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deprived the institution of its true character, and converted the protection of virtue into the penalty of crime. Thus has marriage come to be regarded among numbers of the lower classes as a necessary evil, except as it affords a plea for demanding higher wages or parish relief. Any law which substitutes for marriage a security of a different description, must tend to supersede the Divine law, and to lessen the popular regard for that sacred institution which is the great bond of society. The plea of humanity is always suspicious, when it dictates a policy unfavourable, on the broad scale, to the interests of morals. That cases of hardship will occur under the amended law, for which there will be no available remedy, we do not doubt; but the fact is, that the present law does not secure to the victim of perfidy any adequate indemnification, while it allows the shameless to reap a profit from the fruits of their shame. Such we know to be the notorious effect of the repealed laws. And we cannot, therefore, but entertain a sanguine hope, that the attempt to check the demoralization arising from the lax notions of marriage fostered hitherto by the law itself, will prove beneficial to the country. We admit that the whole subject is as difficult as it is delicate; but the affected alarm for the interests of morality expressed by certain vehement opponents of the Bill, ill agrees with the ridicule bestowed in the same journals upon every measure adapted to improve the morals of the lower classes.

The light in which the Allowance system has led the poorer classes to regard marriage, is scarcely less degrading than that in which it has been placed by being made the penalty of crime. Whether a man was forced into marriage, to avoid being sent to gaol, or bribed to it by the prospect of higher wages or the parochial allowance, the effect would be almost equally unfavourable to morality or domestic virtue. The design of the Divine Institution has, as regards our rural population, been frustrated by the operation of this two-fold perversion. Marriage, the object of hope to the virtuous and industrious, has been forced upon the vicious and dissolute. Marriage, the security of female honour, has been postponed to a protection irrespective of marriage;-has been to a certain extent superseded by the immoral security created by the law of relief. The present Act may not, upon this difficult point, be altogether unexceptionable; but it is an incalculable improvement upon the repealed law. The clause which enables the order on the father to be enforced, not as it now is, by imprisonment, but only by distress or attachment of wages, is itself an important amendment. And the moral benefit which will accrue from the repeal of the former laws, will not, perhaps, be immediate, but we trust it will be decisive and permanent.

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Mr. Pratt's Popular Outline of the Act' is intended to correct some of the gross misapprehensions which have been formed

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respecting some of the provisions of the Statute. We refer our readers to his publication for the details. The following is a brief analysis of the Act, which comprises 110 clauses. The first twenty-one regulations are of a general nature, defining the province and powers of the Commissioners; the next three relate to the erection of workhouses; then follow twelve regulations respecting Unions of Parishes; we have next various provisions relating to the appointment of guardians, who are to have the entire management of the poor, to the mode of voting, and to the regulation of workhouses and parish officers; then come the clauses which class under the heads of Relief, Emigration, Settlement, Bastardy, Removals, and Appeals; and, lastly, we have a number of Miscellaneous Regulations. The principal features of this comprehensive measure may be thus summarily stated:

1. The placing the entire administration of relief to the poor under the control of the Board of Commissioners.

2. The Union of Parishes for the relief of the poor, with a common poor-house.

3. The prohibition of relief in money to able-bodied paupers and families out of the workhouse, except upon special orders of the Commissioners.

4. Certain alterations in the law of Settlement.

5. Certain alterations in the law relating to Bastardy. 6. Regulations relating to Removals and Appeals.

As the 52d clause is one of the most important in the Bill, we shall give Mr. Tidd Pratt's exposition and history of it.

The 52d clause, after a preamble reciting the prevalence of the allowance system, the existence of other mischievous modes of administering relief, and the difficulty of applying an immediate and universal remedy, enables the commissioners to direct to what extent, and for what period, and in what manner, out-door relief may be afforded to the able-bodied or their families, and declares all relief given in breach of such directions to be unlawful. It then enables the parochial authorities to suspend for thirty days compliance with the directions of the commissioners, reporting the special circumstances on which their objections are founded; and the commissioners may then withdraw, or modify, or peremptorily enforce their regulations. If however, the parochial authorities, in particular instances of emergency, depart from the rules of the commissioners, and within fifteen days report to the commissioners such departure and its grounds, the relief given by them, if approved of by the commissioners, or if given in food, temporary lodging, or medicine, and if otherwise lawful, is not subject to disallowance.

