body, especially by the handsome butcher in her street, who is single, and in a moment when butchers are as tender as their meat popped the question whether she had any prejudice against butchers; and Betty, like the candid creature she is, answered that " She had no prejudice against any one;" when Crump-for that's his name-taking heart, asked her "If she would dislike being a butcher's wife?"-and Betty, turning red, and then pale, and then red again, replied, "That she would as lief be a butcher's wife as a baker's, for that matter, with the purvisor that she liked the butcher better than the baker:"so that the thing is as good as settled that she is to be Mrs. Crump. And this is the reason why she looks so red, broiling, and fluttered to-day. She has a dozen friends to whom she must tell the important secret: they live at all corners of the town, and miles apart; but she means to visit them all :—if she does, she will make a circuit which would tire a horse. I foresee that she will knock up at the second or third stage, and be glad of a dish of tea, a happy shedding of tears with some female friend at the turn in her fortunes, and an omnibus back, that she may get home in good time, as missus is mighty particular about servants coming home early. Betty's heart is full-too full; and so are her pockets, crammed with apples, oranges, cakes, a top, two whistles, and three balls which came over her master's wall, heaven knows how mysteriously—presents these for her "nevies and nieces, bless their dear little hearts!" Some of her mistress's cast-off things; a large lump of dripping; some tea and sugar(mind, of her own purchasing); and an extensive miscellany of broken victuals, are all done up in a bundle for the poor widow who was like a mother to her when she was a little motherless girl. She deserves to be Mrs. Crump, especially as Crump is doing well, and is a worthy, honest fellow. Why, there he is!-he has met her "quite promiskus," as he says, but any one may read in his eyes that that is a trick of love:-he puts her arm in his; insists upon carrying her bundle; and away they go-Betty blushing and embarrassed, but happy-Crump proud of his dear little Betty, and not wholly unconscious of the untarnished merit of his boot-tops. It is a match.'-pp. 87-90.

We conclude with part of an essay, entitled, Content.' The worthy reader' has here drawn a little on his fancy-and indeed amply vindicates his title to a place among the authors of The Cockney School-but nevertheless we feel that it reflects the true spirit of a good and a wise man :—

'I have now and then, in the wantonness and ingratitude of my heart, cherished for a moment, or an hour, or a day, that moody and gloomy dissatisfaction, Discontent; but it is an ugly humour.. Besides,

I have, so to speak, no reasonable reasons for discontent. Have I not everything at my fingers' ends and about my feet, and within my reach, which can gratify man? I think so. It is for me that my opposite neighbours, the three Misses Stubbs (ugly, but well off) come out daily in all the glory of the rainbow and humility of the peacock: it is for me that they dress and bedizen themselves, and I acknowledge the genius of their milliner, and sometimes think seriously of her bill, and wonder how old Stubbs, who is but a hunks, submits himself to their extravagance.

extravagance. It is for me that the beauties of this great city (and where is the city that can exhibit more womanly loveliness?) walk abroad in May and June: I behold them with reverence and bachelorly devotion; for I have not yet warbled to the tune of "Hail, wedded love!" and have never yet responded to that church service which begins with the words "Dearly beloved" and ends with that ill-omened word "amazement." But I am content, and still have a heart "to let,”— "coming-in easy;" for "cards of particulars inquire within."

:

