regarded in fragments, but should be contemplated in their intenseness; when they appear like a stately minster, the profuse tracery of which only serves to enhance the majesty of its proportions. The mind is then filled with the greatness of his conceptions, and is borne amidst the robed visions of antiquity, or beholds, in far perspective, the triumphs and destinies of coming ages. But this exciting career is neither confused nor abrupt; for the guide moves with a placid and assured mien amidst the shadows which he loved to invoke, and to which he is now united for ever!

A characteristic of Herrera's manner, which, indeed, is more or less peculiar to the Castilian poets, is his use of direct conversion, in place of metaphor. The most accidental point of resemblance is sufficient occasion to him for replacing the object he describes, by that which his fancy has suggested. A fulness of imagination, which, in its more legitimate exercise, would command applause, is thus in danger of being overlooked, or even censured, as the offspring of a perverse ingenuity. In his minor poems this peculiarity is most conspicuous. For the sake of the slightest analogy, he seizes upon an image, however dissimilar to the object he wishes to represent, and employs it in every sense proper to the original thus represented, indifferent to the discrepancies which this process of substitution discovers. Nay, he appears to delight in them, as affording occasion for verbal antithesis and cross-meanings, without end. We know how hard it is to arraign a privilege which, when exercised within certain limits, is one of the wings of poetical expression; and how difficult it is to define the point at which fair poetical liberty gives place to license. It were lamentable, indeed, if the bard's imagination were to be fettered at the will of prosaic readers, or dull critics; still there are canons which the love of nature and poetry cannot allow to be infringed. The figures, however startling, which are struck out in a moment of warmth and eagerness, while the poet's eye is darting forth on all sides to discover some vivid representation of a picture with which his fancy is teeming,-these, however remote, we can allow and admire. But our indulgence does not extend to the frigid efforts of mere ingenuity, taxed for the invention of incoherent and whimsical similitudes; and we cannot exempt Herrera from this censure, which visits, with allowed severity, the concetti of his countryman, Tongora, and the followers of the so-called Estilo culto.

Our author has been reproached by his countrymen, with harshness in the structure of his versification, and an affected use of verbal innovations. These are points which a foreign critic cannot handle without presumption. We must confess, that we find it difficult to believe in the positive truth of the former of these accusations; although many of the Castilian poets have, undoubtedly, carried the melody of their language to a more exquisite degree of perfection. As to the charge of introducing new expressions, he is defended by some critical authorities, as vigo. rously as he is assailed by others. Non nostrum tantas componere lites. The objection, if proved, appears to us of little importance.

With the largest deduction for all his imputed and real faults, Herrera must retain, undisturbed by the attacks of time or critical enmity, the veneration due to a high and genuine poet. That he cultivated, with unremitting devotion, his eminent natural endowments, is apparent from an examination of his writings, as well as confirmed by the unanimous testimony of his contemporaries :-and if we have cause to regret that the pursuit of foreign excellence should have too frequently seduced him

from the happier exercise of his powers, the value of his most excellent productions is perhaps enhanced by their comparative rarity. It would be unreasonable to complain that a poet's remains are not all masterpieces. Who, as Lord Byron pointedly asks, would have a midnight all stars?

Amongst Herrera's greatest works, after the Odes on the Victory of Lepanto, if not before them, must be placed his Cancion for the loss of the Portuguese army, and their king Sebastian at Aleazar. This lament, of surpassing majesty and sadness, we had intended to introduce to our readers. A version may perhaps be admitted in some future number of this magazine. As a single specimen in which, of all his Odes, the author has most expressly imitated the sublimity of the Hebrew poetry, we should have selected it; had not some of the stanzas, rendered by the chief of England's female lyrists, already appeared in the pages of a contemporary; we were therefore induced to prefer a composition which, we believe, has not previously been translated. A natural reluctance to contrast any version we could offer, with the beautiful fragments in question, (which, nevertheless, we should not feel ourselves justified in appropriating,) also contributed to influence our decision.

But we fear that no example we could produce would persuade those who will refuse their approbation to our poet, on behalf of what we have attempted, however inadequately, to exhibit. Their number, we hope, will not be considerable; and we confidently trust that many will be induced, by the foregoing representations, to visit for themselves the pages of this great writer; in the assurance that their research will be rewarded with delight, and that it will add no scanty stream to the fountains of poetry from which they have hitherto drawn strength and refreshment. To those who seek from literature a mere pastime, or what are empirically termed, practical results, we should not recommend the search it would be alike unproductive to both. Our poet sings to a class who entertain a different appreciation of the objects and worth of his divine art ;-the purifier-the universal-the eternal!

