describes me as a laudator temporis acti, and consequently would persuade the world that I am, as regards muscular Christianity, on the retired list. To this I beg to answer, that I am ready to row, ride, swim, spar, or pitch a sledge with him to-morrow; and that I pledge myself, if he be the better man, to give him all the honour of his victory in a future page.

Your pleasant men are, besides, very rarely pedestrians. Horsemen and yachting-men are almost always companionable. The pursuit that exacts too much physical labour, is an enemy to that repose of mind so essential to agreeability. The strain on the tendons is felt on the intellect; and the fellow, weighted with hobnailed shoes and shrouded with a blue gauze veil, is not in the condition favourable to easy genial talk, and that light gossip that are so enjoyable. Mind that I distinguish the Mountaineer, the man of glaciers and crevasses, here, from the pleasant fellow who strolls with you after breakfast through the plantations, talking of everything, from the poet Tennyson to Piedmontese truffles. There is a certain business-like preoccupied air in your regular walker, that gives him a strong resemblance to the pennypostman. You see that he has a number of distinct places to visit, and that he is conning over in his mind his "addresses" as he goes.

Take all the pleasantest men of your acquaintance, and tell me frankly how few are there Mountaineers amongst them; and did you ever meet an Alpine Clubbist that you didn't wish at the top of the Righi ?

Is there not an intolerable sameness in all their talk? Is it not always the same story of the "steps cut with the hatchet," and of "the rope that was too short"? Have you not the brave bold guide and the bad stupid one as regularly as Hogarth's two apprentices; and are you not heartily sick-I amof "We were distinctly seen from

Chamouni, and could plainly hear the salute of guns with which they welcomed our appearance on the summit"?

I never read one of these descriptions without envying the inhabitants of Holland, and thinking what a blessing it must be to live where there are no Alps, and consequently no bores to climb them.

But there is another objection to this sort of fraternity. The great mass of men cannot afford to do anything extraordinary or uncommon without becoming positively insupportable. We all of us have some experiences of the creature who has been up the Nile, and talked sphinxes and pelicans till we wished him under the Great Pyramid. Your Alps walker is, however, a greater infliction again, for he insists on dashing his explorings with a touch of personal heroism. It was he who did or did not do something but for which the whole party would have been precipitated, or engulfed, or swept away, heaven knows how or where.

There is but one condition on which I could forgive these mountain-climbers-which is, that they would not come down again.

Next to these in order of utter uselessness are the people who go up in balloons, and who come down to tell us of the temperature, the air-currents, the shape of the clouds, and amount of atmospheric pressure in a region where nobody wants to go, nor has the slightest interest to hear about.

Is there any one, I ask, who couldn't write a balloon ascent just as amusing as those we read of every week in the papers?

You start with the account of all the cubic feet of gas employed in the inflation, and then you proceed to describe how all Kent or Surrey, or wherever it was, lay beneath you like a map, and "we could see the Thames meandering for miles like a silver thread." Then come clouds, and a smart shower of rain, and two loud claps, "louder than any thunder, made by the sudden col

lapse of the balloon as we gained the great altitude of" a hundred thousand miles, let us say. Of course the Queen's health is drunk here, and "my companion essayedwith not very remarkable success, I own-a verse of our national anthem."

Then you bob about for an hour and a half, realising the old nursery rhyme, "Here we go up, up, up," and at last you come down, down, but not downy, but into a tree; and the grapnel drags, and one jumps out, and the other is pitched after him; the balloon is secured by the country people, and all return to town, to go over the selfsame weary exploit some weeks later; the worthlessness of the whole being but

poorly concealed under the mockery of a scientific report, that might for every possible purpose have been as well composed at the "Star and Garter" as at a height of five thousand feet above the earth.

Modern medicine has a grand imaginative vein through it, and who knows but the time may come when an asthmatic patient will be sent up to respire above the clouds, or bronchitis will be treated by an atmospheric pressure of so much to the inch? Till then, however, these gentlemen's experiences have no interest for us; and when we hear of Mr Glaisher "in nubibus," we are tempted to cry out, like the man in the play, "Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère ?"

It would form a very strange and a very instructive subject of inquiry, to investigate how far the great law of compensations-that give-and-take principle which really seems the essential condition of all organised nature-enters into all the acts and events of our daily life; showing us not merely that there is no such thing in existence as unalloyed good or evil, but that for every benefit we receive a certain sacrifice is exacted; and that the good things of life are ticketed with their price, like the objects in a bazaar.

