indeed is all my labour! From God I can look for no reward, for whose sake, it is plain, I have as yet done nothing."*-Through the whole course of my life, she says in another letter, Heaven knows what have been my dispositions. It was you, and not God, whom I feared most to offend'; you, and not God, I was most anxious to please. My mind is still unaltered. It was no love of him, but solely your command which drew me to Argenteuil. How miserable then my condition, if, undergoing so much, I have no prospect of a reward hereafter! By appearances, you may have been deceived like others you ascribed to the impressions of religion, what sprang from another source.'t "Used to contemplate, in ourselves and others, human nature, as cast in common moulds, we view its eccentricities with the mixed emotions of astonishment and pleasure. Of this description was Heloisa. She was born in a century remarkable for ignorance and a blind attachment to the weakest follies; her education, within the walls of a convent, had been little adapted to improve her understanding, or to enlarge her heart; and, at the time she began and finished the bold tragedy I have described, the blossom of life was but in its first stage of expansion: yet already she was learned, to the admiration of France, and her mind had acquired a boldness of conception, and a sufficiency in itself, which carried her far beyond the ideas of her sex, and the adopted maxims of the age. In the most brilliant days of Roman greatness, Heloisa would have been a splendid character.-Her notions of moral and religious duty may be deemed too free: but my surprise rather is from whence she could have drawn them. She had read, we know, the Scriptures, and she had meditated on the works of the fathers of the church: but as, in the sense and application of the doctrine they contained, she was told to adhere to low comments and trifling interpretations, her mind was unsatisfied: she did not find in them that sublimity of thought and fulness of idea, which could meet the expanding energy of her soul.—She turned to the composi tions of the old philosophers; and she dwelt, with rapture, on the poets of Greece and Rome. Here she was free to range, unshackled by rules, and unoppressed by authority. In them the romantic cast of her soul found something which accorded with its feelings; and she became the disciple of Epicurus, of Seneca, and of Ovid, without perceiving that she had quitted the amiable purity of the Christian scheme, and the severer morality of ecclesiastical discipline." the same. We need not enter upon the connexion which afterwards took place between these celebrated persons on a very different ground, (Abelard being then an abbot, and Eloisa taking possession of a convent he had left, as abbess with her nuns.) Their respective characters remained One thing they only always partook in common, which was a liberal theology; Abelard going to an extreme, only on the side of a frightened and selfish repentance; and Eloisa on that of exclamation against Providence, which gave way to the most touching humility. Her candour and good sense are always charming. She never pretends that she took to a religious life for the sake of religion. She hopes to go to heaven, because people love one another there; but says, that she would be content, as she ought to be, with the lowest place. When she applied to Abelard for a monastic rule, or system for her nuns to live by, she made remarks on human nature and what was due to it, worthy of a period of enlightened philosophy; and Abelard, upon the whole, did not do them injustice. The superiority of her letters, even in point of style, is remarkable. Eloisa writes like a man with a woman's heart; Abelard like a crabbed schoolmaster. All the writings he has left us are reckoned disproportionate to his fame; but it is justly considered probable, that his talent for disputation would not have been so renowned, had it not been superior to what his works remain to show. His disputatiousness, and all his other vanity, flourished as long as they had a crevice to issue forth at; and when he finally withdrew into his cell to die, there is no evidence that his thoughts of Eloisa were a jot more unselfish than ever. As for hers, love in her bosom survived every thing, even the shock of discovering that he was ungenerous. The habit of loving remained, as it is too apt to do for their peace in affectionate hearts, when the reason for it was feared to be imaginary. Love is clung to for its own sake;-gratitude and sweet memories are too sweet to part with, as long as a doubt and a possibility can be brought in to retain them. Eloisa prayed over the tomb of her husband to the last, which was twenty years after his death; and she directed her body to be placed in the same grave. We know not whether the legend of his opening his arms to receive her, be agreeable or not, now that his character is known. Supposing his disposition to remain, it looks as if he again took possession of his victim. Supposing it to be altered in the profound self-knowledge of the grave, the fiction is reconciling and beautiful. One can imagine her to have suffered willingly, even for that mortal acknowledgment. Eloisa and Abelard had an interview, the first after their separation, when she was in her eight-and-twentieth year, and he in his fiftieth. She was yet a blooming and a charming woman, with thoughts never ceasing to revert to the past;-he a cold, querulous, and withered elder. This beats the famous interview between the Princess Amelia of Prussia, and Baron Trenck; for though the interval was much greater, and both had grown old, yet it was both that had grown