581 THE LION'S HEAD. THE continuation of The Templars' Dialogues on Political Economy is unavoidably postponed. Our friend X. Y. Z. we are sorry to say, is too ill to be able to follow up the subject this month; but we hope to see it resumed in our next Number. An old Correspondent sends us the following note to correct the account, given in our last, of Paul Jones's Birth-place. "I thank you, and Mr., for the communication respecting Paul Jones. Mr. seems to have followed the popular story of Paul's early years; for I am well aware that he is generally described as the son of Lord Selkirk's gardener. And truly a mistake of some twenty miles of barren coast is, after all, no very important matter, unless to the natives, who, God help them, only produce, perhaps once in seven centuries, a man whom the world thinks worthy of remembrance, and may be unwilling to be deprived of him in the haste of biography. You may inform Mr. that Paul was born at Arbigland, in the parish of Kirkbean; and that so far from dying in wretchedness, his sisters, of whom he left two, obtained considerable property by the event. I have often heard of his opulence, and never of his poverty-though I do not mean to say, that the wily Caledonian was not capable of pretending extreme poverty, in order to cheat those very liberal gentlemen, the French Convention, out of his burial money, to enrich his friends in Scotland." The old, the young, the gay, the grave,, quia's blods The wise man and the witty, Each owns himself her humble slave, And sighs for beauteous Kitty.small roots on myndi q7 But still, alas! they sigh in vain ; Nor love she grants, nor pity: But views them all with fix'd disdainal-countAowu8') At the first glance of her bright eyes, Those roving black banditti, My vanquish'd heart became her prize, I've pleaded oft, to win the fair, Like Scarlett, Brougham, or Chitty, So obstinate is Kitty! Even when she frowns, the frowning maid But when her cheek's in smiles array'd, The Opera House let others throng, Though grave the members who compose My worn-out pen will scarcely write; My ink is thick and gritty ; Or I'd compose from morn till night G. F. There is something very pretty in the following Poem which is from the same pen. THE MILL. How sweet it is in summer to shake off drowsy sleep, And to stroll along, the fields among, as day begins to peep; Before the sun has yet begun to rear his golden head, While the hedges yet and the flowers are wet with the dew that night has shed; And while around the verdant ground all nature's voice is still, Save the current strong that rolls along to turn the neighbouring mill. Oh! then my hasty steps to some eminence I bend, Where, far beneath, the spacious heath, and groves and fields extend; To behold from far, in his golden car, the glorious sun arise; Till on every side the clouds divide, and high above the hill He darts his beams, and gilds the streams, that turn the neighbouring mill. Before his piercing glance all the vapours fade away, And the meadows green distinct are seen beneath his glowing ray; G. F. We have no room for more than the titles of the following:-Stanzas sug◄ gested by the Death of Lord Byron.-Home, addressed to Eugenius on leaving England. The Chieftain's Return.-The Enquiry of the Druids for Caractacus.-Hebrew Melody.-A Communication from "Lisson-street” (this is of too private a nature to admit of our inserting it).-I. W. H. on the Madness of Hamlet, in Opposition to Mr. W. Farren.-On the Promotion of Judges.-To Clara.-Stanzas on a Tress of Hair.-Harry Beauclerk. THE London Magazine. JUNE, 1824. MEMOIRS OF CAPTAIN ROCK.⭑ THIS little book is not what it pretends to be, and, what rarely happens in such cases, it is much more. Under the unassuming title of Memoirs of Captain Rock, it is, in fact, a complete, though compendious History of Ireland; that is, such a history as Englishmen can read, a true summary of the measures pursued by this country towards that, divested of the barbarous names and traditional fabrications which have hitherto encumbered and obscured the subject. We have no hesitation in saying that it ought to be the manual of every one wishing for information on the affairs of Ireland; and if it be objected that the book is written in the spirit of partizanship, and should therefore be discredited, we admit the fact, while we deny the inference. It is certainly written in that spirit, but still the facts which have generated that spirit are all faithfully given, adduced from undeniable authorities, and it is utterly impossible for any one either to narrate or to read them without a similar feeling. It is not the fault of the historian that he has such details to present; but it would be worse than a fault if his condemnation of them did not follow as a corollary. A doubt might just as rationally be cast upon a history of the Inquisition, because the narrator, in transcribing it, could not forget that he was a man. Although we give the parallel merely as an illustration, we much fear that we might carry it farther— this, however, we leave to those who may peruse and reflect on the analysis which we feel it our duty to present.