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pondencies with the excluded family! what promptitude to overturn the work of their own hands, are displayed in the lives of the great men of that day! Since the revolution, the aristocracy have been the remora of civilization,-a feather-bed between the walls of despotism, and the battery of public opinion. A surplus wheel in the machinery of the state, they would long since have stopped the movements of government, if their subserviency did not adapt them to every impulse from the crown; while, by means of their representatives in the House of Commons, they modify the proceedings of that body. At the moment in which I write, the influence of the aristocracy, in defeating a liberal ministry, in making the corn laws an affair of their peculiar "order," in opposing a necessary retrenchment of corrupt expenditure, prove to demonstration the futility of the received theory. Should public opinion, however, triumph in the lower house, the aristocracy must submit to reform, or be crushed. An enlightened people, and an anti-national aristocracy, cannot long co-exist.*

* That there are many bright personal exceptions, makes nothing against the truth of the general conclusion. Genius and virtue are superior to contingent circumstance: and the Russels, the Hollands, and the Darnleys, are not to be placed in the common muster-roll of the class to which they belong. The vice, however, is in the system, and not in the individuals, and we daily feel its influence even on the liberal and enlightened; who, when called upon to decide between privilege and the people are too apt to have their judgments warped by the peculiarity of their position.

TEMPER.

THERE is a sort of fitful gayety very peculiar to the ill-tempered. I have known the most sullen and morose women light up with bursts of brilliant. vivacity, which to me, who was aware of the real state of the atmosphere, loaded as it was with thunder and storm, appeared very awful. It was like the precursive lightnings, which manifest to the eye the density and blackness of the coming desolation.

The secret, the charm, the spell, that "makes tomorrow cheerful as to-day," is the even, spring-like sunshine of the mind, which, though sometimes veiled by the vapour of a passing melancholy, is still seen, pure and bright, through the shadowy medium. This is worth all the explosions of hysterical gayety in the world. Between the sadness of sensibility and the gloom of morosity, what a difference! But the worst of it is, that in both instances, the morale goes for so little, and the physique for so much, that the drop or the drachm more or less, in the prescribed dose, makes the surly gay, and the gay sombre.

"There are individuals," says the unrivalled Madame de Staël (Mademoiselle de Launey), "whose good and bad humour are equally unbearable." This was applied to her royal mistress and patroness the Dutchess de Main; but it is applicable to half the fine ladies and spoiled children of fashion and fortune, all the world over. There was nothing I dreaded half so much as getting into high favour with Lady

, when she got into high spirits. Her

epilepsy of good humour was insupportable; such tyranny of kindness, such vociferation of gayety! Running up the great stairs of one day, I came against a friend, who was going down. "What are you flying from, in such haste?" he asked.

"From Lady's good humour," said I.

He told my mot, and I lost my friend. How often does indiscretion pass for ingratitude! Yet the indiscreet are never ungrateful, for they are uncalculating; and ingratitude, coming from insensibility, cannot act upon impulse. Strong impulses come of strong feelings; and strong feelings are the source of all that is great and good, not, alas! of all that is wise and so end my inferences.

IGNORANCE.

PYTHAGORAS, we are told, invented the term philosopher, or "lover of wisdom," because he could not conscientiously assume the appellation of "soph," or wise man ; and the greatest philosophers, and most knowing, have had the strongest conviction of the uncertainty of science; so that soph and sophism have become terms of contempt. Yet, how obstinate and stiff-necked is the bridling importance of genuine ignorance. How it looks conscious superiority over all! and gives out its oracular nonsense and trite dogmas, as if they were the dicta of divinc inspiration. "When I ope my lips, let no dog bark.'

The conceit of knowledge," says Montaigne, "is the plague of man." What, then, is it of women? A self-supposed, infallible woman, with her

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organic feebleness backing her ignorance, is to be feared and shunned a thousand times more than the wit, and the blue-stocking. I tremble in her presence; and, making my best courtesy, get out of her way as fast as I can. Besides, such women have all (God bless the mark!) a natural antipathy to me; and, without vanity, I may say, "pour cause.”

BEAUX OF OLD.

WHAT funny fellows the dandies of the beginning of the last century were! A fine man, then, was like Sir Harry Wildair-"the joy of the playhouse, the life of the park!" Think of one of the fine men of the present day being a joy any where, the life of any place!

or

No gentleman, then, walked out (when he did walk, for we find even Squire Western going to visit in a chair,) without a footman after him. Dependence and ostentation are the characteristics of semi-civilization! They are also infallible proofs of mediocrity in individuals, in all times and ages.

METHODISM AND MOLIERE.

"It is good to be merry and wise." It is difficult to be wise and not to be merry. A few years back, when, in Dublin, it was a rage to be "serious," some very foolish things took place, which, as they belong to the Cronique Scandaleuse, shall find no room here. It was then the fashion to give tea and tract-parties, to the exclusion of gay faces and pleasant conversation. I remember, on the same night Mrs. Fry preached at a party at Mrs.

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in Merrion-square, La Porte read out a comedy of Moliere's at my soirée in Kildare-street. We both gave "Les Précieuses Ridicules," in our several ways; but my guests went away laughing, and hers yawning. L'un portant l'autre, mine had the best of it; and Moliere versus Methodism, won the

cause.

THE FLYING-FISH.

NATURALISTS have said that the power of the flying-fish has been given to it for the purpose of avoiding its powerful enemies of the deep. What, then, have the poor herrings done, that they should not fly for they, too, have their enemies, no less intent upon "swallowing them quick," than Buonaparte was the bishops, who prayed so fervently VOL. II.-K

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