No. IV. CHRONICLE. JANUARY. 3.-ON this day Mr Jeffrey was inducted into the office of Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. It may here be proper to mention, that though there is an annual election for this office, it has been customary for the same person to be continued two years, the election for the second year being merely a matter of form. Last year this rule was broken through, and Mr Jeffrey was elected Rector by a majority of the votes of the nations into which the College is divided, although his predecessor had been only one year in office. On the present occasion, however, the former custom of the University was reverted to, and Mr Jeffrey re-elected by the unanimous votes of the nations. CARLILE'S SHOP.-A new mode has been adopted for avoiding the penalty of selling seditious and blasphemous libels. The little parlour, which adjoins the shop, has been converted into a citadel; the glass partition, which separates them, is closely blinded, and the operations are carried on in ambush behind it; two of the squares of glass have been taken out, and in the place of one of them is erected a box with an aperture for the receipt of money, over which is an inscription, "Put your money in here;" and in the place of the other, a contrivance by which the pamphlet wanted is slid down to the purchaser from the inside of the citadel. This machinery, however, is used only for the sale of such works as have already been made the object of prosecution. The seller is invisible, and the identification of his person rendered impracticable, unless the citadel be taken by storm. Waddington, heretofore the radical standardbearer, whose personal experience has procured for him an extensive acquaintance with the persons of officers and informers, has assumed the command, and conducts the operations in the front shop, where the sale of such of Carlile's publications, as have not as yet come under the censure of the law, is carried on as usual. 5.-Lord Byron's attack upon Mr Southey, contained in a note to one of his tragedies, having been copied into the newspapers, Mr Southey sent to the Editor of the Courier the following reply: Sir,-Having seen in the newspapers a note relating to myself, extracted from a recent publication of Lord Byron's, I request permission to reply, through the medium of your journal. I come at once to his Lordship's charge against me, blowing away the abuse with which it is frothed, and evaporating a strong acid in which it is suspended. The residuum then appears to be, that "Mr Southey, on his return from Switzerland, (in 1817,) scattered abroad calumnies, knowing them to be such, against Lord Byron and others." To this I reply with a direct and positive denial. If I had been told in that country that Lord Byron had turned Turk, or Monk of La Trappe-that he had furnished a harem, or endowed an hospital, I might have thought the account, whichever it had been, possible, and repeated it accordingly; passing it, as it had been taken, in the small change of conversation, for no more than it was worth. In this manner I might have spoken of him, as of Baron Gerambe, the Green man, the Indian Jugglers, or any other figurante of the time being. There was no reason for any particular delicacy on my part, in speaking of his Lordship: and, indeed, I should have thought any thing which might be reported of him, would have injured his character as little as the story which so greatly annoyed Lord Keeper Guildford that he had ridden a rhinoceros. He may ride a rhinoceros, and though every body would stare, no one would wonder. But, making no inquiry concerning him when I was abroad, because I felt no curiosity, I heard nothing, and had nothing to repeat. When I spoke of wonders to my friends and acquaintance on my return, it was of the flying tree at Alpnach, and the 11,000 virgins at Cologne-not of Lord Byron. I sought for no staler subject than St. Ursula. Once, and once only, in connexion with Switzerland, I have alluded to his Lordship; and, as the passage was curtailed in the press, I take this opportunity of restoring it. In the Quarterly Review, speaking incidentally of the Jungfrau, I said, "It was the - scene where Lord Byron's Manfred met the devil and bullied him-though the devil must have won his cause before any tribunal in this world or the next, if he had not pleaded more feebly for himself than his advocate, in a cause of canonization, ever pleaded for him." With regard to the "others," whom his Lordship accuses me of calumniating, I suppose he alludes to a party of his friends, whose names 1 found written in the Album, at Mont-Auvert, with an avowal of Atheism annexed, in Greek, and an indignant comment, in the same language, underneath it. Those names, with that avowal and the comment, I transcribed in my notebook, and spoke of the circumstance on my return. If I had published it, the gentleman in question would not have thought himself slandered, by having that recorded of him which he has so often recorded of himself. The many opprobrious appellations which Lord Byron has bestowed upon me, I leave, as I find them, with the praises which he has bestowed upon himself. How easily is a noble spirit discern'd But I am accustomed to such things; and, so far from irritating me are the enemies who use such weapons, that, when I hear of their attacks, it is some satisfaction to think they have thus employed the malignity which must have been employed somewhere, and could not have been directed against any person whom it could possibly molest or injure