NOTES.

PREFATORY DIALOGUE.

Note 1, page 13.

Stern "ex officio" tremble o'er her head.

This oppressive legal power has, within a few years, been 1odified.

Note 2, page 17.

Just 80, within that loathsome prison gate.

Those who, like the writer, have chanced to see Mrs. Fry mid the prisoners in Newgate, will understand this illustration.

Note 3, page 18.

With thee I rock a mother's cradled age.

The lines of Pope, from the prologue to the Satires, although so well known, can hardly be too often quoted.

"Me let the tender office long engage

To rock the cradle of reposing age.

With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,
Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death.

Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,

And keep awhile one parent from the sky."

Note 4, page 18.

When the last lingering friend hath bade farewell. See Pope's Epistle to Robert, Earl of Oxford.

Note 5, page 18.

That poesy and virtue are the same.

"Creative fancy's wild magnificence,
And all the dread sublimities of song,

These, Virtue, these to thee alone belong."

These spirited lines, if a distant memory do not deceive, are to be found in a prize poem, written at Cambridge, by the Right Hon. Charles Grant.

Note 6, page 22.

Young savage yet—their silent poesy.

"And even so did'st thou become
A silent poet."

Wordsworth-Poems on the Naming of Places, No. 6.

DIALOGUE SECOND.

Note 1, page 36.

Largest prudence ne'er was virtue's whole.

The "nullum numen abest si sit prudentia" would seem to be the motto of those who assert virtue and prudence to be but one; the "ipsa sui pretium virtus sibi" of those who maintain

the opposite opinion. This latter maxim, however, that logical humourist, Sir Thomas Browne, in his Religio Medici, asserts to be "but a cold principle, and not able to maintain our variable resolutions in any settled way of goodnesse." Such also is the opinion of the Author of the Enquiry into the Nature and Discipline of Human Motives, as ably developed in that work, and in the Recapitulation published afterwards; writings which, for reach of thought and clearness of analysis, and an enlightened zeal for moral and religious truth, would have been warmly welcomed by the kindred feelings and intellects of Bishops Butler or Berkeley.

Note 2, page 43.

Some flashy hand-bill spreads the news of grace.

"There is a stir of business among them, a perpetual bustle of confederacy; societies and branch-societies, associations, deputations, committees, district meetings, quarterly meetings, annual meetings, speechifications, ladies' associations, ladies' committees."

"There is a great deal in all this that is not religion. Pride finds its incense there and vanity its food."

Southey's Prospects of Society, Colloquy 10.

In a pamphlet, published three or four years since, and attributed to an eminent religionist, there is also a very graphic description of meetings of this sort.

Note 4, page 48.

Proud, as old Stylite, of her narrow base.

See Gibbon, chap. 37.

Note 5, page 52.

Calvin's ill-strained word.

To some of the editions of Calvin's Institutes of Religion is prefixed, as is said in his life, the device of a flaming sword, with the motto "Non veni mittere pacem, sed gladium."

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Note 6, page 50.

Yet now no Rothschild greedy king to soothe,
Is strained to yield an ingot—or a tooth.

King John once demanded ten thousand marks from a Jew of Bristol, and, on his refusal, ordered one of his teeth to be drawn every day till he should comply. The Jew lost seven teeth, and then paid the sum required of him."

Note 7, page 54.

Hume, Henry III.

Home who defends, is hanged or shot at will.

Somewhere in Colonel Napier's Tacitus-like History of the Peninsular War, are observations to prove the necessity of this hard usage of warfare.

Note 8, page 56.

Some even have played with Congreve's comic lyre,
Nor felt the tinder temp'rament take fire.

See among the exquisite Essays of Elia, one on the Artificial Comedy, which, with the Essay on the Plays of Shakspeare by the same writer, are specimens of dramatic criticism, of rare subtlety and beauty.

Note 9, page 56.

And then--though Wesley-strong in fervent youth.
Strong in man's weakness, strong in his own truth,

None who have read Southey's Life of Wesley will doubt of that reformer's sincerity. That his work has not fully pleased the followers of Wesley is not wonderful. For it is written too much in the spirit of an honest impartiality, specially to satisfy any one class, excepting only that very small one, which loves truth for its own sake.

Note 10, page 55.

And taught "unawed amid a slavish band." "Thou knowest with what a lofty gratulation I sang unawed amidst a slavish band."

Coleridge's France, an Ode.

When Priestley, driven in distant lands to roam,
Himself the flames scarce 'scaped that wrapt his home.

"The fury was, by good luck, in favour of the government. They set fire to the houses of all the more opulent dissenters, whom they suspected of disaffection, and searched every where for the heresiarch Priestley, carrying a spit about, on which they intended to roast him alive. Happily for himself and the national character he had taken alarm and withdrawn in time. Espriella's Letters.

Note 12, page 60.

A pensioned pleader, yet of soul sincere.

No one looks up with a more humble or affectionate admiration to the name of Edmund Burke than the writer of this note. But his pension injured his reputation, if it did not injure the