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NORTH.

There will be much brutal abuse of the King. The Whigs hated George the Good, and they had not hearts capable of disinheriting the Son, of the curses with which they clothed the Sire. That hatred was first transferred to George the Graceful; and then it hovered like a hornet round the head of William the Brave. Lured by the scent of prey, it flew off for a while-but now it will return, hot as hell, and settle, if it be not scared away, on the royal brow. Nay, the filthy fly will attempt the temples of the Queen, and its venomous sting will threaten veins translucent with purest and hallowed blood.

SHEPHERD.

Damn them-I beg my pardon-that was wrang-will they blackguard Queen Adelaide ?

NORTH.

What they did they will do again.

SHEPHERD.

The dowgs will return to their vomit.

NORTH.

The lowest of the Radicals will join in that charge-nor will the highest gainsay the ribaldry of the rabble-but like philosophers, as they all pretend to be, let human nature take its course. But the PEOPLE OF BRITAIN will not suffer the slander-and high up above the reach of foulest vapours, before their eyes will our Queen be seen shining like a star.

SHEPHERD.

God bless the people o' Britain! Wi' a' their fawtes-and they are great and mony-shaw me sic anither people on the face o' the yearth.

NORTH.

As for his Most Gracious Majesty he has been in fire before now-and our King, who never turned his head aside for hissing balls and bullets, will hold it erect on the Throne of the Three Kingdoms, as he did on the quarterdeck of a man-of-war, nor heed, if he hear, the vain hurtling of windy words.

TICKLER.

There is little loyalty in the land now, North.

NORTH.

Little-compared with that elevating virtue as it breathed in many mil lion bosoms some twenty or thirty years ago-but more than lives in the heart of any other people towards their chief magistrate-for that nowthough a somewhat cold-is the correct and accredited word. In other, and perhaps in nobler times, there was much in common between loyalty to a king, patriotism to a country, and the zeal of the martyrs of religion.

SHEPHERD.

I ca' that a true Holy Alliance.

NORTH.

But we must make the best of our own times; and every man do his utmost to uphold the powers and principles that constitute the strength of our national character.

Enumerate, sir.

SHEPHERD.

NORTH.

Not now. Our ideas and feelings of loyalty, however, we must not adopt from them who were last week his Majesty's ministers, nor from the double-faced, double-tongued crew that will be seizing on their dismissal as an occasion for venting their rage against him whom, for four years, they have been hypocritically worshipping for their own base purposes, and incensing with perfumery that must have long stunk in the royal nostrils.

TICKLER.

The Modern Alfred! Alfred the Second!

NORTH.

Faugh! let us speak as we feel of our king, in a spirit of truth. True loyalty scorns the hyperbole, and is sparing of figures of speech. To the

patriot statesman, whom true loyalty inspires, history is no old almanack; for an old almanack is the deadest of all dead things—and more useless than dust. To him history is a record ever new-all its pages are instinct with life-and its examples show the road to honour on earth, and happiness in heaven. Let us not fear to compare our King with his Peers. The place assigned him by posterity will be a high one; and among his many noble qualities will be reckoned scorn of sycophancy, and intolerance of falsehood. As long as his servants served him according to their oathin its spirit as well as its letter-he was willing to make sacrifice of some thoughts and feelings that to him were sacred, of some opinions so deeply rooted he could not change, though he could give them up-but as soon as he saw and knew that he must not only sacrifice feelings, and relinquish opinions, but violate his conscience, he exerted his prerogative-a prerogative bestowed by God-and called on that MAN, who had been the Saviour of his country, again to rescue her from danger-by the weight of his wisdom, and the grandeur of his name, to bear down her internal enemies, as, by his valour and his genius, he had crushed or scattered all foreign foes-so that the land, by a succession of bloodless, and, therefore, still more glorious victories, might again enjoy that liberty which consists in order and peace.

SHEPHERD.

You dinna fear, sir, I howp, that there will be ony very serious disturbances in the kintra, on account o' the change o' Ministry?

NORTH.

I think there will be a great deal of very ludicrous disturbances in the country, on account of the change of Ministry, and that the People will find it so difficult to assume a serious countenance, on the kicking out of the Whigs-if a kicking out it has been-that they will almost immediately give over trying it, and join in a good-humoured, yet perhaps a rather malicious peal of hearty laughter.

SHEPHERD.

That's a great relief to my mind. But are ye sure, sir, o' the Political Unions?

NORTH.

Quite sure. It is not improbable they may be revived in a small sort of way, but half-a-million of men will not march up to London from Birmingham, as about half-a-dozen men talked of their intending to do in the delirium of the Bill fever.

SHEPHERD.

It maun be a populous place that Brummagem, as the Bagmen ca't.

NORTH.

Very. For my own part, I rather liked the Whig government.

Whatttt?

SHEPHERD.

NORTH.