The history of this clause is curious. The enacting part of it was originally a modification of a clause proposed by the commissioners of inquiry, but rejected by his Majesty's Government, prohibiting, after a fixed period, all out-door relief to the able-bodied. When that clause

was expunged, it was proposed to omit the enactment in question. It was retained, however, as a check on the powers given to the commissioners by the 15th clause, and a clause was added, and passed the House of Commons, prohibiting allowance after the 1st of June 1835, but giving power to the commissioners to sanction it under particular circumstances. In the House of Lords, however, that clause was struck out, and the present preamble to the 52d clause substituted. It was thought that the prohibition of allowance, after a given period, would sanction, for the interval, a mischievous practice now generally admitted to be illegal, and that the best mode of extirpating it would be to leave that extirpation to the parochial authorities, sanctioned and assisted by the commissioners.' pp. xv, xvi.

We had intended to advert more particularly to Mr. Longfield's Lectures, as they bear upon the subject of a Poor Law for Ireland; but we must reserve this for another opportunity.

Art. V. 1. Heath's Picturesque Annual for 1835. Scott and Scotland. By Leitch Ritchie. 17. 1s., morocco.

2. The Landscape Annual for 1835, or Tourist in Spain; commencing with the Ancient Moorish Kingdom of Granada, including the Palace of the Alhambra. Illustrated with Twenty-one Engraved Plates and Ten Wood-cut Vignettes, from Drawings by David Roberts, Esq.; the Literary department by Thomas Roscoe, Esq. 17. 1s.

3. The Oriental Annual, 1835, or Scenes in India; comprising twentytwo engravings, from Original Drawings by William Daniell, R.A., and a Descriptive Account. By the Rev. Hobart Caunter, B.D. 17. 1s. in morocco. Royal 12mo., pp. 263. London, 1835. 4. Fisher's Drawing-Room Scrap-Book for 1835. With Poems by L. E. L. 36 Plates. 4to., 17. 1s.

5. The Christian Keepsake and Missionary Annual. Edited by the Rev. William Ellis. 12s., morocco.

6. Friendship's Offering; and Winter's Wreath: a Christmas and New Year's Present for 1835. 12s., morocco.

7. The Amulet. Edited by S. C. Hall. 12s., morocco.

Edited by Frederick Shoberl.

12mo.

8. Forget me not. HAVING elsewhere spoken of the Illustrations to the first three of this year's Annuals' on the above list, and which claim precedence as works of Art, we shall at once proceed to notice the execution of the literary department,' as the Advertisements style that very subordinate portion of the joint production which assumes the shape of letter press;-or, as children call it, the reading,' which tells us what the plate is about."

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Mr. Leitch Ritchie has executed his task with his usual tact

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and vivacity. His aim has been, he tells us, to illustrate Scott ' and Scotland in illustrating the Historical Manners of the People. Such a subject almost precluded novelty, but he has presented to the reader a very agreeable mélange of historical anecdote, legend, poetic citation, and scenic description. Upon the hackneyed, yet seemingly inexhaustible topic of Queen Mary, Mr. Ritchie dwells with a sort of chivalrous enthusiasm.

Of all the personages of history,' he remarks, Mary Stewart, at the distance of two centuries and a half, is the nearest and the most palpable. There are few of our Scottish youths who have not fought for her, as for a lovely and calumniated mistress. I myself, when a boy, have more than once been covered with blood in her cause.

