a faint plea of a Dentist, and one or two other pretences no less transparent and ingenious. To none of these would I listen : whereupon, seeing that there was no evasion to be managed,-I was favoured with the real business which brought her :-for the thousandth time, plied with compliments on my generosity, and assurances (perfectly superfluous to one already aware of the fact) that "I was the last man in Lancashire, who could, would, or should, trample on the fallen." Something was added, by way of giving the Pilgrimage a poetical turn; but my lame Boy laughed, and by this time, I was ready to speak to the point.

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Madam," said I, (and every reader of Johnson will acknowledge the rebuking force of a "Madam," rightly applied,) “That ill-placed Pity may produce results as mischievous as those of open Immorality, History, unfortunately, affords us too many examples. To be sorry for an old gentleman burnt out,' is one thing to be sorry for the man, who secure in the selfishness of Insurance, does not care whether every one else's house be burnt, is another.-Shall we ever forget the year 30 ?"

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Sir," was the affronted answer, "I cannot guess to what you refer. Eighteen years ago."

"As to our ages, Miss Le Grand, we will not refer to them; the subject being obviously displeasing. But I was thinking of the sarsnet Personages, and the linsey-woolsey Persons, who thought they were making themselves finer in proportion as they aped sarsnet-how they, then, were afflicted by the said plight of the Wandering Kings whom Fortune threw on Albion's hospitable shores.' No words were, then, opprobrious enough for Louis Philippe-no wickedness so fatally beyond the pale of forgiveness as his. He was sitting in the rightful Sovereign's seathe was pandaring to the vile passions of the people-he was snatching at a crown which neither God nor Man had entitled him to wear. There was something so low-lived in his whole proceedings and Charles the Tenth was such a gentleman !—and the Duchess such an admirable woman-a martyr, nothing less. And who but was inflamed by the brilliant and heroic spirit of the vivacious Duchess de Berri!-so lately the life, soul, and splendour of the French Court, and at that moment of sympathy doomed to wander forlorn in a brown stuff gown,—

Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough briar ;

Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire!

And to hide behind the backs of ovens till baked, and to endure all manner of perils and agonies for the sake of the good cause of Right Divine' and Loyalty! Why we are neither of us old, Miss Le Grand!" (this I threw in by way of sweetener) "yet we recollect all this: and how Sir Walter Scott sympathised, and Tory heads were bowed in legitimate sorrow and the Carlists tried to make the Usurper ridiculous, by proving his likeness to a Pear. And, recollecting this, and being aware, moreover, that you belong to a congregation that lays great stress upon a direct apportionment of rewards and punishments-permit me to ask you, on what reasonable grounds, are you disposed to tender to these fugitives the homage of your Pity? If you were just, then; Nemesis is just, now; and you had better not interfere with the Ladysince like other ladies she is apt to be touchy when meddled with."

My question posed Miss Le Grand. To have represented to her that Monarchs were, after all, like other human beings, simply and severely responsible for the consequences of crime, craft, or cupidity, would but have irritated her; without convincing. But a long memory, used in favour of consistency, is-I have frequent occasions of perceiving a weapon more untoward than any other you can bring to bear. And the highly-connected gentlewoman of the Row, was pricked in her conscience, I was convinced. For in 1830, she had talked of wearing mourning for The Bourbons, and had been thrown into fever-fits by the black perfidy exercised against the wandering Princess, whose shame she declared, had been expressly contrived and provided for by the usurping Citizen King until her maiden virtue and her loyalty got into such strange confusions, that some one was obliged to point out the indelicacy of her suggestions only in time. Then my Imp of a Boy plied her with the assurance that, if too much fuss was made over these dishonoured exiles, we should have half Paris across the Channel in a week-to ravage: and what not. So betwixt laughter and intimidation, and that strange conviction of want of importance which, somehow or other, seizes every one in London from time to time,—the Aristocratic Lady of the Row, was fain to take express train two days after her arrival, and be whirled homewards with the miserable pretext that she had just run up to town "to see the fashions for March."

:

But all this time, some impatient liberal under years of discretion is crying" Out upon the old Trifler!" meaning me-angry at me, for wasting time, ink, and persuasion, on matters of trifling

consequence-for being run away with, in short, by "the fugitives of March, in place of dwelling on the progress of a Living People, as vastly more important than the board of discrowned Dollallollas and the lodging of punished Potentates. For this I have my answer, and, I think, my good reason ready. To look towards France with silence, proportionate to the depth of our interest, seems to me all that the best of us can do,―save, perchance, he have the self-complacency of Lord Besom, and fancy, that in three days he can set matters to rights as easily as he ousted the family of Cuckoo, who, not long ago, got into his nest, under pretext it was their own.

stream.

