two classes, those ennobled before the reign of George III. and those since, of the former, fifty-six are friends, and only twenty-one enemies, of the Reform. So much for the vain and saucy boast, that the real nobility of the country are against Reform. I have dwelt upon this matter more than its intrinsic importance deserves, only through my desire to set right the fact, and to vindicate the ancient Aristocracy from a most groundless imputation. Do it is Suffrage by the Million! From this you turn away indignant, and for the second time she departs. Beware of her third coming; for the treasure you must have; and what price she may next demand, who shall tell? It may even be the mace which rests upon that woolsack. What may follow your course of obstinacy, if persisted in, I cannot take upon me to predict, nor do I wish to conjecture. But this I know full well, that, as sure as man My Lords, I do not disguise the is mortal, and to err is human, justice intense solicitude which I feel for the deferred, enhances the price at which event of this debate, because I know you must purchase safety and peace; full well that the peace of the country nor can you expect to gather in anis involved in the issue. I cannot look other crop than they did who went without dismay at the rejection of the before you, if you persevere in their measure. But grievous as may be the utterly abominable husbandry, of sowconsequences of a temporary defeating injustice and reaping rebellion. temporary it can only be; for its ultimate, and even speedy success is certain-nothing can now stop it. not suffer yourselves to be persuaded that even if the present Ministers were driven from the helm, any one could steer you through the troubles which surround you, without Reform. But our successors would take up the task in circumstances far less auspicious. Under them, you would be fain to grant a Bill, compared with which, the one we now proffer you is moderate indeed. Hear the parable of the Sybil; for it conveys a wise and wholesome moral. She now appears at your gate, and offers you mildly the volumes-the precious volumes of wisdom and peace. The price she asks is reasonable; to restore the franchise, which, without any bargain, you ought voluntarily to give; you refuse her terms-her moderate terms, she darkens the porch no longer. But soon, for you cannot do without her wares, you call her back;-again she comes, but with diminished treasures; the leaves of the book are in part torn away by lawless hands, in part defaced with characters of blood. But the prophetic maid has risen in her demands-it is Parliaments by the Year-it is Vote by the Ballot But among the awful considerations that now bow down my mind, there is one which stands preeminent above the rest. You are the highest judicature in the realm; you sit here as judges, and decide all causes, civil and criminal, without appeal. It is a judge's first duty never to pronounce sentence, in the most trifling case, without hearing. Will you make this the exception? Are you really prepared to determine, but not to hear, the mighty cause upon which a nation's hopes and fears hang? You are. Then beware of your decision! Rouse not, I beseech you, a peace-loving, but a resolute people; alienate not from your body the affections of a whole empire. As your friend, as the friend of order, as the friend of my country, as the faithful servant of my Sovereign, I counsel you to assist with your uttermost efforts in preserving the peace, and upholding and perpetuating the Constitution. Therefore, I pray and I exhort you not to reject this measure. By all you hold most dear,-by all the ties that bind every one of us to our common order and our common country, I solemnly adjure you, I warn you, I implore you,-yea, on my bended knees, I supplicate you-Reject not this Bill! WILLIAM HAZLITT. WILLIAM HAZLITT, born in Shropshire in the year 1780, may be classed among that number of modern writers who have introduced a new style into English literature, combining a strong love of the beautiful in nature and art with the tender in the concerns of human life. This author procured for himself a high degree of distinction by his eccentric criticisms on paintings and poetry, and contributed on rather a large scale to different periodicals. He CHARACTER OF A COCKNEY. The true Cockney has never travelled beyond the purlieus of the metropolis, either in the body or the spirit. Primrose Hill is the ultima Thule of his most romantic desires; Greenwich Park stands him in the stead of the Vales of Arcady. Time and space are lost to him. He is confined to one spot, and to the present moment. He sees every thing near, superficial, little, in hasty succession. The world turns round, and his head with it, like a roundabout at a fair, till he becomes stunned and giddy with the motion. Figures glide by as in a camera obscura. There is a glare, a perpetual hubbub, a noise, a crowd about him; he sees and hears a vast number of things, and knows nothing. He is pert, raw, ignorant, conceited, ridiculous, shallow, contemptible. His senses keep him alive; and he knows, inquires, and cares for nothing farther. He meets the Lord Mayor's coach, and, without ceremony, treats himself to an imaginary ride in it. He notices the people going to court or to a city feast, and is satisfied with the show. He takes the walk of a lord, and fancies himself as good as he. He sees an infinite quantity of people pass along the street, and thinks there is no such thing as life or a knowledge of character to be found out of London. 