chamber, excepting the addition of two windows, on each side of the speaker's chair. The offices of the clerk and transcriber, are placed one on each side of the speaker's chair, each having five paper cases recessed in the wall, together with a niche for a stove, and two large windows.

The second story is divided off into committee rooms. These are thirty-one feet by thirty-four in the clear, for forty members each, and one of the same dimensions for the joint library; likewise four other committee rooms, thirtyone by twenty-two in the clear, each having their appropriate doors, windows, fire places, &c. The passage leading from the vestibule, to the committee rooms is twelve feet wide, and twenty-one feet high; receiving light from a large venetian window in each end of the building.

The landing of the portico is four feet six inches high from the ground; (two steps higher than those of the wings) from whence to the top of the cornice is forty-six feet; making the front fifty feet six inches high from the ground. From the top of the cornice, to the top of the dome, is fifty-seven feet six inches; making the whole height one hundred and eight feet. The rotunda above the roof, is composed of sixteen columns, twenty-two inches in diameter, and seventeen feet high. It is forty-eight feet in diameter outside of the columns. The dome is forty feet diameter. It contains eight windows, and eight niches. The faces of the great clock can be placed between the two front columns, facing the four sides of the building round the rotunda; the space left below the dials, to be filled with pannel work. The dials can be seven feet diameter. The niches can be occupied with such statues as government may direct, allegorical figures of Liberty, Justice, Authority, Clemency, &c., may be thought most appropriate.

The cellar walls are remarkably substantial, and that part of them which is above ground, is faced with cut stone and superbly wrought iron gratings, in the proper places for

1

light and air. The windows in the superstructure, contain twenty-four panes of glass, fourteen by twenty-two: the second story, twenty-four panes fourteen by nineteen. The ceilings are admirably well contrived, and those of both chambers of the legislature, will be supported without columns; timbers above, having the power within themselves. to carry the whole weight between the walls. The roof of the whole building, including that of the dome, is to be slated and coppered. The whole cost, including wings and furniture, will be about two hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars.

ART. VI.-Maurice and Berghetta: or the Priest of Rahery, a Tale. Republished by Wells and Lilly, Boston.

THE high reputation of this novel in England where it was published in the last year, has induced an American bookseller to republish it, and it is one of the very few new works at present advertised for sale to the public of this country.

The author is said to be a Mr. Parnell, a member of the British Parliament for the county of Wicklow in Ireland, and, it may therefore be presumed, an Irishman. The object of his lucubrations is professed to be of a patriotic nature; to exhibit Ireland as she deserves to be shown, in an amiable point of view; to reconcile differences between the Catholics and the Protestants, and to place such observations on the manners of the Irish peasantry, as have occurred to him, in a less formal shape than that of a regular dissertation.'

We confess we regret his choice of this mode of conveying his notions to our understandings. There is an intense degree of interest attached to the actual condition of Ireland that does not require the aid of fiction, to give it a hold upon our feelings; and the impossibility of distinguishing what is

portaiture from what is cariacature very much weakens the effect of the most natural descriptions.

From Miss Edgeworth or Lady Morgan a tale comes with better grace than a dissertation, but Mr. Curwen's observations on the state of Ireland, if they do not afford so much amusement, excite a deeper interest than the manners painting' prose of either of those ladies. These thoughts are much confirmed by perceiving how discriminative, perspicuous and instructive Mr. Parnell can be, when he condescends to stoop to truth,' and generalize his opinions. As a specimen of which we make the following extract from his prefatory remarks.

'Perhaps it will not be difficult to account for the conversational wit, intelligence, and suavity of manner, which the Irish possess in a superior degree to the English peasantry.

'The English peasantry may be pretty generally considered as a domestic race of people-they have the virtues of domestic habits, and the defects, if they may be called so, of a want of vivacity and conversation.

'On the whole their character is well adapted to their station of life, and they are pretty much what one would wish a religious and industrious peasantry to be.

'On the contrary, the habits of the Irish peasantry are all antidomestic; they miss no opportunity of being in society, and these perpetually occur; hence the habit of conversation. and art of manners are familiar to them.

'Irish merry meetings of the lower ranks, though they may differ in the polish of the detail, have the same general effects as the more fashionable assemblies of the higher ranks; funerals, wakes, and saints' days, though they have duty for their pretence, are all a species of route; and when to these fairs, markets, races, occasional parties for a fight, hurling or football match, and several night dances, and card assemblies in each parish are added, and all eagearly attended, it

may easily be conceived, that an Irish peasant is rather more sociable and polished than befits his station.

'The causes which lead to this disturbance, as it must be considered in the order of society, appear to be principally

these.

'1st. That landlords in Ireland generally throw upon the tenants the business of building, while the leases they give, fall short of the length which a building lease ought to be. The peasantry have generally to build their own houses, and being either possessed of no capital, or naturally unwilling to lay out any that they have to the reversionary profit of the landlord, they build houses of the most wretched description, usually of mud with clay floors, too often without windows and chimneys. It is impossible, that domestic habits should be formed in these horrid habitations, and the natural result is, that the whole family feel happier any where than at home.

'2d.—Being generally illiterate, or at best possessing no books, they have no means of amusement at home during the long winter evenings; and as a substitute assemble either at a neighbour's house, or a dancing house, where the conversation and amusement are of a very questionable description. The establishment of lending libraries in Ireland has already been found to check this evil.

'3d. As individuals, the Irish peasantry have been degraded and oppressed, and they are not connected in any manner with the civil business of the country, an evil that is aggravated by their exclusion from vestries.

'An Irishman of the lower orders, individually, is dejected, timid, and spiritless; it is only in combinations and social confederacies that he feels himself a man, and that his natural energy and vivacity display themselves.

'This seems to be the principal cause of the uncommon avidity with which the lower orders in Ireland seize every pretence and opportunity for assembling together, and also

for their proneness to every kind of illegal combination: legally, they have no opportunity of escaping from their individual insignificance; in these, at least, they find that they are of sufficient importance, to make themselves feared.

And yet the tendency of all modern legislation, that con cerns Ireland, is to render this exclusion of the lower orders from all participation in civil affairs more strict and their separation from the higher orders more marked!

'The peasantry in Ireland, compared with the same class in England, are distinguished by a very striking superiority in benevolence and charity. That they have long been a suffering race, may partly account for their compassionate temper and generosity. Virtues, like grosser commodities, generally exist in proportion to the demand for them; and in no country has suffering humanity presented a more importunate claim for mutual commiseration and assistance than in Ireland. But the difference, in its extreme degree, we should ascribe principally to the operation of the poor laws in the one country, and the absence of all legal provision for the poor in the other. It is evident, that, where the domestic and neighbourly affections in the one country are seldom called into exertion, they will exist in a very torpid degreeand where in the other country the remedy for all the casual evils of life is sought for only in their exertion, they will be in the same degree abundant and energetic.'

The tale is deficient in effect; the characters are quite overdrawn, and the incidents quite too prodigious; with these large qualifications we are willing to allow it to be a very good tale indeed, as to lively description and pathetic sentiThe commencement is as follows:

ment.

'I am a priest of the Island of Rahery. I shall soon follow the good and beloved that I baptized and buried, for my heart is not at home in this world, praise be to God. Yet while it is his good will that I should live in clay, let me