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tall houses, or rather plastered and pillared palaces meet the eye, where formerly there were trees; but the laying out of the enclosure as pleasure ground is a very great improvement. This also is a work of the Tories, in which I understand his Grace of Wellington took no small interest and pleasure.

But notwithstanding all these salubrious openings, and the parks, and squares, and garden enclosures which are very pretty to walk in, they are still

town, and town expensiveness, and elaborateness, and pomp, and show are in them and about them. It is the curse of London that you cannot get out of it into the real country without making a long journey. It is very possible to get into gardens, and under the shade of trees, but not to the clear breezy atmosphere, and the clear grass and leaves, and the simplicity of the country. Is it not John Milton who singeth thus :—

"As one who long in populous city pent,
Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,
Forth issuing on a summer's morn to breathe
Among the pleasant villages and farms
Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delight;
The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine,
Or dairy; each rural sight, each rural sound.
If chance, with nymph-like step fair virgin pass,
What pleasing seemed, for her, now pleases more;
She most, and in her look sums all delight."

Now these things are not to be obtained about London. You may travel your six or seven miles from the postoffice in any way you will, and instead of villages and farms, or what is a million of times worse, long-long rows of shabby genteel houses, with pieces of waste ground about, intended to be built upon, only that times grew bad, and checked ere its prime, the growing pimple on the "wen." Instead of the smell of grain, or grass, or cows, there is around London a uniform stench of brickfields. The burning of bricks is a most hateful suburban smell. They annoy the air" more than the sewers, and as to the virgin with "nymph-like step"-O rara avis in (his) terris-say rather old lady, stealing along for exercise, with a footman walking behind, or young smirking waiting woman, who has studied the fitting of her clothes and the dressing of her hair, and flirtation (if no worse) from her youth upward. But enough of this. I hate to do things by halves; and as it is impossible to have the country in London, I have a mind, if I stay here, to go live in some of the tall old houses in the heart of the city, where there is still some of the regularity and quaintness of the olden time, and when the longing for rural sights and sounds becomes insupportable and irresistible, betake myself to a hundred miles off at the least-why not three hundred, to

the county of Wicklow at once, and leave mountains of sugar loaves, such as one sees in the city warehouses, for the Sugar-loaf Mountain.

As yet I have got lodgings no-where but take mine ease at mine inn. I detest the business of taking-the thing ought to be done by one's servant, and as I have no such appendage at present, I must engage in the hateful office of finding out a settled abode for myself, or do without it. It seems to me that I have a morbid acuteness of sight or smell, or hearing, or all the senses together, in a "concatenation accordingly" which enables me to tell by the time the door of a house with "apartments to let" indicated thereupon, is opened two and twenty inches, whether it be possible to live there or not. But this readiness of discovery, instead of being of any use, is the very thing which makes the torment, for one must tell what one has knocked at the door for, and then walk in, and look, and ask questions, and give trouble, when, in nineteen cases out of twenty, the determination is fixed, before the threshold is crossed, not upon any account, to live in that house. In nineteen cases out of twenty, as I have said, when the door opens, either it is by a flaunting young woman, or a dirty old woman, or you hear the mistress on the second landing place, scolding some one in a loud sharp voice, or you meet a man

with moustaches coming out, or you smell the smoke of last night's, cigars, or see a pail with dirty water, and a broom in the passage (we do not say "hall" in these parts) or two children, with dirty pinafores, are quarrelling or knocking pieces of bread and butter about, at the foot of the stairs. In any or all of these cases, a man of the least sense or experience, will take up his resolution at once, to avoid the house, as though a pestilence were therein, but he cannot say that he has done so, without being or appearing to be rude, and therefore he must suffer,

