touches the soul of the question; let us listen to him— hear him. Spoke !—spoke! indicates impatience, ennui, lassitude. You abuse your privilege-you have said enough—you have spoken! This reproach is imperative-it is rarely resisted. Order! order! is the call to

the result? The whigs and the radicals are absorbed, | Listen to the speaker!-his discourse penetrates and the one in the other. Seeing so many liberal concessions obtained by England, the Irish Catholics have followed the example of the liberals; they have put off their extreme demands; they have ceased to contend for the repeal of the union. Under the orders of O'Connell, they march behind the ministerial troops, and sus-order; it is a summons to the speaker to notice and tain them so as to prevent their falling back, come what may.

In the camp of the opposition there is the same fusion. Sir Robert Peel has dressed all the tories in the uniform of conservatives. Even the little irresolute batallion of Lord Stanley, has recently, with its chief, assumed the new livery of the defenders of the church and of the throne. The tiers-parti has not been more successful on the side of the Manche than on the Parisian.

The question, then, is simply and plainly raised. It is the great question that is to be decided between the old society and the new, the same that was raised in France in 1789; only, if the throne is wise, here the whole war may be finished on the floors of Parliament. The field of battle is now before the reader. You have the army of reformers and that of the conservatives in the presence of each other-each recognizing but one watchword, but one standard; the first, stronger and bolder, but having too many leaders, and a rear guard more impatient to arrive in action than the principal body; the second, more compact, better disciplined, and more obedient to its only chief.

Great as may be the exasperation on each side, you will rarely ever observe the belligerent parties, even in their hostilities, depart from their habits of chivalrous loyalty.

reprimand the offending member who has passed the boundaries of propriety-for, to the speaker alone be longs the right to pronounce judgment on such occasions.

The speaker centres in himself the omnipotence of the chamber of which he is the representative. His authority is supreme, within as well as without the walls of the Parliament house. His situation renders him a personage of very high importance. He has his official palace, he holds his levees, to which none are admitted unless in court dress. Singular inconsis tency! the very same Commoners who enter booted, spurred, with their over-coats and their hats on, into their own hall, would find the doors of their own speaker closed against them, if they should present themselves without ruffles and dressed à la Française, This rigorous particularity is unreasonable. Mr. Hume, however, in a recent attack upon this absurd etiquette, found himself unable to succeed against the powerful prejudice by which it is upheld. The sound sense of his objections only passed for radical folly. Thus it is that with the English the ancient forms of etiquette have deeper root than even their old abuses. You may be certain that they will have reformed the church, the aristocracy, and perhaps the crown itself, before the grotesque wigs of their magis

There is a sort of Parliamentary law of nations trates. Their entire revolution will have been comestablished in the house.

The opposition never takes advantage of the absence of a minister to interrogate his colleagues on matters foreign to their own departments.

pleted, while their new liberty will be still distinguished by the marners and dress of the ancien regime.

In England, the real and undeniable sovereignty is in the House of Commons. The British peerage is a Nor will a minister ever introduce a bill without mere phantom, a little more respectably clothed than notice; the courtesy, in this respect, is extremely great that of France, but quite as much of a phantom. Still between the two parties. Challenges are regularly ex- this very British Peerage, which is condemned to obey changed; the day and the hour are both fixed. If any the Commons and register their edicts, preserves all the member mentions his inability to attend at the appoint-appearances of supremacy! It continues to command ed time, the motion is hurried or delayed to suit his convenience.

If the question should be one of importance, and the decision doubtful, whatever urgent business may call a member away, he will not desert his post, unless he is enabled to find among his adversaries some one equally desirous to absent himself. They make an arrangement then that both shall stay away, and this double contract is always held sacred.

the Commons to appear at its bar, who regularly obey this summons, preceded by their speaker! And when the Lords, seated in their own chamber, have signified the royal assent to the wishes of the Commons, the latter withdraw, bowing as they go out! The real upper or superior chamber consents to be called and to appear always as the inferior.

How much do I prefer to these ceremonious levees of the British speaker, the popular balls of the president of the French Chamber of Deputies, where no orders are given to the guards to prevent the entry of persons

ters of invitation—the four hundred and fifty-nine first for the representatives of the people, and then the four hundred and sixtieth for the Duke of Orleans, as the first peer of the realm, and so on for the rest. In France the peerage comes after the people!

