Read Ebook: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Volume 57 No. 354 April 1845 by Various

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I am not writing a panegyric. He had his infirmities; his temper was too excitable, and his measures were too prompt for prudence. But his heart was sound, and his spirit was made for the guidance of a state in the hour of its danger. If a feebler mind had then presided in the public councils, Ireland, within a twelvemonth, would have been a republic; and in every hour since, would have been agonizing under the daggers of rival factions, or paying the fearful price of her frenzy in indissoluble chains.

If this were the single act of his life, it was sufficient for fame. It is enough to inscribe on the mausoleum of any man, that "he rescued his country from a DEMOCRACY!"

The first news of the revolt which reached England, produced a formidable effect on the legislature. Even the sagacity of the premier had been deceived, and his cabinet evidently staggered on the effect of the surprise. Opposition had been equally startled, and were still more perplexed in their decision. Dealing for years in all the high-sounding topics of national wrong and national difficulty, they were astonished at the first actual realization of popular revenge. The Englishman had heard of wars as the child hears of spectres--none had seen them, and the narratives served only to excite the imagination. But the tremendous novelty of revolt was now at their doors. Whether the Irish revolters acted in concert with the undying hostility of France, or with the factions reform of England; the danger in either case assumed a shape of the most appalling magnitude. Opposition, in the very prospect of power, shrank from possession; as the stormers of a fortress might start back when they saw the walls rolling down before them in some sudden convulsion of nature. They had predicted every casualty which could befall a country, ruled by a cabinet inexorably closed against themselves. But when their predictions had changed their character from the fantastic and remote into the substantial and immediate--when the clouds which they so often predicted to be advancing over the prosperity of the land, seemed to have suddenly rushed forward, and condensed and darkened with the full freight of national havoc; they as suddenly flew to shelter in utter inaction, and left the minister to meet the storm. Pitt was soon equal to the crisis. The orders which he dispatched to Ireland were stamped with all the considerate vigour of his matchless ability. I had sent him all the information which could be obtained of the progress and purposes of the revolt, with the suggestions arising from the contingency. His remarks on my communication were brief, but incomparably clear, direct, and decided. Their tenor was, that I should distinguish accurately between the deluded and the deluders--that I should assure the loyal of the unhesitating support of England--and that, in all instances, I should cultivate the national loyalty, reward the generous obedience, and sympathize with all the gallant and generous qualities of a people with whom every thing was to be done, by taking an interest in their feelings. These principles were so entirely my own, that I acted upon them with double zeal, and with complete success. The loyalty of Ireland rapidly exhibited itself in the most willing sacrifices; all ranks of opinion coincided in the necessity of bold and instant action; and from day to day, party, absorbed in the sense of the national exigency, disappeared, and patriotism rose. The leading men of both sides of the House ranged themselves in the ranks of the voluntary corps which came forward to assist in the public defence, and the fine metaphor which had once made the senate thunder with applause--"The serpent's teeth, sown in the ground, sprang up armed men,"--was now amply, but more fortunately, realized. The bitternesses and schisms of public opinion were hidden in the earth, and the harvest was a brave and spontaneous armament of men prepared to undergo all hazards for the sake of their country.

"Happy," says the French wit, "the land which has nothing for history." This happiness has never belonged to Ireland. Her annals are a romance. But the period of which I speak exhibited her senatorial strength with an energy, almost compensating for her popular misfortunes. While Parliament in England languished, parliament in Ireland started into sudden power. It was aroused by the visible presence of the public peril. Ireland was the outpost, while England was the camp; there the skirmish was at its height, while the great English brigade moved up slowly from the rear. The ardour and activity of the national temperament were exercised in perpetual conflict, and every conflict produced some new champion.