A proper understanding of this would take away a great deal of that discontent and grumbling one sees around us; and men would learn that within certain limits happiness was pretty equally distributed, and that even those who appear to have won the great prizes, have somehow or other paid for them more heavily than we wot of. What particularly led me to reflect on this matter was the state of excitement, amounting to irritation, that is now witnessed in certain parts of Southern Italy at the sudden in crease of all taxation. Hitherto, all that they have known of a

"United Italy" has been rosecoloured. New schemes of industry developed, railroad activity, public works, private enterprises, national festivals, royal receptions, crosses, pensions, and promotions, have all had their day; but at last has come the hour when the "whistle must be paid for. Το enable the State to be generous, it must be rich, and this is precisely the thing it is not. In the maintenance of a great army and a very costly fleet Italy has spent enormous sums, and is pretty much in the condition of a man who has laid out so much money in bars and padlocks, that there is nothing left inside the house to guard. The State, however, wants money, and having taken all the loose cash of the convents and church-lands, has at last to come down on the laity.

"This, then, is liberty!" cries the labouring man in the street. "Liberty means dear bread, dear beans, dear oil and wine and maccaroni. In the old days of bad government all these were cheap. worked five days a-week, and gave two others to the saints and my own pleasures, I had enough! This new Freedom, however, has put an end

If I only

to all this. To make this United Italy, it would seem that I must work more and eat less than heretofore." And this is perfectly true. I have not a word to say against Liberty. I only premise that it is a thing to be paid for. Occasionally it is well worth the money. As we deem it in England, and occasionally as America shows us, it is one of the veriest shams and humbugs that has ever misled humanity.

Now, the assertion is not perhaps pleasant to make or to listen to, but it is a fact, that corrupt governments are generally cheap ones -that is to say, that oppressive rulers are often disposed to conciliate their subjects by the diffusion of material benefits, while they grind them down by restrictive laws and tyrannical edicts. The

duchy of Modena, for instance, was more arbitrary in its sway-more insolently irresponsible in the exercise of its wayward rule-than any country of modern Europe, and yet no people ever paid less taxes than the Modenese.

How lightly were the Neapolitans taxed under the Bourbons! and so we might proceed upwards and show that for every concession to freedom there came a price, till we reached Tuscany, where enlightenment and civilisation stood certainly highest in the peninsula, and where, at the same time, taxation was heaviest, and men saw that liberty was just as much a luxury as plate-glass, or jewels, or champagne: that is to say, it was a charming thing if you could afford it, but was by no means a positive necessity; and, like all luxuries, it had only charms for those who had tasted of it, and felt its attractions.

Liberty has very fine things in her gift, it is true. Personal freedom, immunity from arrest without sufficient cause shown and legal authority invoked, free discussion, free speech, religious toleration, untrammelled education, -are no small boons; but there is not one

of them whose due appreciation does not exact either a certain amount of reflection, or of information; whereas the humblest and the most narrow-minded can comprehend the hardship of increased taxation, and there is no intelligence so limited but can take in the fact, that it is less pleasant to pay ten centimes than five.

Liberty, besides, was always represented to be as much a man's birthright as the air he breathed. Our reformers told us that we are only, in asking for it, demanding our own: how came it then that it was so costly? Why, if it were the inalienable possession of humanity, should it be paid for? This certainly is capable of explanation, but we are not to be surprised if the masses have not hit on the solution as readily as we might wish.

The organised pressure which we call Liberty requires policemen, and magistrates, and jails, and penitentiaries, and courts of law to punish libel and repress slander, not to speak of all the appliances to prevent religious freedom from degenerating into blasphemy, and free speech becoming a scandal and a shame; and these are all parts of a very costly machinery.

Irresponsible governments work cheap, just because they can dispense with all this mechanism. The Pacha who says, "Cut off his head," does not cost the State he serves one-fiftieth part of a ChiefJustice, before whom the culprit comes after five months' imprisonment, to be arraigned by an Attorney-General with four thousand ayear, and a corps of witnesses like an army. I don't say I prefer Ottoman justice to English; but if I want the latter, I must be content to pay for it. Now the Italians at this moment are in that crisis which all people must pass through, and they want all the benefits of good government and all the cheapness of the bad.

2 D 2

The misfortune is, there are nations that would positively prefer tyranny, oppression, and cruelty, if they only came accompanied by cheapness and an easily-provided existence, to all the benefits of the highest civilisation, if linked with a high tariff; just as the Irish peasant liked his old lawless, reckless, devilmay-care landlord, that sometimes took a shot at him, sometimes forgave him his rent, better than the modern agriculturist with his Scotch steward, who will neither overlook

arrears nor weeds, and who, if he is never cruel, is equally far from any impulsive generosity in his behalf.

Naples, like Ireland, is just in this state of awakement. They have each of them emerged from barbarism, but it was a barbarism so congenial and so cheap withal, that they'd almost rather have it back again, than all this newfangled Freedom, that makes bread so dear and saints' days so seldom.