In their struggles, though often violent, the blows are always generous, and aimed in front. However, the noise of the interruptions by which approbation or dis-not in costume! Above all, I like those numbered let content is expressed, would astonish and terrify a stranger—above all, one unaccustomed to the discordance of English pronunciation. The sound is unusual, striking, and the more astonishing, as at first you are unable to tell whence it proceeds. There are six hundred men, seated, uttering savage cries of joy or anger, their bodies all the while remaining immovable, their features preserving their usual phlegmatic and calm expression. These tumults produce quite a fantastic effect. Hear! hear! is the cry of satisfaction and encouragement.

It is much to be regretted that the French do not remove the abuses themselves, as they do their names and customs. Their system is different from the English, but it is very doubtful if it be the best. The latter are always very respectful subjects; they kneel

down at the feet of royalty in supplicating it to take | Burdett took frequent part in it. My attention was their will for its pleasure. The former hold themselves fixed on their persons, if not on their discourses.

Mr. Henry Lytton Bulwer is a young radical who leads a life altogether aristocratic. He is renowned for the elegance of his grooms and of his vehicles. Nobody wears a black frock so short and so tight. He speaks Mr. Abercromby, the present speaker, by no means well and easily, with a voice somewhat unpleasant, his solicited the honor of the chair which, at the opening of head elevated and thrown back after the fashion of men the session, was decreed him by the first act of the of small stature. He is the elder brother of the novelist, reformers. Constrained to maintain, in the name of the and is himself the author of a work on France, in which house, the privileges of that body, he represents that he judges of French manners, society, politics and literassembly with all the dignity that his grotesque wigature with a degree of insane ignorance hardly less will permit. Happily he has thick grey eye-brows, disgusting than the naïve buffoonery of Lady Morgan. which harmonize extremely well with his light-colored It is a distinguishing characteristic of the English, to official perruque. In spite of the enormous quantity of write without knowledge, observation or study on every hair that overshadows his person, there is nothing country they pass through. It is a pity that a man of savage in his appearance; on the contrary, a mild and common sense and intelligence such as Mr. Henry Lytaffable dignity eminently distinguishes him; his man-ton Bulwer, should have made his literary debut by so vulgar a piece of national gaucherie.

There was at first a long discussion of a bill regulat-on this unlucky bill, the galleries for the reporters and ing the distribution of water in the parish of Mary-lebone; the debate was of but little interest, though Mr. Henry Lytton Bulwer, Mr. Hume, and Sir Francis

the public were cleared. This is the custom of Parliament; decisions never take place but with closed doors.

quite an altered appearance. The less piece was finish- | known to the whole city. Add to this the most refined ed-the great one was about to commence. The ranks impertinence of vanity, a sublime contempt for every on the right and left grew thicker every moment-each one not of the exclusive circle into which they alone find member hastened to his post. admission, and an ambitious senseless jargon. Lord Castlereagh is the perfect type of this first and principal class of London fashionables.

Lord John Russell, the official commander in chief of the reformers, had appeared on the ministerial benches, to the right of the speaker. By his side, you observed his principal aides-de-camp, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Spring Rice, with a large bald forehead, and the countenance of a Satyr, the most ready, if not the ablest speaker in the cabinet; Lord Morpeth, secretary for Ireland, a large young man whose premature grey hairs, appear at a distance to be of a light yellow, looking like a timid and blushing youth; Lord Palmerston, an old bloated dandy, whose fat face seems to swell itself out between his thick whiskers with more satisfaction since he is no longer led by the nose by Talleyrand-Lord Palmerston, who has not wished to be made a peer since his last return to power, pretending that his eloquence has a more open field in the Commons than it could have in the House of Lords.

In front of the ministerial group, and separated from it only by the table of the clerks, sits Sir Robert Peel, surrounded also by his conservative aids, among whom you may distinguish Lord Granville Somerset the quasimodo of Westminster, whose double hump does not prevent him from being one of the most alert to sound the Protestant tocsin against Popery.

Here and there you may have observed other distinguished members of the house; Daniel O'Connell, the great O'Connell, calm and absorbed in the reading of some new book, of which he is cutting open the leaves, in the midst of his sons, his nephews, and his Irish Catholics, who form what is called his tail; a tail, if you please, but one which leads the head of the state. After them, Lord Stanley, the young heir of the house of Derby, that ambitious and disappointed elegant, who has yet only in heart deserted the benches of the

reformers.

Next you have remarked two young men standing up, and differing as much in their height and figure as in their opinions; but equally celebrated, each one in his own way, in the world, and who, in consequence,

deserve to be described.