'Beyond Hyde Park all is a desert to him.' He despises the country, because he is ignorant of it; and the town, because he is familiar with it. He is as well acquainted with St. Paul's as if he had built it; and talks of Westminster Abbey and Poets' Corner with great indifference. The King, the house of Lords and Com was the author of the following works: The Charac ters of Shakespeare's Plays' 1817, 'A View of the English Stage, 1818, 'Lectures on English Poetry 1818 and 'A Life of Napoleon Bonaparte' in four volumes. Many of these writings are composed in a brilliant, poetic, imaginative style: he seems to possess a renovating influence over the subjects he treats, converting dry and uninviting articles into objects of interest and attraction. He died in 1830. mons, are his very good friends. He knows the members for Westminster or the city by sight, and bows to the sheriffs or sheriffs' men. He is hand and glove with the chairman of some committee. He is, in short, a great man by proxy, and comes so often in contact with fine persons and things, that he rubs off a little of the gilding, and is surcharged with a sort of secondhand, vapid, tingling, troublesome selfimportance. His personal vanity is thus continually flattered and perked into ridiculous self-complacency, while his imagination is jaded and impaired by daily misuse. Every thing is vulgarised in his mind. Nothing dwells long enough on it to produce an interest; nothing is contemplated sufficiently at a distance to excite curiosity or wonder. Your true Cockney is your only true leveller. Let him be as low as he will, he fancies he is as good as any body else. He has no respect for himself, and still less (if possible) for you. He cares little about his own advantages, if he can only make a jest at yours. Every feeling comes to him through a medium of levity and impertinence; nor does he like to have this habit of mind disturbed by being brought into collision with any thing serious or respectable. He despairs (in such a crowd of competitors) of distinguishing himself, but laughs heartily at the idea of being able to trip up the heels of other people's pretensions. A Cockney feels no gratitude. This is a first principle with him. gards any obligation you confer upon him as a species of imposition, of a ludicrous assumption of fancied superiority. He talks about every thing, for he has heard something about it; and, He re veys.' The Monument, the Tower of London, St. James's Palace, the Mansion House, Whitehall, are part and parcel of his being. understanding nothing of the matter, concludes he has as good a right as you. He is a politician, for he has seen the Parliament House: he is a critic, because he knows the principal Let us suppose him to be a lawyer's actors by sight; has a taste for music, clerk at half-a-guinea a week: but he because he belongs to a glee club at knows the Inns of Court, the Temple the West End; and is gallant, in virtue Gardens, and Gray's Inn Passage; sees of sometimes frequenting the lobbies the lawyers in their wigs walking up at half-price. A mere Londoner, in and down Chancery Lane; and has fact, from the opportunities he has of advanced within half a dozen yards of knowing something of a number of the chancellor's chair:-who can doubt objects (and those striking ones), fan- that he understands (by implication) cies himself a sort of privileged person, every point of law (however intricate) remains satisfied with the assumption of better than the most expert country merits, so much the more unquestion- practitioner? He is a shopman, and able as they are not his own; and nailed all day behind the counter; but from being dazzled with noise and he sees hundreds and thousands of gay, show and appearances, is less capable well dressed people pass-an endless of giving a real opinion, or entering phantasmagoria-and enjoys their liinto any subject than the meanest berty and gaudy fluttering pride. He peasant. There are greater lawyers, is a footman-but he rides behind orators, painters, philosophers, players, in London, than in any other part of the United Kingdom: he is a Londoner, and therefore it would be strange if he did not know more of law, eloquence, art, philosophy, acting, than any one without his local advantages, and who is merely from the