preferment pinned to them, unless he would wish to incur that censure of the poet: "The world is nat❜rally averse HUDIBRAS. The truth, once out, can never be recalled, and rone but fools will shut their eyes and ears against conviction. If, after the present lesson, we should still witness an archbishop, and shoals of deans, prebends, doctors in divinity, wise legislators, generals, colonels, &c. dancing attendance at a prostitute's levée, for a share in the public spoils, or to bribe her to silence, we may venture to predict that-ENGLAND'S SUN IS SETTING. CERVANTES HOGG. THE SETTING SUN. 66 I "Sometimes some fam'd historian's pen Where all, I see, through ev'ry page, Yet always asses much the same." SOAME JENYNS. HOPE," said Oliver Cromwell, on reading a letter of Admiral Blake, of his humbling the Spaniards at Malaga-" I hope to make the name of an Englishman as great as ever was that of a Roman!". Degraded as we now are from our brave ancestors, at least with respect to public virtues, there are yet to be found many, many Englishmen, who are animated with the purest sentiments of patriotism, and who would willingly devote their property and lives to the interest and honor of their country. But what encouragement is there for such men to step forward, when barely to hint at what all the world sees and sneers at us for-that things are all going the wrong way, is enough to draw a reprimand on the first body of men in the universe? Lord Chesterfield, at the beginning of the present reign, writes thus:-"The sons of Britain, like those of Noah, must cover their parents' shame as well as they can, for to retrieve its honor is now too late. One would really think, that our ministers and generals were all as drunk as the patriarch was. However, in your situation, you must not be Cham, but spread your cloak over our disgrace, as far as it will go."-If this had not. been a letter from one courtier to another, who "Nothing woo, but gold and power" we should have said that his lordship was right in his premises, but wrong in his conclusion. His lordship has ingenuously laid open his own putrid heart, and that of a politician in general. Their sole aim is to keep the cancerous sores of the constitution from being probed, and to spread their cloaks over them, to prevent the corrupting maggots, that is to say themselves, from being discovered to the naked eye of the public. We, who are no courtiers, think that, to spread a cloak over corruption, is to patronize and encourage it; that to open the louse-bag, is to destroy the insidious vermin that are momentarily undermining the constitution; and that it is the duty of every well wisher to his country to uncloak knavery. He should exclaim boldly, such and such men— "Objiciunt noctem fraudibus." Veil their frauds with darkness. If a self-interested, hungry administration, etheir play themselves, or, through weakness, suffer others to play the morbus pediculosus with the constitution, and eat their way into the public vitals, they should be exposed, and no king, who has a grain of sense, will suffer them any longer to lead, or rather mislead him. Sir William Temple once observed in person to King Charles II. who was suspected of wishing to introduce the same religion and government as that of France, that he never knew but one man, and that one a Frenchman, named Gourville, who understood the English nation well; that when he (Sir William) was at Brussels, in the first Dutch war, and Gourville heard that the parliament grew weary of it, he said that the king had nothing to do but to make peace; that he had been long enough in England, and seen enough of its court, people, and parliaments, to conclude-" Qu'un roi d'Angleterre, qui veut être l'homme de son peuple, est le plus grand roi du monde; mais s'il veut être quelque chose d'avantage, par Dieu, il n'est plus rien."-In plain English : "That a king of England, who wishes to be |