The Sun.
London, England, 1845-03-03 00:00:00

FRASER'S MAGAZINE.

This is the best number. that Fraser has published
for many months. The subjects are well selected
and treated with more than usual skill and taste.
The leading articles will suit almost every reader.
We have " Rambling Ren-arks on nonce, for the
classical scholar ; " The Lives of Rubens and Rem-
brandt" for the painter; " Bunyan and Bunhill-fields,"
for the Quakers and Methodists ; " My Log," for the
sailor; " A Walk from London to Fulham," fur the
antiquary ; " The Great Ward Business," for the
Anti-Puseyites ; and " Tt,e Policy of Ministers,"
adapted to every class and denomination throughout
the vast empire called the United Kingdom, and its
dependencies. But to begin with the beginning.
Horace, some nineteen hundred years ago, announced,
more than Roman vanity, that he had erected a
monument more lasing than ti e royal Pyramids of
Eg) pt; that rain, and hail,.and tempests would bat-
tar against it in vain; that his songs would be Te-
r-it'd on the banks of the. Ebro and the Rhone,
and his verses be scanned on the shores
of the _Bosphorus, in -the wilds of Numidia, and on
the Se) thian hl.uns. We are only sorprised that he
diet not elrry his prophetic eve farther, penetrate
into the New World, pa'yr c)mplitnent to the repudiat-
.

,I)-nn,ylv:inians, and the men governed by Lvnch
tm the t7ks of t!)e Ohio and the Mississippi, for
th,re hi.. unetry is ktimti, ltQd Perhap; in re admirer!,
tor), than in the valleys Anio and the
pains of ;)elluwv fiber. 'lt has reached 'even the
Ultima Thule ; the Dcric Muse of the North has

TIRE SUN, LONDON,

paraphrased his celebrated Ole to Mount Soracte,
and a Scotch barber has thus turned into verse his
cheering prescription for a cold winter evening:—
" Dissolve frig-us, ligna super foco
repouens :—"
" Then fling on coals, and rlpe the ribs,
And beck the hoes' baith butt and ben,
That mutchkic-stoup is hauds but dribs,
Then let's get in the tappit hen."
Hor.ice, however, did not build 'a monument for
hi nisei t only, he had inscribed on it aratlng many others
the names of Augustus, and Mmcenas and Quinctilius,
on whom he .has written an elegy which will last
while justice and honour and truth are revered as
virtues. To him Maecenas in these days owes his
fame, and the splendid character drawn by Morgan
RAtier, Eiq , M A., an apprentice of the law in
the nineteenth century :
" The peculiar privilege of the renown of 111weenas's
natm, is, that it renews its accumulated honours
in the person of each lofty and gdnerous patron of lite-
rature ai,d the learned, which'the world, in its successive
centuries prduct .s to do grace to human kind. The
great politician and phil.sopher, the acci,ruplislnd
Bch slur, the prin;a gentleman, the, honest prime
inini,t,r, who shrunk from ncthing-4, labour except its
ordinary rewards, who was c.intent,—.
Certarc ingenio, contendere nobilitate,
Nocteis atque dies niti prrestante labure,' _ _

end yet who was so great of heart as to disregard the
sumnias apes, who would never take
,anything from the
country and the master he so worthily served—who'
despised all conventional rank and title—who was indil,
ferent quite to personAl pow,-r—might have been for,
g,tten; but the benefactor and friend of Horace and
Virgil survives the wreck of the mighty empire
he helped to raise, and can never die era
unirnic hominurn eteendate ternporum, faniiz return.
And be it known, moreover, that while this gentleman
lived—the finest gentleman, perhaps, the world has ever
known, for the very jokes of Augustus, who was also a„
true gt ntleman, independent of rank and station, go
only to prove this—while Mmcenas lived, he was equally
dear to the poor and igi orant, as to the lofty and the
learned. Gentleness, courtesy, munificence, boundless
charity, the outward and visible signs of the kingly
blood that ran through his veins, made him beloved by
the multitude, in the same degree with their imperial
benefactor Augustus. Horace, with -an overflowing of
delight, alludes, in two places, to the manner in which
his friend was received, when, after a long and dan-
gerous illness, he once more took'his, place amongst the
knights at_the theatre—

Cum populus frequens
Lmtum theatris ter crepuit sonum.' "

These "Ramblingßemarks" will be read with pleasure
by the admirer of Horace, not only from their in-
trinsic merit, but for the choice selections from his
works, with the best translations in verse, and the
proofs they furnish of the most remarkable fulfilment
ofa prophecy. About forty years 8.C., when the in-
habitants of these isles roamed in their native woods
with painted skins, and were more savage than the
red men of America, he uttered the words—" Visarn

