Coach. I devour it.

The conversation is interrupted, however, by the entry of the other guests mean time into the ball-room. The King and Olympia have met, and realizing the picture of Celia's passion for Oliver, no sooner met but they looked-no sooner looked but they loved-no sooner loved but they sighed -no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason-no sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy." The King has found what he sought, a beautiful and amiable being, who loves him for his own sake, for he still appears under the humble garb of chamberlain, while Rüpel, in that yellow suit with blue spots, which he had wrung from the hard hands of the indignant tailor, has been flirting alternately with Clorinda and Louison, and leading each in turn to believe herself the favoured woman. The King now thinks it time that the farce should end, and addressing Olympia suddenly, intimates to her that the King proposes for her hand, and asks her consent. He forgets, however, that as Olympia is ignorant of his true rank, and sees nothing in the supposed King but a hunchbacked buffoon, who had evidently been trifling with both her sisters, this proposed match is likely to be any thing but an agreeable surprise. To poor Olympia it comes like a thunderbolt. She thinks herself deceived, and in her confusion flies out without waiting for explanation, leaving her heart and shoe behind her, and, under the auspices of Sir Walter Scott and Muscipula, is borne off in the en

chanted car as if on the wings of the wind.

The King, of course, is in despair at his own rashness. Only one way of recovering the unknown fair one to whom his vows are plighted occurs to him, namely, to advertise that the king is to marry the lady whom the lost shoe is found to fit. We must say we think this was rather a hazardous speculation.

Ex pede Herculem may be

a very safe maxim for any thing we know; but ex pede Venerem we greatly doubt. Why the result might have been, that the King might have met with a wife with a foot like the Venus de Medici, but with a nose like the stranger's of Strasburg, and a mouth like Garagantua's! Or again, on the side of the morale, was there not too much likelihood that he might have hit upon a lady the length of whose tongue was in the inverse ratio to that of her foot, or whose virtue sat as loose upon her as her slipper? The only instance in which we recollect a similar experiment being tried was not likely to encourage favourable hopes as to the success of the project. Old Ælian, if he has writ his annals true, relates, we think, that Psammiticus, King of Egypt, a decided admirer of the pied bien chaussé, was so captivated with the sight of a slipper which an eagle one day accidentally dropt at his feet, that in an unguarded moment he proclaimed that he would wed the fair proprietor of the slipper. And who, think you,, was the claimant of the slipper, the fortunate holder of the capital prize? Why, Rhodope, a

young lady of easy virtue, pretty well known in Memphis and the parts adjacent. Still there was no escape for Psammiticus: nothing had been said about virtue in the royal proclamation. "She could not find it 'twas not in the bond:" and so, as the laws of Egypt are as unalterable as those of the Medes and Persians, the monarch submitted with the best grace he could to his fate.

Indeed the hazardous nature of the experiment is shown by the narrow escape which the king makes after all, even in the present case. For a dog of a Jew, a relation of cunning little Isaac, after endeavouring in vain to squeeze the slipper successively upon his five eldest daughters, without the least regard to corns, consoling them all the time with the last line of Schiller's Maid of Orleans, "Short is the pain, eternal is the joy," brings forward his youngest, a child in the nurse's arms, and insists on having the slipper tried on the child's foot the proclamation, as he maintains, being general, and extending to the whole female sex. Rüpel, who is acting as master of the ceremonies, is at first very much taken aback by this quirk of the Jew; but fortunately he had studied civil law under old Hugo at Göttingen, and remembers enough of the code to be able to meet the

Jew's plea, by showing that the proclamation spoke only of ladies, while little Rebecca being under seven years of age, was accounted a child and not a lady, according to the law of Rome. The Jew and family being thus disposed of, the trial proceeds. Clorinda, Louison, and the Baroness though already provided with a husband (an objection which the Baron declares he is quite ready to waive), make the attempt and successively fail. At last comes Olympia, conducted by her fairy protectress, slips her foot with ease into the slipper, and falls into the arms of the King which are outstretched to receive her. We pass over the explanations between father, stepmother, and sisters-suffice it to say, that on the part of Olympia, all their unkindness is forgotten. She promises them her love and her protection, pays off-(with her husband's money) the incumbrances on the Baron's estate, and is cordially disposed to lend a helping hand to the matrimonial projects of Duke Lothaire and the Prince of Serramoglia. The Queen of the Fairies now begins to see, from obvious symptoms on the part of the King and Olympia, that her presence and that of her train is no longer required. So, advancing to the happy pair, she addresses to them this parting blessing.

THE Church-Rate question has already been treated with so much talent and learning, both in and out of Parliament, that we might well despair of success in attempting to resume the consideration of it, with reference to any of its various relations to the English Church Establishment. The speeches of Sir William Follett, of Lord Stanley, of Sir James Graham, and of Sir Robert Peel, and the discussions of the Conservative Press, leave nothing to be desired with respect to these its leading and most important features; and if the measure introduced by the Government, and sanctioned by a Popish majority of the House of Commons, must be perpetrated, it can never at least be said that this has happened from the want of able and honest counsellors.

We have no intention, therefore, of renewing this thrice-told tale of fraud, folly, and weakness. We feel that no language of ours could place in a stronger view the unparalleled effrontery of those who ask us to believe that we are not undermining, but actually strengthening the English Church, in robbing her of a part of her revenues at the bidding of men who have ever been, and must ever be, her deadly and implacable enemies. We think, however, that there are some circumstances with regard to our Scotch Church Establishment, and the conduct of our Scotch Dissenters with reference to this question, which have not yet been brought into notice, and which may serve to throw light on the nature and tendency of the principles maintained by the abolitionists, and on the views and motives in which this measure has originated; and it is to these that we propose at present to direct our attention. With a view to these subjects, it is hoped, however, that it may not be thought superfluous to

*

offer one or two preliminary observations of rather a more general character.

The abolitionists are, for obvious reasons, anxious to disconnect this question from the question as to the maintenance of a National Church.* It appears to us, however, to be selfevident, that the two parties in this discussion are directly at issue on this latter question; and that there is no other ground on which the subject can be argued so as to be even intelligible. We think, moreover, that the answer which is to be given to this question must, on the plainest principles of reasoning, be considered as decisive of the whole controversy; and it is just because our opponents feel that it must be so that they studiously avoid putting their case on this ground. They know full well that from none, save the most ignorant, the most interested, the most reckless, or the most depraved, have they any hope of success in announcing their argument in the only form in which it is in the least degree consistent even with their own views; and they thus, in the very outset of every exposition of their opinions, are involved in the difficulty of objections to the Church-rates as one of the means by which the Church is supported, without avowing their hostility to the Church itself.

This being the course of argument which prudence imposes on them, it is manifest that they at once relieve us from the task (no doubt a light and easy one) of demonstrating the vital importance of a Church Establishment to the well-being of this country; while they take upon themselves the burden of proving that there is a distinction between the Church-rates and the other branches of Church revenue-as, for instance, the TITHES -from which it can be made to appear that the latter rest on a founda