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Mary's life was a series of calamities: and yet, perhaps, were the computation accurately made up, she enjoyed more of happiness than her prosperous rival. Her brief but frequent gleams of sunshine were bright and beautiful. She enjoyed the triumphs of love and beauty; at the most disastrous period of her life she was surrounded by warm and faithful friends; her death was religious, tranquil, almost joyful. Elizabeth, on the contrary, though a great and fortunate queen, was an unhappy woman. Her life was spent in a struggle against nature, and when the dreams of ambition were dissipated by the approach of death, she found that her existence had been a blank. The discovery was made too late. The years that had fled could not be recalled-nor the blood of Essex, which she had spilt; and she closed a loveless, joyless, yet brilliant existence, in melancholy and despair.'

As a further specimen of the volume, we give the description of the ancient and royal borough' of Linlithgow,- once the favourite residence of the Scottish kings.

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SCOTT AND SCOTLAND.

Of all the palaces so fair
Built for the royal dwelling,
In Scotland far beyond compare,
Linlithgow is excelling;
And in its park in jovial June,
How sweet the merry linnets' tune;

How blithe the blackbirds' lay!

The wild buck bells from ferny brake,
The coot dives merry in the lake,
The saddest heart might pleasure take
To see all nature gay.

Ascending from Edinburgh, in a line parallel with the Forth, we reach the ancient and royal borough of Linlithgow. The description in the lines prefixed to this chapter is now only half true, whatever it might have been in the days of Marmion and Sir David Lindsay. Nature is still the same; but the palace is a ruin.

The town lies in an amphitheatre of hills; and is bounded on the north by a lake, into which the eminence projects, on which the palace stands. The streets-or rather the single street, running east and west, for the diverging avenues are merely lanes-consists of a double range of tall, black, and grim-looking houses; carrying the imagination back, by their ruinous and antique appearance, to the time when Linlithgow was a favourite seat of the Scottish kings, and when such simple but stately buildings were the town residences of the nobles of the court. The modern houses interspersed, only serve to bring home these associations more forcibly; while they impress us with a disagreeable consciousness that the memorials of the olden time-the mute yet eloquent witnesses of history-fast crumbling away before our eyes.

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In the time of David I. this was a very considerable borough; and the size of the church, still extant, would seem to prove that the pulation must then have been at least double its present amount. prosperity increased under the princes of the house of Stewart, who loved to listen to the "wild buck bells" in its woods and parks; it was in its palace that Mary opened upon the world those beautiful eyes, destined to be so often filled with tears; it was in its church that her chivalrous grandfather saw in vain the apparition which warned him back from the fatal field of Flodden. The very trees as they murmur in the wind, whisper of the past; the very air seems thick with the shadows of history. Every sod around is classic ground to the Scot, who, while rejoicing in the modern prosperity of his country, yet looks proudly and devotedly back to the days of her stormy and blood-bought independence.

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In the exterior of the palace you look in vain for any remains of the magnificence which the description in Marmion would lead us to expect and for this sufficing reason, that such never existed externally. In the time when it was built, men looked to safety more than show; and the pomp of a court could hardly be displayed any where else than within the walls of a fortress. If the reader will glance at the engraving prefixed to this chapter, he will discover at once the purpose of the building. In the upper part of the walls he will see a few narrow windows-since then the inhabitants might indulge themselves in a view of the country with comparative impunity : lower down there are only slits in the walls, whence those literal arrows might be discharged, which are darted from bows instead of ladies' eyes.

'In the inner court, however, enough remains to bear out the eulogium of Sir David Lindsay; for there the architects had opportunity to display their taste. The stones are polished and richly sculptured, and at each corner a tower, containing a spiral staircase, gives an air of castellated dignity to the whole. The well in the middle of the court, erected by James V., and said to have been extremely splendid, is a pile of ruins. The last time it ran wine instead of water, was in honour of Prince Charles Stewart in 1745; and in the following year, as if in revenge for this Jacobitism, it was utterly destroyed by the Georgean army.

"The western side is the most ancient; dating from Edward I., who constructed a fort on the spot, when engaged in the task of attempting

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