old. There was an equal look in their misfortunes; and they could sympathise with each other. What must have been Eloisa's feelings, when the cold monk gave her his paternal benediction? We would fain have concluded our article at the paragraph just before; but it appeared due to its truth and proper effect to finish with this contrast. THE WOOD-STORM. WHEN to the wind the firm oak's stately form The straining forest's thunder-tis to me That shrill sound heard amid the tempest's pause, As 'twere a Phantom's whisper, deep yet clear, While its dread breath anew the spent blast draws: Sounds not that Voice, which makes the listener pale, 6 J. "Did you never observe, while rocking winds are piping loud,' that pause, as the gust is re-collecting itself, and rising upon the ear in a shrill and plaintive note, like the swell of an Eolian harp ? I do assure you there is nothing in the world so like the voice of a spirit.”—Letter of Gray. THE IRISH ELECTIONS. THE representative system of England is a "mingled web of good and ill together." Viewed in its most brilliant aspect, it stands alone, a stupendous monument of political good luck : considered in the numerous abuses with which it is overlaid, it is pregnant with ridicule, and abundant in absurdity. The moment of a general election, when it is attempted to infuse new life into an assembly worn out and effete from its septennial longevity, brings the merits and the demerits of the system alike into prominent relief, and strikingly illustrates the strong and weak points of the national character. Assuredly it is not the precise time at which the system can be said "to work well," nor that in which the morality of" the most moral people of Europe" is seen to the greatest advantage; yet from the very depth of its shades there break forth occasional lights, of no ordinary intensity, to illuminate the political prospects of the country; and in the veriest sinks of corruption, a zeal, an ardour, a perseverance, and a devotion spring up, which afford undeniable evidence that the cause of liberty is not yet lost. The guarantees of freedom are less in the institutes than in the morals of a people; and public opinion, well asserted, will triumph over the most malignant combinations of circumstance. It is therefore gratifying to observe that in the late elections, the growing intelligence of the people has exercised a decided and a salutary influence on the returns ; that the sense and spirit of the nation have risen superior to the bribery and corruption which have been engrafted upon our institutions; and that, wherever the least popular principle is infused into the elective franchise, strenuous efforts have been made to restore purity of election, and to send to parliament real representatives of the people. Those disgusting appeals to the prejudices and the madness of the multitude, which have heretofore been so successfully employed in misleading men from their public interests, have, in the present instance, most egregiously failed of their purpose. Strong grounds of principle have been taken; pledges have been demanded for the future conduct of candidates; and their merits have been appreciated less by their adherence to political factions, or the more equivocal test of parentage and descent. Where a good principle exists, no matter how neutralized and impeded by ill, there is ground for hope; for it is impossible to say how soon some unobserved circumstance, some unforeseen combination may call it into exercise and awaken its energies. In Ireland, the recent elections have singularly illustrated this truth; and in the turn which they have taken, a political change has occurred that may almost be qualified a revolution, and which it is most important that the people of England should thoroughly understand. An Irish election is made up of far different elements, and exhibits far different phenomena, from those which may be traced on the English side of the Channel. In all the counties of Ireland the effective strength of the candidate lies in the forty-shilling freeholders, whose number is artificially raised, till it reduces the larger holders to insignificancy. The condition of this class of persons is altogether different from that of the individuals bearing the same denomination in England. In Ireland the custom prevails of granting leases on lives, which give the privilege of a vote to the holder of land of the annual value of forty shillings. The Irish forty-shilling freeholder is therefore not the proprietor of the soil, and consequently has neither the education, nor the habits, nor the independence which such a possession implies. His condition indeed is far below that of the English day-labourer: for the landlord, in granting these leases, is not governed by the agricultural necessities of the estate, but by an ambitious desire to increase his own political influence; and he looks to ministerial gratitude for making good those losses which he sustains from a too numerous and inefficient tenantry. To make a freeholder, is, besides, to create a family; and a wife and three or four children are an usual appendage to this species of cattle. The artificial increase in the population of the country, of course, raises the rents; and the freeholder, compelled to give more for the land than it is worth, is bound hand and foot to the landlord by his inability to pay. To the Englishman who desires a sensible image to guide him to a correct notion concerning the Irish forty-shilling freeholder, the itinerant harvestmen, who annually emigrate from the sister island, afford a pretty accurate type. Such, in general, is their exterior; such the rags in which they are clothed; and