Generally speaking, the winters are mild, and the heats of summer are seldom extreme. The pasturage and meadow fields exhibit carpets of emerald verdure through all the seasons. Even in the depth of winter, banks of the most fragrant violets may be discovered in sunny spots, and before the snowdrop and the crocus have disappeared in England, not only the hedge sides, but the uplands and valleys of Ireland may be seen profusely decorated with the primrose. Take it all in all, with its now truly temperate men, its comely, chaste, and sprightly women, its rising generation of hardy, courageous, intelligent and educated youths, its admirable capabilities for the railway and the steam-boat, its wonderful natural fertility, the opulence of its sea borders in every species of the finest fish, its numerous harbours which scarcely require the improving hand of art, its internal communications by rivers and lovely lakes without number, its superb estuaries, unrivalled scenery, and, above all, its admirable geographical position for speedy communication with the old world and the new, there is certainly no territory like it to be seen under the sun. Delightful, truly Godlike, therefore, will be the duties of the association that has at last sprung forth to break the manacles by which the destinies of Ireland have been hitherto bound down. It has appeared amidst a galaxy of circumstances, all of the most propitious nature that have ever yet been assembled together, to light industry on her way to wealth and renown, Before it have already vanished party and sectarian feuds. Men, long estranged from each other . by religious and political contentions, meet in the chambers of the new Institution, animated only by one glorious hope and thought, the regeneration of their native land, and her promotion, by her own energies, to at least a level with her sister nation—the mistress of the world. And let it not be forgotten, that the gracious and beloved sovereign who holds our imperial sceptre, has come to foster this institution by her influence, and thus to give a new pledge of her true affection for her Irish people. She has seen that the objects it proposes to effect are mainly directed to the advancement of the moral and social condition of the labouring population, to elevate them in society, and to bless them with comfort and happiness. Thus aided by her Majesty, her excellent representative in this country, our long-admired chief secretary, and the other able officers around him,-guided and liberally sustained by the Leinsters, the Charlemonts, the Fingals, the Cloncurrys, and the most patriotic and highminded of our gentry, the Royal Agricultural Improvement Society can hardly fail to triumph over every obstacle that may appear to stand in its way. Perpetua esto! Art. IX.-- Lives of the Queens of England. By Agnes reached a second and much improved edition; and if in the continuation of it, which we are promised, the same spirit of research be brought to bear upon more ample materials, and the same dispassionate and graceful spirit preserved in treating of nearer and more exciting times, we think that Miss Strickland will have established for herself the character of one of the most useful and pleasing writers of the present day. Independently of the execution, we consider the idea of the work to be very valuable, and that it may tend to in troduce a new description of biographies, more generally useful, and more calculated to throw light upon domestic history than any we as yet possess. There is certainly nothing new in the practice of elucidating obscure points in history by the private records of the individuals chiefly concerned in them, nor any dearth of materials for doing so. Memoirs, diaries, biographies, and autobiographies, histories of detached periods, leiters and correspondence of all ranks and times, and all degrees of value, are abundant, especially in our own and the French language; and few styles of reading are more agreeable or more popular. These are, however, but fragments in the history of the manners and social progress of nations, too deeply tinctured by the peculiar views and cir. cumstances of the subjects of them to be used as safe guides ;too voluminous to be in general circulation ;-too disconnected and various to give a clear and single impression upon those subjects as to which they would most generally be referred to. They are in short the rich materials from which may be drawn all those details of the manners and modes of thinking and expression of the period, which are so valuable that they have olten been held to counterbalance the disadvantages of the historical novel with all its inaccuracies. The most advantageous method of conveying this information is certainly by a series of lives, to form with all the accessories that may be grouped around them) a kind of running commentary upon ihe changes which time brings with it; and the picture must obviously be more faithful, according as the characters selected move in the same sphere. They should not be unconnected with history, to which, in this use of it, biography would truly be a handmaid; nor yet should they be so overloaded by its important public facts, as to make the introduction of hundreds of minor and domestic matters irrelevant. How much interesting information, for instance, might be conveyed in a history of the Lord Mayors of London, supposing ihere existed materials for such a history, and patience to work them out! Under this view, Miss Strickland's subject is most promising; for the Queens of England are closely intertwined with the domestic history of their country. One is surprised indeed when presented with a connected view of the whole series, to see how much this is the case; and for the most part how worthy they were of the influence which they possessed, by their ialents or virtues, and frequently by both. It is true of women in particular, as of human beings in general, “they are what you believe them to be." What trace is there of the trifling slave of the harem, or the monster of profligacy described by Juvenal, in the noble women of the middle ages ? Take, for instance, the majestic wife of the Conqueror-the devoted Matilda; or Stephen's queen; or the fair Adelicia, who crowned a life of blameless excellence by devoting herself soul and body to ber Creator. If, in the days of chivalry, women were idolized, it is worth while to observe what pains were taken to fit them for this affectionate homage. 