country. This is a non sequitur, and it constantly appears so when put to the test. A real Cockney is the poorest creature in the world; the most literal, the most mechanical, and yet he too lives in a world of romance-a fairy-land of his own. He is a citizen of London; and this abstraction leads his imagination the finest dance in the world. London is the first city on the habitable globe; and therefore he must be superior to every one who lives out of it. There are more people in London than any where else; and though a dwarf in stature, his person swells out and expands into ideal importance and borrowed magnitude. He resides in a garret or in a two pair of stairs' back room; yet he talks of the magnificence of London, and gives himself airs of consequence upon it, as if all the houses in Portman or in Grosvenor Square were his by right or in reversion. 'He is owner of all he sur beauty, through a crowd of carriages, and visits a thousand shops. Is he a tailor? The stigma on his profession is lost in the elegance of the patterns he provides, and of the persons he adorns; and he is something very different from a mere country botcher. Nay, the very scavenger and nightman thinks the dirt in the street has something precious in it, and his employment is solemn, silent, sacred, peculiar to London! A barker (1) in Monmouth Street, a slop-seller (2) in Ratcliffe Highway, a tapster at a night cellar, a beggar in St. Giles's, live in the eyes of millions, and eke out a dreary, wretched, scanty, or loathsome existence from the gorgeous, busy, glowing scene around them. It is a common saying among such persons, that 'they had rather be hanged in London than die a natural death out of it any where else.' Such is the force of habit and imagination. Even the eye of childhood is dazzled and delighted with the polished splendour of the jewellers' shops, the neatness of the turnery ware, the festoons of artificial flowers, the confectionary, the chymists' shops, the lamps, the horses, (1) Also called a toot. A man who stands at a shopdoor, to invite strangers to enter. (2) Dealer in readymade clothes. the carriages, the sedan-chairs: to this was formerly added a set of traditional associations Whittington and his Cat, Guy Faux and the Gunpowder Treason, the Fire and the Plague of London, and the Heads of the Scotch Rebels that were stuck on Temple Bar in 1745. These have vanished; and in their stead the curious and romantic eye must be content to pore in Pennant for the site of old London Wall, or to peruse the sentimental mile-stone that marks the distance to the place where Hicks's Hall formerly stood.' The Cockney lives in a go-cart of local prejudices and positive illusions; and when he is turned out of it, he hardly knows how to stand or move. He ventures through Hyde Park Corner as a cat crosses a gutter. The trees pass by the coach very oddly. The country has a strange blank appearance: it is not lined with houses all the way, like London. He comes to places he never saw or heard of. He finds the world is bigger than he thought it. He might have dropped from the moon, for any thing he knows of the matter. He is mightily disposed to laugh, but is half afraid of making some blunder. Between sheepishness and conceit, he is in a very ludicrous situation. He finds that the people walk on two legs, and wonders to hear them talk a dialect so different from his own. He perceives London fashions have got down into the country before him and that some of the better sort are dressed as well as he is. A drove of pigs or cattle stopping the road is a very troublesome interruption: a crow in a field, a magpie in a hedge, are to him very odd animals-he can't tell what to make of them, or how they live. He does not altogether like the accommodation at the inns-it is not what he has been used to in town. He begins to be communicative-says he was born within the sound of Bow bell;' and attempts some jokes, at which nobody laughs. He asks the coachman a question, to which he receives no answer. All this is to him very unaccountable and unexpected. He arrives at his journey's end; and instead of being the great man he anticipated among his friends and country relations, finds that they are barely civil to him, or make a butt of him; have topics of their own which he is as completely ignorant of as they are indifferent to what he says, so that he is glad to get back to London again, where he meets with his favourite indulgences and associates, and fancies the whole world is occupied with what he hears and sees. A Cockney loves a tea-garden in summer, as he loves a play or the cider-cellar in winter; where he sweetens the air with the fumes of tobacco, and makes it echo to the sound of his own voice. This kind of suburban retreat is a most agreeable relief to the close and confined air of a city life. The imagination, long pent up behind a counter or between brick walls, with noisome