What must be the condition of a minister, rising before such an audience, to pronounce the grave doctrines of public prudence; to oppose argument to brilliant declamation; to proclaim regulated obedience, in the midst of spirits fantastic as the winds; and to lay restraints, essential to the public peace, on a population proud of their past defiances, and ready to welcome even civil war? I was not conscious of any natural timidity; nor have I ever found occasion to distrust my nerve on any great demand; but I must acknowledge, that when in some of the leading debates of that most absorbing and most perilous period, I rose to take the initiative, the sight of the vast audience to whom I raised my eyes, was one of the severest trials of my philosophy. The members round me excited no alarm; with them I was prepared to grapple; it was a contest of argument; I had facts for their facts, answers for their captiousness, and a fearless tongue for their declamation. But the gallery thus filled was beyond my reach; its passions and prejudices were inaccessible by any logic of mine; and I stood before them, less as in the presence of a casual auditory than of a tribunal, and at that tribunal, less as an advocate than as a culprit on the point of being arraigned.

The eventful night came at last; for days before, every organ of public opinion was in the most feverish activity; lampoons, pamphlets, and letters to the leading journals, the whole machinery of the paragraph-world was in full work round me; and even the Administration despaired of my being able to resist the uproar--all but one, and that one the noblest and the most gifted of them all, my friend the chancellor. I had sat long past midnight with him on the eve of the coming struggle; and I received his plaudits for my determination. He talked with all his usual loftiness, but with more than his usual feeling.

"Within the next twenty-four hours," said he, "your fate will be decided. But, in public life, the event is not the dishonour; it is the countenance with which we meet it, that makes all the difference between success and shame. If you fall, you will fall like a man of character. If you triumph, your success will be unalloyed by any baseness of purchase." I told him sincerely, that I saw in the vigour and resolution of his conduct a model for public men. "However the matter may turn out in the debate," said he, rising and taking his leave, "there shall be no humiliation in the conduct of government, even if we should be defeated. Persevere to the last. The world is all chances, and ten to one of them are in favour of the man who is resolved not to be frightened out of any thing. Farewell."

Still, the crisis was a trying one, and my occupation during the day was but little calculated to smooth its anxieties. The intelligence from the county announced the increased extent of the revolt; and the intercepted correspondence gave startling proof of an organization altogether superior to the rude tumults of an angry peasantry. Several sharp encounters had taken place with the soldiery, and in some of them, the troops, scattered in small detachments and unprepared, had suffered losses. Insurrectionary proclamations had been issued, and the revolt was already assuming a military form; camps were collected on the mountains, and the arming of the population was become general. My day was occupied in writing hurried despatches to the magistrates and officers in command of the disturbed districts; until the moment when the debate was expected to begin. On my way to the House, every thing round me conspired to give a gloomy impression to my mind, weary and dark as it was already. Public alarm was at its height and the city, with the usual exaggerations of undefined danger, presented the appearance of a place about to be taken by storm. The streets were crowded with people hurrying in search of news, or gathered in groups retailing what they had obtained, and evidently filled with the most formidable conceptions of the public danger. The armed yeomanry were hurrying to their stations for the night, patrols of cavalry were moving out to scour the environs, and the carriages of the gentry from the adjoining counties were driving to the hotels, crowded with children and domestics; while waggons loaded with the furniture of families resident in the metropolis, were making their way for security into the country. All was confusion, hurry, and consternation. The scene of a great city in alarm is absolutely inconceivable but by those who have been on the spot. It singularly harassed and exhausted me; and at length, for the purpose of escaping the whole sight and sensation together, I turned from the spacious range of streets which led to the House; and made my way along one of the narrow and obscure lanes which, by a libel on the national taste, were still suffered to remain in the vicinity of an edifice worthy of the days of Imperial Rome.

My choice was an unlucky one, for I had scarcely gone a hundred yards, when I found my passage obstructed by a crowd evidently waiting with some sinister purpose. A signal was given, and I was called on to answer. I had no answer to make, but required that I should be suffered to pass on. "A spy, a spy! down with him!" was the exclamation of a dozen voices. A rush was made upon me, and notwithstanding my struggle to break through, I was overwhelmed, grasped by the arms, and hurried into the entrance of a house in utter darkness. I expected only a dagger in my heart, and from the muttered tones and words which escaped my captors, not one of whom could I discern, I seemed evidently about to encounter the fate of the spy which they deemed me. But, convinced that nothing was to be gained by submission, I loudly demanded by what right I was seized, declared myself a member of Parliament, and threatened them with the especial vengeance of the law, for obstructing me in the performance of my duty.

