invitation to "his little place in Staffordshire;" but I mislaid the address, and forgot him. Years afterwards, there came a letter from him presenting his friend, Mr Somebody, who, he said, had been spending some time with him, and whose "tone of mind and temper he thought I would like, resembling so strongly those traits I was once so kind as to be attracted by in himself."

His friend was, however, by no means to my taste, and I was not sorry to say adieu to him. Various others came after this, with letters from the same quarter; they were all "original thinkers," and he only regretted he "could not make one of us in those delightful conversations he knew we were enjoying." It is not enough to say that these people were distasteful-they_were_positively odious to me. How I had been represented to them by my Staffordshire friend I know not; but they approached me at once on terms of easy intimacy; they made themselves at home, in the most atrocious acceptance of the word, and repaid me by "original thoughts" —that is, by the most extraordinary licence of opinion on every subject, and by excesses of language which I could only regard as outrage. Driven at last to the utmost limit of endurance, I wrote to my friend a very civil but determined note, assuring him that he had not taken a just measure of my tastes or habits in his late letters of presentation, and declaring for the future that I desired to assert my privilege to choose the persons of my acquaintance, and not incur the double disappointment which might, and did often, arise from uncongenial intimacies. I received the following reply :

"SIR, I respectfully beg to return the letter which was addressed by you to Mr Thomas Lethbridge, and which a severe relapse renders him totally unable to appreciate or reply to. As his case is only mania,

This accounted for the "original thinkers" at once.

Of my friend at St Kitt's I never heard more. Would that I could hope for as happy a release from my tiger; but too well I know nobody will shut him up. The cage that is to hold him has not yet been made.

It is a sad and humiliating confession, but it is the simple truth. The civilisation that makes us wiser and richer and greater does not make us happier. Which of us does not look back with regret to the old days of the post, when, after the morning's delivery, you knew you were free for the day, and at least had twenty-four hours before you could hear what steps Gammon and Gloss were taking against you, or what further evidence was forthcoming in that unpleasant suit in the Arches? The telegraph now may fall on you as you mount your horse. It may drop into your soupplate at dinner. What security have you against evil tidings any hour of the day or night? Once you could hug yourself over a storm in the Channel, or a snow-drift on the Alps that's all gone!

So, too, is it with regard to tigers. So long as they had to come round by the Cape, one heard of their approach, and could calculate when they might be looked for. From the sailing of the ship at Calcutta to her being signalled in the Downs, there were three months to get out

of the way to go down to South Wales or the Tyrol, or some other snug and safe retreat. Now, however, there is no security. The creatures come overland, and with one bound they are at Aden and the next at Marseilles. Like the telegram, they come in upon your most unsuspecting moments.

And there are people who want to shorten this transit, and are ready to expend millions to diminish its time by a few hours! O rash speculators! have you never been torn by a tiger? O great capitalists have you never been carried into that tope of mango-trees where I have been eaten any time these last twenty years, and may be eaten again to-day for anything I see to the contrary?

I have no courage to meet the commonest events of life. I have no pluck to go out for my daily walk, as I know "that tiger" is waiting for me round the corner. I am weary of existence, and yet I do not feel that as an honest man I can insure my life for the benefit of my family, as I know that the tiger destines me for his prey, and will finish me one day.

If you have not courage to fight your tiger, why not fly from him?

I hear some one say-why not hide from him? And have I not? Is there a nook or corner of the globe I have not sought to take refuge in? Have I not gone to Mexicoto Jamaica-to the gold-diggings? Have I not sought shelter amongst the Fenians in Ireland, and the Fans in Africa? It was but yesterday my tiger caught me skulking in a six-pound house, and hunted me through a rotten borough. I read of "Protection" in the Insolvent Court, and thought of going there; but my friends tell me the place is infested with tigers, who mangle each other all day long. Forgive, then, O much compassionating Public, if these O'Dowderies I now give to the world show signs of a broken spirit, a timid heart, and a trembling hand-if I express myself with less than my usual courage-if I take a less hopeful view of what seems bright, and look but gloomier on the gloomy, bethink you how I have been mauled and mangled-how faint I feel from loss of blood, and what a wreck I am from all the suffering I have gone through.

If I come alive out of the jungle, you shall hear from me next month.