There exist, we believe, but three editions of Herrera's poems; the first, published at Seville in 1582, a delicious old quarto; a second, edited by Pacheco in 1619, which we have not seen; and the modern edition, by Fernandez, which appeared at Madrid in 1786; forming the 5th and 6th volumes of his Poesias Castellanas. Some of Herrera's poems are also to be found in the Parnaso Espanol; but the selection omits many of his finest productions.

V

THE CORN LAWS.

Ir has just been reported as a special joke, that one of the candidates for the representation of a neighbouring Transforthian County, did, on a late occasion, when trying his sweet voice upon certain sticklers for the "protection" of agriculture, gravely announce, that although he might depart from the present law, he would never consent to the destruction of the British farmer; but was willing, by way of a liberal compromise with the manufacturer, to try a permanent duty of 18s. or 19s. per quarter of wheat! Hopeless as would seem the ignorance and the folly which could suck in a piece of drivelling and greedy idiotism like this, we yet not only believe

the occurrence a probable one, but are convinced that the great majority of those agriculturists who still shudder at the idea of “a tampering with the Corn Laws," are, to this moment, prepared to asseverate, that without protection to some such amount, they would be inevitably ruined. One argument alone is fitted to enter the brains of such people, and it is this: The attempt to exaggerate the degree of " required protection” just exaggerates in the public eye the evil of that protection. Who can be ignorant that the oppression of which the starving condition and degraded character of our people have so long emphatically complained, is just that we are debarred from obtaining comparatively cheap food? Tell us that the agriculturists require, for the upholding of present prices, a permanent duty of 188. or 19s., and what is it but this,-that except for landlords, and the landlord's monopoly, we could get our food the cheaper by so enormous an annual sum? What is it, when they add, in argument, even one shilling to the actual difference of home and continental prices, but the adding of an additional amount of incitement to the popu lation opposed to them? what but telling us that the Corn Law is more detestable by far, than our gloomiest imaginations have depicted it, and infinitely more effectual in repressing the growth and enfeebling the first energies of the commonwealth? If our opponents are determined to throw themselves upon this horn of the dilemma,-nay, if they will sharpen its point, and temper its substance, that it may be the fitter for goring them, we shall only say, that we wish them all the comfort possible, after it has run them through.

We do not profess to have formed an exact opinion as to the influence of a perfectly free trade upon prices; nor do we think it is yet possible to arrive at that opinion. It is known, however, that from the time when the present act came in force, in 1828, until July 1831, upwards of four and a half million quarters of wheat were imported at an average duty of only 6s. 1d., nearly a million quarters of barley at a duty of 4s. 4d., and upwards of a million quarters of oats at a duty of 7s. 6d. The efficient protection enjoyed by the farmer must, in consequence of the peculiar nature of that act, have been somewhat greater than these several sums, but not considerably so. All the documents which have passed under our eye-and we have seen, we believe, everything worth seeing-concur in assuring us, that Sir Henry Parnell's statement may be taken as the limit of duties necessary to complete "protection ;" and we assume from it, that 10s. is about the amount by which free trade would permanently lower the price of wheat per quarter, 7s. 6d., the corresponding sum in regard of barley, and 5s. in regard of oats. The agriculturist need not suppose that we willingly underrate this probable diminution. If he weighs the words of our previous paragraph, he will perceive, that for every shilling by which these sums may be increased, we just hold that we have by so much a better case, and would enter the more vehement a reclamation against the injustice perpetrated on our population. We have adopted the foregoing amounts because we are convinced of their approximate accuracy, and we hold them perfectly adequate to support our energetic appeal. They inform us, that the people of these islands are taxed, on the first article of food, in the enormous sum of L.12,500,000 per annum !*

The grounds of this calculation will be seen in Sir Henry Parnell's Financial Reform. Various estimates have been given of this sum. The most accurate can only be an approximation.

In order that the conditions of the inquiry be fully within our grasp, it is necessary to state still farther at the outset, who are the gainers by this extraordinary situation of things. Delusive opinions have, we regret to say, been set afloat also upon this point :-we regret alike that the opinions have been put forth, and that they are delusive. A well known and well informed economist has told us, that the landlord gains little, while the community suffers to so large an amount; whereas we uphold it as demonstrable, that the landlord gains by nearly the whole sum wrongously extracted from the consumer. It has been held out, in proof of the trifling advantage of the landlord, that, as his rental is only about a fourth or a third of the entire produce, the consumer is taxed for the whole produce, in order to give a higher value to this fourth or third; but it is here wholly overlooked, that the landlord receives, not only a higher price for the quantity of corn which falls to his share as rent, but also a larger quantity of corn than he would otherwise do. The point may be illustrated in one sentence. Suppose that the various soils, A, B, C, D, and E, represent the different soils of Great Britain, arranged according to their degrees of fertility; and that they severally return to the outlay of £100, the number of quarters we have here marked beneath them :

