of the new men
with much pompous parade of words, and all the Delphic mystics of the
schools. They are none of your journeymen--your everyday spouters--in
the Commons or common places. They exhibit only on state occasions,
after solemn midnight preparation made; their intended movements are
duly heralded beforehand; their approach announced with a flourish of
trumpets. They carry on a vast wordy traffic in "great principles;" they
condescend upon nothing less than the overthrow or manufacture of
"constitutions"--in talk. The big swagger about "great principles"
eventuates, however, in denouncing by speech from the throne repeal as
high treason, and O'Connell the repealer as a traitor to the state; and
next, with cap in hand, and most mendicant meanness, supplicating the
said traitor--denounced--repealing O'Connell, to deign acceptance of one
of the highest offices in the realm. Their practice in the
"constitution" line consists in annihilating rotten borough A because it
is Tory; in conserving rotten borough B because it is Whig. The grand
characteristic of each species is--_vox et preterea nihil._ Need I
further proclaim them and their titles? In the order of Parisian
organization they stand as _faiseurs_ and _phraseurs._ You can make no
mistake about the personality ranged under each banner; they are as
perfectly distinguishable each from the other, though even knit in close
and indissoluble alliance, as Grand Crosses of the Bath from Knights of
the Garter. At the head of the _faiseurs_ you have Lord John Russell,
Lord Viscount Palmerston, and Lord Viscount Howick. You have only to see
them rise in the House of Commons--Lord John, to wit--

"Pride in his port, defiance in his eye"--

to be led into the belief that

--"Now is the day
Big with the fate of Cato and of Rome."

The physical swell of conscious consequence--the eye-distended "wide
awake" insinuation of the inconceivable, unutterable things--the grand
sentiments about to be outpoured--hold you in silent wonderment and
expectation. You conceive nothing less, than either that the world is
about to come to an end, or the _millennium_ declared to be the "order
of the day." You imagine that the orator will lose self and party
in his country. Nothing of all this follows, however. You
have some common-places, perhaps common truisms, some undefined,
mean-all-or-nothing, declamation about "constitution" and "principles,"
by way of exordium; for the r