The

made clear that the people can obtain a Reform Bill for themselves. law is with them. Judges have decided in favour of the principle this Society adopts. The individual interests of the people will be promoted by supporting it. Shall it be said, therefore, that they claimed from the Government that which they had not the perseverance nor the consistency to obtain for themselves when clearly placed within their reach?"

LETTER FROM PARIS ON THE LAST HUNGARIAN VICTORY.

DEAR SIR,-I got news last night that another battle between the Hungarians and the Russians had taken place fifty miles S.E. of Waitzen, in which a Russian corps has been totally defeated by a Hungarian General, whose name has hitherto been unknown to Europe. This battle is not to be confounded with the great battle of Dembinsky and Gorgey. This will not be probably made known in England for a day or two, but it is inspiring the friends of freedom here with high hopes, and the conviction that Russia, though she has immense armies (but has a wretched commissariat), will be beaten; and it may be hoped, in that case, that Austria may be extinguished. I trust that this may be so, for the world has had enough of Metternich and his policy, and of the worn-out House of Hapsburgh, in whose name he worked his mischief. We are happy here to see that the Jews and money-lenders, through the Times (for the Times is but their instrument), are writhing under the fears induced by the new light that has been cast upon them and their machinations. The article in the Times of Thursday, I believe, shows that they are like a nest of young owls, who make a noise when the light is let in upon them.

The increase of knowledge in the people shows them that kings, princes, and warriors have been, to a large extent, but tools in the hands of the money-jobbers, by whom they have been enabled to plunder each other. They (the money-jobbers) have been the Fagins of worldly misery. It is they who have seduced kings and princes into the exercise of their evil passions, and kept the political world in a state of bad morals. The real interest of princes, as well as of their subjects, is in peace and constructiveness, and the effect of the many revolutions that are now in progress will be to teach them this through suffering. The loss of many crowns, and the uneasy sitting of many more, will lead princes to shrink, and will educate their peoples to see the necessity and form the disposition to watch and control their conduct. Men will see that the policy of princes involves the happiness of nations, and that the many must watch the manoeuvres of the few.

The good news from Hungary is confirmed by this morning's papers. And Garibaldi has had the advantage in a contest with the Lombard troops sent against him. Yours truly,

Paris, Sunday, July 29, 1849.

EDWARD SEARCH.

Upon this important point we received a letter by the previous post, which we regret to be obliged to defer till next week.-ED.

DR. ELLIOTSON'S REFLECTIONS ON THE HEAD

OF RUSH.

WHY was such a monster, such a monstrous organisation, made? But why is the whole world a scene of suffering and wickedness? Why are innocent babies tortured with endless varieties of disease? why are they agonised with the natural process of obtaining their teeth? Why do epidemic poisons devastate nations, the good and the bad equally? Why do agonising and fatal hereditary diseases attack the virtuous? Why do countless causes of misery assail the just and the unjust? There is little happiness which is not produced with the unhappiness of others, toiling and anxious; or which is not liable to be smashed unexpectedly. As to the miseries occasioned by ourselves, why are we not so made as to wish and be able to act better? Why have we not more intelligent and more virtuous brains? Why is mankind so organised and situated that ignorance, superstition, vice, and suffering, are the prevalent lot of humanity? Whatever the external show of happiness, we may find sorrow actual or impending almost everywhere, if we go behind the scenes and learn the particulars of every individual; or, if not, we have only to wait and we find it come. Not only while beholding the glitter and happy excitement of our parks and streets have we merely to turn our heads and see the famishing and diseased beggar, or visit the hospitals or the dirty alleys and back streets, and behold want and agonising and wasting disease: but, while we are enjoying the most glorious landscapes, the dwellings of the destitute and almost houseless are at hand, some victim of disease is never far off, and some suffering birds, fish, beast, or insects, in more or less abundance, are always discoverable.

For the innocent brutes suffer too. Look at the miseries of the toiling horse that docile and affectionate animal-cruelly forced to excessive labour for our advantage, or perhaps taken into bloody battle to be wounded and painfully killed. Look at the miseries of the myriads of animals which are every moment painfully put to death for our own nutriment. Truly, the whole creation travaileth and groaneth.' The insensible department of nature is no less exposed to injury and destruction. Plants perish from overcrowding, from lack of moisture and nourishment, and from the violence committed upon them by the animal department of nature, and by weather. The inanimate department is equally injured; mountains fall, countries are swallowed up; streams obstructed; shores worn away. In the vegetable and inanimate department there is no suffering, and all appears a magnificent circulation of changes but the same general lan's which disturb them reign throughout, and disturb the sentient department of nature just as though this part were also insensible. Good comes out of evil every moment. But the question presents itself, Why the evil at all? And next comes the greater question, Why is anything at all? For what end this strange and suffering spectacle of nature?

