avidity, and had succeeded him only a few months before the period at which our little history has now arrived, when his most respectable parent left the world at an honoured old age, and bequeathed him a small fortune, a valuable connexion of clients, and the honourable, though honorary duties of executor and trustee to the will of the late Mr. Fothergill. Such was the man whose official claims introduced him to a frequent and at last constant intercourse with the lovely widow. Both parties were equally aware of the prohibitory bar to her marrying again whenever the subject crossed their minds. The lady, therefore, admitted his friendship while she loved his society without fear of any sinister intention, and the gentleman gave full scope to his admiration without ever dreaming of a warmer sentiment. A warmer sentiment, however, was gradually, and, in wonderful conformity with the common, because irresistible, laws of nature, engendered in the hearts of both, of which both were certainly equally unconscious; until the greedy relative of the late legator, a man with many children, who had watched the young widow's movements with mercenary attention, mistaking the usual gossip of the neighbourhood for established truth, took the premature and unwarrantable measure of applying to the lady herself, through his solicitor, to know at what period she intended to surrender her estate in conformity with her late husband's will, on her approaching marriage with Mr. Charles Wingrove.

This was an application calculated to startle the delicacy of a far less sensitive person than Mrs. Fothergill. She had for some time begun to feel a certain shyness, in many cases amounting almost to the vulgar "cut" in some of her most respectable, and, perhaps, over-scrupulous friends. It had never occurred to her perfectly pure and innocent mind that the prohibitory clause in her late husband's will rendered her great

intimacy with any marriageable man a subject of suspicion, and, consequently, of scandal; but she had long felt that, surrounded by every luxury, and, indeed, splendour of life on which the world sets so high a value, she could not dream even of

a second marriage which was to carry her with the now paltry fortune of 5007. per annum into a new alliance. We say she felt this, and the more strongly because more than four times the amount of that income was annually disbursed in active and wellregulated benevolence, and generous assistance to the poorer branches of her own family. To cut off the sources of such supplies in order to gratify any personal inclination would have appeared to her selfish and base, and the vulgar application to which we have alluded, while it brought forth abundant tears and self-reproach for what she, perhaps, justly deemed her unguarded conduct, at the same time immovably clenched her determination to resist a passion which she now first acknowledged to herself, but had never even by implication admitted to any other person, and least of all to the object of it.

After summoning all her fortitude to her aid, she seized the first op portunity of placing the disgusting epistle in the hands of Mr. Charles Wingrove.

His feelings on perusing this extraordinary document may be so easily conceived, that the attempt to describe them would be superfluous. He had not escaped some jocular allusions to his intimacy with the rich and beautiful widow from many of his intimate associates; but the idea of involving her in a matrimonial engagement at the sacrifice of her vast fortune had never entered his head, and far more remotely could he ever have imagined that, as her known trustee and acknowledged man of business, the slightest scandal could have arisen on their intimacy.

Charles Wingrove was habitually a steady and collected man of busi ness, one not easily surprised or "thrown aback;" but on this occasion he found himself "perplexed in the extreme." The hesitation of a few minutes, however, decided him.

Madam," said he, "this is a ma lignant and cruel aspersion. My is, and shall be, devoted to your service; but I am not so miserably selfish as to ask you, could I flatter myself that you were so inclined, to surrender the noble means of your bountiful and generous heart to a union with a comparatively poor,

THE COMING SESSION.

It is impossible to contrast the present state of public affairs with what it was only four short years ago, without rendering, in the first place, our unfeigned thanks to that good Providence which has watched over and sustained us in our hour of need; and offering, in the next, the tribute of our gratitude to the statesmen who have been, in God's hands, the instruments for carrying this country through a crisis scarcely less alarming than that which seemed to impend during the agitation of the Reform-bill.

When Sir Robert Peel came into office, commerce was stagnant, and the revenues of the state altogether inadequate to meet the ordinary demands of the public service. There was discontent, amounting to sedition, in the manufacturing districts of England. Ireland was moved from shore to shore by the agitation of the Repeal question; our foreign relations were in the most unsatisfactory state. The experiment of governing Canada by means of a united legislature gave little promise of a successful result; and a breach with the United States on the subject of the North-castern border seemed all but inevitable. Meanwhile our arms had suffered a terrible reverse in India; and the success which attended them under the walls of Acre served only to place us in a position of more than half-hostility towards France. Parties, too, were in the very height of their rivalry in the Legislature. A falling cabinet seemed willing to put the existence of the monarchy in hazard, rather than relinquish places whence the current of events was removing them; while, out of doors, their adherents were urging them continually to measures against which their better judgment revolted. How different is our position now!