The first is Viscount Castlereagh, son of the Marquis of Londonderry, a mad conservative like his father, but less simple and possessed of much more discretion. Thin and pitiful in his person, without figure and without talent, it is not in the house that he really exists; in the saloons of the west end is his true atmosphereit is there alone that his stupidity finds the air that it can respire. Lord Castlereagh is one of the chiefs of the new school which has regenerated English fashion. This school is entirely different from that of Brummell, which founded its distinction upon dress. The new fashionables of the sect of the noble lord, affect, on the contrary, entire negligence in the dress, and the greatest freedom of manners. Nothing is brilliant in their equipages, nor in the style of their servants. Their vehicles are of dark colors and sombre liveries; for themselves extreme simplicity in appearance. No flowered vests; no gold or silver lacing about them; no jewels; at the most the end of a gold chain at the button of a black cont; an engraved ring betraying some mysterious sentiment

The second, Mr. Edward Lytton Bulwer, the well known author of Pelham and other novels, is, like his brother, an avowed radical. He is large, and would, did he not stoop and hold himself in other respects badly, appear to advantage. His hair is thick, light, and curly. His long inexpressive countenance, and his large moist and fixed eyes, scarcely reveal the writer of genius. I suppose it is in some measure the incontestible success of his writings that has opened to him the doors of that exclusive society, with which he is very much at home. For the style of his costume he is indebted to old traditionary fashions. You will rarely ever meet him but with his bosom open, the skirts of a luxuriant surtout lined with velvet or silk floating to the wind, with the rest of his dress of clear brilliant shades, and varnished boots, brandishing some cane encrusted with a rich head. He would remind you of those parvenus of bad taste who encumber the avant scenes of the opera at Paris. I do not deny the really interesting character of some of the novels of Mr. Bul wer, though they are in other respects so wretchedly written; but it seems to be that he acted very ridicu lously in endeavoring to exaggerate their real value, at the expense of exhibiting the absurd vanity betrayed in every page of the sad rhapsodies he has recently published under the title of the Student. I would how. ever sooner pardon him for this last work, than an act of his of which I have been informed. A young Ame rican called on him the other day, with letters of introduction. "I am delighted to see you, sir," said Mr. Bulwer, "but I will tell you beforehand that it will be difficult for me often to have that honor; I have already more acquaintances than my leisure will allow me to cultivate, and, in conscience, it is to them that I owe the moments at my disposal." Do you not discover in this piece of politeness something that even surpasses the characteristic amiability of the English? The English do not ruin themselves by hospitality. If a stranger is introduced to them by letters of introduction, they give him a heavy and long dinner, with a supper for dessert; then, having stuffed him with roast beef and filled him with Port and grog, and having spared no pains to cram him, they take their leave of him; and if the unfortunate individual survives this cheer, their doors are afterwards closed against his entrance. Sir Walter Scott, who was perhaps as great a novelist as Mr. Bulwer, did not consider himself exempt from the common duties of politeness and attention to visitors who hap pened to be introduced to him. So far from it, he treated them with much more hospitality than is the custom in England; it is true, however, that Sir Walter, though a great novelist, was not a great fashionable,

There also you may have recognized Doctor Bowring searching about, running up and down, from one bench to another, shaking the hand of every member who will allow him to do so. The doctor is well known in Paris; and as he did not quite waste his time in promenading the streets of that capital, he soon discovered that char latanism was one of the most powerful means of success,

He took the most direct route to attain his end, and proceeded straight to the journals. The French journalists, when one knows how to deal with them, are complacency itself. In a short time no one was talked of but Doctor Bowring. The doctor did not take a single step that was not duly registered; it was Doctor Bowring here, and Doctor Bowring there, every where the doctor; and the honest public of the French capital, deafened by these trumpet-tongued praises, took him for some extraordinary important personage. On this side of the channel we better understand the puffs of the press, so that every body laughed, I assure you, when this Doctor Bowring was strutting through France, so splendidly decked out with the importance which he had purchased from the newspapers of Paris. He returned to London, but without this glorious mantle. That had been detained at the custom house as a sort of prohibited French merchandise. In fine, the doctor remains just what he was before, that is to say a reformer, anxious to profit by reform, a pale disciple of the utilitarian school of Lord Brougham; a sort of travelling clerk of the foreign office, speaking sufficiently well three or four living languages; a poet, who furnishes some stanzas of ordinary poetry to the magazines; as for the rest, the very best physician in the world.