For it is an amiable weakness of mine to feel kindness towards any man or body of men whom I see the object of very general contempt or anger. No Ministry in my time was ever so unpopular-to use the gentlest term-as the one t'other day turned to the right about-and as for my Lord Melbourne, though you, James, say you never heard of him -I know him to be one of the most amiable and accomplished men-and that is saying much-in the Peerage. So that I am sorry that any Ministry, of which he was the head, should have been so universally despised when living, and so universally ridiculed when dead.

SHEPHERD.

That seems to me a new view o' the soobject.

NORTH.

However, it is the true one. I am disposed to think they were not kicked out-but that they backed out, in a state of such weakness, that had there been any rubbish in the way, they would have fallen over it, and injured their organs of philoprogenetiveness and Number One. All the world has known for some time, that they intended to resign on the meet

ing of Parliament for they had got quarrelsome in their helplessness—as teething childhood, or toothless age.

TICKLER.

I wish your friend Brougham, James, would publish his epistolary correspondence with the King during his Lordship's late visit to Scotland.

SHEPHERD.

But wou'd na that be exposing family-that is, Cabinet secrets? And Hairy wou'd never do that, after the dressin' he is thocht to hae gi'en Durham on that pint. Besides, it wou'd be awfu' to publish the King's letters to him without his Majesty's consent!

TICKLER.

I think I can promise him his Majesty's permission to publish all the letters the Lord Chancellor ever received in Scotland from his most Gracious Master.

NORTH.

Umph. The vol. would sell-title," Letters from the Mountains."

SHEPHERD.

Na-that wou'd be stealin' the tittle o' a delichtfu' wark o' my auld freen' Mrs Grant's.

NORTH.

I think I can promise him Mrs Grant's permission to publish under the title of what you justly call, James, her very delightful work, all the letters the Lord Chancellor ever wrote to his Most Gracious Majesty from Inverness, Elgin, Dundee, Edinburgh, or Hawick.

SHEPHERD.

A' impediments in the way o' publication being thus removed, I shall write this verra nicht-sae that my letter may leave the post-office by tomorrow's post-to Lord Brumm to send down the MSS. and they maun be a holographs in the parties' ain haun-writing-to Messrs A. and R. Blackwood-and I shall stay a month in Embro, that I may correct the press mysell-in which case I houp there may be a black frost, that at leisure hours we may hae some curlin'.

NORTH.

The Grey Ministry, in its best days, was never, somehow or other, inordinately admired by the universal British nation.

TICKLER.

That was odd. For the nation, I have heard it said, was for Reform to

a man.

NORTH.

All but some dozen millions or thereabouts-but people are never so prone to discontent as when they have had every thing their own wayespecially when, as it happened in this case, not one in a thousand knows either what he had been wanting, or what he has got, or what else he would wish to have, if at his bidding or beck the sky were willing that moment to rain it down among his feet.

TICKLER.

They surely were the most foolish financiers that ever tried taxation.

NORTH.

Of not one of them could it be sung,

"That even the story ran that he could gauge."

They were soon seen to be equally ignorant and incapable on almost all other subjects; nor-except with Brougham-was there a gleam of genius-nor a trait of talent beyond mediocrity-to make occasional amends for their deplorable deficiences as men of no-business habits, and of non-acquaintance equally with principles and with details.

TICKLER.

Hollo! we are forgetting Stanley and Graham.

NORTH.

So we are, I declare-but I hope they will forgive us since they too often, or rather too long, forgot themselves-and I should be happy to see them-whether Ins or Outs-at a Noctes. Their secession left the

Reform Ministry in a state of destitution more pitiable than that of any pauper-family under the operation of the new Poor Law.

TICKLER.

Strange how it contrived to stand for the last six months-yet all of us must have many a time seen a tree, Kit, lopped, barked, grubbed-remaining pretty perpendicular during a season of calm weather-by means of some ligature so slight as to be invisible-till a brisk breeze smites the skeleton, and down he goes-whether with or against his own inclination you can hardly say-so resignedly among the brushwood doth he lay his shorn and shaven head.

Haw-Haw-Haw!

SHEPHERD.

But it's no lauchin' maitter. I'm glad, after a', sir, that at this creesis you're no Prime Minister. The Duke 'll hae aneuch to do to get a' richt-and to keep a' richt-and I only wuss Sir Robert were hame again frae Tureen.

NORTH.

So do I. A Conservative Ministry can now be formed, stronger in talent, knowledge, eloquence, integrity, power, and patriotism, than any Ministry the country has had within the memory of man.

SHEPHERD.

Then whare's the difficulty wi' the Duke?

NORTH.

I will tell you, James, some night soon. The difficulties are strong and formidable-and there must be a dissolution.

TICKLER.