This announcement evidently had its effect, at least in changing the subject of their consultation; and, after another whisper, one of their number stepped up to me, and said that I must follow him. My refusal brought the group again round me, and I was forced down the stairs, and through a succession of airless and ruined vaults, until we reached a massive door. There a signal was given, and was answered from within; but the door continued closed.

My emotions during all this period were agonizing. I might not have felt more than others that fear of death which belongs to human nature; but death, in darkness, without the power of a struggle, or the chance of my fate being ever accounted for; death by the hands of assassins, and in a spot of obscure butchery, was doubly appalling. But an hour before, I had been the first man in the country, and now what was I? an unhappy object of ruffian thirst of blood, destined to die in a charnel, and be tossed among the rubbish of ruffian hands, to moulder unknown. Without condescending to implore, I now strongly attempted to reason with my captors on the atrocity of offering violence to a stranger, and on the certainty that they would gain more by giving me my liberty, than they could possibly do by burying their knives in my bosom. But all was in vain. They made no reply. One conception alone was wanting to the torture of the time; and it came. I heard through the depth of the vaults the sound of a church clock striking "eight." It was the very hour which had been agreed on for commencing the debate of the night. What must be thought of my absence? What answer could be made to any enquiry for my presence? What conceivable escape could my character as a minister have, from the charge of scandalous neglect, or more scandalous pusillanimity; from treachery to my friends, or from an utter insensibility to personal name and official honour in myself? The thought had nearly deprived me of my senses. The perspiration of mental torment ran down my face. I stamped the ground, and would have dashed my forehead against the wall, had not the whole group instantly clung round me. A few moments more of this wretchedness, and I must have died; but the door at length was cautiously opened, and I bounded in.

At a long narrow table, on which were a few lights, and several books and rolls of paper, sat about twenty men, evidently of the lower order, though one or two exhibited a marked superiority to the rest. A case of pistols lay on the table, which had probably been brought out on the signal of my arrival; and in the corners of the room, or rather vault, were several muskets and other weapons piled against the wall. From the obvious disturbance of the meeting, I was clearly an unwelcome guest; and, after a general sweep of the papers off the table, and a whisper which communicated to the chairman the circumstances of my capture, I was asked my name, and "why I had intruded on their meeting?" To the latter question my reply was an indignant demand, "why my liberty had been infringed on?" To the former, I gave my name and office at full length, and in a tone of authority. No announcement could have been more startling. The president actually bounded from his chair; others plucked out knives and pistols; all looked pallid and thunderstruck. With the first minister of the realm in this cavern of conspirators, every life of whom was in peril of the axe; my presence among them was like the dropping of a shell into a powder magazine.

