ities uttered in
Parliament, by one and indeed by all; in which sad list Sir Robert Peel
stands for his share among others. Unveracities not a few were spoken in
Parliament: in fact, to one with a sense of what is called God's truth,
it seemed all one unveracity, a talking from the teeth outward, not as
the convictions but as the expediencies and inward astucities directed;
and, in the sense of God's _truth_, I have heard no true word uttered in
Parliament at all. Most lamentable unveracities continually _spoken_ in
Parliament, by almost every one that had to open his mouth there. But
the largest veracity ever _done_ in Parliament in our time, as we all
know, was of this man's doing;--and that, you will find, is a very
considerable item in the calculation!"

Yes, and I believe England in her dumb way remembers that too. And
"the Traitor Peel" can very well afford to let innumerable Ducal
Costermongers, parliamentary Adventurers, and lineal representatives of
the Impenitent Thief, say all their say about him, and do all their do.
With a virtual England at his back, and an actual eternal sky above him,
there is not much in the total net-amount of that. When the master of
the horse rides abroad, many dogs in the village bark; but he pursues
his journey all the same.

No. V. STUMP-ORATOR. [May 1, 1850.]

It lies deep in our habits, confirmed by all manner of educational and
other arrangements for several centuries back, to consider human talent
as best of all evincing itself by the faculty of eloquent speech. Our
earliest schoolmasters teach us, as the one gift of culture they have,
the art of spelling and pronouncing, the rules of correct speech;
rhetorics, logics follow, sublime mysteries of grammar, whereby we may
not only speak but write. And onward to the last of our schoolmasters in
the highest university, it is still intrinsically grammar, under various
figures grammar. To speak in various languages, on various things, but
on all of them to speak, and appropriately deliver ourselves by tongue
or pen,--this is the sublime goal towards which all manner of beneficent
preceptors and learned professors, from the lowest hornbook upwards, are
continually urging and guiding us. Preceptor or professor, looking over
his miraculous seedplot, seminary as he well calls it, or crop of young
human souls, watches with attentive view one organ of his delightful
little seedlings growing to be men,--the tongue. He hopes we shal