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peace and goodwill by main force! The Fadgetts had grubbed up the May-pole on Fash Gate Green, which had kept its standing through the reign of China-monsterism and classical elegance:to set up in its stead the Pillory and the Stake.

Well, it is not always the wiry and tough who hold out the longest; still less those "who have never had a day's illness," that live to tell what becomes of rheumatic old gentlemen who drive gigs on Sundays, when "they drive no more on this side of the grave. The Fadgetts were people pretty sure to wear themselves out (though I have known some gifted with propensities like theirs, live to a spectral age, breeding confusion to the very last). A fit of righteous indignation into which Mr. F. was thrown, on the breaking out," as he called it, of the Mathew Temperance fanaticism, hastened his end. He died, and his warnings were printed in a book, and himself canonized. The sister died, too,sorry, it would seem, for having been so violent during her life, since the Reverend of her nomination was wont to avoid the subject of her last moments, with as awful a brow and as heavy a sigh, as if hers had been a case of rank -ism. For some years

my rounds did not lead me near Fash Gate; indeed, while in the occupation of its last-named inhabitants, there was small comfort in entering its walls, unless one had an appetite for "Morning Portions," at breakfast; "Words in Season," at lunch; Divinity sauced not with love-apples, but with peppery polemies, for dinner; tracts at tea; and so forth; and was able to say "Yes," and speak amiss of the Pope in the right places. So far from this; with me, such people palsy every good thought and good word I can command at the best of times. Their ways are immodest, to say the least. But not long since, being called upon to extend a journey, methought I would make a circuit of a few miles, just to see how the old place was looking; and the woods where I had so often gone bird-nesting, when Mrs. China Fadgett was Lady of the Manor.

No railways can go near the estate, it lies so high among the bills, so I had no idea of finding the outward aspect of matters in any wise changed. The trees seemed grown taller, and the roads narrower; that was all; and the Hall made a poorer figure than I had fancied; even though Progress had laid his strange hands on the old pot-house, which used to stand near the avenue gates, had faced its front with stone, had broken out at its side two Tudor oriels, and converted the dingy old Black Ram which used to creak as harshly on a windy night as though the sign had been the Old

Black Raven, into The Fadgate Arms. There was some motto over the door, which I could not read; but I had heard that nowa-days an inscription is thought nothing of, if the passer-by can make it out. So I went in at once, and called for a glass of Fash Gate ale, hoping-since the day was cold-that, among the other "choppings and changings" which that unlucky place had seen, the Brewery had at least been spared. For though the world goes round, and John Bull must go with it, I am not so sure about John Barleycorn-I mean as to the making of ale; for I would not be thought to hold with the "stand-still starvationers," as a friend of mine designates that very select society, more generally called by the Post "The Country Party."

While mine host and a young, civil man, with a face strange to me, was away fetching the liquor, I went to a window, which looked across the park, for I was in a humour-the liveliest of us has such fits to catch a sight of the ruins among the leafless winter trees. Ruins, bless you! I stood fixed by what I beheld ; and it was a good moment ere I could exclaim,“ Fadgetts have been at it again! What's all this?"

Why those

The ruins were gone. Gone the old arch and its waving ivy; and even the crucifix, which any one who did not know it might have mistaken, from a distance, for the stump of a tree; and in their place, something so newly old and so anciently new! For a moment the thing puzzled me. It could not be an alms-house; for fewer pinnacles would have served, and there would have been no need of that large window on which the sun was playing so pleasantly;-nor a church, for churches are not grown round with low buildings, like barns, inasmuch as they have few windows, yet not like barns, because of a row of gilt crosses on the roof. Everyone will have guessed already what it was ;-new as the idea was to me who was thinking no harm. Shade of the Low-Protestant Miss Fadgett, with her tracts and her Readers, her Tabernacle-tunes and her account-books posted up of other people's merits and peccadilloes! A spick-and-span-new Monastery!

"Here's your ale, sir," said the Boniface, with a rueful smile, as he jogged my elbow to attract my attention; "we 're all quietlike, down here, to-day. My folk and the rest are up at Fash Gate town End to look at the show."

"The show! Is there a wedding, then-or a funeral?"

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Bless you, sir! There's no one to be married worth seeing sin' our Squire brought home his lady five years ago. It's the new building they are for handselling and they've got their

Bishop, as they call it, down from York, and a procession, and flags, like ours on club-days used to be before Miss Fadgett made such a rout over 'em. Well, to be sure, and she was as hard as ever a Pope or Pagan of the lot! But what would she say if she were alive now, I wonder? I tell my Missis, she 'll get up and walk; fetched out of her grave by these Roman doings!"

"But the Priory yonder is not on the Fash Gate property?" "Yes, but it be, sir, begging pardon; the Squire bought it, sir, the year he was married; and they 've been as busy as becs among 'em ever since. Never was a Fadgett but he was fantastical; and I have a right to speak. Mayhap, sir, you did not know they had all turned, root and branch ?"

"Turned?" said I, bewildered.

With that the landlord took down from the wall "a picture," as he called it, being a framed inscription, in black letter with emblazoned borders, and a gentleman and lady with wings and gold plates round their heads, and no shadows on their faces, like Queen Bess, keeping ward at each corner.

