disgust (if I may so call it), when he continued, addressing himself to Oldacre: "

you, my old friend, know what a delight it was to me, when I first came to these venerated walls,

"And lov'd my old hereditary trees."

"Here once my family flourished in undeviating loyalty to the laws and institutions of their country, and hoped their posterity might do so for ever. You, who were the friend of my father, have often recollected the energy with which he used to repeat the fine lines of a man who loved liberty as well as the hottest of our would-be patriots, and understood the constitution better than most:

'Remember, O my friends, the laws, the rights,

The

generous plan of power, delivered down, From age to age to your renown'd forefathers, (So dearly bought, the price of so much blood!) O! let it never perish in your hands,

But piously transmit it to your children.'

"In committing this wish, this solemn lesson, to me, my father, thank God, had no fears that his son's heart would not respond to it. Alas! if he could see him now! responding indeed to it, but only in his own breast; all those he most wished to rely upon, failing him; nay, from hour to hour devising new invasions of the constitution, and allying themselves closer and closer with its enemies; some of them openly and unblushingly

professing principles of action which would shame the poorest beggar if an honest man.

"No doubt, in this new order of things, the genius of the banker, Wingate, is born to rebuke that of the heir of Penruddock; and that name, which I had fondly hoped I should leave unstained behind me, is already an ephemeral shadow, trembling before the fortune of universal suffrage." Do you know, Strickland, I wished you with us at this moment; for I thought that even your hope of being Solicitor-general would have fled, and voluntarily disappeared before the energetic ebullition of this true English gentleman. How mean and dastardly, or how frivolous and shallow, did a number of high-titled and wealthy renegadoes to the common weal, by being traitors to their order, after professing to stand by it, appear in comparison with this high-minded person!

But you will say, as most of the calculating new men, to whom the only open road to destination is reform, do constantly say-is not this mere prejudice-high soaring, if you please, but still prejudice? Is every thing so perfect as not to need reform? Or, if not, is reform not to be attempted?

Not so. For, impressed as I was with Penruddock's energy of manner, and his evident sincerity

of feeling upon the subject, I asked these very questions, and it was thus he answered me:

"Reform certainly, where reform is necessary; and if reform mean alteration for better, and not destruction, adopt it. Every thing wears out; manners change; the reasons for customs fail with time new situations require new laws; or, as is better said by him who said all things best, and says it in this very play,

'What custom wills, in all things should we do't,
The dust on antique time would lie unswept,
And mount'nous error be too highly heap'd
For truth to overpower.'

mountainous

'No! I am not for consecrating error.' Usurpations are to be resisted; rights that have been forcibly extinguished, restored. But the march of all this is to be regulated with caution, with prudence. We are not, with brother Jack, to be so alarmed at a bit of lace, as to tear the coat to pieces in getting it off. Show me suffering, show me wounds, and I will gladly apply lenitives; I will restore health to the body, but by alteratives, not by poisons. If a limb be hurt, I will restore it if possible; but will not, on every bruise, fly to amputation. If the Catholics or Dissenters are oppressed for no fault of their own, I will relieve them, and gladly; for all ought

to be brothers, as sons of the same mother; but to do so, I will not confess myself an alien, and surrender my birth-right. So, if great cities are unrepresented, let them have representatives; but do not on that account alter the frame and constitution of all representation, and open the floodgates of the populace to bear down all differences of condition, confound all ranks, and drown the fair rights and influence of property.

"How well is all this depicted by this wonderful man" and he again opened the book.

66

Perhaps you

will bear with a few more extracts from his wisdom, which on this, as on all subjects, are little less than oracles: and recollect here it is Ulysses speaks."

At this he read from Troilus and Cressida :

'Troy, yet upon her basis, had been down,
And the great Hector's sword had lack'd a master,
But for these instances.

The specialty of rule hath been neglected.

When that the general is not like the hive

To whom the foragers shall all repair,

What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded,
The unworthiest shews as fairly in the mask.
The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre,
Observe degree, priority, and place,

Office and custom, in all line of order.

But when the planets,

In evil mixture to disorder wander,

What plagues and what portents! what mutiny!
What raging of the sea! shaking of earth!

Commotion in the winds! frights! changes! horrors!
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate

The unity and married calm of states,

Quite from their fixture! O, when degree is shaked,
Which is the ladder to all high designs,

The enterprize is sick.

Take but degree away, untune that string,

And hark, what discord follows! Each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy; the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than their shores;
Strength should be lord of imbecility,

And the rude son should strike his father dead.' *

Here Penruddock stopt, and we expressed ourselves not more struck with the wonderful poetry he had recited in support of his opinions, than the energetic tone with which he gave the recitation.

"It is indeed," said he, "wonderful poetry; but not, like poetry in general, fiction. No lawgiver, meditating his code of government for a state soberly in his closet, could have better sounded the depths of true legislation. Yet these are now, by the superior wisdom of such lights as Wingate and my nephew, deemed empty prejudices, which they are born to correct. But if prejudices, I avow them mine; and for this I and my ancestors are thought unbending aristocrats.

* Some of the lines in this fine speech are omitted.