From the seats of commerce and of trade, reports more and more cheering come in daily. There is an excess upon the revenue over the expenditure to an amount unprecedented in the memory of the present generation. Of the Chartists we hear

nothing, either through the newspapers or otherwise; and the Repeal question is to all intents and purposes defunct. We are at peace with all the nations of Europe, and likely so to continue; and if in Asia and America a few clouds still hang on the horizon, they are not sufficiently dense to obscure to any important degree the prospect of tranquillity in either quarter. Surely there is in all this ample cause of gratitude, both towards God and man; which cannot surely be better shewn than in the abandonment, on all sides, of party feeling and party prejudice, in order that both the Government and Legislature may apply, in a spirit of mutual forbearance and confidence, to the consideration of questions which must be taken up sooner or later, and which can never be so happily dealt with as in times like the present, of freedom from foreign war and domestic embarrassment.

And here, upon the threshold of a new session of parliament, let us tes tify to the sincerity with which we offer this counsel, by doing justice to the late Government as far as regards their intentions in very many of the acts which, while they were in progress, we did our best to resist. For if, at any time in the heat of argument, we have charged them with entertaining designs hostile to the mo narchy or destructive of the Established Church, we beg leave to retract such charge. That many of their projects had a strong tendency that way, it would have been the height of absurdity to deny. Their great measure of all-the Reform of the House of Commons-was, both in its principle and in the manner of its accomplishment, as large a stride as ever was taken by statesmen of any age-from a monarchical to a demo cratic form of government. If such a scheme had been concocted and carried out in any other country in the world, if the influences which for a century and more controlled any other people under heaven had been so entirely and abruptly revolu tionised, no power on earth could

have saved the Constitution. But we do not, therefore, charge the late Government, now that the crisis is past, with deliberately proposing to merge the prerogatives of the Crown and the Aristocracy in the power of the people. They had a theory of their own which they were determined to work out. They believed that the balance of the Constitution had given way; that the Lords had become too powerful for both the Crown and the Commons; and the only sure means of restoring the just equilibrium of the State which occurred to them was to render the Lower House, as far as possible, independent of the Upper. Now they might be right, or they might be wrong, in their theory, but it would be the height of injustice, at this day, to assert that at any stage in the great struggle their views extended farther; except, perhaps, in this respect, that they were prepared to peril Crown, Church, and the public peace, rather than leave their great purpose unaccomplished.

mitted it, immediately after the Reform-bill was carried! Neither he nor his colleagues had at that time any community of feeling either with Irish agitators or English demagogues; indeed no ministry ever went so far as this same reforming cabinet under Earl Grey to put down with a strong hand both the one and the other. Who that has arrived at the years of discretion can have forgotten the memorable speech from the throne, which denounced Daniel O'Connell, almost by name, as an enemy to his country; or the measures that were adopted to restore the majesty of the law in quarters where, a short time previously, breaches of the law were, to say the least, connived at? But what was the consequence? The aristocracy, with whom Earl Grey desired to reconcile himself, held aloof from him, as the principal cause of their recent humiliation; and the high-minded though mistaken peer, unable to bend to circumstances, withdrew shortly afterwards into private life, and left to his associates, for whom office had still charms, a more difficult game to play than ever.

It was the necessary result of the sort of contest upon which the Whigs thus entered to unite them in all their after-career with the most unquiet spirits of the age. They had triumphed over the aristocracy by means of the mob; and the mob became henceforth, to a certain extent, their masters. It was not in the Houses of Commons and of Lords that the Reform-bill was carried. The inen of Birmingham, the Political Union with Mr. Attwood at its head, proved far more effective in thrusting Schedule A down the throats of the borough-mongers in the Lower House than either Lord John Russell or Lord Palmerston. The final surrender of the Lords was much more owing to Lord Wharncliffe's personal fears, than to the eloquence of Lord Brougham, or Earl Grey's reasoning. Both parties, of course, remembered this when the fight was over. A defeated aristocracy never forgives; a democracy, triumphant, is inexorable in its demands upon the leaders which it professes to follow. This the Whigs learned to their cost, and to this, in a great degree, may be attributed almost all the more flagrant of the blunders which by and by they committed. How gladly would Earl Grey have stood still, if his party had per