you

On the other hand, where the appearance of things pleases the judicious seeker, it is ten to one but he meets with some disappointment which disconcerts and annoys him. You find the door opened by a good-looking, quiet-looking, distinctly- speaking servant, and you are shewn into a parlour of the most admirable neatness, where find an old lady with a benevolent face, and nicely-plaited cap-a big family bible lies on the table, and upon it the old lady's spectacles. This remarkably decent-looking person is not alone-a young girl, apparently about seventeen, her grand-daughter doubtless, with beautiful features, and an expression of most delightful mildness, is sitting at the far-end of the table at work. She just raises her soft blue eyes at your entrance, and then lets them fall again, continuing to pursue her task, as if in gentle unconscious ness that any stranger was present. "I will certainly take these lodgings" you say to yourself, but presently the old lady informs you with a quiet precision which you perceive at once to be absolutely unalterable, that she can only give you a very small bed-room at the very top of the house, or that you can never dine at home, or that she always shuts up her house at eleven o'clock exactly, and never allows the key of the street door out of her own bed room after that hour. Then you are forced to express your regret, and to go away, taking another glance at the charming grand-daughter as you are going out, and when you do get into the street again, and for the whole of the day afterwards, or perhaps two or three, you do nothing but blame yourself exceedingly, for not submitting to all the restrictions and privations proposed to you, for the sake of dwelling

in the house with such a very decentlooking elderly gentlewoman, and such a lovely innocent-looking young girl But you are ashamed to go back.

Now these things which I have described, are but a small part of the miseries of lodgings-taking the packing of trunks, the bother of conveying lug gage, the fear that you have forgotten, or lost something, the discovery that there are people who rock upon their chairs over your head, or of vermin walking in the inside of your nice clean bed curtains-these and a thousand things besides, with nobody to find fault with but yourself, are all very affrighting in their aspect, so I stay where I am-the wine is good, and the neighbourhood is good, and sometimes after a social glass with a sensible friend, I begin to glide into the princi ples of the fat and contented, and to adopt the doctrine, that every thing is good, if we could only persuade ourselves to think so, This is a state of mind fit to go to sleep upon so good night.

The ablest and honestest men with whom I have conversed here upon political subjects, have gloomy forebodings of the future. The perfidy of the Whigs, and the phrenzy of the nation, coming together, have produced changes which render it now impossi ble to combine as we did under the old constitution, stability of government with the constant operation of popular influence. The Whigs themselves as well as the Tories, indeed the whole thinking part of the nation, see plainly that we must go back into some of our old methods for the blending of political inflences in the House of Commons, or we must go forward into more extensive and palpable revolution, The discontent with the present state of things is too strong and too generally diffused throughout the nation to suffer that state to continue, and yet the nation is under the snug and su perintending guidance of that reformed Parliament from which frantic dema gogues, or cunning traitors promised that every public blessing should flow, and the mass believed them and have been deceived.

The political state of Great Britain has indeed received a tremendous shock, which seems to have wrenched every thing out of its right place. The ignorance in public men, which

seven years ago was the object of almost universal contempt and laughter, is now, in these enlightened times, more influential than wisdom. How often have we sat and laughed together at the obtrusive folly of the blundering booby Hume, when he was the but and bore of the House as member for Montrose. That same person, as ignorant as ever, and even more offensively presumptuous, now sits in Parliament as the representative of the the metropolitan county of England. This fact alone is sufficient to show that there is something very rotten in the State. As he has no territorial interest in the county, it must be in consideration of his character as a public man that he is chosen; and what is that character? He is a public scoffer at the very mention of religious influence in politics. He is a man palpably without the slightest elevation of sentiment, or comprehensiveness of mind upon any question whatever. Like a huxter or slopseller, he imagines that in national affairs, whatever is lowest in price is cheapest, and all his industry, such as it is, goes upon that false principle. Hume could no more understand or feel a speech of Edmund Burke's (although he too was an advocate of economy) than he could fly-he has no more conception of the distinction between discipline and tyranny, than a coach-horse has of the difference between type printing and calligraphy. I mention this man's position merely as one of the most glaring instances and proofs that the times are out of joint; but such instances are sufficiently abundant, and there is no lack of evidence that good sense and good feeling have been horribly trampled upon, by a heartless, revolutionizing philosophy, which, pretending to have found out principles more true and useful than those of religion and morality, feels no

