public at another fountain in the street at the east side of the square. Here, as in the olden days, is the grand rendezvous of idlers and gossips of the toiling-class in hot weather. A big church is at one of my corners, and a little one at the other; and the bells of both unite their confusion's devilry of bang, clang, dang, jang, twang, dong-dang, dong-dang, clang-clang, hour by hour. This square is the Plaza de la Constitucion. Each evening, at nine o'clock, a really good band commences its musical labours, and continues till about eleven. The expense is paid by a voluntary tax of ninepence per month from each house. In this very warm season, with such miraculously beautiful nights, there is something enchanting in the music, time, place, and promenading. The music ceases, the crowd disperses-the sober (I mean the prudent, for there is no drunkenness here) go off to lounge at home. The more restless, or racketty, or frolicsome, keep it up with guitar and castonets and song through the greater part of the night. Here live I: and I purchased in the market this morning as many tomates (I think they are called love apples in England,) for one farthing, as would be paid for by not less than half-a-crown at home; for a halfpenny more fish than enough for my dinner; and I am in the very region of grapes and figs; and nightly I am devoured on by myriads of mosquitoes; I must quit-other houses are free of them.

Now with all these pleasures and allurements I would rather be (at this moment, if the sun shone,) sitting under a hedge in a deep, green lane, roasting potatoes with purloined sticks, in England;-a thousand to one, for a thousand reasons.

The current events-the Chartist movements-the violences, the injury to truth, the obstruction to the progress of right and light; the seas of defaming and damnable lies which hypocrites, bigots, aristocratic and "better class" people, will seize this occasion for pouring forth; (and that, too, with a seeming and shew-off sincerity and truth,) when the timid and the thought-limited, and the slavish-minded, are all agape to drink in the lies with a greediness of suck for "more, more!" -the prudent cooling of warm friends to the cause, and the eager and crafty abandonment, and adoption of avowed enmity of cool friends,— load me with painful solicitude: grief and indignation, contempt and sadness, scorn and intense sorrow alternately engage my senses as I read and think.

August 5.—I have "shifted my birth," as the Nauticals would say, and am now complacently lodged at San Roque, with my host of 1837. At this moment I feel so well, elastic, and free from all pain, and full of strong hope; though my voice is still an absentee, and my whole frame very feeble. I am improving-existence is becoming desirable again, and life has charms; but--this blessed condition is only a morning visitor; and stays till about three o'clock, P.M.; then discomfort comes; and from four till seven or eight (such has been the case for the last month,) miserable and frightful convulsions of coughing tear me to fragments: then "oh, that some kind soul would spread a bundle of clean straw, here on this spot, in the street, that I could lie down and die quietly," is my often thoughted wish; but I am right again in the

morning, and have faith in getting rid of this vile visitor: for two or three afternoons past he has grown much gentler. I am irritated by not being able to find the cause of these convulsions; they are Catarrhal : but what brings on the Catarrh, I can by no means discover. Suffice it, I am positively better than when I last wrote. Thank you truly, truly, for the Iris-it comes very regularly. The Spectator is also sent from Sheffield. I know not by what good soul; if you know him, do say that I am sincerely grateful for his kindness.-Adieu, C. R. PEMBERTON.

LETTER, ON RECEIVING AN INVITATION TO DINNER,
ADDRESSED TO THE REV. B. T. STANNUS,
OF SHEFFIELD.

Worksop, 18th October, 1838. MY DEAR SIR,-Dine with you ?-or with any one, next Friday! I must improve wonderfully to be able to table, with anything approaching to within a thousand leagues of decent comfort, in the presence of others. Why, Sir, my columnar vertebræ are all creaking, awry, and rusty. Scapula and clavicle are tugging away as if maliciously bent on each other's destruction-my arms, hands, and fingers are like a process of crumbling filagree, and my legs mere articulations of burnt rushes: and, worse than all, every nerve in my system is ten million times more rapidly and burningly vibratory than ever. I am skin, bone, and nerves only-not body. I am a mere bag—a sack—a bladder (kinked and collapsing) of strings and fibres of moral sensation,-miserable, agonizing acuteness of perception of touch. Oh, no! Dine! I should make you all miserable, and wish myself at the bottom of a deserted coal pit. So excuse me-pray do. I dare not come. Very truly your's,

C. R. PEMBERTON.

LINES WRITTEN IN THE ALBUM KEPT AT HUCKNALL TORKARD CHURCH, WHERE LORD BYRON IS INTERRED. C. R. PEMBERTON, (a wanderer,) 30TH JULY, 1836.

