THE DAWN OF TRUTH IS GRADUAL.

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ance. There are degrees, and stages; and seeing this, a wise man is patient and temperate.

Shepherd. Like yoursel.

North. Many men fall into this error, James, by a miscalculating impatience to bring on at once the reign of truth-that they foolishly imagine that small portions of truth communicated, which it is in their power to communicate, are the reign of truth brought on earth!

Shepherd. Coofs !

North. The truth which is in their power, is that which regards definite relations-as mathematics, and the science of matter. Their hasty and enthusiastic imagination seizes on parcels of this truth, and upon plans for communicating them; and to judge from their manner of speaking, it foresees consequences of a magnitude and excellence, conceivable only if all truth were to have possession of the human heart.

Shepherd. You're gettin rather beyond my depth—yet by drappin my fit I feel grund; only, tak tent you dinna droon me in some plum.1

North. In judging the past, James, we are not to condemn errors, simply because they were errors. They were, many of them, the necessary guidance of man!

Shepherd. Alas! for puir man, if he had had nae sic Christianity even as the Roman Catholic religion afforded him in the dark ages.

North. Alas! for him indeed, my dear Shepherd. Neither are we to judge the total effect of the error by the effect of the excess of that error.

Shepherd. Eh?

North. Not, for instance, to judge the total effect of monastic orders by the worst pictures of sloth and vice which monasteries have afforded-not the total effect of Aristotle's Dialectics, if erroneous, or erroneously used, by the most frivolous and vain of the school-subtleties-not the effect of the Roman Catholic religion at a Spanish or English auto-da-fé.2

Shepherd. I canna but agree wi' you.-But look at Tickler (yawning), isna he sleepin?

North. Our business, my dear pastor, is not to hunt error 1 Plum-a perpendicular fall.

2 This is a repetition, no doubt inadvertent, of a remark made by Tickler in vol. iii., p. 209.

236

THE PEEL MINISTRY.-LORD STANLEY.

out of the world, but to invite and induce truth. It is a work not of enmity, but of love; and, with all my admiration of Lord Brougham, I cannot think his temper and method as a moral teacher so good as those of Socrates.

Shepherd. You'll forgie me, sir-but I never can help suspectin that a man's getting a wee dullish or sae—even if that man should happen to be yoursel-when I experience a growin diffeeculty in keepin up my lids. What think you

noo, sir, o' the prospects o' the Government?

North. The same I thought of them at last Noctes. Sir Robert Peel had not then arrived from Rome;1 but I knew he would be Premier-Wellington Foreign Secretary—and Lyndhurst Chancellor-and I said that the strongest Ministry would be formed the country had seen since the time of Pitt. I added there would be a dissolution, and that the Government would have many formidable difficulties to encounter and overcome in the new Parliament.

Shepherd. Sagawcious.

North. I heard a gentleman, who, I presume, has studied politics, and declares that he belongs to the juste milieu, prophesy-that was his word—that in two months the King would, much against his will, send for Lord Stanley, and request him to form a Ministry; and I wish Gurney to record the prophesy, that this philosopher of the golden mean may enjoy through life the halo that will glorify his brows ever after its fulfil

ment.

Shepherd. Wha was't? And what said ye till the man o' mediocrity?

North. I never mention the names of private persons at a Noctes; and I said nothing to him, for I make it a rule never to disturb any friend's self-complacency, so long as his remarks are innocent.

Shepherd. And that, sir, was indeed as innocent a remark as ever was lisped by a babby about a change o' kittens.

North. The greater and indeed the lesser prophets were inspired direct from heaven-and I do not believe that my worthy friend, who is such an enemy to extremes, thought of

1 On the dissolution of the Melbourne Ministry, in November 1834, Sir Robert Peel was summoned from Rome, where he was then residing, for the purpose of forming a new Administration. He continued at the head of the Government until May 1835, when a Whig Ministry, with Lord Melbourne as Premier, again came into office.

THE DUKE'S DICTATORSHIP.

237

claiming Elijah's mantle, or that he imagined he had had communion with the spirit

"That touch'd Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire."

To another class of prophetic personages, called seers, he could not well suppose he belonged, as they are always Highlanders. But he was born of Lowland parents in the Luckenbooths-so he cannot have the second-sight-nor to his eyes "coming events cast their shadows before." Milton, again, speaks of the sages whose

"Old experience doth attain

To something like prophetic strain ;" but my friend is not forty, and his experience has been circumscribed within a somewhat narrow circle. He could not, therefore, have been in Milton's eye.

Shepherd. He maun o' necessity, then, belang till that class o' prophets that are ca'd simple conjecturers-because they're nae conjurers. He'll hae just knowledge aneuch to ken frae the newspapers that Lord Stanley didna quite like the noo to join Ministers, and that he has been praised for hangin back by the Whiggamores, though, between you and me, sir, he's nae favourite noo wi' them, and like to be less sae afore seed-time. And as nae man o' mediocrity wad ever dream o' Durham's being Premier, the simple conjecturer couldna weel help prophesying-sae he was determined to prophesy—that Stanley would be the man.