It was now near six; no one remained to be heard; the moment had arrived for opening the lists. According to the order of the motions for the day, the speaker gave the floor to the minister of the home department. Suddenly the waves of the assembly subsided; a profound silence ensued; Lord John Russell rose to speak. Lord John Russell, third son of the Duke of Bedford, is extremely small, scarcely five feet high; the smallness of his person almost renews his youth; one would hardly suppose him forty-five years of age, as he really is. A head large about the forehead, and small towards the chin, forming a sort of triangle; chesnut-colored hair, short and thin; large eyes surmounted by well arched brows; a countenance pale, calm, soft and phlegmatic, marked by a sort of half-concealed cunning, are the features that would alone strike you. His manner of speaking is in perfect harmony with his modest and quiet exterior. His voice is weak and monotonous, but distinct. In speaking, his body is scarcely more animated than his discourse. All his action consists in gliding his left hand behind his back, seizing the elbow of his right arm, and balancing himself indefinitely in that position.

details, not without letting fly some well sharpened arrows against the corrupting influence of the tories over the municipal constitution, the reform of which he demanded.

As soon as Lord John Russell had resumed his seat, and in the midst of the various murmurs which his speech had excited, Sir Robert Peel rose to address the speaker.

The ex-first lord of the treasury is of moderate height; his figure would be elegant, but for the fatness which has already begun to render it heavy; his dress is neat and studied without being dandyish; his manner would not convict him of the approach of fifty; his regular features have an expression of contemptuous severity; he seems to affect too much the manners of a great man; natural distinction has more ease and carelessness about it.

Moreover, studied affectation is also the prevailing characteristic of his oratory. Gesture and language both betray his ambitious affectedness. He has more of the actor than becomes a public speaker. It is irksome to see him agitate, struggle, and throw himself incessantly about. I do not like to see a statesman exhibit so much acquaintance with the positions of an elocutionist. It may be well enough by one's own fireside to cross one leg over another and to play with the guineas in the pockets of one's pantaloons. One may play with his collar in a drawing room, or throw back the skirts of his frock, without any great impropriety; but in public, and, above all, in places devoted to the solemn discussion of the laws of a nation, this style of flirting manners is by no means appropriate. Sir Robert abuses the purposes for which his hands and arms were given him. One almost loses his words in the incessant agitation of his person.

In other respects I will acknowledge that his elocution is spirited, easy, and intellectual; he may be listened to with pleasure. I am always well pleased with the manner in which he applies his rhetorical skill to public affairs. He has every thing which the art of speaking can give him; but the warmth which animates him is always artificial. The true fire of conviction which is so naturally communicated from the speaker to his audience, is always wanting. There is no sincerity about him. He is an ambitious tory in disguise, who, in order to seize again the golden reins of government, has hypocritically cloaked himself under the mantle of a reformer, and who would pass over to the radicals with his arms and baggage, if there was any chance of remounting by their aid to the power which he covets, and of securing himself in its enjoyment.

Lord John Russell expresses himself plainly and without effort; his language is cold and dry, but clear and concise. An author more concise than elegant, his style of writing exhibits itself in his off-hand speeches. He has nothing of the tiresome volubility of Thiers, who is minister of the home department in France; he says no more than is necessary, while he says every thing that he wishes. His sarcasm though frozen, is not the less sharp. The blade of his poignard does not The minister replied in a few polite but firm observarequire to be made red hot to inflict a deep wound. He tions. The serenity of the noble lord is perfectly unhas none of those sudden flashes which electrify and changeable. He is as calm when defending himself, as inflame an assembly; his light is of that peaceable and when attacking his adversaries. I consider this politisteady nature that illuminates and guides. His mind is cal temperament as the most desirable for a statesman a serious one, full of appropriate, condensed, and well actively engaged in public affairs. Such coolness disresolved reflections. concerts the fury of one's assailants. One is never worsted in a combat when he retains such undisturbed self-possession.

In accepting, with ample reservations, the principle of the bill, Sir Robert Peel, in answer to the sharp insinuations of Lord John Russell, made several witty and amusing observations, which diverted a good deal the house.

In less than an hour he had unrolled the whole plan of his bill, and concisely explained its principles and

I am not surprised that desperate conservatives, see-burn again the Pope in effigy and in processions, as ing their tottering privileges ready to be trodden under the feet of O'Connell, should treat him as an agitator, madman, destroyer. But how is it, that among the reformers themselves, he has so many inconsistent admirers, who will never pardon him for the bitter violence and inexorable severity of his speeches? Do these moderate and quiet men believe that honeyed phrases, and the submission of prayers, would have obtained the redress of even the least of the Irish griefs? No! had he not struck roughly and pitilessly, the old edifice of usurpation and intolerance would be still entire. Let him go on-let him be pitiless; he has made an important breach in the walls-let him level themance.