less. The viper, however venomous in purpose, is harmless in effect, while it is biting at the file. It is seldom, indeed, that I waste a word, or a thought, upon those who are perpetually assailing me. But abhorring, as I do, the personalities which disgrace our current literature, and a verse from controversy as I am, both by principle and inclination, I make no profession of non-resistance. When the offence, and the offender, are such as to call for the whip and the branding-iron, it has been both seen and felt that I can inflict them. Lord Byron's present exacerbation is evidently produced by an infliction of this kind not by hearsay reports of my conversation, four years ago, transmitted him from England. The cause may be found in certain remarks upon the Satanic School of poetry, contained in my preface to the Vision of Judgment. Well would it be for Lord Byron, if he could look back on any of his writings with as much satisfaction as I shall always do upon what is there said of that flagitious school. Many persons, and parents especially, have expressed their gratitude to me for having applied the branding-iron where it was so richly deserved. The Edinburgh Reviewer, indeed, with that honourable feeling by which his criticisms are too peculiarly distinguished, suppressing the remarks themselves, has imputed them wholly to envy on my part. I give him, in this instance, full credit for sincerity: I believe he was equally incapable of comprehending a worthier motive, or of inventing a worse; and, as I have never condescended to expose, in any instance, his pitiful malevolence, I thank him for having, in this, stript it bare himself, and exhibited it in its bald, naked, and undisguised deformity. Lord Byron, like his encomiast, has not ventured to bring the matter of those animadversions into view. He conceals the fact, that they are directed against the authors of blasphemous and lascivious books-against men who, not content with indulging their own vices, labour to make others the slaves of sensuality, like themselves against public panders, who, mingling impiety with lewdness, seek at once to destroy the cement of social order, and to carry profanation and pollution into private families, and into the hearts of individuals. His Lordship has thought it not unbecoming in him to call me a scribbler of all work. Let the word scribbler pass; it is not an appellation which will stick, like that of the Satanic School. But, if a scribbler, how am I one of all work? 1 will tell Lord Byron what I have not scribbled-what kind of work I have not done. I have never published libels upon my friends and acquaintance, expressed my sorrow for those libels, and called them in during a mood of better mind; and then re-issued them, when the evil spirit, which for a time had been cast out, has returned and taken possession, with seven others, more wicked than himself. I have never abused the power, of which every author is in some degree possessed, to wound the character of a man, or the heart of a woman. have never sent into the world a book to which I did not dare affix my name; or which I feared to claim in a court I of justice, if it were pirated by a knavish bookseller. I have never manufactured furniture for the brothel. None of these things have I done; none of the foul work by which literature is perverted to the injury of mankind. My hands are clean; there is no "damned spot" upon them-no taint, which "all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten.” Of the work which I have done, it becomes me not here to speak, save only as relates to the Satanic School and its Coryphæus, the author of Don Juan. I have held up that school to public detestation, as enemies to the religion, the institutions, and the domestic morals of their country. I have given them a designation to which their founder and leader ANSWERS. I have sent a stone from my sling which has smitten their Goliath in the forehead. I have fastened his name upon the gibbet, for reproach and ignominy, as long as it shall endure. Take it down who can! One word of advice to Lord Byron before I conclude. When he attacks me again, let it be in rhyme; for one who has so little command of himself, it will be a great advantage that his temper should be obliged to keep tune; and while he may still indulge in the same rankness and virulence of insult, the metre will, in some degree, seem to lessen its vulgarity, ROBERT SOUTHEY. Keswick, 5th Jan. 6. MURDER OF FAULDES.-M. Carcenac, vicar of the parish of St, Amans, Rodez, deposited in the hands of M. Viguée, notary of that town, in order to be annexed to its registers, a declaration, of which the substance is as follows: "I, the undersigned John Baptiste Théron, journeyman joiner, living in the Rue Neuve, being dangerously ill, yet, nevertheless, possessing all my intellectual faculties, and finding that I am about soon to appear at the judgment-seat of God, wish to appease the remorse of my conscience, and to do an act of justice by retracting an atrocious calumny, which I put forth in my deposition made at Albi, against MM. Jausion, Bastide, Colard, Bach, and Bancal; which calumny consisted in my saying, that I had seen those five individuals in the cross passage, called de Capoulade, carrying the body of the deceased M. Fualdès, and conveying it down to the Aveyron. I declare, before God, that that deposition is not true, and that I was not even present at the place mentioned; that the motive which induced me to make the deposition was the pleasure which I expected to