Can ye read that?" said mine host; "it's not every one as can."

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The "picture" told that, on the eve of a certain Saint (name omitted here, as too personal), "George Gregory Fadgett, his wife, their two children, Augustin and Barbara, and their entire household, had entered the Holy Roman Catholic community."

"And their entire household!" mused I, half aloud.

"Ay, belike," was the comment. "That's the Fadgett way! No pleasing the Squire else; and the people at the Hall had had enough of Mr. and Miss Fadgett and their psalm-singers. But, for aught I can see,-I don't say so much to my Missis, though, one was as peremptory as the other; six and half-a-dozen, sir: I dare say you know the family. They were always a 'cute set, and very rhapsodical! Another glass, sir? The gig's at the door."

"Well," thought I, as I drove away, catching as I crept up the hill something like a nasal chaunt, and too much put out with this new Fadgett foppery to have the heart to stay and see "the show," or to attack the Hall, had that been suitable on a day of such high solemnity-" that fellow is no fool. It does run in the blood. First China, then Greece, now Rome. The Fadgetts must have their toys. And the last, who would have fainted at the very name of a Catholic, was as peremptory in following her own Pope, as any of them. What next, I wonder?"

HIS MAJESTY THE PUBLIC.

THE British Constitution recognises two Kings at Arms. The railways have their king. The regal title, therefore, may be ascribed to another than the actual prince, without infringement of the royal prerogative; and we protest that in speaking of the Public as his Majesty, we meditate and compass no offence whatever against our Sovereign Lady the Queen, her crown and dignity. Need we be more explicit? Well then. His Majesty the Public lays no claim to the royal arms. The lion and the unicorn are none of his cattle; and though his maxim certainly is "Dieu et mon Droit," he does not usurp it for his heraldic motto. Neither does he pretend to the crown, ball, and sceptre; but acknowledges the property of those goods and chattels to be lawfully vested in the hands of their present possessor; and to the wish that she may long wear and hold them, he is ready to respond "Amen!" Further, he renounces all and every pretension to first fruits, deodands, waifs, estrays, escheats, treasure-trove, flotsam and jetsam. He is a king, throneless, crownless, sceptreless, without a court, yet not without courtiers. However, he is untended by any lords and ladies in waiting, gold sticks, silver sticks, grooms of the stole, chamberlains, gentlemen pensioners, and beef-eaters; and his only maids of honour are those he buys at Richmond. Last, and not least, so far from levying taxes, all he has to do with them is to pay them.

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Yet His Majesty the Public is, doubtless, one of the mightiest monarchs in the world. His dominion and authority have been acquired, comparatively, quite of late. For as many as a thousand years, they were extremely limited indeed for many centuries it was hardly apparent that there was such a person, much less king, in existence. His personal and natural rights, to say nothing of his will and pleasure, were never consulted; and it may be said that he passed the earlier ages of his life in slavery. It will be seen that His Majesty is a very ancient monarch; and it is probable that he will continue to reign till doomsday; of him, therefore, it may be literally asserted, that the king never dies.

So nearly absolute a potentate is His Majesty the Public, that

his will may now almost be declared to be law. It is true that his mandates cannot be always carried into effect immediately, but sooner or later they are sure to be obeyed. For example, when he dictated the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, the Abolition of Slavery, Catholic Emancipation, the Reform Bill, and the mitigation of the criminal code, he encountered violent opposition, and this continued a long time; but at length his ordinances were complied with. He commanded, some time ago, that the Corn-Laws should be done away with, and the rebellion which was raised against this decree is subsiding; and the measure, as we see, is on the point of being carried. He has also decided that the Game-Laws shall be abolished, that the Poor-Law shall be amended, that Imprisonment for Debt shall be put an end to, that the law shall be reformed, that the hours of labour in factories shall be shortened, that perfect liberty of conscience shall be established, and that many other improvements shall be made in legislation; and sooner or later all these things will be done.

The means by which His Majesty the Public enforces submission to his authority are not those adopted by the generality of autocrats. He has no recourse to muskets, swords, bayonets, axes, and gibbets. He does not call out the militia or the yeomanry cavalry, or even the posse comitatus, for the purpose of coercion. He contents himself with desiring his subjects to do his bidding, or to take the consequences; which are sure to follow in the event of non-compliance. It always proves dangerous to slight His Majesty's opinion.

His Majesty the Public has of late discovered a new and very pleasant method of controlling affairs. Jupiter, it was said of old, governed all things with his nod. His Majesty has found that he can exert a like influence by his laugh. When the Thunderer shook his curls, Olympus trembled; nor with less effect does His Majesty the Public shake his sides. There is a large class of gentry who are beginning to find this out to their cost. Reverend and Right Reverend preachers of evangelical poverty, themselves overpaid; shuffling statesmen, foolish justices, and that not inconsiderable the dishonest and knavish portion of the bar, feel daily, to their increasing discomfiture, that he is laughing at them. In the same predicament are all the varieties of the quack, from the political mountebank to the nostrumvender. Retailers of clap-trap enthesiasm, who, on behalf of some doomed abuse, are perpetually invoking the "British Lion," and calling on their partisans to "nail their colours to the mast,"

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