-P. No: it doesn't.-R. Why not?-P. Because, by transferring the duties to the property, the circumstances of the owner are overlooked, and land being the most visible species of property, the notion of an agrarian right is set up, which is the real and ultimate purpose of the knaves who put forth such doctrine, in hopes that another class of persons will give currency to it. Supposing two men to have equal properties; one is a bachelor-the other has a numerous family: are their duties alike? If the duties depend on property only, where the properties are the same, the duties must be the same; and yet one may be better able to spare half his income than the other to spare anything-so that at last it results in this, that every man ought, of such things as he possesseth, to give alms to the poor according to his ability. I grieve that the doctrine of the apostles of the new light should have to be rectified by the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England; but there you will find it.

The Reformers.

L. The reformers ask why people should not be brought to think giving a vote for a bribe as disgraceful as giving a verdict for a bribe. M. The answer is very palpable. Because, by a verdict, you affect an individual, and by a vote the community. It is an obligation too general to be practical. Thousands of persons evade a tax who would be horrified at picking a pocket.-L. Then does not that show the necessity for voting by ballot?-M. The chief danger of the ballot is that you may do exactly the reverse of what you intend. It is very probable that it might afford secrecy enough to render bribery undiscoverable, and not enough to render it ineffectual. But supposing it to be successful as far as bribery is concerned, there is this strong objection to it, that it intercepts public opinion. Representatives could not know which of their constituents approved and which disapproved their conduct. It is, however, one of those measures the precise operation of which can never be known except by experiment.

S. In strictly popular elections, a candidate must pay either in money or lies. There are but these two ways. If you put down the influence of property, lying rises in proportion.

L. The people find out the best physician: why should they not find out the best politician?-S. I deny the assumption. Except so far as they are directed by imitation of their betters, they invariably choose a quack for their physician; and as surely, when they judge for themselves, they choose a quack for their representative.

In Louis XVIII.'s narrative of his escape from Paris, he notices with approbation the remark of his English servant, that there were neither democrats nor aristocrats in France; for every man who had but sixpence considered one who had a shilling an aristocrat. This is the ultimatum of all thorough-going reformers; and if they stop short of it they are outbid. Nil moderatum vulgo gratum. If there remains any extravagance greater than what has yet been proposed, he who proposes it is sure to get the upper hand. O'Connell fought off repeal as long as he could, knowing that there was no greater absurdity short of rebellion.

rebellion. Smith O'Brien did not stick at rebellion. O'Connell was outbid; and the master of fifty votes in Parliament sunk like a bubble -upon water.

Statesmanship.

S. The institution of laws does more to change nations than conquest does. Henry VII. made a more durable impression on England than Bonaparte did anywhere. If Louis-Philippe, instead of shuffling and trickery for the immediate aggrandisement of his family, had established a right of testamentary disposition of property, he might have laid the foundation of an aristocracy and a permanent dynasty.— L. However, it cannot be denied that Louis-Philippe is a great practical statesman, notwithstanding his ultimate ill-success.-S. If to provide for the future be an essential attribute of a great statesman, he is not one.-L. He never had the power.-S. What sort of argument is that? It is like saying a man is a great traveller, but because he has been in prison all his life he never could travel. To uphold the great maxims of policy instead of serving present interests is precisely the difference between a good politician and a bad one. If a minister acts upon sound principles of government, and follows them ably, he may be defeated by circumstances-still he is a statesman. But when he aims only to accommodate himself to the time, and overcome the difficulty of the moment, if he does not succeed he is contemptible. Success is the only test of such merit. Godere li beneficj del tempo is Machiavelli's badge of a shallow politician. It seems to have been Talleyrand's maxim, and to be * * * *'s.

N. The charge against this last personage is, that he came into power on the shoulders of the landed interest, meaning all the while to abolish the corn-laws.