HIE lies not in obscurity, though here

This humble dwelling gives his dust a home,

For Byron has not-ne'er shall have-a tomb;

That name—the spirit's blaze-will flash its dear

And animated light for ever there,

Where thought can roam, where mind can mock the doom

Of mouldering mortality-the wing
Of Time will fan into a brighter ray,
That glory as he passes on his way,

And o'er that name a lustred record fling,
More strongly splendid, wider radiating
Through cloudless and interminable day.

But if on earth a spot were chosen meet
For this his earthly part to rest in, well
Mighty Niagara, and that alone, should tell
The traveller who yearns that grave to greet-
That ever rolling stream, his winding sheet!
That deep-toned thunder voice his endless knell.

C. R. P.

WILLIAM C. MACREADY AND J. P. KEMBLE IN THE CHARACTER OF MARCUS BRUTUS.*

There came

My memory can trace distinctly the first deep impressions which were made on my senses by a perusal of this drama (Julius Cæsar ;) the noble, gracious, and beautiful qualities of head and heart, which are so conspicuous in Brutus, were struck indelibly on my mind-they grew with my growth and strengthened with my strength and how much did I wish to gaze on a living representation of the man! one before me of whom all spoke as the realization-a second life-of Brutus all voices were loud in his praise: the sympathies of all glowed in admiration of this noble impersonation of the noblest of Shakspeare's characters. I gazed with fixed delight, I listened with concentrated eagerness of eye and heart. The stately beauty of his form, the glowing grace of his gestures, and the majesty of his repose, touched me with a feeling of reverence. The rich and piercing light of his intellectual eye, was haloed round with an intense sorrow :-he looked an eagle speculating in deep grief. The tones of his voice came upon the ear as floats the continuous breeze through the multitudinous foliage of a forest-it swept through the auricular channels, into brain and heart, with a mighty and irresistible influence. I was at once astonished, delighted, and subdued-I admired equally with the most admiring-I applauded with the most enthusiastic. But it was not the Brutus which my imagination had created out of Shakspeare's glorious illuminations. I could not recognize in that, the living soul and throbbing heart; yet its power over me was sufficiently strong to obscure, for a while, the massive substantiality, and distinctness of outline of my former creation: but time and thought brought it back again, in mightier strength and deeper beauty than ever: and I longed "till hope had hopeless grown"-though I was not one of those who thought that with John Kemble had died the last representative of "the last of all the

* A passage from a lecture on Brutus delivered by C. R. Pemberton

at the Bath Saloon, Sheffield, August 8th, 1838, and furnished by him, at the request of a friend, to the Editors of the Sheffield Iris.

Romans." I saw Macready-my desire was accomplished. If the stately form, and the cautious, though beautiful, artistical elegance of Kemble, manifested in the gorgeous folds and abundant drapery of his toga, and entire personal costume, struck me with admiration, how much more intense was the effect of Macready's invisible art and profounder acquirements, the massive simplicity of thorough gracefulness -the strict though bountiful preservation of all that combines to make a picture of pure, noble, spontaneous, and exalted manly beauty! So he stood, as the slight lifting of the folds across his bosom told of the painful presages that were heaving in his heart beneath them. I will not attempt to go into detail of this masterly development: to particularize the beauties, the graces, and the grandeur of the massive strokes, the delicate touches, the sublimity of tenderness, the heart-crushing gentleness, the soul-elating strength, and swelling magnanimity, would excite my nerves to a sympathy far too intense for my enfeebled body to endure, without a reaction of physical suffering. All was the exactness of masterly talent catching, swaying, and directing the impulses of genius-the expansive blaze and the subtle sparks—the vast soarings of imagination, were thrown forth or kept back at the volition of reason; helmed on their undeviating course by the steady hand of perfect judgment. I soberly regard that personation of Brutus as the noblest intellectual triumph that ever was exhibited on the English stage ;-I doubt whether it has been surpassed by any thing of dramatic power the world ever saw. It was a lovely thing—it was beautiful, gracious, pure, and, ay, holy-holy is the word; for every sympathy which it awakened was generous or kind, or gentle, or soul-elevating. From first to last the voice was a varying and noble music-but who that heard the words