But the dismay soon passed; their native daring returned, and I saw that my fate hung once more on the balance. After a brief consultation, and many a gloomy glance at their prisoner, the president summed up the opinion of the board. "You must be sensible, sir," said he, addressing me; "that in times like the present, every man must be prepared to make sacrifices for his cause. The call of Ireland has summoned us here--that call is irresistible; and whatever may be our feelings, for you, sir, who have been brought into this place wholly without our desire, the interests of a great country, determined to be free, must not be put in competition with the life of any individual, be his rank what it may." He paused, but a general murmur of applause showed the full approval of his grim auditory. "You, sir," he continued, with the solemnity of a judge passing sentence, "are one great obstacle to the possession of our public rights. You are a man of talents and courage, and so much the more dangerous to the patriot cause. You would disdain our folly, if we threw away the chance which fortune has put into our hands;--you must die. If we were in your power, the scaffold would be our portion. You are now in ours, and the question between us is decided." I felt, from his tone, that all remonstrance was useless; and I scorned to supplicate. "Do as you will," I indignantly exclaimed. "I make but one request. It is, that no imputation shall be suffered to rest on my memory; that the manner of my death shall be made known; and that no man shall ever be suffered to believe that I died a coward or a traitor." "It shall be done," slowly pronounced the president. I heard the click of a trigger, and looking up at the sound, saw one of the sitters at this board of terror, without moving from his place, deliberately levelling it at my head. I closed my eyes. In the next instant, I heard a scuffle; the pistol was knocked out of his hand, and a voice hurriedly exclaimed, "Are you all mad? For what purpose is this butchery? Whom are you about to murder? Do you want to bring a curse upon our cause?" All rose in confusion; but the stranger made but one spring to the spot where I stood, and fixing his eyes on me with astonishment, loudly repeated my name. As the light fell on him, I recollected at once, though his hat was deeply drawn over his eyes, and a huge cloak was wrapped round him, palpably for the purpose of concealment, the rebel leader whom I had so strangely met before. He turned to the table. "And is it in this infamous way," he fiercely exclaimed, "that you show your love of liberty? Is it in blood that you are to dip your charter; is it in making every man of common sense despise, and every man of humanity abhor you, that you are to seek for popular good-will? Down with your weapons! The first man who dares to use them, I declare a traitor to his country!" His energy made an impression; and giving me his hand, which, even in that anxious moment, I could perceive to be as cold as stone, he pronounced the words, "Sir, you are free!" But for this they were not prepared; and some exclamations rose, in which they seemed to regard him as false to the cause, and the words--"sold," and "traitor"--were more than once audible. He flamed out at the charge, and passionately demanded proofs. He then touched another string. "Now listen to what I have to tell you, and then call me traitor, if you will. You are in the jaws of ruin. I have but just discovered that Government has obtained knowledge of your meeting; and that within five minutes every man of you will be arrested. I flew to save you; now judge of my honour to the cause. You have only to make your escape, and thank the chance which has rescued your lives." Still my safety was not complete. There were furious spirits among them, who talked of revenge for the blood already shed, and graver spirits who insisted on my being kept as a hostage. But my protector declaimed so powerfully on the folly of exacting terms from me under duress; on the wisdom of appealing to my generosity in case of reverses; and, above all, on the certainty of their falling into the hands of authority, if they wasted their time in quarrelling as to my disposal; that he again brought them to a pause. A loud knocking at the door of one of the distant vaults, and a sound like the breaking down of the wall, gave a sudden success to his argument, and the meeting, snatching up their papers and weapons, glided away as silently as so many shadows.

I naturally attempted to thank my protector, but he put his finger to his lip and pointed to the quarter from which the police were apparently forcing their way into the subterranean. This was clearly a time of peril for himself as well as his associates, and I followed him silently through the windings of this hideous locale. We shortly reached the open air, and I cannot describe the solemn and grateful sense with which I saw the sky above my head, the lights glimmering in the windows, and felt that I was once more in the land of the living. My conductor led me within sight of the door of the House of Commons, and, with a slight pressure of the hand, turned from me, and was lost among the crowd. I rushed in, exhausted, overpowered, sinking with apprehension of the evil which might have been done in my absence, and blushing at the shame which probably awaited me.

The House was at length hushed, and Grattan rose. I cannot revert to the memory of that extraordinary man, without a mixture of admiration and melancholy--admiration for his talents, and melancholy for the feeling that such talents should expire with the time, and be buried in the common dust of the sepulchre. As a senatorial orator, he was incontestably the greatest whom I have ever heard. With but little pathos, and with no pleasantry, I never heard any man so universally, perpetually, and powerfully, command the attention of the House. Thee was the remarkable peculiarity in his language, that while the happiest study of others is to conceal their art, his simplicity had the manner of art. It was keen, concentrated, and polished, by nature. His element was grandeur; the plainest conception in his hands, assumed a loftiness and power which elevated the mind of his hearers, as much as it convinced their reason. As it was said of Michael Angelo, that every touch of his chisel was life, and that he struck out features and forms from the marble with the power of a creator, Grattan's mastery of high conceptions was so innate, that he invested every topic with a sudden magnitude, which gave the most casual things a commanding existence to the popular eye. It was thus, that the grievance of a casual impost, the delinquencies of a police, the artifices of an election, or the informalities of a measure of finance, became under his hand historic subjects, immortal themes, splendid features, and recollections of intellectual triumph. If the Pyramids were built to contain the dust of nameless kings and sacrificed cattle, his eloquence erected over materials equally transitory, memorials equally imperishable.