shame in wickedness, and no check in
the contemplation of probable destruc-
tion of established institutions. The
Whigs, who used to protest so mo-
destly that every thing which was
wrong in public matters, was in conse-
quence of not adopting their sugges
tions, have been completely exposed
by the trial of the experiment. They
have had the government in their hands
for two years and a quarter, and have
utterly failed. This the Radicals ad-
mit; but say they, with marvellous
hardihood, it is because the Whigs have
not carried their innovations and their
attacks upon settled influences and
established rights far enough—that is,
they allow that so far as their system
has been proceeded with, nothing has
been reaped from it but disappointment
and harm; and yet the only way to
obtain political good is to persevere with
the changing and destroying principles
of that system to a much greater extent.
How largely must these people calcu-
late on the prejudices or the credulity
of those whom they expect to influence.
The essence of the Radical creed, so
far as it has yet been developed, seems
to be that all religious and political in-
stitutions now existing should be des-
troyed. What they mean to have done
afterwards, is yet to be taught to the
world, perhaps to be considered by
themselves, but doubtless they are so
well convinced of their own remark-
able superiority, that they have per-
fect confidence in their ability to take
the place of managers and directors,
as soon as the established influences are
completely vanquished and put down.
If they would take any lesson from ex-
perience, they might easily see how
much easier it is to point out what is
defective, than to establish what is bet-
ter in its place. To adopt the reverse
of wrong, for right, is, as Cope says, a
mistake, and a very fatal one too.

"For what to shun will no great knowledge need;
But what to follow is a task indeed."

The solemn impertinence of the dogmatisers in what is called the science of politics, is almost intolerably disgusting. You shall meet now-a-days, scores of ashy coloured, lanky looking, young men, and ugly spinsters of a certain age, who lay you down what they call "principles," as plenty as blackberries, and deduce therefrom, with the most

VOL. I.

complacent calmness, that the express commands of the revealed law of God, and the suggestions of the kindliest and most benevolent feelings of our nature are altogether wrong. If, like Sampson, you allow yourself to be "vanquished by a peal of words," these people will be sure to bear you down, for they are inexhaustible in quantity of

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argumentation. If you suggest that, with all deference to their ingenuity, their conclusions must be wrong, because they are at variance with true religion and sound morality, they grin horribly a ghastly smile at your "prejudices," and remind you that their argument is not affected by these assumptions," and then follows some hint about the enlightenment of the present times, and the errors which have been fallen into through ignorance of true political science. I never met one of these philosophers who was not in his or her own person hateful and hated by all who had the pain of their acquaintance, Without an exception I have found them tyrannical, and for the most part, dishonest and sensual. That they should be the two last, is no wonder, seeing that their conscience acknowledges not the restraints which mark out what we consider duties, but the first is a strange practical illustration liberty" of their philosophical

of the 66 dogmata.

All the solemn prate of these people about "principles" and " axioms," is mere rubbish. There is no real political science but HISTORY-no guide for that which concerns the general affairs of men, but EXPERIENCE. Making allowance for different situations, and different circumstances, men probably will be, something like what they have been, but to lay down general rules and positive laws, as those by which the important interests of a community are and must be governed, and from which certain results must be produced, is to do that which is totally inapplica ble to the nature of the thing thus dealt with. Men are too uncertain and capricious, and impart too much of their own character to all matters, the conduct of which depends upon their will, to allow of any uniform rules being justly predicated with regard to what they will and must do. We can only say what they ought to do, and we can only settle that, with reference to the Divine law. The most general rule that can be accurately applied to men, as governing their actions, is, that they will follow what appears to them to be their own interest. But this settles almost nothing; for different desires, passions, hopes, pursuits, capacities, tastes, fashions, not only cause various views of what is their own interest in different individuals, but even in

the same individuals at different times. Laws and institutions should be adapted to the general character and disposition of the people as well as to their degree of information. In commercial affairs the same rules which work well among the cautious Scotch, would be dangerous in England, where the people are liable to "panie," and ruinous in Ireland where they are headlong in speculation, and not very heedful of consequences. Instead then of laying down general axioms, and saying that such and such policy must be upon the most enlightened principles" the best, let us judge by experience of what has made the nation prosper, and on the other hand of what has made its prosperity decline. If, for the sake of "enlightened principles," statesmen neglect these plain methods of judging what is right, they are worse than idiots, and yet this is precisely what is done by Whigs, and "political science" mongers. Yes, these men whose wisdom is the wisdom of the Edinburgh Review, not of observation and experience, have been allowed too long to philosophize the country into distress and difficulty, but the time seems to be at length coming, when the people will endure this quackery no longer, and will insist on being governed, at least in matters of trade and currency, aecording to what practice has shewn to be beneficial, and not according to theories which have never produced their promised results.

