NOTES AND_QITERIES.
A MASS of evidence offers itself to show the real progress of Ire- land. Under the operation of the Encumbered Estates Court, which has disposed of 3320 petitions, and realized more than 10,500,0001., a certain ghost which has haunted Ireland is dis- appearing. One gentleman, who appeared to have a property nominally estimated at 116/. a year, is discovered to -have in that so-called " property " only the nucleus of a debt of 87341.; by the sale of which,. at sixty or seventy years' purchase, the creditors might realize something." Yet he was "an Irish pro- prietor." Nor was he alone : &whole tribe, the living embodiment of ancestral traditions and hereditary debts, has continued to haunt the Irish Lethe untilireed from its ghastly bondage by the En- cumbered Estates Court.
Ireland, too, is discovering that "union is" not always "power," when it is without a practical or self-paying object. Tenant-League has been trying to assemble itself in Dublin. Mr. Sergeant Shee, invited to attend, sends as his proxy a letter deprecating such distractions at the present time, and the Nation itself, growing moderate, declares that in the improved condition of Ireland it is not necessary to have such revolutionary measures as she once required. O'Connell's statue is inaugurated, private/y.
Forgetting her dissensions, Ireland sees the representatives of her opposed parties coming togethrr Ian the common ground of im- provement: Mr, Edmund Burke Roche, the Member for Cork, takes 50 girls out of Cork workhouse, and will take 50 boys, to induct them into the mysteries of flax-culture and manufacture,— a field materially extending through the folly. of Russia: and Lord Downshire proposes a Society for giving prizes to farmers ex- clusively, as they can well compete for quality of stock, but can- not vie with the gentleman .that... showy -"condition" which charms judges but does -not pay. The landed potentate con brings into the field a lovely lo, which will extort the prize without being at all richer in those humbler sealitiesthat constitute the wealth of the dairy.
And it is necessary to-come to realities; for Sir Charles Knightley avows that there is sect even in the shaping of stock. He must conform, he soya' to the fashion, and, giving up lo formations, 'will breed cattle "like steam-engines." But profounder truths emanate from the genuine old agriculturist. Some object to breeding, say- ing that their land is too bovod; some also use laud for feeding that is not good for feeding ; hut- Sir Charles insists that the great thing is for farmers to adapt their system to the land they occupy—to sow, to breed, to feed, or " to dairy." There is plenty of land for all uses, if the supposition which we hazarded last week is correct ; and Sir 'Charles confirms us in the Supposition,- not only that land is wasted by a wholesale appropriation of more than is needed, but that it is wasted by a bad distribution,—corn usurping the place of cows, and cheese being neglected for want of "old ladies" to make it
Bad distribution does not apply only to turnips and cheese : we have also bad distribution Of our fellow creatures. In the ens deavour to prove that certain familiar gases are not productive of cholera, a writer observes, that of the men who work in sewers, only one has been attacked, although the tribe numbers 2300. Think of that number doomed to spend their days in subterranean recesses that nicety dislikes to name ! They are indeed select for their robustness, and their power to resist the subterranean atmo- sphere as well as i
to work n it—they are in fact picked men, not less numerous than two household brigades of cavalry. And our drainage sueungements are so barbarous, that we must doom those fine fellows to a life- among the rats, with ratlike training, and , burrowing ideas' /1/ust that continue ? Tubular-drainageists may investigate, that query.
At.a. recent Sheffield. meeting; which/dr:Roebuck was invited to attend, he attended not:; he sent a letter, but the letter was published not :s it is, supposed to consist of reasons why the inde- pendent Member would not attend.to play the game of Russia by attempting to defeat the Western Powers in their use of the Aus- trian alliance ; and hence,. no doubt, its suppression. Is that timely -theais to be counted amongst the lost works of literature ? CAD it not be. published:? What have the Sheffield people done with, their, copy?
At the last meeting of the East India Proprietors, Mr. Tones asked what had become of the dispossessed Sikh nobles; and while he pleaded for restitution to those persons, he contended that a native resident nobility is not a class to be lightly swept away, nor to be replaced by an alien bureaucracy, however "resident" The question is one very proper for discussion, only there is no body more deaf to advice against its democratic and levelling tendencies than the "Honourable East India Company."
The newspapers are undertaking the functions of a Council of Nice, and discussing the rearrangement of some of the writings used in divine service. The hymn-books and tunes are the object of an active discussion. In the first place, the great variety of hymn-books, and the diversity also in the hymns used in particular churches as a substitute for the psalms, elicit strong complaints. Popular clergymen vie with each other in a species of literary contest, and the getting-up of hymn-books is degenerating into a stroke in trade. Literally so, says one correspondent, since popular preacher and professional adapter render these volumes the instruments for puffing off each other. It is the fashion always to have a run on these occasions at Sternhold and Hop- kins; who have their weak places, but are often strong in a plain broad simplicity. The chace after niceties and fashion in the con- struction of hymns is in itself an abuse. Congregations do not want to be diverted by critical niceties and refinements of thought, strokes of art in poetry, or intellectual suggestiveness. The very object of the psalm is, that the whole congregation should unite with one voice and one heart in the utterance of one feeling. If they could do so without words at all, and be secure against the distractions of the wandering mind, it were best ; and the next thing to that oneness of inward feeling is an expression as per- fectly simple as it is possible to make it—so simple that the ex- pression itself never shall become the object of attention.
As a set-off against concerts which are sometimes got up by way of attraction to divine service, another correspondent notes the tax upon the attention in,the sermons of fifty or sixty minutes' duration : and it is an abuse. A moderate speaker can deliver two columns of Times leading article in twenty minutes, and the enforcement of a simple proposition fittest for the pulpit, would seldom require more space than the editor of the Leading Sournal would allow himself even for a most complicated political subject. A sermon that taxes the attention of the congregatior —that can- not carry one main truth straight into the open minas of the greatest number present—fails of its effect, and cliscredits the church for the display of the clergyman's vanity or imbecility. No concert over a hymn-book can compensate to an audience for that filching of attention on false pretences.
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