His style has been criticised, and has been called affected and epigrammatic. But, what is style to the true orator? His triumph is effect--what is to him its compound? What is it to the man who has the thunderbolt in his hands, of what various, nay, what earthly--nay, what vaporous, material it may be formed? Its blaze, its rapidity, and its penetration, are its essential value; and smiting, piercing, and consuming, it is the instrument of irresistible power.

It was Grattan who first broke down this barrier, and he thus rendered the mighty service of doubling the strength of the empire; perhaps rendered the still mightier service of averting its separation and its ruin. As the nation had grown strong, it had grown sullen; its disgust was ripening into wrath; and its sense of injury might speedily have sought its relief in national revenge. And yet it is only justice to acknowledge that this evil arose simply from negligence on the part of England; that there was no design of tyranny, none of the capriciousness of superiority, none of the sultan spirit in the treatment of the rayah. But no minister had yet started up in English councils capable of the boldness of throwing open the barrier; none of intellectual stature sufficient to look beyond the old partition wall of the countries; no example of that statesmanlike sagacity which discovers in the present the shape of the future, and pierces the mists, which, to inferior minds, magnify the near into giant size, while they extinguish the distant altogether. But no man can ever write the annals of England, without a growing consciousness that magnanimity has been the instinct of her dominion; that she has been liberal on principle, and honest by nature; that even in the chillest and darkest hour of her sovereignity, this influence has existed unimpaired, and like gravitation on the globe, that it has accompanied and impelled her, day and night alike, through the whole circuit of her proud and powerful career.

This was the glorious period of Grattan's public life. His task, by universal confession, was the noblest that could be enjoined on man, and he sustained it with powers fitted to its nobleness. On the later portion of his history I have no desire to touch. The most hazardous temptation of early eminence is the fondness which it generates for perpetual publicity. The almost preternatural trial of human fortitude is, to see faction with its vulgar and easy triumph seizing the fame, which was once to be won only by the purest and rarest achievements of patriotism. When the banner which had flamed at the head of the nation on their march to Right, and which was consigned to the hand of Grattan as its legitimate bearer, was raised again, in a day threatening the subversion of every throne of Europe; he exhibited a jealousy of his obscure competitors, unworthy of his renown. But he did not join in their procession. He was unstained. If he felt the avarice of ambition, he exhibited no decay of that original dignity of nature, which, in his political nonage, had made him the leader of bearded men, and a model to the maturity of his country's virtue.