such their haggard countenance of mixed ferocity and starvation. Their actual possession is often-nothing: at best, a pig or a cow is the utmost of their havings. With no other available source of maintenance than the potatoe they cultivate,--their sole chance of subsistence lies in the permanence of their holding. The sheet-anchor of their hope lies in the forbearance of their landlords, and in the merciful assertion of those pecuniary claims, which it is all but impossible for the tenant to satisfy. The Irish gentleman therefore has, up to the present election, considered his freeholders as much his property, as his sheep: they were driven to the hustings with as little ceremony as the beast is to the market: and to canvass a neighbour's tenantry without his consent, has long been esteemed a duelling transaction. Thus the decision of a county election might be anticipated on arithmetical principles. The number of registered freeholders of each great landed proprietor being known, and their respective leanings being ascertained, the problem was solved and except in cases of nearly balanced interests, a contest was scarcely to be expected. Such was the ordinary condition of the Irish representation: and apparently a more perfect and degrading state of Helotism could not be devised. As an instrument of liberty, such a system seemed obviously worse than useless; while the boasted" amicable intercourse" it engenders between landlord and tenant, which, it is said, holds them in a reciprocity of good offices, (at the expense only of their common country,) was made up, on the one part, of abject servility, perjury, corruption, drunkenness, and idleness; and on the other, in the occasional remission of sums, which never can be paid, and which never should have been demanded; in refraining from pounding the last cow, and counting the last potatoe; with about as much personal urbanity, as a not very ill-tempered savage might afford to his horse or his dog. It was an intimate knowledge of this system, and of its ordinary operation on the liberty and the morals of the people, which made certain of the Catholic leaders so ready to disfranchise the forty-shilling voters; and not, as has been asserted, a heartless indifference to the poor man's rights, or an undue eagerness for personal advantage. An experience, however, the most unlooked for, has proved the fallacy of these views. The elective franchise is in its essence a power; and it required but a knowledge of the reality of this power to lead to its assertion. The absurd and extravagant combination of a Catholic constituentcy returning an Orange representation could arise only out of the grossest ignorance-that ignorance has been dissipated, and henceforward the elective franchise will be used in Ireland, as it ought always and every where to be employed, in the assertion of liberty. This result, however unlooked for by the Catholic Association, has, with great justice, been attributed by Mr. Shiel to that body. Its labours have awakened in the country a national feeling, have spread a great mass of political information. Discussion has become the order of the day in the remotest cabins, and the pike and the pistol have been laid aside (let us hope for ever) for the newspaper and the pamphlet. The knowledge has been rapidly disseminated, that the destiny of the Catholic freeholders is in their own hands; and that it is idle to imagine that Englishmen will believe their desire for emancipation to be earnest, so long as they supinely return their Orange landlords to parliament. This leaven has fermented potently throughout the entire country; and wherever opportunity has been afforded, an almost unanimous rebellion against the feudal oppressor has developed itself; and the consequence has been a sudden and an awful overthrow of the political power of houses, long the undisputed tyrants of the land, and the monopolists of place, of power, and of pension. It cannot be denied, and it ought not to be concealed, that the Catholic priests have actively availed themselves of that influence which their spiritual authority and their conciliatory and affectionate bearing towards their flocks have given them, to ripen this perception of a fact into a vivifying sentiment, and to confirm the sentiment by a sense of duty. This interference having proved so fatal to the enemies of the Catholics, has not unnaturally excited much clamour. Doubtless all interference of priests, as priests, in political discussions, is alike to be deprecated, let the religion they teach be what it may : but till church work shall be done by machinery, till sermons shall be preached by power-looms, and visitations be performed by steamengines, such interference will ever exist. It is of the nature of man to use, and to abuse, the powers with which he finds himself invested; and it is neither the surplice nor the stole which will impose humility and forbearance. It must also in candour be admitted, that in this respect the parsons have not been a jot behindhand with the priests; and it may be safely doubted whether the latter, with all their patriotism and zeal, have carried their electioneering practices as far as the subornation of perjury. As men, the clergy of both churches have a deep interest in the state of the representation; and as long as they have property to be plundered, or persons to be enslaved, we cannot conceive a plea for restraining them from participating in elections. If the authority of the Catholic priest be greater than that of the Protestant parson, it is a necessary consequence of that ascendency, which a community of injury and of suffering must ever afford. If there be |