"What ceremony next?" is to be looked for what new fashions may " come up," in France, or for Europe, are matters quite beyond the scope of ordinary prophetic powers. Lady Hester Stanhope, we all recollect, predicted a wondrous future for M. de Lamartine: and the Rock of Cashel has fallen, which Elderly Ladies say, means an English Revolution. And those must know the French, better than most Frenchmen, who can gravely, and without the arrogance of quackery, decide as yet, down which channel the current of their social life shall " rage and swell;" ere it subside into a broad and deep and tranquil Promises have been made to the operatives of France, on the keeping of which, or otherwise, much will depend. Banners of Peace and Good-will have been hung out-which it is to be hoped will not be torn to tatters by a gust of wind or two. Let us forbear from comment for a while and those with whom the desire for Prophecying is strong, will do what is the wisest and the kindest, to wait and to prophecy after the fact—a mode of proceeding full of comfort. Meanwhile, though we are unable to prove our Prescience, there is no need that our Wisdom shall grow rusty for want of occupation. Never was there a time when integrity and caution were of such consequence: in speech no less than in action. The Swiss guides have been used by way of adding to the excitements of mountain climbing, to desire the Traveller to be silent at certain dangerous points, lest an Avalanche should be detached by the vibration caused by his idle talking. Even so, might the words of rash or dangerous persons, at the present period, be the means of dragging down Ruin, Confusion, and Dismay, upon Europe for half a century to come. The same reason as has here made me protest against bad examples being set by the Canonisation of Dollallolla, or the admission of the Citizen King to the honours of martyrdom, makes

me also enforce the virtue of discretion. Mockery-enthusiasm -political economy-or diplomatic counsel-any one of these awkwardly administered, might do irremediable harm. Meanwhile, good go with Liberty! And may those abroad and at home, who love it the most, show by their example and influence that they have not evoked it too soon, nor taken its name in vain, nor clad it in an attire totally unfit for work-days! And let Dollallollas and Citizen Kings be allowed undisturbed leisure, in which, as the Irish have it, they may "make their souls" and confess their follies-for the edification of generations yet unborn. Thus employed, it is not too late for even them to contribute their quota of usefulness and instruction to their fellow-dancers and Sovereigns -not to speak of the pit, boxes, and gallery—alias, the general Public.

March 4, 1848.

P.S. March 21st.

My "Old Woman" (there's no disgrace in a title, worn by the arbitress of Moliere's mirth; and, in later days, affixed to the Queen of Good Manners, Mrs. Trollope, by the Americans) Mrs. Bell-will have me add, a few lines on the newest fugitive French Fashion for March-to wit, the Marching order, imposed on every English workman, workwoman, and workchild-coachman, chairwoman and handmaiden-by the enfranchised French operatives. M. Louis Blanc, she insists, cannot wash such a transaction white; nor Socialism recognise a proceeding so utterly insensate and churlish. And, true to the spirit of "reprisals," (which I once called "Politics of the feminine gender,")—she would have such measures met by others corresponding in scale. It is not enough that Madlle. Caroline Monsieur Auriol and Monsieur and Madame Jullien, she persists, were compelled to sing "God save the

* A rather rash statement of facts; I submit:-but rash statements of events of the hour, were among the most popular fashions for March. A fortnight ago, English travellers on the Rhenish railways were solaced by the news, that The King of the Belgians had added one more to the list of fugitives; that London was in flames; and our Queen gone, no one knew whither-probably to Ireland! Ten days ago, the return and the reign of the Count de Paris was cried in the streets of London, under the very ears of the Ambassadors !-And everybody had three weeks since his own positive information of the resignation of Prince Metternich: just as if he was as transparent a person as Mlle. Jenny Lind, and, if he had resigned, would let everybody know it. When he was swept out". (a totally distinct matter) we heard all about it, fast enough.-And, here, while I am writing, comes a cry from Munich that Dollallolla has got back again: and another

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Queen,' on their bended knees, the night "the resuscitation of the precarious state of the Drama," mentioned in the Bunn and Butler papers, commenced at Drury Lane, by several spirited acts of Horsemanship-she would compel every Anatole and Palmyre among them, to troop home "on the spot."-Nor them alone; but also every one of the hair-dressers-the shoe-makers-the milliners the cooks-" Why are they," cries the patriotic woman, "to take the bread out of honest English mouths, when they won't any longer give their nasty brioche to the people they lured across the Channel, to show them how to groom a horse; and to make a a railway-cutting?"-'Tis useless to remind her, that this is merely the doing of "The People in a passion," (long ago so awfully sketched by Titmarsh in the frontispiece to his book) that, so far from the Government countenancing any such incivilities, it is pressing every stranger to spend as much in France, "just as if nothing had fallen, -"But," saith the angry old woman, "who governs the Government, then? And what use is political freedom to those, whose first practical act, is one of such sandblind bigotry?-and what reliance is there on professions of peace made by persons whose very first position," (as the dancing master M. Hyacinthe has it) "is not a turning out of Gallic toes merely - but a kicking out of English labour and capital?'

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I have tried every means of pacifying my wife-but in vain. She will set up, on the occasion, for a Lady Hester Stanhope the second; prophecy and not be comforted. Moreover she is driven into a cul-de-sac (I must take care that she does not insist on my expunging the French word) on being asked, whether she would not suffer the most, by having-ahem!-her curls subjected to the heavy hands of native talent ;-and her feet pinched in native shoes, the fashion of whose discomfort has never changed since the days of the old Corn-Law!" And who," I further inquire, can you trust to teach our two little girls, carriage if M. and Mme. Hyacinthe are dispatched home, to instruct M. Ledru Rollin and the Electors,- -or to teach M. Lamartine how he may keep his balance, on the dizzy thread, from whence he must address and aid in enchanting into order, a fervid people, whose desires have been exaggerated by craft and systematised falsehood, till they be now something of the wildest? It is hard-I own-to distinguish just now, betwixt accident, and essential; between inevitable cry (Dollalolla's own)-that they have snatched off her coronet and given back her house and garden to the Crown again!-Therefore, the singing and genuflexion of Monsieur and Madame Jullien, may be apocryphal.-P. B.