same time to make small experiments as to whether something might not be abstracted, in the bustle, from the pockets of that gentleman or his companions. Triumphantly the procession marched into Lower Fleecington. As it was passing the Rector's garden, the whole of the pupils with Cavendish conspicuous among them-who were ranged along the wall, got up with blue ribbons in their button-holes, giving one long concentrated hiss in answer to the cheering. It was rather unlucky for Cavendish, this expression of feeling; for as he stood on the edge of the wall with his hand up to his mouth, to assist his hissing, a dead cat, picked up by the way, artfully directed by some vigorous arm right across the young gentleman's face, drove him into certain prickly specimens of floriculture in the inside of the garden :—the wall was immediately clear, and the procession gave a tremendous shout of victory. They met with no other outward opposition whatever; although we may be certain there was a deal of quiet determination concealed under the clean white aprons of the respectable tradesmen, who stood at their doors to see the cavalcade go by. Tom, marching with Sniggers at the head of their host, felt his face grow strangely red and his heart beat strangely fast when they passed the old Mill-house; but he held up his nose as high as he could, and carried his small flag in a defiant way, and tried to feel a fine fellow and a patriot-but in vain. There was a scene going on in the little room, which it was perhaps as well for Tom that he did not see. There was old Brancrust standing stiff with indignation, his hands dived deep in his drab-small pockets, his grey eyes fixed and glancing through his spectacles. Then there was the tall gaunt figure of the Indian, standing upright, with his hands crossed behind him, and staring at Tom with his stern, sharp, tiger-shooting gaze, full of bad omen to the unlucky patriot. By the side of this figure of wrath was poor Ada-gentle little Ada, with whom I hope my readers are, by this time, as much in love as Tom himself! Let us beg, however, that none of them will go over to Lower Fleecington to find her out, for she is at present Mrs. but hold! I am running away, and anticipating, and doing all that is bad in a story-teller. I will go back. Well then, there was pretty little Ada, not daring to look at her very very naughty Tom, witness of his humiliation, but faithful still; and at every fresh muttering of her uncle's, raising a little hand and laying it on his coat, to check him. By her side were the ringlets, and ribbons, and face of Miss Amelia Dovecote (the countenance, this time, nearly as long as the bonnet-strings), who was busily occupied in trying to do three things at once, viz.,-to cheer up her friend, to pacify her friend's father and uncle, and to look at the procession. Still, however, the spectacled eyes were fixed on Tom, still however the hands were dived fiercely into the deep pockets-still the stern look remained unsoftened on the Indian's forehead, still the sentences dangerous to eyes, and life, and limbs, gurgled out of his mouth. "Well, what do you think of that?" demanded Mr. Brancrust, turning short round towards the Indian, as soon as Tom had fairly passed out of sight. "Think! Oh, Ada here had better look out for another sweetheart -that's all!" replied Mr. Scampton, with cruel jocularity. "Yes, I think he's done it now," mused Mr. Brancrust: "his vote for their side is pretty sure after this-he could n't help it!" "And he doesn't intend, sir! But I'm sure my little niece does n't care a straw about him now-such a fool as he is, making an ass of himself in the streets like that-do you, Ada?" And the Indian moved to put his arm round that young lady's waist; but she turned pettishly away, and whispered something to her bosom friend, whereupon they both left the room. "Well," said Miss Dovecote, when they were both in the garden of the Mill-house, "it's an unfortunate thing that Mr. Thomas Suffrage can't be kept away from these universal-suffraging people! But of course, dear, it can't be helped now unless you are going to be sensible, and think no more about him-that's what I should do-nasty disagreeable thing!" "Amelia!" “Well, well, dear-then if you will go on with this foolish love of yours, we've only got our scheme to depend on now, you know because if Tom does not really give his vote, your father and uncle too will forgive his "Cat and Trumpet" doings, and everything else—I'm sure!" "Oh dear, no! I'm frightened to try it—it's all over, I'm sure— oh, silly silly Tom!" cried Ada, despondingly, and let her head fall on her friend's shoulder. "What, love, have you lost your resolution so soon?" exclaimed Miss Dovecote-perhaps unwilling to lose the fun of carrying their plot, whatever it might be, into execution. "Come, Ada, cheer up; put on your bonnet, and we'll walk round the shrubbery and talk about it." rose; "Oh, I sometimes wish I had never seen Tom!" said Ada, as she " and yet-" "Ah! what a sad thing it is to have a sensitive heart-I know how you feel, exactly!" said the gentle Amelia, sighing pathetically. Poor sympathiser!-her heart had been broken three times already! (To be concluded in our next.) LORD BROUGHAM. Among all the literary celebrities of the day, it would be difficult to point to a name more renowned than that of Henry Lord Brougham and Vaux. It may be asked why we have so long omitted to notice him. We reply that even now we despair of doing justice to a career so momentous, talents so varied, a list of works so voluminous, as those of the noble lord and so we have postponed our task, from fear of our incompetency to perform one so laborious and so difficult. Our readers, however, are aware that we have not professed to give copious biographies, or minute criticisms, of the authors whose names have adorned our pages: we are producing SKETCHES only, and the finish and accuracy of a laboured picture must not be looked for in them. The outlines of a life; a list of the works, with the dates of their appearance, and a slight running commentary on their subjects, merits, or defects, are all that we attempt. So far, therefore, as we perform this restricted task well or ill, and no further, are we amenable to praise or censure. Yet, even within the limits to which we confine ourselves, it is no easy matter to trace the life and works of one who from the age of sixteen to seventy-five has been before the world as an author; whose history is bound up with, and forms part of, that of his country; whose fame as an orator is unsurpassed, perhaps unequalled, among his contemporaries; whose career