66

OUR readers will do us the justice to remember that, adverse as the results of the general election seemed to be to the party to which it is our happiness to belong, we expressed neither alarm nor much regret at the circumstance. We had not been inattentive observers of what passed at the majority of the hustings throughout the country. We saw gentlemen standing there who called themselves Liberals, yet enunciated views as sound, because as constitutional, as our own; and though they were, in many instances, opposed unsuccessfully by other gentlemen whom we considered to be better men than themselves, still the issues of the contest by no means broke our spirit. "All these," we said to ourselves, will prove, when the pinch comes, a great deal more Conservative than their professions indicate. They belong to that school of Liberalism of which Lord Palmerston is the head. They will certainly not go farther than he invites them in the direction of democracy at home; and abroad, they will help him to make the name of England respected." It is not pretended that such reflections afforded to us ground of absolute self-congratulation. We had wished well to every Tory who came forward to contest a seat, and lamented his defeat when he was defeated. But, after all, the ostensible loss to our own side proved less considerable than many of us anticipated; and we found comfort in the thought that things might have been worse, and that there was far more of a Conservative spirit stirring in the country than a few years ago could have been counted upon, though it preferred for its work the guidance of Lord Palmerston to that of Lord Derby.

That which, during the recess, amounted to little more than a well-grounded hope, has hardened,

since Parliament met for the transaction of business, into something like assurance. The death of Lord Palmerston and the first reconstruction of his Cabinet went far to release some members from the engagements into which they had tacitly entered with themselves; and the changes which have since taken place, both in the personnel and in the avowed policy of the Government, are working wonders upon others. Not that men are passing over singly or by shoals from the Ministerial to the Opposition side of the lobby. When the House meets, the benches to the right of the Speaker's chair are as well crowded as at the first; and we still see, sitting opposite to them, the 280 gentlemen, and no more, who took service under the banner of Conservatism. But the

temper of the Liberal party, if party it now deserve to be called, has undergone a great change. They are falling off from one another, section from section; and all the sections, more or less, look suspiciously at their ostensible leaders. No wonder. Never was a Ministry so little to be counted upon for prudent guidance amid difficulties and dangers; never was there a Ministry which succeeded so entirely in shaking the confidence of its adherents. A good many causes have been at work to bring about this result; and it may more than amuse, it may instruct and enlighten, some at least into whose hands this paper is likely to fall, if, before proceeding further, we briefly but correctly enunciate the most prominent among these causes.

We must begin by stating, what no one will venture to deny, that Lord Russell himself is as little the object of personal devotion and respect to his followers as it is possible for a nobleman in his exalted station to be. This is owing partly to constitutional temperament, and

partly to the effect of age upon a disposition not naturally genial or affectionate. Lord Russell was, even in early life, a great exclusive. He never mixed freely in society. He had no taste for exchanging ideas, far less jibes and jokes, except with a very minute fraction of the upper ten thousand. Affecting literary tastes, he saw little of literary men, and never, when he did dispense to them his hospitalities, sent them away delighted with their entertainer. He was not a lady's man-poor fellow! how could he be-and he lost a great deal that is worth acquiring in consequence. In all these respects he presented through life a remarkable contrast to the statesman whose place he holds at the Treasury; and growing years only rendered the contrast more striking. Now, more than ever, he lives with his own small set, and takes counsel only with the few in that set to whom personal ties bind him. It is said, but we can hardly credit the rumour, that his great authority for the state of public feeling at home is his son, Lord Amberley. Who may advise with him on questions of foreign policy we cannot pretend to guess. For the most striking feature in the portrait we are sketching is that, chief as he is of an Administration avowedly Liberal, Lord Russell rarely confers even with the members of his own Government except officially.