On this night he spoke with remarkable power, but in a style wholly distinct from his former appeals to the passions of the House. His accents, usually sharp and high, were now lingering and low; his fiery phraseology was solemn and touching, and even his gesture, habitually wild, distorted, and pantomimical, was subdued and simple. He seemed to labour under an unavowed impression of the share which the declamatory zeal of his party had to lay to its charge in the national peril. But I never saw more expressive evidence of his genius, than on this night of universal consternation. His language, ominous and sorrowful, had the force of an oracle, and was listened to like an oracle. No eye or ear strayed from him for a moment, while he wandered dejectedly among the leading events of the time, throwing a brief and gloomy light over each in passing, as if he carried a funeral lamp in his hand, and was straying among tombs. This was to me a wholly new aspect of his extraordinary faculties. I had regarded rapidity, brilliancy, and boldness of thought, as his inseparable attributes; but his speech was now a magnificent elegy. I had seen him, when he furnished my mind almost with the image of some of those men of might and mystery, sent to denounce the guilt, and heap coals of fire on the heads of nations. He now gave me the image of the prophet, lamenting over the desolation which he had once proclaimed, and deprecating less the crimes than the calamities of the land of his nativity. I never was more struck with the richness and variety of his conceptions, but their sadness was sublime. Again, I desire to guard against the supposition, that I implicitly did homage to either his talents or his political views. From the latter, I often and deeply dissented; in the former I could often perceive the infirmity that belongs even to the highest natural powers He was no "faultless monster." I am content to recollect him as a first-rate human being. He had enemies and may have them still. But all private feelings are hourly more and more extinguished in the burst of praise, still ascending round the spot where his dust is laid. Time does ultimate justice to all, and while it crumbles down the fabricated fame, only clears and separates the solid renown from the common level of things. The foibles of human character pass away. The fluctuations of the human features are forgotten in the fixed majesty of the statue; and the foes of the living man unite in carrying the memorial of the mighty dead to its place in that temple, where posterity comes to refresh its spirit, and elevate its nature, with the worship of genius and virtue.

BETHAM'S ETRURIA CELTICA.

Herodotus has this amusing story of a philological experiment made by the Egyptian king Psammetichus, who may, not inappropriately, be termed the James the First of his dynasty:--

"Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire,"--

"Quis tales probet oscitationes! Quis has respectat meras chimeras! Non Judaeus Apella de proseucha, Non qui de Solymis venit perustis, Aut quisquam de grege Tabatariorum Queis phoeni cophinique cura major: Cimmerii denique non puto probabunt Et si prognatos Japhet putantur Gomoroque parente procreati."

Our own Cambden, about the same time commencing his great work on British Antiquities, began by a protestation against being supposed "insaniam Becani insanire." Justus Lipsius alone, of all the learned men of the day, restrained the expression of positive indignation. "We often speak of Becan and his book about our language," he says, writing to Schottius, "and have frequent jokes on the subject. He, as you know, would have it not only to be an elegant and polished tongue, but the primitive one, and mother of all the rest. But we

'Stupuimus omnes tentamina tanta Conatusque novos.'

And that this may appear by sufficient proofs, he proceeds to show that the chief names of men and places in each of these counties are rightly significant in Dutch, and not in their respective proper languages: as, for example--

After Teutonising the Hebrew in this manner, he next proceeds to the Egyptian.

Coming in the course of his peregrinations to Etruria, and being equally successful in making all the ancient names of men and places there significant in Dutch, he boldly attempts the interpretation of the Eugubian tablets. These singular remains of the extinct language of Etruria, had already exercised the skill of some of the best scholars of the 16th century, but none of them had succeeded in bending this new bow of Ulysses. To the insane all things are easy. Scrieck made no more of the task than did Ulysses--

"When the wary hero wise, His hand now familiar with the bow, Poising it and examining--at once; As when in harp and song adept, a bard Unlabouring strains the chord to a new lyre, The twisted entrails of a sheep below With fingers nice inserting, and above-- With such facility Ulysses bent His own huge bow, and with his right hand play'd The nerve, which in its quick vibration sung Clear as a swallow's voice."

Hinc bellum lacrymosum, hinc miseram famem Pestemque a populo et principe Caesare, in Persas atque Britannos, Vestr? motus aget prece."

We had little expectation, when laughing at these vagaries of Scrieck and Becan, many years ago, that it would yet be our lot to see the same follies revived in our own time, and among ourselves. But follies are like fashions, which, having once prevailed in the metropolis, usually run the round of the provinces. And so this fantastic trick of interpreting the names of antiquity by modern equivalents, spreading from the schools of Antwerp and Ypres, still shows itself occasionally in the outskirts of the republic of letters, and has here lately had a new Avatar, fully as absurd as any of its prior exhibitions, among those Jupiters Stators of every exploded folly of the Continent--the English writers on the antiquities of Ireland.

All the nations of Christendom give God the name Christ; but he would be justly deemed insane who would argue, that therefore English is the proper medium of interpretation for a Russian ukase.

