philosophy, may be good things in theory, but in practice they are mere kickshaws. John Bull will none of them. He prefers the simple fare and the simple faith which have come down to him from his fathers. And it is more from instinct than from reason that he makes up his mind to live and die rallying round all that his fathers have rallied round, whether it be old port wine, the purchase system of the army, the Union Jack, or the Royal family. It is in virtue of this feeling that the country, whatever its political movements or its progress in tastes or arts, is conservative at heart. The Englishman was born, and wishes to die, plain John Bull. It would be a curious and instructive study if we could contrive to trace back this archaic fancy to its very beginning, and to watch the enormous effect that so spontaneous and simple an instinct must have had at all times of our history upon our moral and political development as a people. In itself the instinct is of the very rudest and most primitive character. It is one which the barbarous tribe possesses quite as strongly as the most civilised community. It begins in ignorance and isolation; it is the result of a want of common feeling between the various groups of the great human family, and yet it is impossible to say that the instinct, barbarous and archaic as it is in its inception, has not done good as well as harm to the world at large. If ever there was a time when mankind were not dispersed, it must have been a time when patriotism was an unknown virtue. Before the Tower of Babel, if there ever was a literal Babel, and for a long time after it, there can have been no patriots. The love of country, which we are taught from childhood to revere as one of the most wholesome and beneficial characteristics of a good citizen, is only a slightly refined improvement upon the selfish domestic passion which binds the savage to the savages among whom he has been brought up, and which teaches him to look with suspicion on the savage who lives at a little distance, on the other side of the nearest river, or across the nearest sea. Want of intercourse and sympathy with others produces it. As the tribe or the caravan becomes a nation, the rough domestic passion becomes larger and more tolerant; but it is a selfish and a separating passion still, and constitutes a barrier between man and his fellow-men. It is true that it places the State above the individual, but, on the other hand, it no less clearly tends to rank the good of the State above the ties of humanity. If the patriot does not live for himself, he lives at all events for his immediate circle of belongings. As opposed to the mere egotist, he is no doubt a paragon of excellence. But, weighed in the balance with the cosmopolitan and the philanthropist, he would as certainly be found wanting. And it is clear that history would furnish plenty of instances to justify this criticism. Half the wars that have desolated the Continent have sprung from the antipathies of nations and of races, and from their incapacity to sympathisc with each other's interests. The notion of a balance of European power has been at the bottom of the greatest and bloodiest contests of the last two centuries. And even in our own times of superior wisdom, patriotism every now and then threatens civilisation with new explosions quite as formidable, and as ruinous to peace and progress. Whatever else comes from patriotism, wars and rumours of wars certainly are among its offspring; and one can imagine some philosopher of the future surveying the ruins of the Nelson column and of the Landseer lions in Trafalgar Square, and exclaiming of patriotism as the Roman poet exclaimed of something still more respectable— Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum. -The Saturday Review. 82. REFORM-MR. GLADSTONE AND MR. LOWE. The bonds of party allegiance are strained until they are ready to crack, in order to keep party together, and we are told that we are bound by every tie to act according to the policy of Lord Russell. I dispute that. I have never served under him. I have served under two prime ministers, unfortunately, for little less than ten years; one was Lord Aberdeen, and the other Lord Palmerston. Both those Governments Lord Russell joined; both those Governments he abandoned. Both those Governments he assisted to destroy. I owe him no allegiance. I am not afraid of the people of this country; they have shown remarkable good sense-remarkable, indeed, contrasted with the harangues that have been addressed to them. Nor am I afraid of those who lead them. Demagogues are the common places of history; they are found everywhere where there is popular commotion. They have all a family likeness, and their names float lightly on the stream of time. They generally contrive to be seen somehow, but they are as little to be regarded as the foam which rides on the crest of the stormy wave, and bespatters the rock which it cannot shake. What gives me the gloomiest misgivings is, when I see many men of rank, property, and intelligence, carried away, without being convinced, to support what many of them in their inmost hearts detest and abhor. Monarchies exist by loyalty, aristocracies by honour, and popular assemblies by political virtue. When these things begin to fail, it is in their loss, and not in comets, eclipses, and earthquakes, that we are to look for the portents that herald the fall of states. I am utterly unable to reason with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but I am happy to find that there is one common ground left to us, and that is the second of the Æneid. My right hon. friend returned again to the poor old Trojan horse. I will add one more excerpt to the story of that noble animal, after which I will promise to turn him out to grass for the remainder of his life. The passage which I wish to call his attention to presents a sketch not only of the army, but also of the general: Arduus armatos mediis in moenibus astans Fundit equus, victorque Sinon incendia miscet The fatal horse pours forth the human tide, I have now, sir, traced as well as I can what I believe will be the natural results of the measure which seems to my poor imagination destined to absorb and destroy one after the other those institutions which have made England what she has hitherto been, and what I firmly believe no other country ever was or ever will be. Surely the heroic works of so many ccnturies, the matchless achievements of so many wise heads and strong heads, and strong hands, deserve a wiser and nobler consummation than to be sacrificed to revolutionary passion or to the maudlin enthusiasm of humanity. But if we do fall we shall deservedly, uncoerced by any external force, not beaten down by any intestine calamity. In the plethora of wealth and the overflow of our own too exuberant prosperity we are about by our own rash and unconstrained hands to pluck down on our own heads the venerable temple of our liberty and our laws. History may record other catastrophes as signal and disastrous, but none more wanton and more disgraceful.—Mr. Lowe (Peroration of Speech on Reform.) Reform-The Last Act. I am deeply indebted to gentlemen opposite, as well as to gentlemen on this side, for their patience and kindness, but may I say to honourable gentlemen opposite, as some gentlemen have addressed advice to us, 'Will you not consider, before you embark upon this new crusade, what were the results of the old.” Three great battles have been fought, and you have fought them manfully. The battle of maintaining civil disabilities, the battle of refusing the Reform Bill, and the battle of protection. All these great battles have been fought by the party opposite, and I admit my own share of responsibility as to the opposition to the Reform Bill. Have they been so satisfactory that you are disposed to renew the experiment? Certainly those who sit on this side of the House have no reason to find fault with the result, for the result has been that for five years out of six and six years out of seven since the Reform Act we have been in power. The effect has been to lower, reduce, and contract your just influence in the country, and your share in the public administration. But if you are strong, you can only be strong by showing not only personal kindness and generosity towards the people, but public and political confidence in them. You may listen with kindness to what I now say. We are assailed. This Bill is in a state of crisis and peril, and the Government along with it. We stand or fall by it, as was declared by my noble friend. We stand with it now-we may fall with it a short time hence; but if we fall, we shall rise with it hereafter. We cannot measure with precision the forces that are to be raised in the coming struggle. Perhaps the great division of to-night is not the last act of the struggle. You may succeed on some point. You may drive us from our seats; you may bury the bill we introduced; but for its epitaph we will write on the gravestone this line with perfect confidence: 'Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor.' You cannot fight against the future; time is on our side. The great social forces are against you. They are arrayed-they are marshalled on our side. The banner which we carry, although, perhaps, it may at this moment droop over our sinking heads, yet it will soar again, and float in the eye of heaven, and will be borne in the firm hands of the united people of these three kingdoms-not, perhaps, to an easy, but a certain and not distant future.-Gladstone (Peroration of Speech on Reform). The Programme of Philosophy. That seemed at first But I had confidence. Statesmen are a limited, The honourable member for Westminster is an advocate of universal suffrage, but on principles on which I do not know but what I should advocate it myself. In the first place, he says that the suffrage should not be confined to the darker sex; and really, if you have universal suffrage, I do not see why women should not vote. Next he says that no one should be allowed to vote who did not pay direct taxes. sight rather to limit the proposition. I knew the difficulty would be solved. arid race of men-limited by nature, and fettered by experience. But a philosopher is an exuberant, imaginative being, and the hon. gentleman is at once ready with an admirable expedient. He says that we must have a poll-tax. Well, it is a great thing to know what is in store for us—to know when the philosophical Cabinet, which is said to be in course of formation, sits on the benches opposite we shall have a poll-tax as the basis of our finance, combined with a measure of compulsory education and another for compulsory cleanliness. That is the programme of philosophy. It will be the admiration of cosmopolitan Europe; but, before many months have passed, the country will be in a state of insurrection.-B. Disraeli. 83. NEW YEAR'S DAY IN PARIS. Socially speaking, as you know, New Year's Day is the great festival of Paris. From dewy morn to shadowy eve, which I |