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principle that I explain to myself the equanimity of some men and Premiers whom we have known.

This and the other Premier seems to take it with perfect coolness. And yet, I say, what a strange feeling, to find himself Chief Governor of England; girding on, upon his moderately-sized new soul, the old battleharness of an Oliver Cromwell, an Edward Longshanks, a William Conqueror. "I, then, am the Ablest of English attainable Men? This English People, which has spread itself over all lands and seas, and achieved such works in the ages,-which has done America, India, the Lancashire Cotton-trade, Bromwicham Iron-trade, Newton's Principia, Shakspeare's Dramas, and the British Constitution,-the apex of all its intelligences and mighty instincts and dumb longings: it is I? William Conqueror's big gifts, and Edward's and Elizabeth's; Oliver's lightning soul, noble as Sinai and the thunders of the Lord: these are mine, I begin to perceive,—to a certain extent. These heroisms have I,-though rather shy of exhibiting them. These; and something withal of the huge beaver-faculty of our Arkwrights, Brindleys; touches too of the phoenix-melodies and sunny heroisms of our Shakspeares, of our Singers, Sages and inspired Thinkers; all this is in me, I will hope,-though rather shy of exhibiting it on common occasions. The Pattern Englishman, raised by solemn acclamation upon the bucklers of the English People, and saluted with universal 'God save THEE!'-has now the honour to announce himself. After fifteen hundred years of constitutional study as to methods of raising on the bucklers, which is the operation of operations, the English People, surely pretty well skilled in it by this time, has raised-the remarkable individual now addressing you. The bestcombined sample of whatsoever divine qualities are in this big People, the consummate flower of all that they have done and been, the ultimate product of the Destinies, and English man of men, arrived at last in the

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fulness of time, is-who think you? Ye worlds, the Ithuriel javelin by which, with all these heroisms and accumulated energies old and new, the English People means to smite and pierce, is this poor tailor's-bodkin, hardly adequate to bore an eylet-hole, who now has the honour to"--Good Heavens, if it were not that men generally are very much of the canary-bird, here are reflections sufficient to annihilate any man, almost before starting!

But to us also it ought to be a very strange reflection! This, then, is the length we have brought it to, with our constitutioning, and ballot-boxing, and incessant talk and effort in every kind for so many centuries back; this? The golden flower of our grand alchemical projection, which has set the world in astonishment so long, and been the envy of surrounding nations, iswhat we here see. To be governed by his Lordship, and guided through the undiscovered paths of Time by this respectable degree of human faculty. With our utmost soul's travail we could discover, by the sublimest methods eulogised by all the world, no abler Englishman than this ?—

Really it should make us pause upon the said sublime methods, and ask ourselves very seriously, whether, notwithstanding the eulogy of all the world, they can be other than extremely astonishing methods, that require revisal and reconsideration very much indeed! For the kind of 'man' we get to govern us, all conclusions whatsoever centre there, and likewise all manner of issues flow infallibly therefrom. Ask well, who is your Chief Governor,' says one: 'for around him men like to him will infallibly gather, and by degrees all the world will be made in his image.' 'He who is himself a noble man, has a chance to know the nobleness of men; he who is not, has none. And as for the poor Public,-alas, is not the kind of "man" you set upon it the liveliest symbol of its and your veracity and victory

and blessedness, or unveracity and misery and cursedness; the general summation and practical outcome of all else whatsoever in the Public and in you?' —L. D.

P. III.

BLOCKHEAD IN OFFICE.

THE mischief that one blockhead, that every blockhead does, in a world so feracious, teeming with endlesss results as ours, no ciphering will sum up. The quack bootmaker is considerable; as corn-cutters can testify, and desperate men reduced to buckskin and list-shoes. But the quack priest, quack high-priest, the quack king! Why do not all just citizens rush, half-frantic, to stop him, as they would a conflagration? Surely a just citizen is admonished by God and his own Soul, by all silent and articulate voices of this Universe, to do what in him lies towards relief of this poor blockhead-quack, and of a world that groans under him. Run swiftly; relieve him, were it even by extinguishing him! For all things have grown so old, tinder-dry, combustible; and he is more ruinous than conflagration. Sweep him down, at least; keep him strictly within the hearth: he will then cease to be conflagration; he will then become useful, more or less, as culinary fire. Fire is the best of servants: but what a master! This poor blockhead too is born for uses: why elevating him to mastership, will you make a conflagration, a parish-curse or worldcurse of him ? -P. & P. II. 9.

