R AND THE COMPANION.*

mith now, so much as they did in our not forgotten, nor ever will be; and , which have not less heart than imagier, 'kindly bade to stay' by the fireside, , 'to show how fields were won,' is, favourite one with thousands. It is asure with which the villagers listened istory.' The enjoyment might have g a character, yet a more pure and n had talked of other matters besides d told of the scenery of the regions d, produced the beautiful flowers or time to pick up in his campaigns, and ads or domestic histories of the inhahad been quartered long enough to e whose interests are in the battles of ments are in the fields of literature, atification in these volumes. Leigh ics: he served long, with little pay n the people's cause; and here he eds or his wounds, but to discuss with gathered in many of the regions of recent and antique; and who of us elcome ?'-will not be glad to see him we the afternoon fire another poke, to eparation for a social chuckle over the our Indicator,' and the pleasantries ily participated as they are frankly on? The volumes are rightly titled; the Fields and the Fireside;' they into the chiffonier, for the good of e comes they shall have an airing; e pocket of the sociable,' if we had pocket or bag must suffice, we being shall enliven our stroll, alternating ne motions and twittering sounds that be read aloud by a voice like a bird's, own the Lea, while the fish shall peren we come to the paper upon Angling. -r companionship; you come not there, now it. Your place is not between ur time the clear morning or the dead companionship for travelling too, when

it is real and right-out travelling. Good bye to you, Leigh Hunt, when it is On with the horses, off for Canterbury;' (for Canterbury from London that is, and so forth;) you are no miscellany for the Rhine and the Rhone, Mont Blanc and the Coliseum. But as to fireside and fields, they are at your service, Leigh Hunt; come, and welcome. There you are at home,' and so are we with you.

These volumes talk; and very well they talk too; and on a vast variety of subjects. They contain tales, both sad and sprightly, literal and imaginative, criticisms, descriptions, reflections, characters, aphorisms, puns, speculations; in short, they are a sort of literary and poetical what-not. Old books and new, print and manuscript, plates and playbills, are scattered on its shelves; you have only to fish, and bring up something good. Moreover, you are sure it will be short; a comfortable security in a book for the fields and the fireside, where nobody wants long stories.

Amongst many others, perhaps as good, or it may be, some of them better, there is a beautiful redemption of the story of Godiva from commonplace vulgarity; a pleasant collection of Memories connected with various parts of the Metropolis;' a touching anecdote of the mother of Thomas à Becket; an ingenious social genealogy, showing how, by lineal descent of cordialities, a living man may have shaken hands with Shakspeare; a glorious sketch of the Graces and Anxieties of Pig-driving;' a good Earth upon Heaven;' and a beautiful tale, called the Mountain of the Two Lovers;' any one of which is enough to put the reader in good humour with the author, and establish their sociability, like that of agreeable companions in a stage-coach, for the rest of the journey, or the book. We mention them by way of introducing the parties. We are not travelling ourselves just now, having business in town which must be done; but we are sure you will like one another, and get on well to the end of your ride. There; shut the coach-door; good journey to you.

Every body knows the faults of Leigh Hunt's writings; his occasional affectations, and his obvious consciousness. We therefore do not feel our critical character at all compromised by not writing a dissertation in proof or reproof of them; especially we do not put forth another dissertation in proof and praise of the many sterling qualities which those writings always exhibit. We would rather that when the author feels like a boy, he did not stop to think and say, 'How like a boy I do feel!' which, moreover, is not like, the boy never being deadly lively in that self-analyzing manner; but we do not care much about this; there are plenty of captious critics to make a fuss about it, and it is but a trifle after all.

Every observant reader of these volumes must feel that, light as they are, they let him into the real character and dispositions

of the writer; and the intelligence, attainment, and benevolence of the man whose acquaintanceship is thus made, are such as to ensure esteem and regard. Oh, it makes one's blood boil to think of the political and literary persecution to which this man,、 in common with many others, was for so long a period exposed. He carried his honesty, his intelligence, his benevolence, into politics; that was his offence, and that alone. He served his country in the most efficient way, as a public writer, as a journalist who never compromised his principles, and who endeavoured, amid the strife of party, to diffuse in the country the knowledge and the love of political principle. Hence he became a mark for the most unscrupulous and unrelenting malignity. He has outlived those days; but shall we forget them? The claws of The Quarterly' are pared; the lacerations which they inflicted may be healed; but those and other scars remain, and they should entitle the veteran to his laurel-wreath, which is all that the people have yet to give to those of their friends who, not being relations of Earl Grey, tools of Lord Brougham, nor hangers-on of the Whig and Tory aristocracy, stand little chance of being the objects of public munificence.

THE TAXES ON KNOWLEDGE.

WHEN we would test the principles of public men, and learn what claim they have to the character of friends to the people, we first require to know their opinions of the taxes on knowledge.