It is not fair to write or speak about statesmen, as if they were exempt from the common frailties of human nature. The best among them cannot help being swayed as much by personal feeling as by public principle; and hence, when it came to be settled that there were but two courses before them-that either they must retire from office, and in doing so acknowledge themselves mistaken, or hold on and conduct the government the best way they could, we claim from Lord Melbourne and his friends a degree of virtue which is rarely to be met with among men, when we argue that they ought to have chosen the former alternative. Nor is this all. We question whether the country was ripe for a change either of men or of measures, at any period anterior to that which brought the present cabinet into office. That it might have been rendered so, by a different policy on the part of the Whigs, is just possible. But this is by no means certain; and, if it were, how was Lord Melbourne to give the impulse out of which a change of temper in the nation was to arise? Would the party which rejected the

overtures of Earl Grey, listen to similar overtures from him? Surely not. Lord Melbourne could not help himself. He was in the toils, and there was no escaping from them; he was on the declivity of the hill, and to pull up was impossible. Indeed every day added to his difficulties, by removing from him, one by one, all those members of the party which at the outset had shed lustre over it. Lord Stanley and Sir James Graham seceded from the cabinet. Sir Francis Burdett abandoned the ministerial benches. And thus, by degrees, the minister found himself ably seconded, no doubt, both in the Cabinet and in the House- for there was no lack of talent among the party at any time but deserted by all the old families which used in former times to make the people's rights their watchword when in opposition, and their stalking-horse to power.

A cabinet circumstanced as that of Lord Melbourne now was deserves more credit, perhaps, for saving the ship at all, than for allowing her to be carried amid shoals and breakers, through which it proved in the end that the pilot was incapable of steering her. The Lichfield-house compact was a measure of self-defence. The political existence of the cabinet absolutely depended upon it; and hence the true ground of marvel is, that the terms exacted by Mr. O'Connell were not much more stringent than they proved to be. To be sure, the Government had always this resource in difficulty, that, as often as they should endeavour to protect the Constitution from their friends, their rivals not their enemies would support them; and the history of the three years prior to the session of 1841 proves, that they did not scruple, on great occasions, to avail themselves of this support. But the proceeding had no tendency to prolong their tenure of office. Their friends, the Movement, became impatient. Their rivals looked daily with a clearer eye towards Downing Street.

The trade of the country fell off. Their foreign policy was not successful, their proceedings at home gave satisfaction to no one. Each new quarter shewed an increasing deficiency in the revenue, and all their stock of changes and chances in finance was exhausted. What

could they do? The Anti-Corn-law League threatened them with defection unless they repealed all taxes upon food, and undid their own work by putting sugar, the growth of countries where slavery continues, on an equality with the produce of our own free colonies. Meanwhile Dissenters were getting very impa tient. The Church was not disestablished, as they had expected it to be; on the contrary, it seemed to have recruited its strength, winning back ministers themselves into the ranks of its defenders, for the cabinet would neither reintroduce the abandoned appropriation-clause for Ireland, nor consent to abolish churchrates, except on terms which their friends rejected. What was to be done? A sop was thrown to Dissenters, in the shape of an Educationbill, which the Church defeated, and the minister withdrew; and now, in a fit of despair, when all other resources had failed them, the cabinet took the fatal leap, by proposing the budget of three years ago. All that followed is a matter of recent history. The dissolution and its results; the entrance of a Conservative Government to office; the new tariff, the incometax, and the triumphant consequences of both; these things are of too recent occurrence to need any recapi tulation here. The violence of the political earthquake appeared to have exhausted itself, and, with the ancient pilot at the helm, the ship of the Constitution held its till way, now she floats, or seems to float, once more in smooth water.

If this outline of facts be correct, it follows that, cruelly as the Whigs may have mismanaged affairs, their errors were the result quite as much of irresistible necessity as of any purpose on their parts to undermine the great institutions of the country. High aristocrats themselves, they were, by the tenor of their policy, at the outset, cut off from the support of their own order, and driven to look for friends in circles which either do not understand or entirely overlook the uses of aristocratic institutions. And such friends as these would not be satisfied unless the bulwarks of aristocracy were cut away. They hated the Church, because the Church teaches her children not only to honour and obey the