having governed the country is a distinction never to be effaced.

The younger men of office have none of these sustaining reflections. They borrow all their lustre from their place; and when the evil day of an adverse division arrives, they are the most helpless and pitiable of all creatures.

As Under-Secretaries, they are cognate numbers in the arithmetic of party. They get up their little statistics, and they come down to the House with a despatch-box, and they slam the doors at Whitehall in the face of the small clerks, and they accord audiences just like their chiefs. They assume the official face, the facies Hippocratica of office-the little smile of unbelief, or the cold stare of astonishment. In a word, they are as like the real thing as nickel is to Hall-marked silver.

Very dreadful is it for men like these to come down to the obscurities of private life, where there is neither official stationery nor Queen's messenger, and, worse than these, no Quarter-day. Very sad is it to descend to a station which can neither assume special means of knowledge, nor decline to give certain documents to the House. These things are not pleasant, for I verily believe that dogs in office are actually vain of their collars.

In the late cotton crisis in this country, it was

painfully proved that to subject men habituated to skilled labour-to the sort of employment which required nicety of touch and lightness of hand-to the coarse work of the daily labourer, was to unfit them materially, if not completely, for all their former occupations; so that by the self-same calamity that broke down the moral man, was the physical man reduced to a condition of social inferiority. Apply this reasoning to the case before us, and ask yourselves, What is to become of a class which, the moment their subsistence is withdrawn, are totally unfitted for every known occupation or employment?

It would be very painful to contemplate Lord Clarence Paget or Mr Layard picking even a figurative oakum, or breaking imaginary stones on the highroad.

The dignity of official life requires that public functionaries should not, in the hour of adversity, be driven to those occupations which should injure that delicacy of touch so essential to the men of office. We ought to take care that, in the language of Manchester, "the Hands" do not deteriorate.

I forbear to lay stress upon the grander independence, the higher tone of political dignity, that would result from the consciousness that Place was not an actual necessity of existence. I think I hear

the conscious pride of the man who says, “Sir, my vote to-day may very possibly displease those with whom it has been the pride and honour of my political life to serve. I may, it is more than likely, by the opinions I have submitted to the House, incur the blame of men whom I regard with equal veneration and affection. Nay, more, sir; it may happen that, by the independent course I have adopted in this measure, I may have unfitted myself for that confidential intercourse with my colleagues, so essential to the unity and strength of all government. If so, sir, I can only say that I retire into the obscurity of private life, with," &c. &c. &c. I almost fancy I hear the cheers that drown the concluding words, and make the peroration-as all perorations ought to be-inaudible.

What an alleviation to the evil day of a "turn-out" would be the certainty of falling back on one's twelve or fifteen shillings a-week! I speak figuratively, for I am comparing them with the mechanics. What a resource, I say, would it be in the dark hour of Opposition to know that a man need not go back to his legation or his penny-a-lining, become a nopaid secretary or an ill-paid scribe, and that when the doors of Downing Street closed against him, those of the Benefit Society opened!

What a zeal would it impart, too, to the society to

keep their own partisans in office, instead of having them as pensioners on the company! What an admirable agency for party might grow out of the institution! Why, the very share-list would be the barometer of national opinion; and one could see at a glance whether Whigs were "dull" or Tories "lively."

Last of all, if we had institutions like these, Gladstone could tax them; and I know of nothing so thoroughly English as to create an industry and then tax it. This is what we call "extending the area of our commercial relations," and it is always mentioned in a Queen's Speech.

It is needless to say that, were societies like these in operation, it would be no longer necessary, on the going out of an Administration, to make those indecent appointments to permament office we occasionally witness-grinding down under-secretaries into commissioners, and converting supernumerary clerks into consuls. 66 Go to your society," would say the First Lord, "and let us fervently hope you may not long be a burden on their resources."

IN RETIREMENT.

WHEN I had got back over the Alps after that brief glance of London life and manners of which I ventured a passing word in these pages, my first care was to seek out some quiet spot-a tranquil corner -wherein I might meditate over all I had so lately seen and heard, and, what was fully as important to me, bring my mind back to those routine ways of thought which constitute, at the same time, the labour and the happiness of my life. For, let me confess it to you, dear reader, you are far more the complement of my existence than I ever was, or could hope to be, of yours. I owe to you, and the share of attention and interest you bestow upon me, not alone the energy and the wish to please you, but an unceasing desire so to employ my faculties that I may keep the place in your esteem you have vouchsafed me, and as I grow in years grow more worthy of your favour.