smells and dingy objects, cannot bear at once to launch into the boundless expanse of the country, but 'shorter excursions tries,' coveting something between the two, and finding it at White Conduit House, or the Rosemary Branch, or Bagnigge Wells. The landlady is seen at a bow-window in near perspective, with punch-bowls and lemons disposed orderly around-the lime-trees or poplars wave overhead to 'catch the breezy air,' through which, typical of the huge dense cloud that hangs over the metropolis, curls up the thin, blue, odoriferous vapour of Virginia or Oronooko; the benches are ranged in rows, the fields and hedgerows spread out their verdure; Hampstead and Highgate are seen in the background, and contain the imagination within gentle limits-here the holiday people are playing ball-here they are playing bowls-here they are quaffing ale, there sipping tea-here the loud wager is heard, there the political debate. In a sequestered nook a slender youth, with purple face and drooping head, nodding over a glass of gin toddy, breathes in tender accentsThere's nought so sweet on earth, As Love's young dream. While 'Rosy Ann' takes its turn; and 'Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled' is thundering forth in accents that might wake the dead. In another part sit carpers and critics, who dispute the score of the reckoning or the game, or cavil at the taste and execution of the would-be Brahams and Durusets. THE LITERATURE OF THE AGE The age of Elizabeth was distinguished, beyond, perhaps, any other in our history, by a number of great men, famous in different ways, and whose names have come down to us with unblemished honours,-statesmen, warriors, divines, scholars, poets, and philosophers: Raleigh, Drake, Coke, Hooker, and higher and more sounding still, and still more frequent in our mouths, Shakespeare, Spenser, Sydney, Bacon, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher -men whom fame has eternised in her long and lasting scroll, and who, by their words and acts, were benefactors of their country, and ornaments of human nature. Their attainments of different kinds bore the same general stamp, and it was sterling: what they did had the mark of their age and country upon it. Perhaps the genius of Great Britain (if I may so speak without offence or flattery) never shone out fuller or brighter, or looked more like itself, than at this period. For such an extraordinary combination and development of fancy and genius many causes may be assigned; and we may seek for the chief of them in religion, in politics, in the circumstances of the time, the recent diffusion of letters, in local situation, and in the character of the men who adorned that period, and availed themselves so nobly of the advantages placed within their reach. I shall here attempt to give a general sketch of these causes, and of the manner in which they operated to mould and stamp the poetry of the country at the period of which I have to treat; independently of incidental and fortuitous causes, for which there is no accounting, but which, after all, have often the greatest share in determining the most important results. The first cause I shall mention, as contributing to this general effect, was the Reformation, which had just then taken place. This event gave a mighty impulse and increased activity to thought and inquiry, and agitated the inert mass of accumulated prejudices throughout Europe. The effect of the concussion was general; but the shock was greatest in this country. It toppled down the full-grown intolerable abuses of centuries at a blow; heaved the ground from under the feet of bigoted faith and slavish obedience; and the roar and dashing of opinions, loosened from their accustomed hold, might be heard like the noise of an angry sea, and has never yet subsided. Germany first broke the spell of misbegotten fear, and gave the watchword; but England joined the shout, and echoed it back, with her island voice, from her thousand cliffs and craggy shores, in a longer and a louder strain. With that cry, the genius of Great Britain rose, and threw down the gauntlet to the nations. There was a mighty fermentation: the waters were out; public opinion was in a state of projection. Liberty was held out to all to think and speak the truth. Men's brains were busy; their spirits stirring; their hearts full; and their hands not idle. Their eyes were opened to expect the greatest things, and their ears burned with curiosity and zeal to know the truth, that the truth might make them free. The death-blow which had been struck at scarlet vice and bloated hypocrisy, loosened their tongues, and made the talismans and love-tokens of Popish superstition, with which she had beguiled her followers and committed abominations with the people, fall harmless from their necks. The translation of the Bible was the chief engine in the great work. It threw open, by a secret spring, the rich trea |