-With respect to Captain Rock himself, he is too well known to our Irish readers to require any description for their satisfaction-some of our friends here, however, may not be quite so fortunate, and to them, therefore, we give the brief information which has reached us. He is sprung from a very ancient family in Ireland, so old, indeed, that his name may be considered as in some degree symbolic of his origin. They were found by us in a flourishing state, on the invasion of Henry II. and even then, their date, like that of the Round Towers, had outlived tradition. They are almost the only Irish relic which English policy has not exterminated, but, strange to say, this family seem only to have prospered the more, in proportion as that policy has expanded. There are branches from this stock in almost every part of Ireland, but the south has generally been their head quarters. It is curious enough, that not one of them ever held a situation * Memoirs of Captain Rock, the celebrated Irish Chieftain, with some Account of his Ancestors. London, 1824. JUNE, 1824. 2 P under government, yet they have all lived by it, and this, notwithstanding the most constant and undisguised hostility. Indeed, amongst the vicissitudes that often befel various sects and parties during the alternate ascendancy and fall of the respective powers to which they had attached themselves, the Rocks continued prosperous and independent, disdaining the patronage of any, and profiting by the errors of all. There was ever a military mania in the family, which induced many of them to become great travellers; although they were generally in opposition, the King, for the time being, has often turned this propensity to account, and at times most graciously defrayed their expences. Indeed, the very subject of the present memoir has himself thus personally experienced the royal bounty. The connexions of the Rocks are all almost as ancient as themselves, a truth which their very names will testify. The Moonlights, the Starlights, the Thunder and Lightnings, houses whose names are taken, not from any sublunary trade or invention, but from the elements of creation itself, are all intimately related to them. We cannot now go more minutely into particulars respecting the family it self; the great, general outlines which distinguish them are all eloquently detailed in this volume; which rather surprises us by its learning and its genius, knowing as we do how utterly despised such trifles have ever been by the most ancient families in Ireland. The present narrative was entrusted to the editor, by its author, a short time before his travels, under the following circumstances. The editor was sent to the south of Ireland, in the enviable situation of Missionary, by a society of old ladies, who generously assemble at the City of London tavern, for the purpose of civilizing that country. Travelling with this object in the mail coach, he became acquainted with a very communicative gentleman, disguised like Bob Logic, in a pair of green spectacles, with whom he held many conversations on the state of the south, little suspecting then that he was in company with no less a personage than the celebrated Captain Rock himself. Their subsequent recognition, and the receipt of the manuscript are well told, but for the particulars, we must refer our readers to the work itself, and hasten to more important matter. There is much and just ridicule thrown by this description on the absurd associations formed here by well-meaning but very ignorant persons, for the amelioration of Ireland. By the bye, among the most prominent of these we observed lately an account of a society formed for the purpose of printing and distributing the Bible in the Irish language, together with a list of many thousand copies which had already gone forth: this is very laudable, no doubt, and would be very useful if the people could read,—a trifling circumstance, which seems totally to have been overlooked by these Bible distributors; we will venture to assert without the fear of contradiction, that not one in half a million of the Irish peasantry, nor one in one hundred thousand of the Irish gentry could read one page of the language in which these bibles are printed, even though they were promised the fee simple of the island for the achievement. A very cursory perusal, indeed, of this book, will at once clearly account for the present barbarism of that country, and as clearly show that its civilization is out of the reach, not merely of any club or conventicle, but, we fear, even of those who ought to be most interested, both by duty and conscience, in its accomplishment. It is no easy matter either for the ministers of church or state to counteract the evil which seven such centuries as the last have been generating in Ireland. The book begins, as memoirs ought to do, with some account of the family of its subject, the antiquity of which the author supposes to be coeval with that of the numerous and respectable race of the Wrongheads in England. For the first eleven hundred years, however, after the Christian era, they gave but little promise of that enterprising spirit which has since distinguished them. This is imputed to the purity in the administration of public justice which then prevailed, and which is illustrated by the following authentic anecdote. "The chief judge, |