the clamours of the people, which would have cost us little,) rather than expose the Constitution to so imminent a hazard of subversion. Had we taken this course I feel quite assured of the patriotism that would have helped us from the most distinguished of our political antagonists! and I have a firm belief that a large measure of reform would have been obtained by compromise, a measure which, however hateful at the moment to thoughtless, reckless men, who become really more eager about the mode of obtaining it than about the object itself, would afterwards have proved satisfactory to all. My opinion of Lord Grey's extreme repugnance to the course upon which we felt we were forced, has been more than confirmed by his letters since he read the above passage."

On the 4th of June, when the bill was read a third time, there was for the third reading 106; against it, 22; majority 84. On the 7th of June the bill received the Royal Assent, and thus, after a two years' contest, became law.

And now, looking back to that period, and remembering that the Reform Bill aimed only at the most moderate justice-doing away with rotten boroughs, taking the franchise from places without inhabitants, and bestowing it on towns like Manchester and Liverpool-it seems strange and almost unaccountable, that the bill should have provoked an hostility and hatred which was remarkable alike for venom and

continuance. But so it was. For the success of that measure the country is indebted to Grey, Brougham, and Russell-a measure which, owing to the advance the nation has made in virtue and political intelligenec, will doubtless ere long be supplemented with a new bill, the recital of which, in 1832, would have been deemed the precursor of a revolution, and which will embrace such an extension of the franchise as to admit a large addition of the working-classes to that privilege-a bill which will be no more a finality measure than its predecessor of 1832, but which will in its turn be followed by another bill, demanded by the exigencies of the times, which will make provision for such an extension of the suffrage as will admit within its pale every man who has attained to years of maturity, untainted by crime, and willing, under cover of the ballot, to record a free and unfettered vote at the polling booth. Before that time arrives, the mass of the working-classes will doubtless more generally embrace the means on every hand placed at their disposal for mental cultivation, and for the attainment of that political knowledge which is so needful to the proper discharge of the functions of an elector. When that day arrives, no one can or will oppose the introduction of a bill which has for its basis universal suffrage and vote by ballot.

THE INTERVIEW OF JOSEPH GARIBALDI AND KING VICTOR EMANUEL.

HE Oliver Cromwell of Italy is Joseph Garibaldi.

THE

What the former achieved for England in the destruction of the tyrannies, imposts, and exactions of Charles I., the latter accomplished for Italy in the overturn of the weak, foolish, and cruel Francis II. Right is ever in the ascendant. It may be that a long period is permitted to fraud and wrong; but with nations, as with individuals, the right ever ultimately comes uppermost: the day of reckoning may be postponed, but so surely as there is a God in heaven, its fitting reward will overtake the evil work, be it done for private ends, or under the sacred name of a public trust. With such a faith it is not too much to imagine that Providence raises up men for specific works in the world's progress; that when a great discovery has to be made, some man whose life training has developed the peculiar resources suited to the thing to be done, makes his appearance on the scene of action; that when the liberties of a people have to be maintained in opposition to might, notwithstanding that such maintenance will be made at the cost of estate, and it may

be of life, then a Pym, a Hampden, a Cromwell, will rise up in the majesty of justice, and demand the severance of wrong and the imposition of right, for the down-trodden people.

The man in such a case, in Italy's great emergency, in her need and hour of difficulty, was Joseph Garibaldi.

This, the hero of 1860, was born at Nice, on the 22nd day of July, 1807. The chamber in which he first saw the light had had a previous honour, that of being the birth-place of Massena, who was the son of a baker; his subsequent attainment of the marshal's baton is therefore infinitely to his credit. Garibaldi's parents were comparatively respectable. His father was a sailor, and at a later period of his life commanded a vessel of his own. He was subjected to the usual vicissitudes which beset all men; but, amid any and every privation, he did not omit to give his son the best education in his power, taxing his slender means for that sacred purpose to the utmost. His son's physical education was left to himself. Gymnastics, he tells us, he learnt by climbing among the shrouds and ropes of his father's vessel, and the use of the sword, by defending his own head and in trying to split the heads of others. Swimming was the constant exercise of his youth. The art seems to have been almost natural to him, as he has no knowledge of its acquirement. Of his mother he speaks in the most delightful terms, she being in his mature con