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never found the smoother pebble or the prettier shell! What a preparation for the latest inquiries and the last views of the decay ing spirit, for the inspired doctrines which alone can throw a light over the dark ocean of undiscovered truth!"—Vol. ii. pp. 398-408.

There are very many interesting particulars of the life, and habits, and character of Newton scattered through these volumes, amongst which his wonderful aptitude for study, not only from mental organization, but from physical powers of endurance, are most conspicuous. He seemed to study and discourse functionally, as ordinary mortals eat and sleep, while to him eating and sleeping would seem to have been enforced, and not altogether agreeable duties. Other great men have put themselves under restraint in these particulars, from their knowledge that abstemiousness and temperance generally are indispensable to clearness and vigour of intellect, and that unless you borrow from the hours of repose, half your nominal life is nothing better than death. But this does not seem to have been the case with Newton. He was temperate from instinct. He had no violent passions to disturb the balance of his judgment, no warmth of imagination to lead him into reveries. He thought and reasoned with an effort; he required no mental discipline, for his thoughts presented themselves to him in order, and he had hardly the trouble - of classification or arrangement. His morals in the more restricted sense of the word, were quite blameless; his religion, being altogether of the reason, partook as largely as might be expected of the infirmities of reason, when it constitutes itself sole arbitrator of things beyond its reach. It was as cold, though by no means as regular or as massive, a piece of business as Saint Paul's. He hardly ever sought it, he took it up as it came in his way and occasionally broke the uniformity of philosophical studies. "He very seldom went to the chapel, that being the time at which he chiefly took his repose; as for the afternoon his earnest and indefatigable studies retained him, so that he scarcely knew the house of prayer." We do not know whether from all this we should say that his religion was purely speculative. That might be considered harsh; but it does appear to us that his morality, his honesty, his simplicity, his generosity, which are ordinarily the fruits of religion, or at least of religious feeling, were in his instance part of the constitution of the man;

VOL. XXXIX.-NO. LXXVIII.

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that, in fact, they were habitual, and not the offspring of reflection. On the whole, while we hardly allow to Sir David Brewster's book the praise of method, we gladly acknowledge that it is for the most part calmly reasoned and ably written. Good service has been rendered to truth generally, and to the memory of Newton, especially by the industrious researches of the author, and we think that with some few, though to Catholics in particular, rather important drawbacks, both Sir David Brewster and the public have reason to be satisfied with the publication.

ART. II.--Thom's Statistics of Great Britain and Ireland, 1855. Selected from Thom's Irish Almanack and Official Directory. Dublin, Alexander Thom and Sons, 1855.

SOME

In

OME politicians take a very gloomy view of our present position as a people, and think that as they see no means of obtaining the legislative measures necessary to secure us a position of permanent comfort and independence here, we ought to emigrate en masse. the sad condition of the country, and the sort of judicial blindness that seems to afflict our masters, it is really difficult to form a positive opinion. We however still adhere to the views which we have always avowed, that the only home of the Gael is on the "Island of Destiny"-and that this is to be theirs for ever. If there have been periods in our history, when the truth or authenticity of the promise said to have been vouchsafed to the first of that race, who reached these shores, might well have been doubted, the present is not a moment to justify such scepticism. Their total extermination has been repeatedly contemplated and attempted by men of different races and religions, by Danes, Normans, and Anglo-Saxons, Pagans, Catholics and Protestants. The Danes came for the final struggle in the time of Brian Boru, with their wives and children, and servants, in the expectation that "the Irish

being exterminated, they themselves would inhabit instead of them that most opulent island," and that effort and its defeat at Clontarf so exhausted their power, that they never recovered it, and those who remained here became merged in the native race.

During the whole period from the reign of Henry II. to the Reformation, the extirpation of "the mere Irish" was a permanent object of State policy. They were not regarded as entitled to the common rights of humanity. Norman jurists held the violation of an Irishwoman, or the killing of an Irishman, to be no crime; and there were Norman priests who were so far from regarding the killing of an Irishman as a sin, that they publicly avowed they could kill one, and say mass without going to confession; yet, after a struggle of 400 years the Normans had become "more Irish than the Irish themselves." "Neither the English order, tongue, nor habit was used, nor the king's laws obeyed above twenty miles in compass;" in that compass there were "but few English inhabitants"-the entire population of the island spoke the native language, and "the Irishmen were never so strong as now." Such was the condition of the country, as described by English officials, when Cardinal Wolsey, and his king, and his deputy, consulted about "the destruction of the whole indigenous race," and the latter thought the main difficulty would be "that of stocking the land anew with inhabitants." So hopeless did this project prove, that Henry VIII. gave it up, and adopted the opposite principle, took the Irish people into special favour, and honoured their chieftains with every mark of respect and friendship. Thus ended the Norman speculations by the two races thoroughly blending, the extirpators by anticipation ending by the adoption of the laws, manners, language, and even names of the Gael.