"You are my true and honourable wife,
As dear to me, as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart;"

can forget, during life, the tenderness of the rich melody in which they passed through Macready's lips into the heart of every hearer? Who that remembered the stately and gorgeous demeanour of Kemble was not penetrated to the very soul by the truer, nobler, the more exalted and melting kindness of Macready, towards the boy Lucius? In one, we saw, and admired, the lofty superior graciously condescending to a consideration of the comfort or convenience of his humble servant :-in the other, a gentle and generous nature impelling the holy and beautiful sympathies. How strong was the contrast! how heart-grasping was the thrill of approving delight with which Brutus was then gazed upon! But I must quit this theme, dear as it is in every intellectual and moral sense of my being.

SIXPENNYWORTH OF TRUTH.*

PREFACE. This small book will give large offence to knaves, and to their friends, the fools and hypocrites.

NOTES TO "MAMMON-MOLOCHISM."-NOTE I.-He who will assert that the reformed Church by law established, did not originate in the licentiousness of its first head, would talk of snuffing out the sun by a pinch of his finger and thumb. He who will deny that it has been a persecuting church, will swear that the crater of Etna is an ice house.

Here at once I soberly disclaim the wish to "put down" Kings and Bishops, and all such like growths of the age of Green Dragons, Scaly Griffons, Fifty Feet Giants, Necromancers, Magi, Augurs, Broom-riding Witches and Wizards. Kings, Bishops, &c. were somebody then. I desire to do my little towards making humanity sick and ashamed, and repentant of its Anti-Christian worship of them; and, if it be possible, to encourage, Kings, Bishops, &c., to laugh out frankly, instead of chuckling in their sleeves at their own mummery and the dupery of mankind.

NOTE II. The repetition of a villainy sanctifies the act. Custom purifies grossness, and, by custom, grossness becomes decorum. The pal of the pickpocket, street thief, or shoplifter, has a tremulous compunction when he mounts the witness box to swear to a lie in favour of his comrade. Not so the parson when he swears. "Custom bath made it in him a property of easiness." In the other case, "the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.” "One murder makes a villain, millions a hero"- -one perjury makes an abandoned outcast; a hundred or a thousand, a "respectable" man on which principle it is, I suppose, that this oath ridden, oath-swallowing, and oath-vomiting people, is the most religious and the most moral in the world. More oaths are sworn in one year in England, (where a religion is professed which forbids oaths) than in all the civilized nations of the earth besides, in a whole generation.-Taking oaths is, here, but a thing of form, though it be at the instigation of the Holy Ghost; which, in the Rev. divine's vocabulary, signifies money, or its equivalent. The thief's pal stammers at a false oath ;-the Rev. divine is

Sixpennyworth of Truth, Good Measure. By "One of the Faction," (according to the Standard newspaper) "Without a God." Containing Mammon-Molochism; Wellington's Oxford Installation; Caste; Pack together Reformers; and Warning and Advice to Reformers with copious notes. London: W. Strange, 1836. In this pamphlet the author gave vent, with great bitterness and power, to some of his views on Politics, Morals, and Religion. The various subjects are introduced in rhyme, but the pith and marrow of the arguments are to be found in the prose notes. The verses are now omitted for want of room, but the notes are given nearly entire.-J. F.