the doors of taverns out of number gape their mahogany jaws, and invite me to walk in for me the waiters stand ready to draw their white napkins in their right hands through their left hands: for me the larder is daily stored with flesh, fish, and fowl, the cod is crimped, the champagne iced, fruit-pies are kept cold, and that calf's-head has had a lemon between his tusks for these three days last past, and only waits my word to be dressed, and made meet and meat for me. . . . . If I desire to make a short cut into Surrey from the theatres, Waterloo bridge has been thrown across the river for me: it cost my too considerate countrymen too many thousands-the more their munificence and unsparing determination to oblige me: I acknowledge their attention to my convenience, and drop a penny to Tilt, as a slight douceur for his civility in turning a stile to let me pass. St. James's Park was formerly a dirty duck-pond and a squashy cow-lair: it is now newly laid-out and made cool, refreshing, and pleasant with shrubs, swans, and serpentining waters for my devious wanderings and delectation..... The Parliamenthouses and play-houses are thrown open in their seasons to gratify my alternate relish for politics and poetry. The King (God bless him!) goes to open the one in his best carriage and best clothes [!] to gratify me; and would take it much to heart if I did not pay him the poor compliment of witnessing his state, and observing and acknowledging how rosy and hearty he looks, and how well he becomes his dignity-his dignity him. The managers open the others, and advertise me to "come but and see" their Macready and Ellen Tree, and Malibran : for me that gentleman studies deeply and learnedly to perfect himself in his admirable art: the ladies enrapture my senses, thrill me with pleasurable emotions, and stir my gentler passions. Books are published almost hourly to instruct and please me: they are made cheap to suit my circumstances; and comely, to take my eye. For me Wilkie, and Etty, and Callcott, and the Landseers paint; and Chantrey and Behnes chisel. The "Morning Chronicle" is printed and published every morning, that I may know what news is stirring abroad and at home: if I am wrong in any political opinion, the editor sets me right: if I am indifferent to party, he rouses me up, and makes me a partizan. In the House Sir Robert Peel pretends to address himself to the Speaker, but it is to me that he speaks-it is me that he endeavours to convinceif he does not always do so, the fault is in me, not in his oratory'!-p. 230. We are not at all flattered to find, that after being reader of the Quarterly Review' for so many years, Mr. Webbe still leans his political faith on the Morning Chronicle;' but we hope No. CXIII. may at length convert him.

ART.

ART. XII.-1. The Mirror of Parliament for 1836.

2. The Speech of the Right Honourable Lord Lyndhurst, delivered in the House of Lords on Thursday, August 18, 1836. Twenty-fourth Edition. London. 1836.

WE made, in our last number, some observations on that branch

of the general attack on the institutions of England, which is directed against what we do not hesitate to call the citadel of the constitution-the House of Lords! We then discussed and disposed of-imperfectly we are well aware in point of execution, but irrefragably, we are assured, in constitutional law and political logic -the most prominent of the current objections to the position and composition of that estate* of the realm. We then, as on other occasions, endeavoured to show from general analogy and historical experience, that in any frame of government capable of uniting liberty with stability, the supreme power of the state cannot be safely vested in one body;-that if a constitution with two governing bodies be adopted, it is essential to the maintenance of their respective independence that they should stand on bases as distinct as the state of society will admit ;-that, for instance, if one be elective, the other should be hereditary;-that if one be exposed to the violent gusts and local epidemics of popular opinion, the other should be elevated to a higher region where those vicissitudes are less sudden, and where the direction of the steady and wholesome current of opinion may be more accurately ascertained. Such being the general theory, we endeavoured to show,-and we trust that the insufficiency of the advocate could not essentially impair the force of the facts,-we endeavoured to show that practically the House of Lords possesses not only all the theoretic requisites for the due performance of its constitutional functions, but also several incidental qualities, created or developed by time, circumstances, and occasions, which have fitted it-by the most happy practical adaptation-to the complex duties which, at the present day, it is called upon to execute.

The recurrence to a subject so recently discussed may, we are too well aware, be irksome to some of our readers; but we feel it to be an inevitable duty. When the assault on what we must again call the citadel of the constitution,-in which are collected the liberties, the property, the glories, the hopes, and the very existence of the nation,-when, we say, the assault is repeated with fresh forces and increased audacity, we must renew

*We are well aware that in strictness the three estates of the realm are the Lords Spiritual, the Lords Temporal, and the Commons (as they were in the States General of France), and that the House of Lords contains two of the three estates; but modern practice has, however erroneously, so generally applied the term to the King, Lords, and Commons, that to avoid circumlocution we think it better to submit to the inaccurate phraseology.

our

our resistance and reinforce our defences. The present contest is for no party interests, nor for insulated points of administrative policy-toto certandum est de corpore REGNI-and may Heaven favour the right!