What should we say if an order came forth from the Master of the Mint, or some such competent authority, "That all the copper coinage of the country should be submitted to a most searching test to ascertain its purity that pennypieces and halfpennies were no longer to pass current without a new certificate of their genuineness, while gold and silver were to circulate as usual-all warranty of their unadulterated value being deemed needless"?

I ask, would not the commonsense reading of such an edict be, that it was exceedingly absurd and ridiculous?

Would not men of ordinary intelligence say, "It is not of very great moment to me that I am now and then imposed on by a 'rap halfpenny:' I can sustain the loss with composure, and bear it without fretting; but if I constantly find a number of bad shillings in my change, and if occasionally I detect some spurious sovereigns in my purse, the affair is more serious, and I am certainly disposed to resent it"?

This is precisely what our Government is at this moment enacting in England with respect to CivilService employment. The men who are to fill all the inferior offices of the State are to be rigidly and

severely examined, while all those who succeed to the higher employments are to enter upon them untried, untested, and unproven. To be a Gauger, you must be a historian, a geographer, an arithmetician, and a naturalist. To be the Governor of a colony, you may be a "Cretin"! To convey a despatch across Europe, you must prove your efficiency in French and decimal fractions, and such other knowledge: to be the writer of that same despatch, no such test is asked of you. The bearer of the message is put through his parts of speech. The writer may-and very often does, too-revel in all the unrestrained freedom of bad gram

mar.

Perhaps you will say that the system is progressive, and that, these initial tests once submitted to, the man proves his fitness for the highest office. To this I simply say, When did you ever hear of a penny-piece growing into crown; or have you any experience of a farthing that became a sovereign? No; the whole system is based on this great principle, Take care of the pence, the pounds will take care of themselves; and certainly so they have done. This legislation is all theirs. It is they who have decreed it. They have declared aloud that shocking abuses are

abroad. The poor are hourly defrauded. "No one can tell the number of base penny-pieces that are in circulation. This must be looked to at once." It is thus the pounds have spoken, and God help the pennies! Gold and silver legislate for bronze and copper, and of course bronze and copper have nothing to say to it. Now, if I know anything about myself, I am not a Radical— not, perhaps, so much because these people have not occasionally a show of reason in what they ask, as from the dislike I have ever felt for their company. They are an overbearing, dogmatical, obtrusive class, loud of speech, coarse of manner, and insolent in bearing; but, without any Radicalism whatever, I would in all humility ask, Why keep all your tests for the coppers? Why not now and then analyse a sixpence? If I could screw up courage enough, I would add, Why not put a halfsovereign in the crucible? Surely it is of more moment that these be genuine than the others. Would not the nation have more patience for a penny-postman that missent a letter, than for a governor who lost a colony and yet it is for the pennypostman's education we are so vitally concerned; and the governor may be anything, only a shade above the requirements for Bedlam.

Have able and efficient public servants by all means; even in the lower walks of office take care that you are not served stupidly or ill. Let the penny-pieces be genuine copper; but, in heaven's name, don't ask them to be more, and do not submit them to the test applicable to bullion, while you let the same bullion go free unquestioned.

But this is not all. The pennies are not merely required to be good pennies, worth four farthings, but they are asked to be useful in various other ways foreign to their original intention: as ounce weights, letter-pressers, and heaven knows what besides; that is, the Tidewaiter is examined in acoustics, and

the War-Office clerk probed in comparative anatomy and numismatics. Like the Irishman's pig, you want him to go to Cork, and you turn his head to Fermoy.

In the name of all that is Chinese, what is this for? Why must a man bring to one pursuit in life forty acquirements that would adapt him for another? If you go to a dentist to relieve you from the pangs of a toothache, is your first inquiry whether he has ever operated for cataract, or how often he has tied the subclavian artery? And yet this is not all; for if the dentist, being a bungler, should smash your jaw, and then tell you it is a satisfaction to you to know that the man who makes his artificial teeth is thoroughly up in osteology, and a deep proficient in animal chemistry, he would be exactly carrying out the present system. Are we, I ask once more, to take all the gold and silver on trust, and only scrutinise the brass ?

What amount of shamefacedness could promulgate such a plan, is hard to conceive. I have heard from a Secretary of State, French so execrable that it would reject the veriest unpaid attaché. I have read despatches from similar hands that would have "plucked" an exciseman; and are these to enjoy high place and station and salary, and yet some poor-devil clerk go out a beggar and houseless because at the age of forty he cannot render Bonnycastle's Algebra, or "mention all the one-eyed men of distinction since the days of William Rufus." I implore most eagerly that there should be some test for the bullion. Let us have a Secretary for the Colonies put through his physical sciences. I'd like to examine the Senior Lord of the Admiralty on the best mode of "footing turf" in a wet bog; and with all his varied acquirements, I'd like to take the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the merits and demerits of the Bauchet system of horse - training. The "Pounds,"