as a statesman has been no less remarkable, though more open to question; who has done more than any man living to reform several gross abuses affecting society, and above all to promote the education of the people; and who has added to all his earnestness, his learning, and his ambition, a degree of eccentricity remarkable even in one of a class celebrated for it (for few men of great talents have been exempt from it), and an apparent political vacillation which has made him at once the most remarkable, and the least trusted, of living statesmen. Henry Brougham was born at Edinburgh, on the 19th of September, 1779 but he is not a Scotchman, though one of the "north countrie," being the eldest son of Henry Brougham, Esq., of Scales Hall, Cumberland, and Brougham Hall, Westmoreland. He was, in some respect, connected with literature by birth: for his mother was a niece of the celebrated Scotch historian, Robertson. He was educated at the High School, Edinburgh; and little as such men as he generally owe to their early schoollife-for they become great, irrespective of their teaching, and often in spite of it-yet we cannot but trace much of Lord Brougham's subsequent bias of mind to his training in this Scotch academy. For example, at the age of sixteen, we find him contributing a paper on Physics and the High Mathematics, to the Transactions of the Edinburgh Royal Society. What young gentleman of Eton, Harrow, Winchester, or Rugby-those well-bred academies of Latin verses and Greek themes-ever enlightened the world on such a subject? How many of them know anything about low arithmetic, far less High Mathematics? In the year 1800, being then just twenty-one years of age, Henry Brougham was called to the Scotch bar. Two years afterwards, in conjunction with Jeffrey and Sydney Smith, he founded the Edinburgh Review. Who would guess that this extraordinary periodical-confessedly the most able one of our own day, and which took nearly the same high position at its very outset was started by three young men, the eldest of whom was scarcely five-and-twenty years of age? But what men they were! Jeffrey, the keenest critic and one of the most powerful writers in the language; Sydney Smith, the wit, the scholar, the most perfect master of the art of ridicule, and, withal, the most correct and finished of literary models; Henry Brougham, the man of science and the classic, the most eloquent and the most sarcastic of reviewers. The contributions, to the Edinburgh Review, of Lord Jeffrey, of Sydney Smith, of Sir James Macintosh, and of Thomas Babington Macaulay, have been published in separate and collected forms: those of Lord Brougham have not yet been so given to the world. Many of the most remarkable papers which have appeared in it undoubtedly emanated from his pen; and he has continued a contributor to its pages down to a very recent period, if not to the very time at which we are writing. But we shall not, in this sketch, notice such unrecognised works-especially as his lordship's avowed ones are sufficiently numerous and voluminous to occupy all our time and space. It is too late to cri- In 1803 he published, in Edinburgh, his first complete and separate literary production, called An Enquiry into the Colonial Policy of the European Powers-a work in two octavo volumes. ticise such a book, fifty-one years after its appearance. Disraeli termed "obsolete politics;" for in no department has reform been more extensively carried out, though in none does more yet remain to be amended, than in our colonial policy, during the last half-century. Our former system lost us the United Colonies of North America: our present one (though infinitely better and more conciliating to our depen YY dencies) has scarcely repressed rebellion in Canada, disaffection in the West Indies, and a growing dislike of arbitrary home-interference in Australia and South Africa. We have much to do yet, to place our colonial policy on a sound and just basis, honourable alike to the mother country and her possessions in all corners of the globe, and calculated to secure the affection and support of the latter without detriment to the power and influence of Great Britain. It is a delicate and a difficult task, and we see not the men who are to perform it. Perhaps no nobler, and certainly no more beneficial, career is open to aspiring statesmen than that. which the supervision and reformation of our whole system of Colonial Government offers: yet how few attempt to grasp, or even to deal with, the subject, because the rewards of success would be less brilliant and famous than are to be reaped in the home and foreign departments of Government. It is a question whether we shall retain Canada, even for a few years; it is equally doubtful whether Australia will remain ours so soon as she has strength to be independent of us: but the questions would never have arisen, had our colonial policy been based on the broad principles of common sense and common justice-had we kept in view the welfare of the colonies themselves, instead of treating them as conquered provinces, places for the banishment of criminals, the promotion of troublesome claimants for Government rewards, the banks of posts and pensions wherewith to repay services utterly unconnected with the colonies, and which the rewarded were sent to govern or to administer justice in, with the apparently essential requirements of utter ignorance of all the wants and resources of their "adopted" countries. We have been led into a longer digression than we intended, on a subject which has always occupied much of our attention, and on which we have thought much and felt deeply. But it is not irrelevant to the matter before us, which is Lord Brougham's first work. We have said that it is too late in 1854 to criticise his remarks on England's colonial policy in 1803; but those who wish to know acccurately what our policy then was, and to compare it with what it now is, will find full information in this work, together with the vigorous exposition of its defects which might be expected from such a man as the author. How much is it to be regretted that the first subject which engaged Lord Brougham's pen never seemed to have again attracted his attention! Among all the twenty or thirty subsequently published works of this author, besides about the same number of his collected speeches, we find not one which refers to this most important and interesting topic. In 1806 Mr. Brougham was called to the English bar, by the Society of Lincoln's Inn; and he then removed altogether to London. The success of Brougham at the English bar has become proverbial. He was not |