tion. All honour to
him who brings to a great cause, not alone the dazzling splendour
of heroism, but the more enduring brightness of a pure and unsullied
integrity!

Such a man may be misled; he can never be corrupted.

A NEW INVESTMENT.

I am not so sure how far we ought to be grateful for it, but assuredly
the fact is so, that nothing has so much tended to show the world with
what little wisdom it is governed than the Telegraph. It is not merely
that cabinets are no longer the sole possessors of early intelligence,
though this alone was once a very great privilege; and there is no
over-estimating the power conferred by the exclusive possession of
a piece of important news--a battle won or lost, the outbreak of a
revolution, the overthrow of a throne--even for a few hours before it
became the property of the public. The telegraph, however, is the great
disenchanter. The misty uncertainty, the cloud-like indistinctness that
used of old to envelop all ministerial action, converting Downing
Street into a sort of Olympus, and making a small mythology out of
Precis-writers, is all gone, all dispersed. Three or four cold hard
lines, thin and terse as the wire that conveyed them, are sworn enemies
to all style, and especially to all the evasive cajoleries of those
dissolving views of events diplomacy loves to revel in. What becomes of
the graceful drapery in which statesmen used to clothe the great facts
of the world, when a simple despatch, "fifteen words, exclusive of
the address," tells the whole story? and when we have read that "the
insurgents are triumphant everywhere, the king left the capital at four
o'clock, a provisional government was proclaimed this morning," and
suchlike, what do we care for the sonorous periods in which official
priestcraft chants the downfall of a dynasty?

The great stronghold of statecraft was, however, Speculation--I mean
that half-prophetic view of events which we always conceded to those
who looked over the world from a higher window than ourselves. What
has become of this now? Who so bold as to predict what, while he is yet
speaking, may be contradicted? who is there hardy enough to forecast
what the events of the last half-hour may have falsified, and five
minutes more will serve to publish to the whole world?

It may be amusing to read the comments of the speech or the leading
article, but the "despatch" is the substance: and however clever the
variations, the original melo