hartists altogether
in his programme, and adds several new points to their political
creed. He not only advocates manhood suffrage, but womanhood
suffrage, and woman-seats in Parliament. Then he is a great friend
of a reform which the Chartists grievously overlook, and which would
make thousands of them voters if they would adopt it. That is,
Total Abstinence from Tobacco, as well as from Ardent Spirits.
Thus, no report of modern times equals the good Squire's summing-up,
which he gives on these occasions, from the great farm-wagon
tribune, to the multitudinous and motley congregation assembled
under his park trees. This year it was unusually rich and piquant,
from the expanded area of events and aspects. In presenting these,
as bearing upon the causes of Temperance, Peace, Anti-War, Anti-
Slavery, Anti-Tobacco, Anti-Capital Punishment, Anti-Church-Rates,
Free Trade, Woman's Rights, Parliamentary Reform, Social Reform,
Scientific Progress, Discovery of the Sources of the Nile, and other
important movements, he was necessarily obliged to be somewhat
discursive. But he generalised with much ease and perspicuity, and
conducted the thread of his discourse, like a rivulet of light,
through the histories of the year; transporting the mind of his
audience from doings in Japan to those in America, from Poland to
Mexico, and through stirring regions of Geography, Politics,
Philanthropy, Social Science and Economy, by gentle and interesting
transitions. This annual statement is very valuable and
instructive, and should have a wider publicity than it usually
obtains.

When "the fine old English gentleman all of the olden time" has
concluded his resume of the year's progress, and the prospects it
leaves to the one incoming, the orators of the different causes
which he has thus reported, arise one after the other, and the
bright air and the green foliage of the over-spreading trees, as
well as the listening multitude below are stirred with fervid
speeches, sometimes interspersed with "music from the band." The
Festival is wound up by a banquet in the hall, given by the
munificent host to a large number of guests, representing the
various good movements advocated from the platform described. Many
Americans have spoken from that rostrum, and sat at that banquet
table in years gone by, and they will attest to the correctness of
these slight delineations of the character of the host and of the
annual festival that will perpe