of the dangers of an enormous increase of the material forces of society; they would have recommended you, above all, to elevate the moral and intellectual condition of the masses; which serve as blind instruments to a new civilization. They would have told you that it is alway from the bosom of Force and Life that Death is developed; that war was the enemy of Rome; that feudality perished by the inequality of the powers upon which it was based;-in a word, that instead of worshipping herself, the reigning Industry of to-day, should take precautions and guarantee herself against the results of her conquests. Under the protection of the great namies which I have cited, these useful counsels would obtain some attention; would escape at least the hollow accusation of pessimism and bad-humor.

The social crisis in which we live, in which all Europe is more or less plunged, is simply an ascending movement of the inferior classes, who covet the power and riches of the class immediately above them. This covetous movement is peculiarly felt in large cities where interests come in collision, where passions ferment, where a luminous and ardent atmosphere envelops every thing, where ambition is in the vital air, where, before the eyes is a dazzling luxury, the pleasures of the rich, and the delights which civilization reserves for its favorites. The Birmingham workman, wanting bread if he should miss one week's labor, imprisoned in a garret six feet square, inflamed by the preaching of street-orators, would not certainly be any more content, nor more peaceful, should a half education enable him to read Cobbett's pamphlets, or even to translate the theories of Rousseau. The light which you would give him would only make him seize his arms, by showing to him the hideous wretchedness and iniquity of his position.

According to late statistics there are in Manchester, Salford, Liverpool, Bury, and York, alone, 80,000 children growing up to be Chartists. The first measures, to be taken are at once the most simple and the most difficult it relates to the giving of bread and well-being to these people. I am not sure that a wise and extended legislation would not oppose all excessive agglomeration of workmen and manufactories at the same point. First, well being; then morality-instruction will come afterwards. Popular instruction would leave to the working generations, a self-respect and attachment for society if they could feel themselves to be its esteemed supports and not its victims.

What England shall do, will be a lesson for all Europe; for all Europe treads the same path. All Europe must struggle against the same dangers born of the progress of industry and of the blind force which industry employs, inflames and exalts. According to us, the first duty of prudent politics will be to provide for the urgent necessity of these unfortunate populations, then to elevate them gradually to the moral level of their minds, and at last to make them to participate in that instruction which will be the last and greatest benefit. What now occupies the Chartists is wages, bread, drink, and covering; the problem of the moment is to increase their wages, not their light. Educate their children, and let the state encourage those parents who are moral aud intelligent enough to send their offspring to school. England, always prudent in her ameliorations, faithful to her personal traditions, and always opposed to the scabrous experience of empirical politics, will unquestionably follow, the gentlest and least violent way; the surest, not the noisiest; not the most democratic, the most flattering to vulgar passions, but the most benevolent, the most useful to those who suffer to-day,

as to those who will pay to-morrow the sufferings of their fellow creatures.

SECTION III.

POETRY OF VENGEANCE AND OF POPULAR WRATH IN EUROPE.

Such a position should find a poetic expression.

back

The first in date, the chief of these poets is Crabbe. Before him the Saxon and domestic tendencies were revealed, but with less violence and harshness. It is casy to go from Crabbe and Burns to Goldsmith, whose "Deserted Village" is a popular and social elegy, or to Gray's "Elegy in a country Church-yard." This popular view is ancient; long interrupted by Puritanism or by Italian and French influence, it is to be found even in the middle ages, and appears in the Vision of Pierce Plowman, the roturier and Saxon reclamation of a peasant against the abuse of Norman Sovereignty.

In America, the poetry of vengeance could not arise. The primitive liberty of nature, the great struggle of the Puritans with the elements, the waves, the soil, the wind, did not permit the domestic muse to take this fearful and bitter flight, nor to become hateful and violent. The earliest of American literateurs, Franklin, Audubon, Cooper, are amiable and human writers, that is popular in the true sense of the word. They write for all the world like Shakspeare, Montague, Cervantes. But in England, in the midst of au old and refined society, is produced another falsely-popular literature, vindicative and furious, destined exclusively for

workmen, peasants, and men without property or civil rights. Strange, that while democratic America fostered a literature graceful and elegant, full of fine and delicate shading, aristocratic and natural, old, weary Europe gave birth to a brood of tragic poets, dithyrambic and academic in the dress of tho penniless;false men of the people who speak loudly and boldly, and roughly, and lyingly.

Hierarchic, feudal England gave the first impulse. Crabbe is the primary instigator. Robert Burns, a peasant, followed him closely. Robert Bloomfield, and Southey, in his youth, trod the same path.

Among these prose and poct-workmen, some have really issued from the inferior classes. Two are men of genius, Robert Burns, and the Sheffield Blacksmith. The latter, Ebenezer Elliot, Saxon and Puritan by his Christian name, has been powerfully reviewed by Carlyle."

As an artist, Elliot is far from being perfect. Epic without knowing it, he tries to be lyric, and does not always succeed. His poetry is Crabbe, Wordsworth, Cowper, exaggerated. Iis energy would be more valuable if he contained it more; if his flame were not mingled with whirlpools of smoke, such as float over the furnaces of Birmingham. He throws out his poetry in ardent puffs, somewhat like Savage, the cotemporary of Johnson; and the incoherence of his words, mingled with his perpetual cry of fury, pain and hunger, produces a painful sensation. Yet sometimes he forgets his political niission, ceases to speak against taxes, the dearness of bread and proprietors, seeks the shadows of the wood,

• Here Mr. Chasles gives the review of the Corn Law Rhymes by Carlyle, too well known here to be reprinted in this volume.