against them and their compound-against all Lord Blarneys, however resonant be their tales of Sir Tomkyn-against all specious Orators of the Skeggs family, charm they ever so wisely, by the hackneyed assertion, that "virtue is beyond all price."

Enough of BENJAMIN'S MESS au Romancier:-there is anotherpreparation of the same materials heavier to digest-au Financier; of which we are hardly suspicious enough. Who knows not the Leader whose Leading Article would come to a dead halt, but for "the instructive remarks" of the last "distinguished foreign traveller?" Who knows not the Orator, relying for his appearance of acuteness and universal wisdom on some feather-headed Frenchman, or some leaden-seated German, who has "come, seen, conquered" all the difficulties of all the problems of our social life-written two thick volumes instanter, describing his conquest; and, what is more cruel, published them. Admirable, valuable to be listened for by every true man who loves truth better than his own insular vanity, are all foreign criticisms of our imma. culate establishments, and our sublime social ordinances !—but let us take them as hints derived from impressions, not codes, according to which our Legislators are to rule us, and "our humble," as Landor hath it, "to hold up hands." The account of long residence, minute sympathy (use of language premised), power of independent observation-as opposed to glimpses through the spectacles of Mr. Millowner this, or the green glasses of Lord Landed Proprietor t'other!-required, ere conclusions can have any serious worth, seems to be oddly lost sight of by all parties. I have been in a position, sir, to watch how some of these oracles colleet their wisdom, living as I do in a manufacturing district, and having (more's the pity,) relations among your London authors; and I shall tell an instance,-one among many.

It is not a hundred summers ago, that a very clever and very honest French journalist, and politico-economist, came to England on a tour of inspection.-I mean my epithets seriously. Mr. Qhas a sharp neat pen, a clear arrangement of paragraphs, and considerable reasoning power. I happen to know, too, that he has proved his integrity by heavy sacrifices of fortune, a melancholy rarity in the annals of the French press. He came to us with some knowledge of English affairs: he had mastered the fact, usually a choke-pear with our neighbours, that your Lord Mayor of London is not next in greatness to our Sovereign. He spoke cuttingly of the exquisite ignorance of M. Alexandre Dumas,

who in his drama of "Kean," makes the Prince Regent transport the tragedian for a year to America! He was aware that English young Ladies had other names than Miss Kitty or Miss Jenny. He did not expect to find the "zions of our nobility," as Titmarsh calls them, going to bed in their buckskins and top-boots after a steeple-chace; nor boxing in the pit of the Opera. He had even reached that extreme of enlightenment, of admitting that the quiet English Sunday need not mean a Day of Mortification exclusively; but might also mean a Day of Rest to a people cleverer at leaning against posts than in dancing! Gravely: he was "well up" in our history, even the history of our " Wighs" and Tories: could name our leading men, and "discuss the same" to Lord Brougham in English, at least as fluent as his blithe Lordship's French! Well, Mr. Q- came over to examine our manufacturing districts—the morals and desires of their population. He had promised to write on these matters; to write serious facts, not Sibylline fictions. He applied in London for letters to some of our leading people; he was to see and to approfondir, Birmingham, Derby: Manchester (of course)-Glasgow, including a Loch or two, if possible-in a fortnight! The party to whom he addressed himself, Sir, respecting him sincerely, ventured to point out to him, that his time was rather short, and his field of inquiry very wide e; that Cotton has one life among its myrmidons, and Crockery another; that those who spin Flax, and those who spin Iron (for really to spinning do recent manufactures of iron amount) have different humours and habits; that the Lancashire Collier in "his posey jacket," and the Spitalfields Weaver, with his auriculas, hardly even speak a common language, have a common belief, save that money is a good thing, and all Rich people are born oppressors! 'Twas in vain :-these representations ran down, without penetrating his self-complacency. Talk of Mackintosh, or the inventor of Pannus Corium, as impervious! mere sieve, I say, to a Frenchman of conscience steeped in a system! Mr. Q- heard my relative with tolerable patience: that was all. But it is not all which I have to tell. The introductions were taken, and the philosophical tourist started behind the Iron Courser for Birmingham, there to begin his wondrous round. But betwixt the noise and dust and scents of his first day's tour of the manufactories, and the misery of his second day's deprivation of the bottle of St. Julien and dish of spinach for breakfast, the French traveller fell sick, and took to bed. There he lay till it was time

to return to London; and thence to Paris. Nevertheless, the "Letters on the Manufacturing Districts" were written all the same. And I have since seen grave appeals made in grave places to his lucubrations, as to a testimony worth heeding.

