merit negatively. You shine as a beacon upon your solitary rock. The pamphlet edition of your letter, if it have one, should be mottoed from the schoolboys' sport,- When I say hold fast, let go; and when I say let go, hold fast.' The Spirit of Reform replies, I will, my lord; and young Liberty shall not slip, or be torn, from my grasp, till I have nursed her to maturity.'

When once the possession of the suffrage is general, and its exercise free, it will be desirable that Reform clubs should cease; and I doubt not but that they will cease, whatever may have become, meanwhile, of those of the Conservatives. The nation will then be itself the one great Reform Association, and the Tories, dwindled in numbers and importance by the continued failure of their natural aliment, will only be in the position of a squad of refractory members, easily kept in order. The rapidity with which that consummation advances will be materially affected by the great measure of municipal reform now in progress. Your lordship's exertions have not been wanting to infuse into that measure as much as possible of the old corrupt and poisonous leaven of aristocracy; nor will you be wanting to the last effort of Oligarchy, when the time is ripe for it, the combination of the worst portion of all parties against the popular cause. The attempt, no doubt, will be made to form a government out of such materials as yourself, Peel and Wellington, and the more aristocratic Whigs. A strong government you will fancy yourselves; a slight interruption you may give to the movement of that mighty wheel which you dream of turning back; and then, the more majestic and resistless, from the feeble pressure and the momentary check, will be its continuous and accelerated revolution.

Rightly has your lordship enumerated not only your principles,' but also your education, birth, position in society, and prejudices,' as amongst the elements of your claim to the confidence of the Conservatives. In the following passage from your letter the operation of these influences is very evident. 'I do not deny that the present is a period at which great interests are at stake. I do not deny that the Reform Bill itself, necessary as I believe that measure to have been, and called for by the deliberate opinion of the country, may have had the effect of stimulating the desire of political change, and of exciting in men's minds an overweening anxiety for alterations in our institutions, and an unreasonable expectation of advantages to be derived therefrom. I am far from denying that to correct such exaggerated expectations, to reason away such overstrained desires, nay, even to expose the sophistries of ignorant or mischievous quack doctors in politics, who impose upon the ill-informed, by persuading them that the benefit to be derived must be commensurate with the strength of the dose administered, may become the duty of those whom Providence has placed in a station to give them the means of forming a more dispassionate judgment, and the influence to add weight

to that judgment on the minds of others.' How far your lord-" ship's advocacy of the pecuniary interests of the Church may have been rewarded by supernal light on the ways of Providence, it is not for me to divine; but common observation has not noted it as any part of the Providential plan to designate by station' those whose judgment ought to have weight with their fellow-creatures. The New Testament tells a very different tale with reference to religion; and so does history in regard to politics. Persons of your order, my lord, are the least likely to form a dispassionate judgment upon questions, some of which involve the extent of their own privileges and their prospects of emolument and power. Quack doctors' have found as much support in the ranks of the aristocracy as in those of the multitude. Nor is it always a symptom of ignorance or source of mischief to expect that the benefit should be commensurate with the strength of the dose.' In the reform of abuse, in the curtailment of irresponsible power, the proportion does obtain. Indeed, it is only the strong dose that is effective in such cases. Had only a third of the boroughs which appeared in Schedule A been inserted, the Reform Bill would never have accomplished a hundredth part of the good which it has already realized. Your metaphor savours of quackery; and it is obviously defective. Your apprehension of strong doses may have prejudiced you against expectations' which are not exaggerated,' and 'desires' which are not overstrained.' What to you presents itself as an evil result of the Reform Bill, to other minds appears one of its happiest consequences. It has stimulated the desire of political change. And when the origin of our institutions in a comparatively barbarous age, and the length of time during which they have been corrupted by being worked for party purposes, are considered, together with the immense advances made by the people in wealth and intelligence, who can doubt that change had become absolutely necessary? Moreover, if there be any truth in the doctrine of human progression, which is, in fact, the doctrine of a Divine Providence, change in the forms and institutions of society must be always needful, until they have arrived at such perfection as to accommodate themselves to all further advances in knowledge and civilization. Ours have not yet manifested any such character of excellence and expansiveness. They are still, in too many respects, only shackles forged by the past for the future, which must either yield or break; and which, until they do, will be productive of suffering and discontent, and act as impediments to the improvement of society. A philosophic statesman would rejoice in the desires and expectations which herald the coming of a better social organization. Foolishly called destructive, they are the manifestations of a creative power at work in the political and moral world; the power of that Providence which, operating by laws throughout the whole extent of its dominion, has made progressive

improvement the law of social humanity. But, although a smart
and ready debater, a good House of Commons' man for the
times that are gone, your lordship is not a philosophic states-
man, nor ever will be. Sir T. D. Hesketh has written to decline
your advice on the part of the Lancashire Conservative clubbists;
as a Reform associator, and one of the public whom you have
favoured with your admonitions, I cordially concur in that portion
of the baronet's reply, and remain, my Lord, &c. &c.
July 1, 1835.

W. J. Fox.

6

SKETCHES OF DOMESTIC LIFE.

No. 5. THE SENTIMENTAL.

COME here, Maria,' said a lively brunette, addressing a little plain orderly person who was examining the contents of a bookcase, you have looked at those books a hundred times before, and I can assure you I have made no new additions to them. I want you here at this window.'

'Well, here I am,' said Maria, looking into the street. Really, rooms for me might be furnished with a skylight, for never by any chance do I go to the window.'