The head of Rush is no greater mystery than the rest of sentient nature. To give a shadow of a reason is impossible. The purpose of all this is past finding out. We must be content with beholding and submitting in silence, conscious of our own littleness and inability; and not foolishly

and presumptuously attempting an explanation. We must be satisfied that it could not be otherwise than it is, and this is my own sole consolation. But while we thus encourage a humble spirit, let us do all the good in our power.

From Rush's head we must learn charity. Let every man remember that, if he had such a charge of cunning, acquisitiveness, &c., &c., as Rush was burthened with in the possession of such massive organs, and a corresponding deficient charge of higher feeling and intellectual power, he would be a Rush. Let us detest such organisations as we detest the organisations called wolf, tiger, rattlesnake, scorpion, or vermin; and let us defend ourselves and others from them by all means which are absolutely necessary and as little cruel as possible. But let us pity the individual, for he did not make himself-no, not a hair of his head.-Zoist, No. 26, p. 119.

POPULAR FABLES: FOR LITTLE REASONERS.

BY ESOPUS MINOR.

I. The Wolf, the Fox, and the Dog.

THE Wolf had monopolised the Commons; and neither the Fox nor the Dog could get in. The Wolf was stronger than either. So they took counsel together in this wise. Said the Fox-'Let us bury our old quarrels, and join to get our common right! We will go together to the Wolf, and put a bold front on it. Then I will take the opportunity to get by; and so soon as I am in we can attack him on both sides, from within and from without, and then you will get in too. Is it not a capital plan? Now the Dog was too civil and well-behaved to annoy the Fox with any unpleasant reflections. He thought within himself— The Foxes are a highly honourable race; but on the present occasion there is no need to trust the most honourable among them. We may as well fight on both one side, as opposite to each other-one from within and one from without. So he said to the Fox-'My dear friend! we will go in together.' 'But,' replied the Fox, don't you see that if I get in you will be so much the nearer ?' 'Not exactly,' rejoined the other, 'for I shall still be out. We will go in together. A many dodges did the Fox try, then; but at last he was obliged to come to terms, and, side by side, the two attacked the Wolf, who, after a little growling, gave way; and the Fox and the Dog entered the Commons together.

What the Fox did there, even when the Dog was in with him,—how he formed a moderate alliance with the Wolf and tried to get the Dog out again,-is told, I believe, in some recent French work not yet translated.

II. The Pigs.

It didn't please the Pigs. And no wonder. For they were not only driven and kicked and otherwise abused and kept filthily dirty, but they were also almost starved, by a set of lazy, neglectful, dishonest swineherds, who had got their appointments from the Lord Knowswho, the

original master of the swine. And these rascally swineherds, instead of fattening the Pigs upon nice grains and wash from their own tables, gave them nothing but chaff and a nasty sort of gruel, sometimes a few bad potatoes; and sometimes they forgot them altogether. So at last a wise Pig told his fellows they had better see if they couldn't take care of themselves, instead of being so badly served. It was in the days of metempsychosis, or the progression of souls, when it was believed that pigs could become men if they tried, and men anything else. And in those days belief and practice sometimes went together: so metempsychosis was practised. But not by the Pigs, for they did not know how to set about it. They thought they had nothing to do but to scramble over their empty troughs and go grunting like mad round and round the biggest Pig among them, and straightway they would become men. They tried it very perseveringly for years, but to no purpose. Sometimes from sheer exhaustion they would stop; and then the swineherds (who, if they had little honesty, were cunning enough) would throw a spoonful of grains over the sty-side to any pig that seemed to be considering; and the smell of the grains curled up the swinish nostrils, and the charmed Pig fell asleep, and so slept for ever in a state of incurable bacon. And the others went on grunting in a circle as usual. For none of them knew that they must cease to be pigs before they could become men; that till the original piggishness was no more, what some of the pig-drovers called the 'new Adam' could not be put on.

And this is why they are Pigs to the present day.