I have just been reading the new number of the Quarterly Review. I was not a Review-reader during Gifford's time, but I have diligently read the Quarterly for the last five years, and it seems to me that taking it for all in all the present number is the best I have seen. The vigorous hand which reviews old Shirley is I suppose Southey's-it is an admirable critique whoever may be the author. How deep too the interest of the paper on the life and labours of Felix Neff, and how laughably demolishing the irony on the poems and affectation of Mr. Alfred Tennyson. I had seen somewhere before the the anecdote about Alderman Faulkener, at the end of that article, but it is well told, and the story is worth telling well. Poor Madame d' Arblay! The pith of that review is merely in establishing that the good old lady is, and was at the time of her

first publication, ten years older than she "let on" to be, as we say in Ireland. This, one would suppose, a strange sort of criticism for the Quarterly Review, but it is precisely the thing that was wanting, and is, in its way, a capital hit. The books of that odious man-woman Miss Martineau, get a sharp dressing, and she well deserves it, clever a writer as she must undoubtedly be admitted to be. One cannot but loathe, from a woman, the inculcation of principles which trample upon the benevolent impulses of our nature, and the examination of political dogmas regarding population, which in scientific or pretended scientific verbiage, insult all decent feeling, as well as good principles. The political articles of the number are as good as knowledge, vigour, and acuteness can make them, and you must read them carefully. How admirably Louis Philippe's character is dispatched in the following paragraph. The Review is defending the French emigrants of some forty years ago, from the libellous imputations which Lord John Russell has cast upon their memory, and thus winds up :

"We may also admit that some of the emigrants did not bear the return of power, so well as the pressure of adversity. One of them, at least, we think we could name, who appears to us in a far more venerable light, when teaching the alphabet in Switzerland, or tilling a farm in America, than when restored to his rank and honours -meanly hoarding an overgrown income-cajoling a helpless old man for his inheritance-despoiling an innocent child of his birth-right-or trumpeting to a sneering world the frailty of a sister!"

I had almost forgotten to tell that I went the other day to take a look at the "Reformed" House. It is even in appearance, much changed for the worse. Do you remember the evening that we walked down to Palace Yard, and as we passed the members' entrance to the Commons we saw Canning, and Tiereny, and Mackintosh, and Brougham, and Peel, all walk in within the few minutes we stopped there? The first three are gone to their graves, and the last two have lost the confidence of their respective parties. But what I wanted to tell you was, that I was impeded at the same door the other

evening by three members, odd looking people, that I had never seen before, each of them with his purse out, clubbing the silver to pay the hackneycoachman who had brought them down. I hope that the affairs of the nation lost nothing by the delay in ascertaining the particulars of each member's share, and procuring the "tottle," as Joseph Hume saith, for the Jarvey's remuneration.

You know that the appearance of the House of Commons was rather slovenly. The honourable members had a careless, undress aspect, but still the group looked like an assembly of the "Gentlemen of England, who live at home in ease." Not so now. Most of them, (at least the new men) are hard, anxious-looking people, such as you would suppose might have spent the most part of their lives in a dark hardware shop, wrapping up locks, and nails, and pincers, and other articles of cold iron, in stiff brown paper, and tying up the same with string, on a hard knot. Among these Cobbett is favourably distinguished by his head of pure white, his smooth ruddy face, and capacious white waistcoat. His colleague for Oldham is grunt and grim, with a method of talking horribly uncouth and provincial, but he seems very much in earnest about matters that he understands, such as the working of poor people in factories, and the wretchedness of their remuneration. I suppose it is from ignorance that he is a radical, for he seems to be humane. Cobbett you well know is the most prodigious old rogue in the universe, and one of the ablest. He has made some excellent hits in the House, but he can be very tiresome, and frequently he is so.

The eye, in wandering over the House, discerns fewer young men, and fewer old. It rests neither upon youthful faces and flowing locks, nor upon the fine old gentlemanly heads of quiet estated folks, well to do in the world, ready to take a part in Road Committees, and averse from plunging into political strife. Reform turns out these respectable gentlemen to make way for more active canvassers-more industrious flatterers of the ten-pound voters, or their wives. The new men now in the House are such as one sees at a parish vestry; middle-aged, straighthaired, darksome men, or sandy-haired chuffy fellows, with a bustling air and

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