Further learning, also, would have taught him the hopelessness of reconciling the Etruscan with any of the languages of Europe known as spoken languages immediately before the Christian era--Dionysius of Halicarnassus having expressly declared, that neither in language nor in customs were the Etruscans of his time similar to any other known nation; and Dionysius was well acquainted with both Celts and Phoenicians.

Still facts are facts, and if the fact be, that the tablets of Gubbio are written in the Irish language, and that Sir William Betham, though as ignorant of his subject as was the boy who invented the safety-valve of the steam-engine, has happened in any way, by skill or by chance, learnedly or unadvisedly, modestly or arrogantly, on the truth, let him, together with the condemnation, have the credit he deserves, if not as a Columbus of a new world of letters, at least as a Madoc or a Thorfinn.

The same may be observed throughout the endless rigmarole of "moon," "stars," "steering," "ocean," "night," "day," "knowledge," "science," and "O Phoenician!" that succeed one another in monotonous repetition for the next 200 pages. Wherever there appears the least symptom of connected meaning or applicable language, we invariably find that either the original is departed from, or that the alleged equivalents belong to no known language of articulately-speaking men.

Taking the same liberty of arbitrary division, any one of moderate ingenuity might turn these inscriptions into a jargon just as readable in any language of the world. Divide any sentence of any articulate language into syllables, and apply these alleged Irish words used by Betham as their equivalents, and you may make it an equally authentic record of a voyage to Ireland or to the moon, or a recipe for the toothache, or any thing else you please, with the greatest facility.

Curious reader, tell us, pray, which is the more readable jargon--this,

"God to knowledge agreeable it is quick and water lonely star indeed the to it in day the month this in knowledge with is from the sea very solitary being water with the water the voyage always the coast steering being throughout moon to knowledge in water God indeed the water to danger this the in knowledge with with altogether to night the man from current the being water the to cause knowledge steering water by Ocean the north."

Or this?

"Was which security day and night inform Phoenician from night means in defence by skill throughout the means being also water means voyage from the means as indeed the voyage in it far away people water of the sea in gentle inward it is by wisdom day and night in it is gentle indeed the sea by science which by night in the will be to will be means of the star it far away Phoenician far away steering night and day and then to whence is in the ocean night sailing happy."

We believe most of our readers will incline to say that the one is about as insane gibberish as the other; or if they discover a distinction, will give the palm of a less degree of incoherency to the first. The first is our own; the second is Betham's--being his literal version of the first three sentences of the second table, and in no material respect different from his version of any other three sentences of any of the rest of the series. The other is our own literal version, on the same principle, of a sentence of his own, marked in italics in the following extracts, in which he defends his arbitrary division of the Etruscan text into monosyllables, though the punctuation of the original plainly divides it into many-syllabled words.

In defence of this unjustifiable corruption of the original, he alleges these excuses--

"In the chapter on language, p. 52, &c., are a few remarks upon the division of the words in these inscriptions, in answer to the criticism of the learned Committee of the Royal Irish Academy, who charged me with 'having made alterations' in the text unwarrantably, 'especially in the division of the words.' The charge of having made any alterations is altogether groundless, I might add unjust, uncourteous, and uncalled for. I have not altered a single letter. I have added a letter here and there in the Irish, when, by the genius and character of that language, it was justifiable, as the addition of a word was required to make sense, and when in the original the sound did not require it to be expressed; but this is fully answered and explained in the chapter alluded to. The 'division of the words' requires a few brief observations here.