The Ex-Chancellor has assured us that the Press has lost all its power -so the elections will not be disturbed by that engine. The Whigs disdain to use bribery and corruption-and the Rads, for sufficient reasons, seldom commit such sins. No Reformer would condescend to receive a consideration from a Tory. A fair field, therefore, lies open to all parties —and, though not of a sanguine but melancholious temperament, I will bet a barrel of oysters with any man that the new House of Commons will back the Duke.

NORTH.

He will carry, by large majorities, all his measures of Conservative Reform in Church and State. He did so before the Bill was the law of the land and he will do so now that it is the law of the land-but, to speak plainly, gentlemen, I am getting confounded sleepy; and I feel as if I were speaking in a night-cap.

SHEPHERD.

And I as if there were saun in ma een-sae gie's your airm, sir, and I sall be the chawmermaid that lichts you till your bed. Its wice in you to lodge in the Road sic a nicht.-Do ye hear him-“ tirlin' the kirks?" Be a good boy, and never forget to say your prayers.

[Exeunt the Tres.

INDEX TO VOLUME XXXVI.

Advocate, Lord, of Scotland, his remark
that Scotland had never evinced a spi-
rit of freedom, 662

Aird, Thomas, a churchyard eclogue by
him, 615

Aladdin, a dramatic poem, by Ochlen-
schlaeger, reviewed, 620

Althorpe, Lord, not indispensable to
House of Commons, 253
Austrian Government of Italy; review
of Count Ferdinand dal Pozzo's work,
530-Austria had established schools
for popular instruction before Prussia,
531

Autocratie de la Presse, reviewed, 373-

Extracts relative to the means of resist-
ing the evils of a democratic press, 385
Banking in Scotland, 665
Bankruptcy law in Scotland, 666
Barricades, results of the triumph of,
209-Extracts from M. Sarran's work,
213-Greater freedom of the press in
an aristocratic than a democratic so-
ciety, 215-Excessive division of land-
ed property in France, 217
Billings, Baron, his letter to M. Jules
Janin, 807

Blackwood, death of William, 571
Bonaparte, comparison betwixt him and
Washington, by M. Chateaubriand,
809

Boyton, Mr, his speech, 764-His de-
scription of the conduct of the Irish
agitators in 1831, 764

Bride of Lochleven, a poem, by Delta,
767

Brittany, Chateaubriand's description of
a spring in, 704

Brougham, Lord, allusion to him in

Noctes Ambrosianæ, 851

Brown, James Hamilton, his narrative
of a visit to the seat of war in Greece,
392

Bryan Jones, 523

Bull, fragments from the history of John,
Chap. VIII. How Buckram bam-
boozled the Schoolmaster, and how the
devil got among the tailors, 289
Chap. IX. How Manley threw up
his place, &c. 292-Chap. X. How
Allsop and Buckram decoyed Gray out
of the house, &c. 296

Burke, Edmund, Part XII., 228-His

Letters on a Regicide Peace, 230-Con-
clusion, 322-Passages quoted descrip-
tive of the principles of the French Re-
volution, 325-Occupation in his re-
tirement, 335-His death, 339.
Byron, notices by J. H. Browne of inci-
dents in Greece in which he was con-
cerned, 392

Byron, his opinion of Sir Walter Scott, 394
Cæsars, Chap. V. 67-Conclusion, 173
Campbell, Thomas, his Life of Mrs Sid-
dons reviewed, 149 and 355
Catholic Relief Bill, disappointment in
its effects, 747
Chateaubriand, Memoirs of M. de, 19—

Extracts from, relative to the changes
in progress from monarchy to demo-
cracy in Europe, and especially in
France, 20, 21-Reflections at sea, &c.,
25 et seq.-Memoirs, No. III., 240
-Chateaubriand a representative of
the ancient French nobility, ib.-Ex-
tracts descriptive of school scenes, 241
-Comparison betwixt him and Tal-
leyrand, 245-Memoirs, 802-Uni-
versal admiration of him in France, ib.
-His letter to M. Ed. Merrechet,
803-His description of a spring in
Brittany, 804-Account of his ances-
tors, 805-His sacred drama of Moses,
810.

Churchyard Eclogue, by Thomas Aird,
615

Coercion, Irish Bill, diminishes crime,
757-Renewed without clauses against
agitation, 762

Coleridge's Poetical Works, reviewed,
542-Christabel, 563-Ancient Mari-
ner, 566

Colonsay, Christopher on, Fytte Second, 1
Combourg, Chateau de, described by
Chateaubriand, 805

Cousin Nicholas, Chap. IX. 97-XI. and
XII. 341-XIII. and XIV. 493-
XV., XVI., and XVII. 776
Criminal law, as settled by old Scottish
Parliament, 664

Croly, Rev. Mr, his pamphlet, 758—

Late improvement of the incomes and
style of living of the Catholic priest-
hood, 759-Dues of marriage, baptism,
extreme unction, payable to them, ib.
Cruise of the Midge, Chap. V, 29-

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