Then let me tell you that in consequence you lose a great deal of what I call bird's-eye observation. I am going to tell you about a neighbour of mine. How is it that you never quiz your neighbours? You may be sure that they quiz you.'

'So let them.'

'I do not recollect ever hearing you say anything against anybody. Now that must be all prudence or hypocrisy.'

I assure you it is not either.'

'I told you what your friend Mrs. Treacle said of you the other day. Ah! I see you are piqued at the mere recollection.

There

is a little malice dilating the pupil of your eye,-a little revenge tingling in your cheek. Now I am satisfied. I cannot bear your over-good people. Now, if you will but swear and stamp a little, I'll love you for life.'

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My dear Pauline,' said Maria, after she had indulged her laughter, when compelled to see the wrong side of human nature I sigh, when forced to feel that a friend can be unjust, a relation unkind, I am hurt; but I do not long surrender myself to sadness from either causes.'

'Because you despise the causes; because, with all your seeming humbleness, you have the pride which was reproved in Plato; you trample upon the pride of the world through a greater pride. There must be some retaliating principle to keep you at the equilibrium you preserve. Apropos, the homeopathy system is no new discovery in malice, whatever it may be in medicine: minute doses of spite have long proved particularly effective, if

well followed up; but I have not patience for such a process; whenever I give moral arsenic or prussic acid, it is in decidedly deadly doses.'

You have a most incorrigible tongue, Pauline. I wish every one knew how pure that issue keeps your heart; yet I fear it will be fatal to you. The matter-of-fact people take you at your word, are half disposed to go to a magistrate, swear that you put them in fear of their lives, and have you bound over to keep the peace.'

It was now Pauline's turn to laugh, which, though a very graceful creature, she did most riotously. I fancy,' she resumed, something of this sort must be the case with Elliot, our magnificent iron-worker, when he rushes along the heights of poetry, shaking his axe at social iniquity, and bringing the hot brandingiron of his indignation to bear upon it. Yet would I answer with this little head of mine, that the lion, who so shakes the forest with his roar, is in the homestead a very lamb, around whose neck children may hang, wreathing the flowers they resemble.'

The strong expression incident to such minds,' said Maria, is moral evaporation; it cools the hot brain it quits, and fires the cool brain it meets. Such minds are mighty agents appointed by Providence to carry on the work of human progression; they stir into motion the sluggish multitude, which, wanting them, would remain a stagnant mass. But we have strangely wandered from my object in coming to the window.'

'Truly,' cried Pauline, I might almost say,' like Juliet, "I have forgot why I did call you back."'

And truly I can say, like Romeo,

"Let me stand here till you remember it."'

'Aye,' exclaimed Pauline, finding in the poet's words an echo of her feelings,

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I shall forget, to have thee still stand there,
Remembering how I love thy company."

But do you see that pale woman opposite, peering over the parlour blinds, looking like Death waiting for doomsday?'

I see a very sad-looking sad-coloured person,' said Maria. The poor thing must be in bad health, perhaps in affliction. What is the matter with her?'

She is the wreck of a Sentimental: her history will afford you matter on which to moralize. When a girl, could she have chosen her position in life, she would have preferred being a pining princess to anything else in the creation; next to that a duke's daughter, dying of a consumption, fair as a lily, and, of course, as fragile. Now, mark the perversity of fate: she was, on the contrary, a little plump person, scarcely four feet high, with a florid complexion, and her father-what do you think her

father was? Oh, that there should be such things in the world! Her father was-A BUTCHER!

6

All her sorrow over this circumstance neither reduced Miss Bullock's bulk nor blushes; and the first serious indisposition into which she succeeded in throwing herself was on the occasion of her father's marriage with a worthy woman, who became his second wife soon after Selina Bullock had completed her seventeenth year. She attributed the fits and fever from which she suffered to the sound of the marrow-bones and cleavers, with which characteristic music the newly married pair were duly honoured; but I cannot but believe that what she considered her father's fatuity, in making such a woman "bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh,' was the real thorn in Selina's side.

6

Hitherto she had suffered from few annoyances but such as she created for herself, which were not half so efficacious as those which were created for her by another. Such a salutary love of self is implanted in human nature that we never voluntarily give unto ourselves any very serious hurt.

'Mrs. Bullock was an honest homely woman, with as much coarse common sense as her daughter-in-law had fastidious refinement; this sense was a hard rough-flavoured fruit, a sort of wall-fruit, cased in a sturdy cover, which, when cracked, afforded a kernel difficult of digestion.

"What a fool your father has been," said the bride one day, addressing Miss Bullock, "to have let you be brought up in all this here idleness, which makes you go moping about all day, with more megrims in your head than he has meat in his shop."

Selina drew forth her smelling bottle: this attack upon her nerves was made near dinner time, and, unfortunately for her sentimental character, she felt an appetite, and no disposition to postpone its gratification, or she would certainly have retired to her room, wept over her uncongenial destiny, and perhaps penned some stanzas under the title of " Delicate Distress." As it was, she swallowed her sufferings and her soup in silence; while her sire, between the pauses of a very arduous mastication, regaled his helpmate with the history of his morning occupations in Smithfield market, to which she listened with lively interest, and which she rewarded with many a hearty laugh, many an incidental remark or exclamation.

This was the tenour of their life: to the obscure and toiling portion of society one day is like another; as in the same way, in a different field of action, one day is like another to the votary of fashion and pleasure. The sweet spirit of variety is present to none but the moral and intellectual worker, who, with one purpose, has a thousand prospects; who, with one source of light, has a thousand beaming tints.

Selina, continually disgusted or offended by the manners, habits, and expressions of her parents, adopted a system of silence,