REFORM.

'PITY,' exclaims Sauerteig once, 'that a nation cannot reform itself, as the English are now [1843] trying to do, by what their newspapers call "tremendous cheers!" alas, it cannot be done. Reform is not joyous but grievous; no single man can reform himself without stern suffering and stern working; how much less can a nation of men. The serpent sheds not his old skin without rusty disconsolateness; he is not happy but

miserable! In the Water-cure itself, do you not sit steeped for months; washed to the heart in elemental drenchings; and, like Job, are made to curse your day? Reforming of a nation is a terrible business! Thus too, Medea, when she made men young again, was wont (du Himmel!) to hew them in pieces with meat-axes; cast them into caldrons, and boil them for a length of time. How much handier could they but have done it by "tremendous cheers" alone!' -M. Dr. Francia.

HELPS TO GOOD GOVERNMENT.

EVERY man, and thou my present Reader canst do this: Be thyself a man abler to be governed; more reverencing the divine faculty of governing, more sacredly detesting the diabolical semblance of said faculty in self and others; so shalt thou, if not govern, yet actually according to thy strength assist in real governing And know always, and even lay to heart with a quite unusual solemnity, with a seriousness altogether of a religious nature, that as 'Human Stupidity' is verily the accursed parent of all this mischief, so Human Intelligence alone, to which and to which only its victory and blessedness appointed here below, will or can cure it. If we knew this as devoutly as we ought to do, the evil, and all other evils were curable;—alas, if we had from of old known this, as all men made in God's image ought to do, the evil never would have been! Perhaps few Nations have ever known it less than we, for a good while back, have done. Hence these sorrows. —L. D. P. III.

REFORM BEGINS AT HOME.

IT has often been said, and must often be said again, that all Reform except a moral one will prove unavailing. Political Reform, pressingly enough wanted, can indeed root out the weeds (gross, deep-fixed, lazy dockweeds, poisonous obscene hemlocks, ineffectual spurry in abundance); but it leaves the ground empty,-ready either for noble fruits, or for new worse tares! And how

else is a Moral Reform to be looked for but in this way, that more and more Good Men are, by a bountiful Providence, sent hither to disseminate Goodness; liberally to sow it, as in seeds shaken abroad by the living tree? For such, in all ages and places, is the nature of a Good Man; he is ever a mystic creative centre of Goodness: his influence if we consider it, is not to be measured; for his works do not die, but being of Eternity, are eternal; and in new transformation, and everwider diffusion, endure, living and life-giving. Thou who exclaimest over the horrors and baseness of the Time, and how Diogenes would now need two lanterns in daylight, think of this: over the Time thou hast no power; to redeem a World sunk in dishonesty has not been given thee: solely over one man therein thou hast a quite absolute uncontrollable power; him redeem, him make honest; it will be something, it will be much, and thy life and labour not in vain. -M. CornLaw Rhymes.

FROM WITHIN OUTWARD.

THE Spiritual, it is still often said, but is not now sufficiently considered, is the parent and first-cause of the Practical. The Spiritual everywhere originates the Practical, models it, makes it: so that the saddest external condition of affairs, among men, is but evidence of a still sadder internal one. For as thought is the life-fountain and motive-soul of action, so, in all regions of this human world, whatever outward thing offers itself to the eye, is merely the garment or body of a thing which already existed invisibly within; which, striving to give itself expression, has found, in the given circumstances, that it could and would express itself-so. This is everywhere true; and in these times when men's attention is directed outward rather, this deserves far more attention than it will receive. -L. D. P. VIII.