window, and door, and ventilator, threatening to sicken the stoutest who resists any longer his most touching appeals for redress. He is not propitiated at all by Messrs. Cubitt predicting that in three years his sufferings will cease. He begs them to stop up the thousand drains that poison him at noon and by night, and instead of doing so they have tried to improve his breath by administering loads of lime. He wants relief, not physic. The old gentleman maintains that he has stamina and long life in him, and all he wants is to be rid of drains and doctors; and he thinks the three years' suffering might be shortened to one, if not less. Nor does this venerable patient content himself with appealing to Parliament. He has lived long enough to learn that there is a Fourth Estate, as powerful as peer or senator. He therefore sends a petition on a current of his best sulphuretted hydrogen from beneath Blackfriars Bridge into Printing House Square, and in six hours he has a leading article on his case. Another current of hydrogen, mixed up with choice exhalations from the docks, he entrusts with kind compliments and a petition to the Daily News, and in a twinkling he secures a leader there. From Waterloo Bridge he sends his politest regards and most distinguished considerations to the Morning Post, and out comes an elaborate leader on sanitary questions, enough to frighten Belgravia. In succession the Herald and Advertiser- all the chief papers, as good luck would have it, lying along his northern bank-are visited in the course of the same night with perfumes not "of Araby the blest." It is one consolation that the venerable father, though he suffers, will not be silent, and his lusty knocks indicate his strength as much as his sorrow tells his sufferings. Take heart, old Thames, a thousand pickaxes and shovels are busy in hastening your emancipation. Five thousand navvies are hard at work. "Up and doing, All with hearts for These are any fate, Still achieving, still pursuing; HE lawyer may arrive at the Woolsack, the parish minister may attain a mitre, the brilliant soldier a coronet, the able diplomatist or accomplished Indian Commissioner may richly deserve one. But are there no virtues but theirs? Is a great agricultural and commercial nation such as England is, to recognize no claims but such as exist beneath a red coat, a cassock, or a silk gown? Are her honours to be henceforth sectarian? Does our country owe no debt of gratitude to the country gentleman who, possessed of magnificent patrimonial estates, feels his responsibilities, and distributes around him with a munificent hand what gladdens many a heart and freshens many a waste place? He may not sound a trumpet when he does deeds of goodness. may have no friendly hand to report them. He may prefer to do the lightning deed regardless of the thunder He at its heels-to be felt rather than seen-to be remembered in the hearts of the few, than to be followed by the empty plaudits of the many. Genius, goodness, and greatness may be developed at a fireside, in a village, or in a county, not so shining, but as substantial as ever shone in battle fields, lightened in courts of justice, or thundered from the pulpit. There may be greatness in the aggregate of many small and unostentatious virtues. Patience is far more difficult than courage. The passive virtues are least popular, but they are not the least important. The world wants bulk, glare, and noise. It recognizes soldiers, statesmen, and orators, and most justly so. But these are not the only-probably not the highest-examples of greatness. Light is more powerful than lightning. The electricity that has no voice, and warms the earth, and indicates its presence only by golden harvests, is mightier than that which explodes from the thunder cloud in crashes that shake the hills. By all means let us do honour-the very highest honour-to our soldiers and statesmen, but we think such honours should not be seen exclusively in fields of battle and courts of justice, and no prospect of attaining them be held out to those who adorn the place they have inherited, and spread around them an influence silent as the dew, but as saturating also, and stand out the most distinguished and useful among those who regard a country English gentleman as no mean place or occasion of doing good, and the recognition of success, eminent success, in this character as worthy of a dignity which costs the country nothing, and contributes a powerful incentive to others to go and do likewise. NTONELLI is the Papal Cabinet compressed in one. He was the writer of those anile Bulls that amused the world, the author of the Papal aggression that annoyed England, and the donor of a cardinal's hat to his friend, admirer, and protégé, Dr. Wiseman, who still inflicts his presence on us. There has not been an indiscreet, ill-natured, and mischievous deed perpetrated ostensibly by Pio Nono that was not of Antonelli's contriving. He has done more to make the Vatican the pity of its friends, the scorn of its enemies, and the laughing-stock of Christendom, than any predecessor in the same office during the last three hundred But years. This was neither his design nor his desire. he was too clever. His policy was too subtle; it overshot its aim by its very cleverness, and exposed what it was meant to hide. His ends were evil, and his exer |