Let it never be forgotten, that he who has no desire to raise the mental as well as the physical condition of human beings, has no sympathy with man, as man. Grant the honesty of his zeal against the oppression which would deprive industry of bread, yet if he stop there, you do but number him with the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Animals; for to consider man (whatever his present state) as a being having no other wants than are supplied when he is clothed and fed, is to regard him in the light of a mere animal, and is not to be the friend of man, in the higher and nobler sense of the word. And he who would not only stop there, but would resist every attempt to improve the moral and intellectual capacities of the many, is not the friend but the enemy of the people.

It is in no spirit of philanthropy that such a one will tell us that there is a possibility of the labourer knowing too much; that more knowledge would make him discontented with his present station, and thus give rise to great unhappiness. Too much knowledge! Can there be too much light? Yes,-to those who love darkness better, because their deeds are evil.' And if there be one deed of evil which more than any other should shun the light, it is that of putting out the eyes of the labourer lest he

should look abroad in the world, and, from among the innumerable channels of profitable industry, choose some other occupation than that of grinding corn for the Philistines.

Away with the notion that knowledge is the parent of discon tent: where discontent exists, it is because of our ignorance o. the means to remove the evils of which we complain. Knowledge animates with hope and inspires with confidence; or where evils are irremediable, it teaches patience. Discontent is found where want and privation exist by the side of wealth and luxury. The starving tenant of the mud cabin, surrounded by the mansions of the rich, repines, where there is none to teach him to repine. He is discontented, from the circumstances of his position; and the bitterness of his spirit, and the danger it may threaten to the peace and order of society, is in exact proportion to his ignorance of the true causes of his sufferings, and the degree in which his views are circumscribed of the means for bettering his condition.

Too much knowledge cannot yet, at least, be charged to the account of the peasantry of England and Ireland, yet they are discontented; and not only so, but, in a practical sense, greater enemies to the rights of property than any other portion of the working classes. Is not this a striking fact? The most discontented class, the class of which almost exclusively machine breakers and incendiaries are now composed, is at the same time the most ignorant class! It has, however, been gravely asserted, that we should have heard nothing of incendiarism but for the influence of newspapers and popular education. Education ! Why, scarcely an individual concerned in such outrages has been found able to read or write; and who ever sees a newspaper in the hands of an agricultural labourer? It has been proved before the Poor-law Commissioners, that there are even now whole parishes in England, and that within twenty miles of London, in which no person employed in field-work is possessed of the elementary arts of reading and writing; and as to newspapers, how little do they penetrate beyond the immediate vicinity of the great towns! There are innumerable villages in which a newspaper is never seen from January to December; and in the few exceptions to this rule, it is only in a public-house used by the better sort of farmers, where a stale copy of a county chronicle, filled with advertisements of farms to let, and sheep to be sold, may sometimes be discovered.

It is not so in towns however, and to the fact that it is not so, may be traced the almost entire absence of those scenes of mob violence which up to the present moment disgrace our agricultural districts. Whoever will take the trouble to examine the habits of the working classes where they have the readiest access

less disposed to resort to brute force to decide the difference between themselves and their employers, or to redress their political grievances. Every day we hear less of the destruction of power-looms, as of the street riots which at one time were almost of nightly occurrence. Bristol, almost a solitary instance, is not a proof to the contrary. In the midst of their violence the mob shed no blood, and even this was an improvement upon the last Spa-fields' riot. Twenty years ago, and in a time of similar political excitement, the example of Bristol would have been carried to greater lengths in every principal town in the kingdom.

This marked progress is what might have been predicated from the nature of the case. The leader of a mob is a man reckless of consequences. Teach him to reason and reflect, and although he may reason wrongly at first, he will soon reason himself out of being the leader of a mob. It is impossible to read much without being led to think, and as the habit of thinking will increase with the habit of reading, it may be laid down as an axiom, the more newspapers the fewer rioters.

Hence it matters very little how intemperate may be the character of a popular journal. The more furious the war of words the more peaceable will generally be the deeds of the combatants. The very individuals best pleased by seeing the conduct of their governors denounced in strong language, will be the least disposed to commit any overt act of treason against the Government. They are satisfied with having a voice given to their wrongs, and are then more easily persuaded to rely upon the force of public opinion, than to resort to dangerous and uncertain expedients. The press may be considered as a safety-valve for popular indignation. Put down the press, and in a moment of universal irritation you produce an explosion which will shake the whole machine of government to pieces. Had Charles the Tenth understood this maxim, he might yet have been upon the throne of France. Civil war would not have raged in the streets of Paris had he not made war upon the journals. Their thunders would have been heard instead of the sound of his own cannon, turned against him by the people. The ordinances must have been repealed, but the revolution of the three days would have been averted.

In disposing of this objection we get rid of almost the only argument deserving refutation which has been urged against the repeal of the taxes on knowledge. Some good people imagine that were newspapers cheap, so violent would be the tone of those addressed to the working classes, that the whole country would be in a flame. Take, however, the most extreme case, and it will be found no evil could arise from a free circulation of newspapers so great as that which is now produced by the restraints to which they are subject. No doubt the most popular journal among agricultural labourers would be that which expressed in

No. 86.

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