cessities of the nation. All was
done as in an assemblage of a higher race of existence, calmly carving
out the world for themselves--a tribe of Epicurean deities, with the
cabinet for their Olympus, stooping to our inferior region only to
enjoy their own atmosphere afterwards with the greater zest, or shift
their quarters, like the poet's Jupiter, when tired of the dust and
clamour of war, moving off on his clouds and with his attendant
goddesses, to the tranquil realms of the Hippomolgi.

And this highbred condition of affairs was the more repulsive, from
the fact that the greater number of those disposers of office and
dividers of empire were among the emptiest of mankind. The succession
of ministers, from the days of Walpole, (unquestionably a shrewd,
though a coarse mind, and profligate personage,) with the exception of
Chatham, was a list of silken imbeciles; very rich, or very highborn,
or very handsomely supplied with boroughs, but, in all other senses,
the last men who should have been entrusted with power.

We have to thank the satirists, the public misfortunes, and even the
demagogues, for extinguishing this smooth and pacific system. Junius,
with his sarcastic pen, the American war, and even the gross impudence
of Wilkes, stirred the public mind to remember that it had a voice in
the state. A manlier period succeeded; and we shall no more hear of
the government being divided among the select party, like a twelfth
cake, nor see the interests of a nation which represents the interests
of the globe, compromised to suit the contending claims of
full-dressed frivolity.

As a specimen of this courtly affair, we give a few fragments from a
confidential letter of Burke to the Marquis of Rockingham. "Lord
Shelburne still continues in administration, though as adverse and as
much disliked as ever.--The Duke of Grafton continues, I hear, his
old complaints of his situation, and his genuine desire of holding it
as long as he can. At same time, Lord Shelburne gets loose too. I know
that Lord Camden, who adhered to him in these late divisions, has
given him up, and gone over to the Duke of Grafton. The Bedfords are
horridly frightened at all this, for fear of seeing the table _they
had so well covered_, and at which they sat down with so good an
appetite, kicked down in the scuffle. They find things not ripe at
present for bringing in Grenville, and that any capital move just now
would only betray their weakness in the