truth an extensive amount of cant afloat just now, both
here and elsewhere, on this subject of THE PEOPLE. It is the staple
commodity of your newspaper-mongers, and the catchpenny song of the
streets. Agitators feed upon it, politicians play upon it, our needy
brethren of the quill pay outstanding debts with it. It is one of the
few things that pay at all in an age of fearful competition, and one
that always will pay whilst poor human nature holds the purse-strings.
The wretched beggarman of Ireland famishes for a crust, yet he has his
farthings to spare for the greedy hypocrite who flatters his vanity, and
heaps laudations on his social importance. JOHN HOWARD made four
pilgrimages to Germany, five to Holland, three to France, two to Italy,
with the simple object of mitigating the physical sufferings of his
fellow creatures; he visited Spain, Portugal, the United States, and
Turkey, with the same practical and praiseworthy purpose. He passed days
in pest-houses and lazarettos, and finally laid down his life in the
blessed work of charity at Cherson in the Crimea. _Nous avons change
tout cela._ Philanthropy is a luxurious creature now-a-days. She is
passive rather than active; she does not work--she _talks_. Her
disciples take no journeys, unless it be to Italy for their own
pleasure; they sit at home in satin dressing-gowns, supported on velvet,
feeding on turtle. They tell the labouring classes--whom they style the
bone and sinew of the land--that though they talk prose, and lead
prosaic lives, they are nevertheless first-rate poets, that though rough
at the surface, they are the gentlest of creation "at the core;" that
though dull, they are quick; though ugly, handsome; though stupid,
vastly clever; though commoners in the last degree, yet nobles of God,
and nature's grandees of the very first class. It is gratifying to
believe all this, and the charge is only threepence a-week, or a
shilling a-month. Open as we all are to flattery, who would not pay so
trifling a sum for the pleasure of so sweet a dream? If you cannot
relieve our sufferings, it is something to create an inordinate
self-esteem. If you cannot afford us a shilling from your pockets, it is
much that your goose-quill can convert us into birds of Paradise. The
successful writers of the day are those who have nauseously fawned upon
the million for the sale of their "sweet voices" and their halfpence.

There is not one of these popular authors who has had t