derive from going to see the country. I retract the calumny with all my soul before God and before justice, and I implore the Sovereign Judge, in his mercy, to accept this retractation, as being the whole truth. This is written by another hand, on account of my inability to write from weakness; and is signed by me, in my house at Rodez, the 22d of December 1821. (Signed)" THERON." "Such is the declaration that Théron dictated to me in his last illness, and which he himself signed, charging me not to make it public until some days after his death, in order that it might not afflict such of his relations as attended his funeral; and although I know the discredit that certain persons have wished, from what has passed, to cast upon the recantation made by Bosquier on his death-bed, concerning the same transaction, I could not refuse to receive, in the exercise of my office, the declaration of Théron, considering it the only means which remained to that individual of making reparation for the injustice and wrong which he has occasioned by his false deposition; and that it was imperiously demanded by his conscience, justly alarmed at the approaching judgment of God. (Signed) CARCENAC, Vicar of St Amans. "Rodez, Dec. 30. 1821." 11. IRELAND. A most shocking occurrence happened in the neighbourhood of Mallow last night. The Rev. Mr Chester, a magistrate, took a party of the 22d regiment to patrol the country to the south-west of Mallow; and having sent out an advanced guard, he was informed by them, that they heard the trampling of horses coming onward. Mr Chester and the military officer placed their party on each side of the road behind the ditches. The supposed marauders advanced, and the two first that appeared were fired at by at least ten or twelve soldiers. They fell; but when the main body came up, it was discovered, that instead of Whiteboys, they were king's troops; and that the individuals, who had fallen, were the Rev. J. B. Lowe, and one Law, a constable. The Rev. Mr Lowe was perforated by five or six balls, and died instantly. The inquest on Mr Lowe brought in the following verdict "That the said Rev. James Bond Lowe came by his death near the village of Glauntane, in consequence of the unsteadiness of some privates of the 22d regiment of infantry, who fired without receiving the command of either their officer, Lieutenant Stevens, or the magistrate, the Rev. John Chester, while on a patrolling party, on the morning of the 12th instant, in consequence of information that a body of Whiteboys intended to be out in that direction." 12. A daring outrage was committed on Wednesday evening, near Ardfinnan, where a party of seven or eight constables had been placed, by Lord Donoughmore, to protect that district. At so early an hour as half-past four in the evening, before the men had come to assume their nightly guard at the house of Mr Francis William Burke, where the arms were kept, this house was occupied by four fellows armed, who suddenly entered and possessed themselves of it; it being then occupied only by his daughter and a Mr A. Burke, from near Borrisoleigh. Almost immediately after, Mr Burke, on his return from Clonmel, came up, at a short distance from the village, with a party of thirteen men armed, and one unarmed, who appeared as a prisoner, and whom, they said, they had taken up for sheep-stealing, and were then conveying down to the guard. This ruse de guerre had its effect. Burke rode a short way alongside of them, when the whole party suddenly rushed forward from him, and entered his house, which they proceeded to rummage for arms. Mr Burke, desperate and idle as the attempt by a single unarmed man was, strove to force his way in, when one fellow ealled out to shoot the rascal; and another told him, if it was not for the good-will they had for him, they would put him to death. One of them, however, did snap a blunderbuss at him. They succeeded in carrying off five military carbines, a double-barrelled fowling-piece, a case of pistols, and twenty ball cartridges. 17. NAPOLEON'S WILL.-The following is an extract from the last will and testament of Napoleon Buonaparte, disposing of sums of money, which he claims as his property, to those friends and servants who had followed him in his exile, or been faithful to him in his different changes of fortune. Besides this testament, which was printed, and circulated privately in Paris, in the shape of a small pamphlet, the Ex-Emperor left a kind of political will, which speaks of graver matters, and disposes of an almost imperial fortune of forty millions of francs, (about L.1,666,700,) to particular classes, and for political purposes. Buonaparte does not conceal how this treasure was acquired. As Emperor he enjoyed a civil list of twenty-four millions a-year; and out of this, by living within his income, he saved ten millions every year for the four years preceding his marriage. After his return from Russia, or during the Russian expedition, he ordered all those savings to be lent to the public service. This loan he reclaims, and disposes of in the will just mentioned. With regard to the authenticity of the present document, little or no doubt can be entertained, as it has been admitted to be genuine by the Count de Las Casas, in the latter part of his "Journal of a residence in Saint Helena." "This day, April 14, 1821, at Longwood, in the island of St Helena. This is my testament, or act of my last will:— I leave to the Comte de Montholon 2,000,000 francs, as a proof of my satisfaction for the attention he has paid |