, where some sheety lake
Cheers the lone heath, or some time-hallow'd pile,
Or upland fallows grey
Reflect the last cool gleam."

Why should this beautiful stanza be lost? Is the substitute to be
compared with it? Ask the landscape painter! He will admire the one--he
will enjoy the other. Who substituted the one for the other? Did Collins
write both, and was dubious which should stand; or do you discover the
hand of an audacious emendator? Who would lose the sheety lake in which
nothing is reflected but evening's own sky, and the "upland fallows
grey," and the last _cool_ gleam!

Odious, odious politics! While I am writing, there is an interruption, a
sad interruption, to thoughts of poetry and snatches of criticism. It is
like a sudden nightmare upon pleasant and shifting dreams. Here are
three visitors new from reading Sir Robert Peel's speech. Two very
indignant--one a timid character--apologetic. What, cries one--a
statesman so egotistical and absolute in his vanity, as, at such a time
as the present, to throw the many interests of this great country into
peril, and some into sure difficulty, lest, as he himself confesses, he
should be thought to have borrowed on Lord John Russell? What business
has a statesman to think of himself at all? It is frightful, said
another. There are two astounding things--one, that a minister should
suddenly turn round upon the principles and the party who brought him
into power upon them, confessing he had been changing his opinion three
years, and yet last July he should have spoken against the measure
which, at the time of speaking, in his heart he favoured, and which he
now forces upon a reluctant Parliament; the other astounding thing is,
that a Parliament created to oppose this very measure, should show such
entire subserviency as to promise a large majority to the minister. May
we not expect one who so changes may suddenly some day join O'Connell
and grant Repeal? We are to be governed by a minister, not by King,
Lords, and Commons. The apologetic man urges expediency, public
(assumed) opinion--any thing for peace sake, and to get rid of
agitation. So, to avoid agitation, Eusebius, I scrambled up my papers
and this letter to you, and left the room; and now, in one more quiet,
resume my pen. With a mind not a little confused between politics,
poetry, and classical reminiscences, I, however, rested a while to give
scope to reflection; and meditation upon this "corn ques