III. The Two Thieves.

Two rogues were taken before a country justice, for an aggravated robbery. Upon one the booty was found, and he was forthwith condemned. The other, having been seen with him, they were also about to sentence, when he prayed to be set free: for, he said, he had nothing to do with the robbery. It was true the other thief had told him he was going into the house that was plundered, but he had not told him whether he should get in by the door or by the window; and though the thief said he would commit the theft, yet he had in reply counselled him not to do so if the owners might be frightened into quietly giving up their goods; and when he saw the thief breaking in, he did not think it was his business to cry out. So that really he had nothing at all to do with the matter. The justice, being an unusually wise man for the country, accepted the plea and dismissed him with a compliment on his ingenuity.

IV. The King of the Beasts, or the Lion and the Ox.

The Lion was the king of the Beasts. But the Lion, instead of defending, took to devouring his subjects. So they were driven to combine against him, and, having with some trouble overcome him, they immediately drew his teeth and cut off his claws and the end of his tail, so that he was incapable of further mischief. They then sate in council to consider how they should be governed in future. Some proposed that the Fox should be king, others proposed the Crocodile, some few that

they should have no king at all. But the majority pronounced in favour of the re-election of the Lion, because, if he had no power to serve them, he at least could do them no mischief. Then some of them got up a cheer for his re-election. And as the sound was dying away, an old sluggish Ox, who in his youth and bullhood had been one of the stoutest contenders against the Lion, and who had once pushed him so hard that he gored him till the blood came, and the Lion was fain to run off with his tail between his legs, roaring for very fear,this poor Ox, who from too rank pasture was grown diseased and corpulent, was heard wheezing out, in a vain attempt at a bellow- Hurrah! what a good thing it is to have a king that's of no use.' The argument was conclusive. So they proclaimed the Lion king again, and provided the 'Lion's share' as before for his maintenance.

TRANSLATORS'S CONCLUSION.

ON sending these Fables to the press, I was asked by the editor of the Reasoner to furnish something like a moral, or application, of each. An odd enough request! In the good old days of my Master's Master-Esop, folks were content with hearing the apologue without troubling their lives about the meaning. And for my own part, from my youth up, I never could apply myself to morals. The best, therefore, I can do will be to relate as nearly as possible how and when these Fables were first uttered: so an intelligent reader-or, it may be, two or more readers-may discover their drift. For the first, then. The Wolf, the Fox and the Dog was delivered on occasion of a commotion among the Spartan helots, who desired to become freemen. The better class of the tradesmen,' says Plutarch, 'long held off from the movement, and were indeed a considerable hindrance thereto, until at length the heavy imposts occasioned by Sparta's long and ruinous wars coming unpleasantly upon their shoulders,-that and other inducements persuaded them to propose at least an appearance of making common cause with their fellow helots. To that end they brought forward a measure of enfranchisement calculated to admit themselves and some very few of the lower order, promising that if the mechanics and others would support them they would show their gratitude to the last by agitating for their freedom also, when themselves should be represented in the senate.' The arguments they used are so precisely the arguments of the supporters of Mr. Hume's half measure of reform, that it is needless to repeat them here. Concerning The Pigs I am at a loss. If it refers to the same period of history as that of the foregoing Fable, it must be intended as a satire on the helots themselves. As translator only, I will not be held responsible for the severity of the stricture; though if the portrait be true, we may flatter ourselves on the vast difference between the Pigs of that day and the comparatively enlightened Patriots of our own time. The King of the Beasts was given to rebuke the inhabitants of the Cassiterides, or Tin Islands, who were wont to pride themselves on their limited monarchy as being superior to the republican freedom of Greece on the one hand, and to the despotism of Persia on the other. The last they held to be intolerable; and they preferred their own rule to the republican rule of Greece on the ground that their sovereign was 'really incapable, whether of good or harm.' I deemed the Fable worth presenting to the Reasoner, albeit at the same time I disclaim the remotest irreverence toward our own Sovereign, whose power of benevolence is unlimited, as any of the tradesmen to her Majesty can witness. The moral I would draw from the Fable is this :-Do not maintain any institution, especially if it be costly, for its mere negative qualities; but only on account of some proved utility. Of course I would except from the rule, the House of Peers and the Established Church. Of The Two Thieves I know nothing. But in an old wood-cut illustrating the original work the culprits are marvellous liknesses of Lord Palmerston and Odillon Barrot. It is Lord Palmerston who is pleading that he had nothing to do with the matter.' And that was why I gave the Fable.

Æ. M.