Britannos hospitihus feros," and in these latter days
we find his works in the hand of every schoolboy; and
the first poets of the age, Milton and Ben Jonson, and
Dryden and Pope, vieing with each other in render-
ing his immortal odes into English verse. On re-
ferring to the political, and what may be called the
business dissertations in the Magazine, it is refreshing
to witness the happy change which has taken place
in this clever periodical. For many years it went on
purl pasizt with its brother of the-North, reviling
Catholics, defen: ing the status quo of Church anti
State, and trade, and declared every man a traitor--
a "thief and loon," who would 'not sub-
scribe to the doctrine that the Constitution
was perfect when George 111. was King.
It has suddenly started off at a tangent from old
Blackwood, defends free trade measures, stands up
for the Catholics, a large increase of the grant to
Maynooth, and even looks forward, :if not with com-
placency, at least without concern, to the period when
the Catholic religion shall be the State religion of.
Ireland. To save appearance, Fraser admits that the
carriage is running down the pass at a tremendous
rate, but he has full confidence in the coachman. He
objects neither to the pace nor .the position. "The
former, though rapid, will carry us the sooner through
our perils ; the latter, though beset With some dangers,
has a considerable touch of security in it too, and we
will tell our readers where to look for it." He then

furnishes very good reasons for liberal measures. But
his remarks in reference to the Irish and their religion
are most novel, and would have done honour to the
Edinburgh thirty years ago :
"So touch for deeds actually done. We have, under
a Tory Government, recognised the Church of Rome in
Ireland as a Church. We speak no more of ministers
of the Romish persuasion; but, in commissions issued
from the crown, address ourselves The Most Rev.
Archbishop Murray,' and The Right Rev. Bishop.'
" Again: we pass an Act of Parliament whereby
pious individuals professing th 6 Romish faith are em-
powered to endow benefices, and build Roman Catholic
places of worship, at their pleasure. Thus an end is
put to that fiction in law which denied the existence of
the Church of Rome within these kingdoms. So far
from prohibiting the Romish clergy to officiate in
public, we permit them to become bodies corporate; and,
like our own vicars and rectors, to hold property as
corporations whole, so long as time, shall last. More-•
ever, if we do not negotiate directly with the Pope, we
give a sanction to the promulgation of one of his bulls in
this our Protestant realm; and very much rejoice to find
that it enjoins on the Romish clergy that, which all our
laws failed to command,—an abstinence from political
agitation, and the steady devotion of their time and
talents to the duties of their calling. And, lastly, that
other symptoms of change may not be wanting, the head
of the party which so long resisted emancipation proposes
a grant of many thousands annually for the better edu-
cation of Roman Catholic priests; and, if not cheered,
is certainly not turned round upon or denounced by the
party for having done so.
" Are we annoyed at all this? Do we blame it ? By
no means. Sir Robert Peel is pursuing. according to
our poor judgment, the only course which holds out a
prospect of peace for Ireland, and, as a necessary con-
sequence, for the United Kingdom. He is acting justly
towards the majority, and with exceeding policy to-
wards the minority, of the population of Ireland. But
we acknowledge, nevertheless, that we are on a rapid
descent on the hill-side, and that our nerves are some-
what shaken by it. Who will undertake to give a
pledge, that in ten years, or twenty at the most, the Ro •
man atholic Church shall not be established in Ire-
land? Be it so. This is the risk. And, if it do come,
we must try to make the best of it. But we are not at
all disposed to say that it must come."
The " Great -Ward Business" is very brief, and so
good that it ought not to be abridged. We there-
tore recommend it to the reader entire. There is

room only for a few lines of poetry, addressed to an
old friend, which paint with melancholy truth the
ravages of time

" We will not meet again, old friend of mine!
Much of life's beauty bath already past,
And now I would not willingly resign
The spell thy memory can about me cast.
What I have been to thee, and thou tome,
Even since those old days wherein we met,

We ne'er could be again, if each should see
How little of the past remaineth yet.
" No, no! It were not well to learn how strange,
How all unlike thy heart and mine have grown;
To feel and know how sorrowful a change
Time and the world have wrought; weeping to own
The fairest vision of our lives have fled.
I know we are not as we were; I know

How much, alas, of my past self is dead!
Therefore, old friend, we'll meet no more be'ow!
" How ha, e the depths of bitterness been stirr'd
Within my soul since those departed days;
I, who could smile at every jesting word,—
I, whom thy spirit at its will could raise
Up to its own proud heights of dreamy thought,—
I, from whose sunny hopes, thy nobler mind
Fresh energy and inspiration caught,—
How little of all this thou now would'st findl"