Lord Russell is, in consequence of all this, not personally popular with his colleagues. His manners are always cold, and his reticence is sometimes felt to be ungracious. He is accused likewise of concocting his own schemes in his own study in Chesham Place, and insisting upon their adoption with little or no modification when he meets the other members of the Government in Cabinet council. If there has been any flirtation with Mr Bright, as the world says there was, Lord Russell alone gets credit for it. It is certain that some of the most startling of the re

cent appointments to office are his exclusively. For Mr Göschen's first introduction to the Board of Trade Mr Gladstone is mainly responsible. He wanted some one to help him in fitting in the details of the coming budget with the trade of the country, and believing in Mr Göschen, he asked for and got him in Mr Hutt's place. But the subsequent and sudden advancement of the same gentleman to the Duchy, without consultation held as to the temper or wishes of the other Cabinet Ministers, was Lord Russell's act: it outraged all sense of propriety, and gave intense disgust. It was curious to hear the matter criticised, not only by the junior Ministers, who felt themselves to be superseded, and therefore slighted, but by Ministers already in high place, and especially by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. We doubt whether Mr Gladstone will ever heartily forgive the offence, though he was selected to be the medium of communicating the fact, when accomplished, to his astonished and offended colleagues. This is not to be wondered at. Mr Göschen may be, and we daresay is, all that his patron assumes him to be, both as a politician and a gentleman; but the head of an Administration in a free country, and especially in England, ought to recollect that he is only primus inter pares, and that he has no right whatever to bring into close personal contact with the members of that Administration any one man, of whom they are not perfectly satisfied that he is the sort of person with whom they would desire to act under all circumstances.

One word more by way of postscript to this little bit of official gossip, for such we acknowledge it to be. Lord Russell, having determined to bring the descendant of a not very long line of Prussian money-lenders into the Cabinet, did not care to run the risk of opposition, by placing him where his services would be most valuable. His forte is said to be finance,

and an acquaintance with the principles of commerce. It is obvious that the proper place for such a man was exactly that into which Mr Gladstone first introduced him, whence, after some experience of his powers, it might have been easy, by proper management, to raise him to the presidency of the Board of Trade. But delays seemed to the Prime Minister to be impolitic; and so, instead of negotiating with Mr Milner Gibson to take the Duchy, and to make room for Mr Göschen, he leaves the veteran Radical in a post for which he has never, as far as we know, shown any special qualification, and thrusts Mr Göschen into the Duchy, where there is no scope whatever for his ability. Does the matter rest there? Oh no. Mr Göschen must do something, and therefore, rather than leave him to his repose, the young Minister, overflowing with knowledge, and eager to apply it to practical purposes, is set to revise the salaries of the clerks in the Treasury, whether with a view to add to or diminish them we cannot pretend Lord Russell is more sharply censured for all this by his own friends than by ours; and the great Liberal party, aware of a growing schism in the Cabinet, begin to count the days when the rotten fabric will fall to pieces-probably of its own accord.

to say.

A second ground of distrust among the majority, arises out of the contemplation of the changes which have taken place in the Government since Mr Göschen's elevation, and the anticipation of others understood to be impending. Personally unpopular as he might be, Sir Charles Wood was admitted, by all who came in contact with him, to be a good man of business and an able administrator. Whether the principle on which he acted in the amalgamation of the two armies was either very wise or entirely just, is a point open, perhaps, to discussion; but nobody can deny that he understood the real wants of India thoroughly, and that

the best interests of the millions of Hindoos and Mussulmans who owe allegiance to the Queen were in his hands carefully attended to. He has resigned his office as his late colleagues assert, in consequence of the injury received by him in the hunting-field during the recess according to a rumour, not, as it appears to us, destitute of foundation, because he is dissatisfied with the policy of Reform to which they are committed, and for which he declines to become partially responsible. It is not for us to determine which of these two surmises most merits public attention. Probably there is truth in both of them; for his fall undoubtedly prevented the exchange of offices which had been proposed between him and Lord de Grey two months ago; and his health was indifferent when he returned to his room in the India Office. On the other hand, it is generally understood that both he and Sir George Grey are in accord, on the Reform question, with their relative Earl Grey-whom, indeed, they have thus far represented in a Government which he himself never could be persuaded to join. Now, Earl Grey makes no secret of his abhorrence of a scheme which goes only to lower the franchise, and in doing so, paves the way for continued and successful agitation for something more. It is probable, therefore, that dislike to Mr Bright's plan, which Lord Russell is understood to have adopted and made his own, is at least as strong an influencing motive with Sir Charles Wood as physical weakness, to withdraw at this critical moment from the Administration. And if there be any foundation for the report, that the example which he has set will shortly be followed by his relative at the Home Office, then we may rest assured, that not through the pressure of bodily illness alone has Sir Charles ceased to be a Cabinet Minister. The Liberal party know all this just as well as we do, and they look with