S. I believe he had no such intention, nor any intention, except to humour the strongest party. The boroughs had been hitherto indifferent; and he shouted, "Protection for ever!' The boroughs showed their teeth: he was on their side. The pretence that he had changed his opinion from the experience of the last three years, was futile, seeing that his strongest declaration in favour of protection was not a year old. N. But the Reform Bill has made such compliances necessary.

S. If he had said that and nothing more, it would have been his best excuse. As to the fine things about becoming wiser, and having the moral courage to own it, they are trash. If a man undertakes office, and is years behind other men in finding out that which it is his duty to know, where is his competency?

S. The Duke of Wellington, in the later years of his life, has been in the unexampled position of a man having nothing to desire for himself-a man not so much unconnected with party as above it. But no man -no great man at least-has made more serious political blunders than the Duke of Wellington.

T. Was not England, then, well governed whilst he was in place? S. Not only well governed, but better, I fear, than it is ever likely to be again. I speak of party tactics. Coming into power at the head

of .

of the Tories, the tone of his administration was-'If you, my Lord, do not choose to execute your office according to my views, I will find a drill-serjeant who shall.' His principle was, that the public will appreciate the merits of good government, and will support it for their own sake. Now this is precisely the doctrine of the Liberals-a mistaken one, I believe, but in their hands consistent and intelligible. The aristocratical party was alienated by it; and that alienation, though not openly manifested, was increased by the emancipation of the Catholics. Then came the question of parliamentary reform; and the Duke, whilst he was outraging the Tories by his practical reforms, outraged the Radicals by his sweeping declaration against their theoretical reforms. The Tories seized the opportunity, and at the expense of their interest— almost of their existence-they joined with their old enemies to be revenged on their former friends. The Duke was left without a party. This was the bright day of the Radicals. The success of the tricolor in France, the recent accession of a king supposed to be imbued with old Whig predilections, together with an opponent who joined issue with them on the least tenable ground, formed a combination of circumstances such as no skill of their own could have brought about, and which led to a result probably as little expected by themselves as it was by their antagonists.

N. Is it to be inferred, then, that reform in Parliament could have been avoided?

S. Made to assume a very different aspect at least. If the Duke had said, 'I wish it to be understood that the King's government has no objection to reform-provided a satisfactory plan is proposed,' he would have had fifty-which might have been fought one against the other till he had the game in his own hands.

The volume concludes with the following Envoy-of which we consider it our duty to believe just as much as we do of the Introduction :

When I had written this I gave it to my father to read, hoping he would admire it, because I was sure he would not understand it. He returned it two days afterwards, saying that he thought I must now be sensible of the advantage of attending to his advice, since, in consequence of it, I had laid the foundation of a treasure such as nothing but the experience of age could supply. I told him I was delighted with his approbation; for I had invented the whole myself. From that time he showed a kind of awkward respect for me, which partook a little of fear. He continued nevertheless to use his most earnest endeavours to prevent my following any course by which I might have a chance of rising above the level of his own station in society; but he greatly improved my station in his will. He lived beyond ninety years of age, and his death was at last occasioned by an accident. I believe he had begun to think himself immortal-but he is dead; and I wish he may be as much at his ease in the next world as I am in this.

THESE PAGES I DEDICATE TO HIS MEMORY.

ART.

ART. VIII.—1. The Handbook for London. By Peter Cunningham, F.S.A. 2 vols., post 8vo.