When after the Reformation the Anglo-Saxon race and the Protestant religion became predominant, the effort at

*Ut Ilibernis extinctis ipsi pro ipsis inhabitarent opulentissimam insulam."-Moore, vol. ii. p. 125. quoting Ademar apud Labbe. † Moore, vol. iii. p. 250.

Lord Surrey's Letter to Wolsey.

Moore, vol. iii. p. 246.

extirpation was renewed, and under Cromwell was so near succeeding, that nothing but "pity that would move the stoniest of hearts" at the daily butchery of defenceless men, women, and children, saved a wretched little remnant, who were allowed a certain number of days to go to "Connaught or Hell." It is just 200 years since that allowance was accepted with thankfulness. That remnant soon multiplied, and spread again over the desolate portions of the land, and again was subjected to another approach to extinction by war and famine, and was again saved almost by a miracle. It is now just another century since the still more miserable and reduced remnant, held like Helots in bondage, as hewers of wood and drawers of water-deprived of all civil and religious rights-excluded from all offices and functions in the state-forbidden to own a sod of their native soil as leaseholders or freeholders,-forbiden even like the nigger slaves of America, to seek the advantages of education, were told from the highest seat of judgment in the country, that their existence was not recognized by the law, and was tolerated only by the connivance of the government. The last attempt now just over at extermination in time of peace, with the agencies of "law and order, famine and emigration, seems to have got rid of a greater number of the obnoxious race than any of the former attempts; but though the triumphant cry of the organizers of that effort upon the first great striking evidence of its success was, "the Celtic race is gone with a vengeance," yet the race is not gone, but is more firmly fixed on the soil than it has been for centuries, and those of them who are going away, are likely before long, to return with redoubled love of country and ability to serve it.

That a partial emigration will continue for some years there can be no doubt, but the character and direction of this emigration is a matter of far greater importance to the Catholic Church than to the race of Gadelus. We greatly fear that the Catholic body is too apathetic on the subject, and calculates too much on the unalterable adhesiveness of the Irish race in foreign climes to its fold. Here at home, we watch with suspicion the working of a system in which Catholic youth are placed, with insufficient safeguards, for a few hours a day in the same school or college with Protestant professors and fellow-pupils; but we look calmly and indifferently on a system which

sends them thousands of miles beyond our control, and forces them to associate almost exclusively, and in a subordinate capacity, with persons hostile to their faith. Every step taken by the emigrant is such as the Church should deprecate. The emigrant ship is commonly said to be a regular pandemonium, and the poor emigrants, when they reach their destination, are employed in the lowest drudgery, if women as household servants, if men as "navvies," on canals, railroads, or other public works, and deprived of all opportunity of securing a position of respect and happiness, spiritual or temporal. Even the better class of emigrants, those who can settle as professional men, or shopkeepers, or landowners, are remote from all spiritual superintendence, and in association with persons who are habitually scoffing at the Church. The result in the United States is, that the second generation of Irish settlers become sceptical and indifferent, some of the most virulent of the Know-nothings are Irish-and though there are in the States upwards of 7,000,000 souls of Irish birth or descent; out of the entire population of 25,000,000, -the Catholics, including those of every race, French, Spanish, German, &c., do not amount to 2,000,000. The following extract from a letter which recently appeared in the Tipperary Free Press, gives a by no means exaggerated view of the evils of the present system.

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"Easton, Pennsylvania, U.S., Aug. 18, 1855. May I take this opportunity to entreat of you, dear Rev. Sir, to use your influence to check the insane spirit of emigration to this country, which seems to possess our unhappy people in Ireland? They are rushing on the almost certain ruin of their souls, while their temporal condition is at best but little improved. A full fifth of the number leaving Ireland are laid in strange graves within one year from the day they quit their native shores, and the greater part of the others are soon broken down by the severe labour to which they must apply themselves, and the awful climates which rapidly bring on a premature old age, and hurry the poor victim into a premature grave. From the hour they land to the hour they die they are despised and spit upon, and in thousands of cases they die without the last rites of the Church, or any of the consolations which at home' would smooth their dying pillows, and prepare their souls for the solemn moment of departure.

"I have had much experience of the life into which nearly all our people are drawn, and I solemnly believe that if the vessels

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