BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. NO. CCCCXXV. MARCH, 1851. VOL. LXIX. CONTENTS. THE DANGERS OF THE COUNTRY, 257 MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. PART VII., 282 LEGENDS OF THE MONASTIC ORDERS, AS REPRESENTED IN THE FINE ARTS, 305 LAVENGRO, 322 THE ARTS IN PORTUGAL, 338 SOUTHEY, 349 THE MINISTRY AND THE AGRICULTURAL INTEREST, 368 EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, 45 GEORGE STREET; AND 37 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON. _To whom all communications (post paid) must be addressed._ SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. NO. CCCCXXV. MARCH, 1851. VOL. LXIX. THE DANGERS OF THE COUNTRY. NO. II.--OUR INTERNAL DANGERS. "The apparent contradiction," says the _Edinburgh Review_, "between the vast amount of unrelieved misery in the country, and the vast amount of energetic benevolence now existing in this country, which strikes so many with despair, inspires us, on the contrary, with the most sanguine hopes; because, in that benevolence, we see ample means of remedying nearly all our social evils,--means heretofore impotent solely because misapplied. We agree with the Socialists in holding that the world can never have been intended to be, and will not long remain, what it is. It cannot be that the same intellect which has wrung from nature her most hidden secrets, which has triumphed over the most gigantic material obstructions, which has 'exhausted worlds and then imagined new;' which has discovered and described laws operating in regions of space separate from us by a distance so vast that human imagination cannot figure it and arithmetical language can hardly express it, should not, when fairly applied to social and administrative science, be competent to rectify our errors and to smoothe our path--unless, indeed, society take refuge in the dreary creed, which shall never be ours, that the problem before us is insoluble, and the wretchedness around us inherent and incurable."[1] [1] _Edinburgh Review_, January 1851, p. 23.