take advantage of it, and extract a fault even from her virtues. It is admitted, you know, that one can have too much of a good thing, and therefore I will acknowledge to you that your divine Alice is a little too wise to please me.'

"Is it possible to please you? If a woman talks nonsense, you call her a fool; and if she ventures upon rational conversation, you stigmatize her as wise! Where is the golden mean, I should like to know? I had thought and hoped that Alice Paulet would have exactly suited your taste."

"I am exceedingly obliged to you; so you wished to see me betrayed?"

"I certainly did hope you might be convinced, though against your will, that there was something amiable and estimable to be found in our sex; and let me tell you, that highly as you may value yourself, it would have been no humiliation to have bowed before the shrine of my divinity, as you call her. I know several who have offered themselves, but have been rejected: Lord Amersham only last year."

"And why didn't she accept him? Heir to a dukedom and boundless wealth, one of the first matches in the country; too much, I should think, for any virtue to resist."

"But she refused him, however, simply because she did not like him personally."

"Oh !"

"You may sneer, but it is the fact; and this is not a solitary instance of her declining such offers for the same reason."

66

Perhaps her affections are engaged," said I; "indeed I rather suspect they are; there's a young man in the country, whose father is their near neighbour, to whom she seemed very much attached, and he to her."

"You mean young Axford ?" answered Lady Eleanor, "I have reason to believe-indeed I know the contrary; she has a great regard for him, but no love whatever; there may be on his side."

"Miss Paulet has told you so ?" inquired I anxiously.

"I will give you so much information,-she has. I questioned her upon the subject a short time since, for I had heard that they were very intimate, and she gave me to understand that she never considered him in any other light than as a friend. Indeed, from what 1 have seen of the young man, I should say that he was not the sort of person to captivate Alice."

I was much pained and disgusted by this intelligence of Lady Eleanor's, which went to confirm my belief that I had been egregiously deceived in Miss Paulet. At the very time that Axford was kneeling at her feet and caressing her hand, she writes, it appears, to her friend, that she regards him with indifference! So much for your demure and discreet young ladies!

Griff 28 & Patos. !!!

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE following morning Palmer breakfasted with me by appointment, to talk over political business. As it is not my purpose to weary the gracious reader with a repetition of the topic principally entertained in the second volume of these Memoirs, I shall not detail the particulars of the information communicated to me by my friend. It is sufficient to say, that his object was to form a party in opposition to the existing administration on public grounds, not adopting the watch-words of faction and repudiating its ends, but endeavouring by honesty, firmness, and talent, to establish a sympathy in the country. Lord Tewkesbury's Government had professed to combine the elements of all parties, which being mixed in the cauldron of office were to produce, among other remedies, one panacea of such virtue that it was to cure all the ills with which the nation was afflicted. This universal medicine had been prescribed by almost every political quack for a century passed, and though it had destroyed every constitution upon which it had been tried, there will still be knaves to maintain, and fools to believe in its virtue; I need, perhaps, hardly say that this panacea was RADICAL REFORM. As might have been expected from such practitioners, the real maladies under which the poor patient laboured, and which admitted of safe, obvious, and practicable remedies, were neglected. In fact, he was suffering from the constant operation of a drastic purge, which his late physicians had been lessening slowly, but surely; but as this gradual course of treatment had been violently reprobated by his present advisers, he was taught to believe, that by calling them in, he should experience immediate relief. The new men, however, after having superseded their predecessors on this very ground, bring forward their anxiously-expected prescription, after much preliminary parade, and behold, instead of being diminished, the aperient ingredients are positively multiplied. "At present," say they, "for reasons best known to ourselves, we do not deem it expedient to diminish your cathartics, but we have taken

such order, that at some future period they may be lessened with safety." And this too, immediately after one of them had said, "Thank Heaven! the time is come when physicians can prescribe without apothecaries." Poor Mr. Bull, astonished, disappointed, and indignant, and beginning to suspect that these men were little better than impostors, was going to order them to be kicked out of the house; but their people got about him and persuaded the good man that he should die if he were to discard them; "But wait," said they, "for the grand panacea that will set you upon your legs again," and the poor man being in a very weak state, yielded to their importunities.

But to drop figures, and to speak in sober earnest. Heterogeneous as was the composition of this administration, in which Whigs, Liberals, Moderates, Radicals, and ultra-Tories, the representative of every grade of opinion, sat down cheek by jole at the same board, its acts clearly manifested the predominance of Whig councils. Such arrogance and ignorance, such effrontery and imbecility, were too characteristic of Whigs in office to be mistaken. Their proper province is opposition, where they may be in some measure useful as a drag-chain upon Government; and it is likewise good that they should occasionally come into place for a short time, otherwise if they had no opportunities of practically refuting themselves, and proving their incapacity, the country might, by their clamour, be led to suspect that they were unjustly excluded from power.

Their proceedings in the present instance would have been ludicrous, were not state concerns of too serious consequence to be made a joke of. In performing none of their promises, they were consistent to themselves; in adding to the burdens of the country, however, they exceeded the expectations of those who knew them best, and who thought they would have made only no alteration whatever. As a means of getting into office, they had raised the cry of Reform, which they intended, of course, to abandon or evade as soon as it had procured for them what they wanted; but when they found that it had, owing to the concurrence of particular circumstances, acquired a stronger hold upon the public mind than it is usual for such popular topics to possess, and that it was, in fact, the only expedient left to them by which they could retain their places, they employed every means of extending and confirming that clamour, not a sound of which had been heard

six months before. Then they came forward with great parade to execute the irresistible will of the sovereign people, whose sweet voices had been raised but recently in the same manner against a measure of justice, liberality, and wisdom; and a short time previously, almost to a pitch of insurrection, in favour of a convicted strumpet. What a crying shame, said these men, as wise as they were honest, that Old Sarum should have two representatives and Manchester none! How monstrous that money and the nomination of Peers should return Members to Parliament! We will repair this deformity in the Constitution, we will do away with its immorality. It shall be symmetry without, and purity within. True, that the greatest statesmen have been introduced to public life by the nomination borough, but what argument is this to men who profess to be studious only of the exact and graceful proportions of the Constitution? We are shocked, say these sticklers for political morality, that seats should be bought and sold; we cannot suffer this abomination to exist any longer; but, gentlemen, you are still free to give five and ten pound notes to the independent electors. Those are private arrangements of which we take no notice. Surely this reasoning is plagiarized from our ancient friend Dogberry.

But I must not trust myself farther on this topic, since in pursuing it thus far, I have abused my reader's indulgence, and violated my promise. Quid ad rem? This may be all very fine, and very wise, but what has it to do with the story? We are dying to know about the loves of Matthew Sydenham and Alice Paulet, and you give us a political pamphlet; this is indeed answering our expectations of bread with a stone. Patience, my fair readers, I beseech you, patience, and you shall be satisfied. I have now, I am thankful to say, advanced into the last stage of my Memoirs, which I humbly trust afford sufficient evidence that their principal care has been to provide for your instruction and amusement. One volume, indeed, of this great work has been for the most part occupied by matters in which you can or ought to feel but little interest; for this self-indulgence, permit me to remind you I have endeavoured to atone, by devoting a whole volume to concerns in which you should find sympathy. Nature and experience, indeed, has not fitted me to record scenes of romantic passion, of delicate embarrassments, and elegent distresses, therefore, I fear that the volume which I have just concluded, may be to your taste dull and cold, and, perhaps,