As the price of corn is indicated by the return afforded by the soil E, it will, in this case, be 50s. ; and the sum of what each of the superior soils yields more than E, will be rent. This, in our supposed instance, is 130 quarters, or £325. Now, if free trade reduced price to 40s., it would force E out of cultivation, and the total rental of the estate would then be the sum of the excesses of the produce of each of the three soils, A, B, and C, above the produce of D. This is only 90 quarters; so that the money rent, counting at 40s. per quarter, will have fallen to £180, or by £145. The consumers, however, gain more; they gain by 10s. on every quarter consumed, or £165,-a gain exceeding the landlord's loss by only £20; and this small sum is accounted for, by noticing that there is a saving in actual labour in the procuring of the 40 quarters formerly raised on the bare soil E, by an amount of 10s. per quarter.* The state of the question, then, is plain, and its principal merits are comprised within one simple proposition. The actual law just transfers nearly the amount of annual value above indicated, from the consumer's pockets into the landlord's; and by whatever sum agriculture is at any time "protected" in this way, that sum will nearly indicate the amount so transferred. (1) Our inquiry into the policy of a Corn Law is therefore resolved into the inquiry, as to whether it is expedient for the State, or conducive to the welfare of all parties, or of any party, that the landlords should be empowered to augment their income by forcibly extracting a considerable revenue from the pockets of the consumer? And it must also be borne in mind, that this is done by a tax upon the first necessary of life, or, as near as possible, by the institution of a POLL

This is all approximation, or rather a mere general illustration of the theory of the case. On the repeal of the Corn Law, and our knowing alike the quantity imported more than at present, as well as the reduction effected in price, we could tell the exact amount of the direct national gain. Suppose, for instance, four millions of quarters to be then regularly imported, and the reduction of price to be 10s. per quarter; the national gain would be two millions annually-i. e., the comsumer would gain that sum over and above what the landlords would lose.

TAX. To attempt to resolve this important inquiry, in regard of all classes and parties, is the object of our present paper.

I. It may be disagreeable to persons, who uphold that there is no real or apparent clashing of interests in this controversy, to have their favourite sentimentalism thus unceremoniously disturbed: but we must state the truth, notwithstanding of their disapprobation: and in the present case, as in every other, we will assuredly find it for good, that the truth should be declared. How easy is it, for instance, when we view the matter as it actually is-under the light of a simple transference of income from the pockets of one party to those of another-to see through, and reply to that often repeated, but ridiculous sophism, that without the Corn Law we should never pay our National Debt, nor be able to support our present manufactures! The admirable logicians who say so, talk of course, as if a large amount of national income were intended to be destroyed, whereas it is our whole object to prevent the forcible transference of a portion of it from the general community to the class of landlords. Ask him why the nation will be the poorer by the prevention of a system of legal pillage, and allow Noodle to tax his shallow brain for an answer! Will the indirect taxes yield a less revenue if all but one class are enabled, by a saving of expenditure on corn, to consume more of every taxed article, even although that excepted class be now forced to consume proportionably less? And has the manufacturer to dread a diminished sale, if every workman,-every corn consumer in the kingdom,-can, because of the low price of the first article of food, devote a larger revenue to the purchase of the comforts of life, or of manufactured articles, although the landlord should be shorn of a part of his power, and his command of luxuries abridged? The absurdity and dishonesty of such reclamations are evident on the veriest glance at the point in dispute; but it were difficult, adequately to characterize the infatuation of our opponents, in daring to challenge us to a review of the baleful influences of the system of protection and restriction, either on the prosperity of our industries, or the true power of the State. What these are, we shall now endeavour partly to make apparent.

It will at once be manifest that the measure, of whatever species, which in any one country tends to give corn an artificially high price, must have effects upon the wealth of that country, far more serious, and of much wider range than can be attributed to a similar measure in regard of any other commodity. Tax spirits, or malt liquor, or tea, or cotton goods, either by your Excise or your Customs, and all that happens is the probable diminution of that article's consumption by the man of small income; but a tax on corn is impracticable without altering and deeply injuring the working man's entire economical condition. The peculiarity in regard of this essential article, is just that it is essential. The working man cannot get over the influence of the tax by consuming less, and just because the taxed subject is a first necessary of existence. The only possible result, therefore, is the absorption of a much larger proportion of his scanty income, in the effort to "keep life together," and a corresponding diminution of that portion of it which might be devoted to the attainment of the "comforts." There is a terrible physical evil which hence immediately accrues; but there is a moral evil which is still more grievous and ten-fold more hazardous to the State. The absorption of the main part, if not the whole of the labourer's toil in producing his scanty subsistence, is an emphatic description of poverty. It instantly summons up to our imagination a life