to us?" Have we not moreover living believers in Joanna Southcote, and metallic tractors, and animal magnetism, and fortune-tellers, and the efficacy of the Sinking Fund, and the danger of Popery, and innumerable other phantasms and delusions which poor Posterity will be bound to adopt as gospel, if the seal of time is to be always acknowledged as the signet of truth?

The lawyers of all ages are generally among the blind advocates of Antiquity. As a body, I believe them to have made incalculable advances in respectability and principle since the days of James the First, who, on receiving the great seal which Bacon had been compelled to resign for his manifold corruptions, exclaimed-" Now, by my saul, I am pained at the heart where to bestow this, for as to my lawyers, I think they be all knaves:"--but in expansion of intellect, in capacity for enlarged views, or perception of abstract truth, I apprehend them to be still far behind the age in which they live. Certain trades invariably injure the organ of bodily sight, and the law seems to be a profession which has a strong tendency to contract and debilitate the mental pupil. Its disciples are so accustomed to look with other people's eyes, that they lose the use of their own; because precedent is omnipotent in the Courts, they think it must be infallible in the world. They study acts of parliament, commentaries, cases, arguments, dicta of judges, and receive their fiat with such implicit deference, that they cannot, or dare not, find their way out of the maze to look for any thing so simple and elemental as

truth. Habituated to follow the bark of the leading hounds, they cannot recognise the game even if it crosses their path; or, if this simile be deemed too canine, I would respectfully hint that they worship the priests and the shrine too much to have any reverence left for the goddess. They argue with examples, not reasons, and adduce what people thought centuries ago, not what they ought to think now. They have deputed their faculties to Blackstone and other sages--they speak judgments, but use none, and generally go astray if left to the guidance of their original sagacity; as horses, if they miss their driver, will run their heads against a post or a wall. What they have spent their lives to learn, they would not willingly unlearn: you may prove that it is cruel, or false, or pernicious, which they will not gainsay, for these are points which they have not studied; but they silence you with one triumphant argument-it is law,-a declaration which they usually wind up with the established flourish about hallowed institutions and approved wisdom, and so forth.-I describe the influence of their studies upon the profession in general, and need not offer my testimony to the honourable and splendid exceptions which it has furnished in all times, and in none more signally than our own.

Bibliomania is an amusing illustration of this blind idolatry for whatever is ancient; though I will venture to assert that no good book, since the invention of printing, ever became scarce, and that in an immense majority of cases rarity is in exact proportion to worthlessness. The old types, and binding, and decora

tions, might be adored, as savages worship idols, for their barbarism and ugliness; but when they ventured upon the experiment of reprinting some of these treasures of antiquity, the bubble burst at once. The Archaica and Heliconia induced people to read what they had hitherto only thought of buying, and they then discovered upon what gross trash and woeful rubbish they had wasted their precious guineas.

While we are lavishing the affections of our hearts and purses, upon that egregious dotard, Antiquity, we evince towards our lineal, legitimate descendant, Posterity, a most scurvy and unpaternal disregard, although the poor creature has done nothing to merit such treatment. We bequeath him books enough, indeed, to complete his education, though most of them will be probably moth-eaten, or obsolete, before he is breeched; but in the olden time it was customary to provide him with ready-made houses, and churches, and palaces, none of which can he hope to inherit from the present generation.-Our houses regularly fall in before the leases; our churches will never come down to him, unless it be their roofs; and as to our thatched palaces, and others in imitation of Chinese Pagodas, and Moorish Alhambras, being fortunately as bad in construction as they are in taste, even we ourselves may hope to witness the decadence of these flimsy gewgaws. Waterloo-bridge is almost the only structure which seems likely to descend to the great unborn heir of the present community; and if we have enabled him to keep his head above water in one sense, we have rendered it almost impossible in another, by tying about his unbegotten neck, the tremendous mill

stone of the national debt.

Now I have very grave

per

and compunctious doubts whether the social compact confers upon us any right to commit this doubly noxious injustice. Individuals are not responsible for the debts of their parents,-why should a collection of individuals be so? Why should I, or you, tax-paying reader, be at this moment putting our hands in our pockets to defray the charges of all the mad wars waged since the time of our revolution, when the verse folly of “ our sage ancestors" first discovered the secret of the Funding system?-What authority have we to mortgage the flesh, and bones, and sweat of many generations, to gratify the insane pugnaciousness or extravagance of one?—what charter empowers us to discount futurity for blood-money? O fatal discovery, which torments whole ages with war, and its successors with debt, thus spreading misery over a surface of centuries! If the Holy Alliance would really merit the title of benefactors of the human race, let them invite the whole of Europe to join them in a solemn compact and agreement that every nation shall hereafter fight its own battles, and pay for its own wars; and they will have done more in one day for the maintenance of perpetual peace than they will now effect in a hundred Congresses.-Let them proclaim a public universal law, absolving our successors from all responsibility, legal or moral, for the hostilities of their forefathers; and they will not only have conferred a signal blessing upon the present generation, but have performed a great act of justice towards that ill-used gentleman, who has been subjected to such a series of ante-natal inflictions-poor Mr. Posterity.

THE BARD'S SONG TO HIS DAUGHTER.

O DAUGHTER dear, my darling child,

Prop of my mortal pilgrimage,

Thou who hast care and pain beguiled,

And wreathed with Spring my wintry age,— Through thee a second prospect opes

Of life, when but to live is glee,

And jocund joys, and youthful hopes,

Come thronging to my heart through thee.

Backward thou lead'st me to the bowers

Where love and youth their transports gave; While forward still thou strewest flowers, And bidst me live beyond the grave; For still my blood in thee shall flow, Perhaps to warm a distant line, Thy face my lineaments shall show,

And e'en my thoughts survive in thine.

Yes, Daughter, when this tongue is mute-
This heart is dust-these eyes are closed,
And thou art singing to thy lute

Some stanza by thy Sire composed,
To friends around thou may'st impart
A thought of him who wrote the lays,
And from the grave my form shall start,
Embodied forth to fancy's gaze.

Then to their memories will throng

Scenes shared with him who lies in earth,

The cheerful page, the lively song,

The woodland walk, or festive mirth; Then may they heave the pensive sigh,

That friendship seeks not to control, And from the fix'd and thoughtful eye

The half unconscious tears may roll: