tion of the press, even that of the moderate party also, a continual irritation of suspicion and mistrust is being kept up against the still reigning sovereigns of Germany; and the cry of that very vague accusation "reaction," the name of which alone, however, is considered sufficiently damning, is constantly raised upon every movement, of whatever nature it may be, which those sovereigns may make. The moderate party may be acquitted of republican tendencies in their hearts; but they seem to ignore the old proverb, "give a dog a bad name," and the consequences; and they will make "sad dogs" out of the sovereigns, until at last the consequences will threaten more and more nearly.

Between these two alternatives, however, Germany seems to think

that it may find a middle course, and establish its theoretical and vaunted unity without exciting civil dissension, or plunging into the depths of republicanism. May it prove right in its as yet uncertain hopes; but certainly the means by which this desired consummation is to be arrived at, are not in the least degree visible: it remains as yet the vaguest of vague fancies the how, the where, the when, and even the why, are as yet matters of doubt: not only deeds but principles, not only principles but plans, to this intent, are as yet utterly absent. In fact our question, after all, remains unanswered; and, beyond the main point of "unity," to be effected somehow or other, revolutionising Germany seems utterly unable to tell us, as we vainly endeavour to find out definitively, "what it would be at ?"

SAITH Dr Luther, "When I saw Dr Gode begin to tell his puddings hanging in the chimney, I told him he would not live long!"

I wish I had copied that passage from "The Table Talk" in large round hand, and set it before my father at breakfast, the morn preceding that fatal eve in which Uncle Jack persuaded him to tell his puddings.

Yet, now I think of it, Uncle Jack hung the puddings in the chimney, but he did not persuade my father to tell them.

Beyond a vague surmise that half the suspended "tomacula" would furnish a breakfast to Uncle Jack, and that the youthful appetite of Pisistratus would despatch the rest, my father did not give a thought to the nutritious properties of the puddings,-in other words, to the two thousand pounds which, thanks to Mr Tibbets, dangled down the chimney. So far as the great work was concerned, my father only cared for its publication, not its profits. I will not say that he might not hunger for praise, but I am quite sure that he did not care a button for pudding. Nevertheless, it was an infaust and sinister augury for Augustine Caxton, the very appearance, the very suspension and danglement of any puddings whatsoever, right over his ingle-nook, when those puddings were made by the sleek hands of Uncle Jack! None of the puddings which he, poor man, had all his life been stringing, whether from his own chimneys, or the chimneys of

VOL. LXIV.-NO. CCCXCVI.

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other people, had turned out to be real puddings,-they had always been the eidola, the erscheinungen, the phantoms and semblances of puddings. I question if Uncle Jack knew much about Democritus of Abdera. But he was certainly tainted with the philosophy of that fanciful sage. peopled the air with images of colossal stature, which impressed all his dreams and divinations, and from whose influences came his very sensations and thoughts. His whole being, asleep or waking, was thus but the reflection of great phantom puddings!

As soon as Mr Tibbets had possessed himself of the two volumes of the "History of Human Error," he had necessarily established that hold upon my father which hitherto those lubricate hands of his had failed to effect. He had found what he had so long sighed for in vain, his point d'appui, wherein to fix the Archimedean screw. He fixed it tight in the "History of Human Error," and moved the Caxtonian world.

A day or two after the conversation recorded in my last chapter, I saw Uncle Jack coming out of the mahogany doors of my father's banker; and, from that time, there seemed no reason why Mr Tibbets should not visit his relations on week-days as well as Sundays. Not a day, indeed, passed but what he held long conversations with my father. He had much to report of his interviews with the publishers. In these conversations he naturally recurred to that grand idea of the" Literary Times"

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which had so dazzled my poor father's imagination; and having heated the iron, Uncle Jack was too knowing a man not to strike while it was hot. When I think of the simplicity my wise father exhibited in this crisis of his life, I must own that I am less moved by pity than admiration for that poor great-hearted student. We have seen that out of the learned indolence of twenty years, the ambition which is the instinct of a man of genius had emerged; the serious preparation of the great book for the perusal of the world, had insensibly restored the charms of that noisy world on the silent individual. And therewith came a noble remorse that he had hitherto done so little for his species. Was it enough to write quartos upon the past history of Human Error? Was it not his duty, when the occasion was fairly presented, to enter upon that present, daily, hourly, war with Error-which is the sworn chivalry of Knowledge? St George did not dissect dead dragons, he fought the live one. And London, with that magnetic atmosphere which in great capitals fills the breath of life with stimulating particles, had its share in quickening the slow pulse of the student. In the country, he read but his old authors, and lived with them through the gone ages. In the city, my father, during the intervals of repose from the great book, and still more now that the great book had come to a pause,-inspected the literature of his own time. It had a prodigious effect upon him. He was unlike the ordinary run of scholars, and, indeed, of readers for that matter who, in their superstitious homage to the dead, are always willing enough to sacrifice the living. He did justice to the marvellous fertility of intellect which characterises the authorship of the present age. By the present age, I do not only mean the present day, I commence with the century. "What," said my father one day in dispute with Trevanion "what characterises the literature of our time is its human interest. It is true that we do not see scholars addressing scholars, but men addressing men, not that scholars are fewer, but that the reading public is more large. Authors in all ages address themselves

to what interests their readers; the same things do not interest a vast community which interested half a score of monks or bookworms. The literary polis was once an oligarchy, it is now a republic. It is the general brilliancy of the atmosphere which prevents your noticing the size of any particular star. Do you not see, that with the cultivation of the masses has awakened the Literature of the Affections? Every sentiment finds an expositor, every feeling an oracle. Like Epimenides, I have been sleeping in a cave; and, waking, I see those whom I left children are bearded men; and towns have sprung up in the landscapes which I left as solitary wastes."

Thence, the reader may perceive the causes of the change which had come over my father. As Robert Hall says, I think, of Dr Kippis, "he had laid so many books at the top of his head, that the brains could not move." But the electricity had now penetrated the heart, and the quickened vigour of that noble organ enabled the brain to stir. Meanwhile, I leave my father to these influences, and to the continuous conversations of Uncle Jack, and proceed with the thread of my own egotism.

Thanks to Mr Trevanion, my habits were not those which favour friendships with the idle; but I formed some acquaintances amongst young men a few years older than myself, who held subordinate situations in the public offices, or were keeping their terms for the bar. There was no want of ability amongst these gentlemen; but they had not yet settled into the stern prose of life. Their busy hours only made them more disposed to enjoy the hours of relaxation. And when we got together, a very gay, light-hearted set we were! We had neither money enough to be very extravagant, nor leisure enough to be very dissipated; but we amused ourselves notwithstanding. My new friends were wonderfully erudite in all matters connected with the theatres. From an opera to a ballet, from Hamlet to the last farce from the French, they had the literature of the stage at the finger-ends of their strawcoloured gloves. They had a pretty large acquaintance with actors and actresses, and were perfect Walpoluli

in the minor scandals of the day. To do them justice, however, they were not indifferent to the more masculine knowledge necessary in "this wrong world." They talked as familiarly of the real actors of life as of the sham ones. They could adjust to a hair the rival pretensions of contending statesmen. They did not profess to be deep in the mysteries of foreign cabinets, (with the exception of one young gentleman connected with the Foreign Office, who prided himself on knowing exactly what the Russians meant to do with India-when they got it!); but to make amends, the majority of them had penetrated the closest secrets of our own. It is true that, according to a proper subdivision of labour, each took some particular member of the government for his special observation; just as the most skilful surgeons, however profoundly versed in the general structure of our frame, rest their anatomical fame on the light they throw on particular parts of it,-one man taking the brain, another the duodenum, a third the spinal cord, while a fourth, perhaps, is a master of all the symptoms indicated by a pensile finger. Accordingly, one of my friends appropriated to himself the Home Department; another the Colonies; and a third, whom we all regarded as a future Talleyrand, (or a de Retz at least,) had devoted himself to the special study of Sir Robert Peel, and knew, by the way in which that profound and inscrutable statesman threw open his coat, every thought that was passing in his breast! Whether lawyers or officials, they all had a great idea of themselves-high notions of what they were to be, rather than what they were to do, some day. As the king of modern fine gentlemen said of himself, in paraphrase of Voltaire, "they had letters in their pockets addressed to Posterity, — which the chances were, however, that they might forget to deliver." Something "priggish" there might be about some of them; but, on the whole, they were far more interesting than mere idle men of pleasure. There was about them, as features of a general family likeness, a redundant activity of life-a gay exuberance of ambition —a light-hearted earnestness when at

work-a schoolboy's enjoyment of the hours of play.

A great contrast to these young men was Sir Sedley Beaudesert, who was pointedly kind to me, and whose bachelor's house was always open to me after noon; Sir Sedley was visible to no one, but his valet, before that hour. A perfect bachelor's house it was, too-with its windows opening on the Park, and sofas niched into the windows, on which you might loll at your ease, like the philosopher in Lucretius,—

"Despicere unde queas alios, passimque videre, Errare,"

And see the gay crowds ride to and fro Rotten Row-without the fatigue of joining them, especially if the wind was in the east.

There was no affectation of costliness, or what the French and the upholsterers call recherché, about the rooms, but a wonderful accumulation of comfort. Every patent chair that proffered a variety in the art of lounging, found its place there; and near every chair a little table, on which you might deposit your book or your coffee-cup, without the trouble of moving more than your hand. In winter, nothing warmer than the quilted curtains and Axminster carpets can be conceived. In summer, nothing airier and cooler than the muslin draperies and the Indian mattings. And I defy a man to know to what perfection dinner may be brought, unless he had dined with Sir Sedley Beaudesert. Certainly, if that distinguished personage had but been an egotist, he had been the happiest of men. But, unfortunately for him, he was singularly amiable and kindhearted. He had the bonne digestion, but not the other requisite for worldly felicity-the mauvais cœur. He felt a sincere pity for every one else who lived in rooms without patent chairs and little coffee tables-whose windows did not look on the Park, with sofas niched into their recesses. Henry IV. wished every man to have his pot au feu, so Sir Sedley Beaudesert, if he could have had his way, would have every man served with an early cucumber for his fish, and a caraffe of iced water by the side of his bread and cheese. He thus evinced on politics a naïve simplicity, which

As