On what, then, should the ignorant minds be fed:-by whom should the intellects bare of everything, save a few rags of tawdry prejudices, be clad? Not, assuredly, on mouthings and pleasant periods, attudinisings and grimacings :-not by the Player-Kings and Player-Philanthropists, who bring the tinsel of Richardson's Show into Life's serious business. If it be too much to expect for the instant that state of high morality which shall preclude the political Rope-Dancer from finding any serious employment, he should not be trusted. Let us hope that the days when the trust-worth-less shall look for their audience in vain, are near. As for cutting off the People from such pleasures as brilliant oratory can afford their imagination and musical sense (their judgment convinced the while)-as for denying them such advocacy as the Poet, the Novelist, the Dramatist can tender, and reducing the statement of their wrongs and wishes to the tabulated form of a Work-House Board Report-far be that from me, sir. I would have Poetry and Taste mingle with every transaction of our lives; seeing that the one is merely the loftiest Truth, and the other the most refined Common Sense. Nay, more, to those who can recognise trumpery as trumpery while they love to see the Puppet jerk its limbs-to hear how far a given Orator can burlesque pathos and sincerity-to read whatever new monstrosity their pet writer may have described -the Political Charlatan is innoxious-he is entertaining: the licensed successor of The Fool of old feudal times. But the People have not leisure to be fantastic over their pleasures: they are not, thank Heaven! so blasé as to require monstrosity and exaggeration to move them. Let us, then, beware how we encourage them to fancy the Puppet a real man-to mistake the Talker's trashy "lengths of sound and fury" for an outpouring of real enthusiasm -to accept the Scrawler's melodramatic caricatures of their homes and workshops as simple and faithful representations. Romancer is, after all, smaller by a cubit than the Nec-romancer of elder times: like him, a Quack, but with powers seriously impaired, and pretensions far more grasping than his ancestors'. As for solemn Dulness parading his discoveries as infallible by the aid of that cosmopolitan jargon, which accepts every stranger

NO. XVIII.-VOL. III.

LL

The

as therefore a man of Science-his reign with the People cannot last long. The Merry Andrew may be too nimble for The Schoolmaster, so long as the world endureth ; but twenty years more of enlightenment on matters which the most concern their interests' will enable our friends (without need of any Dr. Dilworth) themselves to turn the Plodders back, bidding them "work their sum at home. But the dinner bell rings. Enough, then, of "BENJAMIN'S MESS," and all that it symbolises. Back to wholesome English roast and boiled!

THE CAULD HEARTH-STANE.

THE blithest sight a poor man sees
Is his ain ingle's couthie bleeze :
When the kind hearth is glowin' het,
And friends in social circle met.-
The blackest sight that meets his e'e,
When trampled down by poverty,
Wi' friends, and gear, and credit, gane,
Is the gruesome look o' the cauld hearth-stane.
When a' that lo'e us leave their stools,
And, ane by ane, mix wi' the mools;
When friendship's, love's, endearin' bands
Are riven frae our thowless hands;
When blackness sits in beauty's place,
And sorrow darkens heaven's face,

How sad to sit, in tears, alane,

Demented wi' grief, by the cauld hearth-stane.

When down the black and cheerless lum
The frozen winds o' winter come;

When through the crazy wa's the drift
O'er a' the house will swirl and sift.

Pity the wretch that's doomed to jouk
In rags beside the ingle-nook;

While hunger bites him to the bane,

And streeks him in death on the cauld hearth-stane.

Wi' nane his glazen een to close,

Or his sair writhen limbs compose;

Wi' nane to speer, and nane to care,

What wrought the deed o' murder there!

From Nature's heart and table turned,
Despised, degraded, shamed, and spurned-
Left like a dog in death, wi' nane

To lift up his corpse frae the cauld hearth-stane.

I've had my share o' warld's ill;

O' grief I've aften drank my fill;
Misfortune's, slander's, venom'd dart
Has broke my peace, has pierced my heart.
I've borne them all, and yet could bear,
Would Heaven but in mercy spare,

What e'en in thought maist turns my brain,
The lang-dreaded look o' the cauld hearth-stane.

DEAREST MRS. RUSTLER,

Take the account of our visit to Lady

fresh from

the tablets of recollection. Should I, indeed, postpone the narration, disturbing exteriorities might arise, which, by weakening impressions, might impair the functions of veracity. Ever let us be actuated by the motto,

Now is the present; Virgins, vineyards till,
And sweet advice by eager deeds fulfil.

Truth be our guide, and Charity, prompt to authenticate good by eradicating evil, our companion.

It was with feelings, as you will believe, of more than ordinary excitation, that P and myself presented ourselves at the portal of Lady Highborough's sumptuous mansion in Square. The strikingness of her character had made itself known to us through a thousand sources. In her youth, as her portrait, painted by Sir Richard Phillips, must have already acquainted you, she was surpassingly beautiful-and, as we all are (who knows better than myself?) an object of precious anxiety, and unmitigated temp.