North. I believe you have hit it, James. But was not two months too short a term?

Shepherd. Ratherly-But the simple conjecturer, though nae conjurer, had seen in the papers that the new Ministry would be refused the supplies by the new House-and takin that for gospel, he fixed his time, and I only wonder he alloo'd Sir Robert to be Premier aboon sax weeks. But what think ye, sir?

North. I think that nothing could be more amusing than the serious view taken by part of the press of the temporary dictatorship of the Duke of Wellington. The "wearifu' woman" of the Morning Chronicle for three weeks, without one moment's intermission, kept up a mumbling and maundering vituperation of the Duke, whom for lengthiness she classically called Dictator, for having put all the seals of office, in a bunch, into his pocket, and being resolved to keep them there as long as he chose, to the indignation, disgust, and horror of the entire

238

THE MORNING CHRONICLE.

British nation, who, she said, at such an unconstitutional spectacle, rose up as one man. As one man, however, it appeared, that the entire British nation almost immediately sat down again-much to the "wearifu' woman's" exasperation, who insisted still more vociferously that the entire British nation should once more get on its legs.1

Shepherd. She micht hae mummled till she was black i' the face.

North. The best-natured old woman in the world would lose her temper, James, if nobody were to listen to her, or even so much as to pretend not to see her, but if everybody were to walk by, as if in the still of the evening silence accompanied their steps. The "wearifu' woman was irritated even

to madness by such usage. Like an aged clergyman of our acquaintance-now, alas! no more-who, in a brain fever, preached in his bed-supported by pillows, and supposing himself in a succession of pulpits-the same sermon twentyseven times in twenty-seven hours—each time fondly believing it to be a different discourse;-so snoozed away-column after column of the same eternal lamentation-for she seemed at last more in sorrow than in anger, though much in both— the "wearifu' woman" of the Chronicle of the rosy-fingered Morn. Incredible as it may be held from extracts of her distraction cruelly published in the Sun-in her own broadsheet they were only printed-there is but too good reason to fear that she thinks she is but entering on her career; and if such steps are not taken as humanity suggests, she may keep at it well on into the ensuing year!

1 "It is a fact that, during the three weeks which elapsed between the dismissal of the Melbourne Ministry and the arrival of Sir Robert Peel from Italy to form another, the entire duties of the Executive Government were performed by the Duke of Wellington, without any apparent deficiency in, or detriment to, the public service. The Whig newspapers were indignant-as became them, being partisans—at this 'Dictatorship;' but the people did not trouble themselves about it, being rather pleased than otherwise at the efficiency of 'The Duke,' who had recovered the popularity he lost in 1830-33. It is proper to mention, as the matter has been misrepresented and exaggerated, that in June 1831, when the Duke 'made a fortress of Apsley House' (as has been gravely writ in history), all he actually did was to put up jalousies, or outer windowblinds, such as are common to most houses in the principal cities of Europe and America, but had not then been much introduced into England. They are generally made of wood, whereas those at Apsley House were manufactured of iron, which had the advantage of durability, and were probably musket-proof when closed."-American Editor.

THE SHEPHERD'S PARROT.

239

Shepherd. The wonder's no in the words; for memorythough it never surveeves the ither faculties-and here it appears they are a' dead-can continue to repeat it by rote to the very last as I ascertained in the case o' an auld parrot, that after a brain-fivver becam a sort o' idiwut. As for teachin him a new word-if it had been but a single syllable-you micht as weel hae tried to teach a stuffed specimen the unknown tongue. You may judge o' his imbecility frae ae fact, that he had forgotten the way to eat. Yet, like your freen the minister, sir, and the "wearifu' woman," he keepit a command o' his vocabulary to the last; and I daurna tell you the words that fell out frae atween bis big tongue and his dry pallet the verra minute afore he expired—but they were fearsome!-and the only excuse for the cretur was, that he had picked them up at sea. But what think ye o' the prospects o' the new Government?

North. Sir Robert's address to his constituents is all that the nation could desire-and the policy announced in it may be supported, without either sacrifice or compromise of a single principle, by all Conservatives.

Shepherd. That's aneuch for me. You've said it, and whatever you say is richt.

North. Oh, shame to the selfishness-the pelf rather than the power-craving selfishness-that instigates needy or greedy knaves to be such fools as to say, that no statesman that opposed the bill of Parliamentary Reform should ever be suffered to take part in the government of the affairs of the nation!

Shepherd. Hoots, toots! you're fechtin the wund. That never was said, sir?

North. Yes, James-and it will be acted on by thousands. Many of the Whig Candidates have already, in addresses to their Constituents, called on them to choose representatives according to that creed. For any baseness, however bare-faced and brazen-faced, we must have been long prepared, in the degenerate Whigs of Scotland. But not till I see that opinion acted on by the Whigs of England, many of whom seem yet to possess many of the political virtues of their forefathers, who were illustrious patriots in their day, shall I believe that Whig is now indeed a word for all that is most despicable and hateful in the heart of man. If this be indeed now a Whig