t is a mystery, a kind of Heathen myth;
and stranger than any piece of the old mythological Pantheon; for it
practically presides over the destinies of many millions of living men.

Such is his report of the Colonial Office: and if we oftener hear such
a report of that than we do of the Home Office, Foreign Office or the
rest,--the reason probably is, that Colonies excite more attention at
present than any of our other interests. The Forty Colonies, it appears,
are all pretty like rebelling just now; and are to be pacified with
constitutions; luckier Constitutions, let us hope, than some late ones
have been. Loyal Canada, for instance, had to quench a rebellion the
other year; and this year, in virtue of its constitution, it is
called upon to pay the rebels their damages; which surely is a rather
surprising result, however constitutional!--Men have rents and moneys
dependent in the Colonies; Emigration schemes, Black Emancipations,
New-Zealand and other schemes; and feel and publish more emphatically
what their Downing-Street woes in these respects have been.

Were the state of poor sallow English ploughers and weavers, what we may
call the Sallow or Yellow Emancipation interest, as much in object with
Exeter-Hall Philanthropists as that of the Black blockheads now all
emancipated, and going at large without work, or need of working, in
West-India clover (and fattening very much in it, one delights to hear),
then perhaps the Home Office, its huge virtual task better understood,
and its small actual performance better seen into, might be found still
more deficient, and behind the wants of the age, than the Colonial
itself is.

How it stands with the Foreign Office, again, one still less knows.
Seizures of Sapienza, and the like sudden appearances of Britain in the
character of Hercules-Harlequin, waving, with big bully-voice, her huge
sword-of-sharpness over field-mice, and in the air making horrid circles
(horrid catherine-wheels and death-disks of metallic terror from
said huge sword), to see how they will like it,--do from time to time
astonish the world, in a not pleasant manner. Hercules-Harlequin, the
Attorney Triumphant, the World's Busybody: none of these are parts this
Nation has a turn for; she, if you consulted her, would rather not play
these parts, but another! Seizures of Sapienza, correspondences with
Sotomayor, remonstrances to Otho King of Athens, fleets hanging by their
anchor in behalf of the Majesty