"It will be observed that in the first five tables there are divisions marked with colons, thus ; in the sixth and seventh tables, and in the Perugian inscription, the divisions are marked with a single period

"In the first few lines of the first table it appears, that, although these divisions generally include perfect syllables and words, yet the same words are differently divided. In the fifth line, the second division contains JUBEBATREBUMPERACNE, and in the fourth division PERAKNE stands alone. The first division of this fifth line contains SAKRE:--in the next line it is worded thus, UNUERIETUSAKRE; this same variation of division pervades all the tables, and indeed almost every line of each table; the same may be observed on the Perugian inscription. The hypercriticism of the learned committee was therefore altogether erroneous, and their observations not borne out. These marks are evidently not intended as divisions of words, but of sentences, and they are not sufficiently precise even in that respect to constitute an accurate guide. The syllabic division, however, is governed by rule, is precise, uniform, fixed, and consistent, and may therefore be acted on with some degree of certainty. Instances occur where three or four consonants follow each other, and vowels are altogether omitted; but a little exertion of sagacity, after some practice and study, enables us to judge of this and supply the omissions."--

And again, in the passage referred to at p. 53,

"That the language of Etruria has hitherto defied the laborious investigations of the learned of Italy, is now on all hands admitted. Passavi, Gori, and Landsi, have done something to obscure, but little if any thing towards its elucidation. Nor have the German investigators been more successful. Dr Lepsius has lately given an account of the Eugubian tables, and Dr Grotefend a work on the rudiments of the Umbrian tongue, and still the subject is as much at sea as ever. These profound scholars have made no real impression--no light has been elicited--the meaning of a single word has not been obtained with any certainty. The solemn, learned, trifling, and absurd speculations of Passavi, Gori, and Landsi, and their followers, are now treated with deserved contempt. This is an age of critical enquiry; commonplace twaddling, inane generalities, and magniloquent essays and lectures, even if delivered by professors who enjoy the happiness of presiding over Roman colleges, only excite derision. Learned savans must now put forth reasonable and intelligible postulates, and opinions must be supported by facts, or they will only expose themselves to deserved contempt."--

Scrieck's foundation for all his extravagant topographical derivations was the passage from Plato. Doctor Johnson seems to have been the Plato of these new etymological rambles; but we apprehend that neither the Greek nor the British philosopher would be much edified by the philological excursions of the Irish disciple. Nothing can be more perfect in its way than the dogmatic audacity with which he assigns his derivations; it is in the true vein of Bickerstaff, and a model to quacks of all classes.

When Partridge, the almanack-maker, had overlived the fatal day assigned for his decease by Bickerstaff, he intimated as much to his friends and the public, assuring them that he was not only then alive, but had also been alive on the very 29th March, when the wise astrologer had foretold he should die.

But for the communications announcing these discoveries, the two volumes would be altogether destitute of a single fact, or even useful hint, bearing on the diversified subjects which their prodigiously ignorant and audacious author has presumed to handle. How far the fact of these skeletons being found in such a situation, may affect the rational investigation of the question, we do not pretend to judge. We would merely observe, that human interments are found under most ecclesiastical foundations, and that their occurrence under the "turres ecclesiasticae" of Cambrensis, seems at present no more wonderful than their occurrence in the vaults of an ordinary church.

But we really were surprised, after our long familiarity with "the holy illustrious guiding one of the sea"--"the mighty lord of the waters"--"the swift champion of the moon," and the other moonstruck pseudo deities of the Eugubian tables, to find the chief place and honour in the island of their own discovery and adoption taken from them, and bestowed on the Indian Buddho. The "swift champion of the moon" seems to have been sensible of the affront, and to have made his indignation perceptible in the suggestion of an argument that can hardly have descended from any but the lunar sphere; viz. that because the Buddhists of the east raise monumental dagobas over the relics of their deity, and the Irish round towers, as is alleged, have been called by a name arguing monumental purposes, that therefore the Irish towers are dagobas, and any bones that may be found in or about their foundations are relics of Buddho. The dagobas of Ceylon and India are buildings of a totally different character from these towers; they do strongly resemble the pyramidal structures of Yucatan, but bear not the remotest likeness to any round tower either in Ireland or elsewhere. Such facts might furnish grounds for arguing an identity between Buddho and Quaccalcoatle, but thence to attempt the deduction of any argument applicable to the round towers in Ireland or Great Britain, only shows the illogical constitution of the arguer's mind.

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