2. A Survey of London, by John Stow: A New Edition, by John Thoms, Esq., F.S.A. 1842. 8vo.

THE

HE professed historians of London are not numerous; none between the monk Fitzstephen, who died in 1191, and Stow, the first painefull searcher into the reverend Antiquities concerning this famous Citie of London,' who in 1598 published his 'Survey of London,' the product of eight years' laborious search into ancient records, and the corner-stone on which Strype and others built their more extended accounts. Stow was deservedly popular, for he was essentially a man of facts and information. He wrote for the citizens of London, and his compact little volume, in the old quarto, not so tall as our post octavo, followed the division of his matter best suited to their use and entertainment. Under each of the city wards they would readily find a mass of local description interesting to those of the neighbourhood-relieved by such heads as Orders and Customes, Sports and Pastimes, Schooles and Houses of Learning, Towers and Castels, abounding in piquant quotations from the elder chroniclers, including Fitzstephen, and illustrative of civic habits in the olden time. The worthy house keeping of Thomas Woolsey, Lord Archbishop of Yorke, is detailed, as in Cavendish; and the chapter of the Temporall Government of this City, somewhat discoursed in briefe manner, is highly curious, for the elections, the liveries, the riding to Paules at the winter festivals, and the order of the Lord Maior, the Aldermen, and the Sheriffes for their meetings and wearing of their Apparell throughout the yere according as formerly it hath been used, when the real importance of those personages gave interest even to their costume and ceremonial. Such a work served its purpose at the time, as is proved by its going through three editions in twenty years--a quick sale as books went. second edition, increased with divers rare notes of antiquity' by himself, came out in 1603, 4to. Stow survived this edition but two years. From 1603 the simple text of Stow, a work pronounced by a late writer now perfectly invaluable,' was never reprinted until 1842, when Mr. Thoms carefully reproduced it, accompanied with a notice of the life and writings of John Stow, and such notes, illustrative of early manners, or explanatory of obsolete terms and usages, as might serve to bring Stow's vivid portraiture of London life at the close of the sixteenth and commencement of the seventeenth century distinctly beneath the eye, not merely of the antiquary but of the general reader. A third edition in 1618, and a fourth in 1633 in folio, contained numerous

The

additions

additions by the editors, Munday and Dyson, but no amendments. Had not poverty and ill-health cut short his useful labours, Stow himself would have left us an enlarged and improved edition of his work. As it is, the success was such as to check all similar attempts for a considerable period.

His

At length, in the reign of Queen Anne, Stow had become sufficiently antiquated, and changes and additions had also multiplied considerably. In the interval previous to Stow's re-production in 1720 by Strype, a work of humble form, but worth attention from being in its plan more like a Handbook, presented itself in two octavo volumes, closely printed, in 1708. The author of this, and of some other useful books, was one Edward Hatton, a surveyor to one of the Fire Offices in London.* The duty of his employment obliged him to survey houses in several parts of the city, and in the discharge thereof he took every opportunity of recording what appeared to him worthy of note. Being skilled in architecture, his descriptions of churches and public edifices have more technical accuracy than is usual in ordinary accounts. copies of monumental inscriptions are however taxed with inaccuracy. It would be well if official persons, who have access to records, or themselves furnish surveys, had that union of taste and discretion requisite to enable them to preserve and publish, without endangering private rights, particulars valuable to the antiquary and even the historian. Hatton employed his leisure in this species of occupation. The result is a book simply of utility. His New View of London in two Volumes' professes to be 'a more particular description thereof than has hitherto been known to be published of any city in the world.' Slender as is the reputation of Hatton, the vaunt of being most particular' cannot be gainsaid. 'Streets, squares, lanes, markets, courts, alleys, rows, rents, yards, and inns-alphabetically showing their names, derivation, quality of building, and inhabitants, dimensions, bearing, and distance from Charing Cross, St. Paul's, or the Tower.' Then the churches, companies, palaces, and noblemen's houses, colleges, libraries, &c., inns of court, free-schools, offices, hospitals, prisons, work houses, almshouses, charity-schools, fountains, bridges, conduits, ferries, docks, keys, wharfs, plying-places for boats and their distances from London Bridge, waters, lights, insurances of all kinds, bagnios, baths hot and cold.' And not the least singular is an alphabetical account of the public statues in and about the city, whether curiously done in brass,' or 'lively represented carved in fine white marble,' or such as Pompey the Great, his statue sprightly carved in stone, standing on a pedestal, in Lincolnsinn walks, given by Peter Hussey, Esq. Anno 1675. May 20.'

6

*Hawkins, Hist. of Musick,' iv. p. 504.

The