'l'he earlier queens of England were “ carefully educated,” solidly grounded “in all the learning of the time;" their accomplishments and relaxations were of a grandeur befitting their station; they delighted in architecture; the arts found in them munificent patrons : even the needlework, in which they greatly excelled, partook of this lofty character. The Bayeux tapestry, worked by the wife of the Conqueror, was an epic poem done in needlework, being a complete representation of all the incidents of her husband's conquest of England. “It is a piece of canvass, about nineteen inches in breadth, but upwards of sixty-seven yards in length, on which is embroidered the history of the Conquest of England by William of Normandy, commencing with the visit of Harold to the Norman Court, and ending with his death at the Battle of Hastings, 1066. “ The leading transactions of these eventful years, the death of Edward the Confessor, and the coronation of Harold, in the chamber of the royal dead, are represented in the clearest and most regular order in this piece of needlework, which contains many hundred figures of men, horses, birds, beasts, trees, houses, castles, and churches, all executed in their proper colours, with names and inscriptions over them to elucidate the story."—vol. i. p. 57. Their charities were upon a scale of munificence-their devotions frequent and continual. Even the “ fair Provençal queens” (as our authoress in her somewhat flowery style delights to designate them), if they in the commencement of their career showed somewhat plainly the influence of a softening education and climate, yet proved that they had that innate vigour of mind which can extract the " precious uses” of adversity, We see with great pleasure some of these illustrious ladies vindicated from the calumnies of the writers of fiction, who as Celia says, “simply misused” the sex in their versions of history. We cannot imagine why Sir Walter Scott in the Crusaders, has chosen to represent the wife of King Richard as a silly, trifling girl, and Edith, of whose connexion with Richard he seems not well aware, as a haughty, pedantic shrew. Above all, why he should have devoted many of his most lively passages to a description of the petty quarrels between the relatives. Now, Berengaria was no longer a girl when Richard married her; of a noble character and style of beauty (if we may trust the accuracy of her portrait), and between her and the Princess Joanna, Richard's sister, there existed a steady and tender friendship worthy the exalted character of both. Here, then, is a sad sacrifice of real beauty to effect, easily produced by bringing together all the violent contrasts that can be crowded on to the scene. There is more of truth in his delineation of Margaret of Anjou; but he has given a character of selfishness in her, and of weakness in the old saint-like king, her father, in the negotiations for the cession of Provence, by no means warranted by history, disagreeable in themselves, and of no use to the story, except to introduce those farcical scenes between Margaret and her father, by which Scott has in fact destroyed the poetry of as interesting a passage as can be found in history, — the retirement of the heroic and unfortunate queen to the father, whose love for her was expressed not only by his actions but by his tender sympathy. “ My child," he writes, “ may God help thee with his counsels, for rarely is the aid of man tendered in such reverse of a fortune. When you can spare a thought from your own sufferings, think of mine—they are great, my daughter, yet would I console thee.”-(Vol. iii. p. 354.) Indeed, Queen Margaret has especial reason to complain of the treatment she has received from posterity; since even Shakspeare, usually so alive to moral beauty, destroys the only excuse that could have been offered for Queen Margaret's cruelties—her devoted affection for her helpless husband and her infant son-by representing her as the paramour of Suffolk, who was in truth an attached husband, and a grey-headed soldier, old enough almost to have been the grandfather of the innocent girl of fifteen whom he brought over to her husband. The unhappy Anne of Warwick has been even more grossly and more unaccountably traduced; but we have not space to point out the many instances in which truth is more beautiful, more poetical, than fiction. It is much to be lamented that Miss Strickland is not a Catholic,—we say this not in reproach—for in touching upon religious subjects she shows a gentle, and in general, a liberal spirit: but had she been a Catholic, how admirably might she have availed herself of the opportunity afforded by her subject for tracing the influence of the Catholic faith upon the minds and manners of the age,—and there could not be a better one than is offered by this domestic history; for in the middle ages men were certainly an “out-spoken race;" their crimes and their virtues were all strongly and boldly defined; it needed no deceptious investigation of hidden motives to enable us to assign them their true character. Of these heroic heroes and heroines, we may truly say that there was no ambiguity, and just as little secresy; the principle of concealment, which under different names and forms has so long chilled modern society, did not exist. The kings of England with their courts appear to have lived in public—the blended humility and magnificence of their devotions, their loves and their quarrels and fierce revenges, their joys and sorrows, were all shared and sympathised in by their subjects. The barons of Edward II " sat on the green hill side to ransack the baggage of the luckless Gaveston, where they found many of the crown jewels, some articles of gold and silver plate belonging to the king, and a great number of precious ornaments which had been presented to the king by Queen Isabella, his married sisters, and other persons of high rank.”-(Vol. ii. p. 220.) The particulars of the king's property they were doubtless well acquainted with, all the wants of the royal household being a |