It cannot be too often repeated and pressed on the recollection and consideration of the public, that the main objection-that, indeed, of which all others were but consequences and corollaries to what was called Parliamentary Reform, was this,—that under the pretence of clearing the House of Commons from all aristocratical influence, and restoring it to its natural, as it was called, and strictly independent state, the Bill was in fact calculated to transfer to it all the substantial power of the country, and to render it not merely independent, but predominant, by introducing into its composition such additional elements of mere popular and physical influence as could not fail, ex necessitate rerum, to lead to an usurpation of power on its part, and the consequent absorption or annihilation of the two other estates.

This objection was strenuously repelled by the advocates of the bill, who insisted that it was a mere visionary danger; that the Commons having reconquered their own rights, would be, on that very account, the more anxious not to infringe those of the other branches; and that the beautiful theorem of three distinct and equiponderant powers, holding the state in equilibrio, would be the certain and unalterable result of their experiment; and we believe that the vague plausibility of this vision, and its coincidence with the doctrine of the balance of constitutional powers promulgated by De Lolme and such superficial observers, seduced, to the support of the Reform Bill, a vast number of well-intentioned men, who would have resisted, and by their influence helped to defeat it, if they could have believed that it was pregnant with a democratic usurpation. They did not, or would not, see that the aristocratical influence which had grown up was barely sufficient to counterbalance the vast accession of democratical power; and that the theory of three equiponderant authorities-in no case perhaps possible-was, as applied to the British constitution, a verbal delusion.

But the argument was not only false in its theory, but it wholly overlooked all the compensating operations of the practical machine. In groping after low analogies they neglected the great analogy of the universe, and forgot that in the political, as in the natural world, it is only by mutual influences, invisible to the vulgar eye, that those bodies, moving in orbits apparently distinct, could be combined into one harmonious and enduring system. When the reformers fancied that they had exposed an indefensible abuse in the existing practice of the constitution, by showing that the King

and

and the House of Lords possessed, by their connexions, a certain degree of influence in the House of Cominons, they forgot that 'the action and reaction were equal and opposite,' and that the House of Commons possessed, by the very same means, an equal, if not a greater, influence over the King and the Lords. There was no man who knew anything of the details of public affairs who did not know that the members of the House of Commons, connected by blood, by local interests, by party, by private friendship, or even by nomination with the House of Lords, exerted at least an equal degree of reciprocal influence on their lordships. Instances there undoubtedly were in which measures proposed in the Commons were modified by the ministerial leaders, with the object of rendering them palatable to the House of Lords; but many more instances there were in which the original inclination of the House of Lords was controlled, swayed, and even overborne by the feelings of its connexions and allies in the other house. With regard to the Crown and its ministers, the operation of this reciprocal influence was still more obvious, and still more in favour of the Commons. The instances in which the wishes of the Crown gave way before an indication of dissatisfaction in the Lords were not infrequent; but scarcely a session ever passed without half a dozen visible and important demonstrations of a still greater deference to the mere whisper, or even suspicion, of disapprobation in the House of Commons. The reconciling, by a previous understanding, by mutual concessions and conciliatory modifications, these distinct and occasionally discordant authorities, was the great and most arduous duty of a Ministry, who were, in fact, rather the mediators between the three powers than the servants of one. Nor could we, from the first dawn of the Reform question, nor can we now, when it has been submitted to a partial experience, imagine any other mode by which a mixed government, democratical, aristocratical, and monarchical, can be conducted for a single session. When, in the Reform debates, it was urged, with the common-place declamation of the theorists, that the House of Commons should be independent of the two other branchesit was on the other hand argued—and at that time not denied― that the equal independence of the other two branches was a logical consequence of that original proposition; because the constitutional rights of the Commons were neither in law, in equity, nor in reason, more distinct and absolute than those of the King and the Lords respectively; and hence it was most truly and rationally deduced, that the attempt to create (under the pretence of restoring what never had existed) these three independent and self-responsible authorities, was not only contrary to

the