vernment is embarrassed, therefore it must be embarrassed. Admirable logician! In truth, there are three ways of governing a country; by force, by corruption, by opinion. The time for the first passed away with James the Second. The country, for a short time, vibrated between the two latter spirits of rule. Walpole, the whig, who practised what Swift, the tory, taught-the wisdom that is based on a knowledge of the vilest parts of humanity-Walpole fixed the machinery of government upon the art of Corruption. This art became a science, and under succeeding Ministers flourished with prodigious effect. By degrees our debt began to press upon us; taxation grew heavy; the eyes of politicians became fixed on our financial incumbrances; the smallest economy seemed desirable; the pettiest expense was regarded with jealousy; sinecures were lopped away; jobbing became difficult; corruption was weakened; and with corruption, the power of Government. This is the simple state of the case. Government must be strengthened. Will the nation bear to see it strengthened by force? Will it vote the Administration a standing army; or, denying this, will it recur to Corruption, and recruit the spectre to its former plumpness? Will it submit new places, new sinecures, new pensions, new grants to the disposal of Government, in order to influence, ad libitum, the Members of the Lower House? Does any man expect this? No man! We must try, then, a new experiment. We must try to strengthen the Government by the force of Opinion! The reason why Governments of late have been so weakly and so short-lived is, that while, on the one hand, the power of influencing supporters by corruption was daily decreasing, they made, on the other, no appeal to the support of Opinion. Upon that great and virtuous source of power-after seeing their predecessors recede from it to the last hour-an English Administration is irresistibly thrown. We can readily believe, with the Reviewer, that the principles of government it affords are not those of which former Administrations have the least experience, or any that are known to them as intelligible!

Our Reviewer is an all-accomplished gentleman, wit, punster, legislator, and prophet. He now proceeds to foretell the component parts of the Reformed House of Commons. So modest a gentleman feels the greatest pain to think" that the new Members (wholly unlike any of the old ones) are to be men of a confident and plausible address, a noisy and turbulent generation of glib talkers and shallow thinkers!"-" Nor let any man," cries the Reviewer, " flatter himself that this is a dream! It is a fearful reality!"—a fearful reality indeed it must be !-for then we shall have all the Tories back again! -or, No-if it requires "a confident address" to be Member of a Reformed Parliament, Mr. Croker will certainly have no chance-if a plausible" address, Sir Robert Peel is lost to us for ever-if on the benches of the House of Commons we are to see a noisy and turbulent generation of glib talkers and shallow thinkers, what! oh, what will become of the present, quiet, retiring, silent, ruminating, Minority?" But," proceeds our Reviewer, "it is a fearful reality! We have only to look around us, and we may see the stage already prepared and each performer rehearsing his part !"-it is true; it is indeed a fearful reality! While we write, in all probability, the Re

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corder of Bristol is on that stage, or Mr. Croker, rehearsing those graces of action, which would have rendered him the darling of Sadler's Wells.

Our Reviewer then, turning from the prophetic, avails himself of the poetical character, and wafts us from Thebes to Athens-from England-to Rome, to France, and to America-in order to show that the numerical force are averse to-property?-No! to the present distribution of property!-What man is not?-all financial reform, all political economy, all sound philosophies concur in telling us that our present distresses arise from our imperfect knowledge of the distribution of property-to the place of the sore must be ultimately applied the remedy. Returning then to the Reform Bill, and criticising Lord Brougham's speech, which our Reviewer, who, as we have seen, is a great hand at irony, facetiously tells us Mr. Escott has entirely destroyed, " in his masterly pamphlet," (the most arrogant piece of coxcombical ignorance, by the way, that ever was penned), this guardian of the Constitution, this supporter of morality, this oracle of the high-churchmen, this Tartuffe of Toryism, proceeds to tell us, that jobbing and corruption are necessary to the prosperity of the kingdom, in the following lofty style: "In a country where there is so much inequality of wealth, so much enterprise, information, and capacity for public business, so many ardent, restless, and ambitious spirits, as in Great Britain, there appears the strongest reason to apprehend that the fabric of the Constitution would be exposed to continual shocks, and the peace of society incessantly brought into peril, by the turbulence and daring intrigues of individuals, unless the executive government were in some degree charged with the means of bringing those spirits into harmony, and fencing itself round with a strong barrier, cemented by the mutual interests, the hopes, and pride of its retainers. These may be stigmatized, perhaps, as unworthy motives of action, and unfit to be adopted as the basis of a system of free institutions; but they are the motives by which ninetenths of both the good and evil which befall mankind are determined, whether they be in direct alliance with their System of Government or not."

Now, if this farrago of words signify any thing, it signifies that a Government ought to have the means that wealth and power afford to bring ambitious " spirits into harmony, &c.;" viz. in plain English, the power of bribing adherents and buying off foes. This is exactly begging, the question; and this experiment-satisfied with a higher view of the principles of human conduct, of the true majesty of laws, and the modes by which the Divine Ruler of all intended his creatures to be governed-this grand experiment it is that the people of England propose to try. We have done with this Reviewer Î

ASMODEUS AT LARGE, NO. II.

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The warning of Asmodeus against love-The fate of Authors belowThe principles of Criticism and Morality the same-The Excursion renewed-Foudras-Casimir Perier-The art of hatching plots—A view of les amis du peuple-General Dubourg, &c.-A comité doctrinaire-The Duke de Broglie-M. Guizot M. Thiers, &c.— The Tuileries-The Royal Family-Louis Philippe and his dispositions-Return Londonwards-The Devil's remarks on the Lord Chancellor Apostrophe to Novelty-Asmodeus re-appears-Chitchat upon Literature-Morals, &c.—Walk out-The Devil's admiration of Buckingham Palace-The Duke of Wellington-considerations on his probable estimate of mankind-The Devil and myself resolve to go to a Public Dinner-And elsewhere!

AFTER all, there are few pleasanter modes of spending your time than over a bottle of good Chambertin, enjoyed with an agreeable Devil. As we leave the age of five-and-twenty behind us, we begin to like wine and talk. Women and moonlight are still charming,— but they have passed from the drama of life to the interlude. "And what," said I to Asmodeus,-"what do you propose for the rest of the night? shall we visit Berenger, and make him sing us one of his own songs, or shall we hire a guitar between us and go a-serenading with Messieurs les Chats? perhaps your present Don Cleofas may discover a new Seraphina." "As to that,"-replied Asmodeus, as he quaffed the first glass of a new bottle, for those devils are judges of good wine, and their constitutional thirst is a great advantage to them in a place like the Rocher ;-" as to that, whenever you wish to turn lover, I am at your service-'tis my vocation-I am the imp of valets and billets-doux, and an intrigue is the breath of my nostrils-but I warn you, I have a little of the Mephistopheles in my nature when it comes to love-making, and my assistance may not turn out so happily as it seems. You see how frank wine makes one."

The Devil said this with great gravity-but I who was bent upon falling in love at the first favourable opportunity, and who, the more I see of life, am the more convinced that falling in love is far better than business, ambition, law, or even fighting-for disrobing oneself of ennui-filled my glass gaily-and drinking to the memory of Le Sage, cried to the Devil-" A truce with your warnings, Asmodeus -I renounce human friends, because they are always advising and foretelling-plunge me into embarrassments-I will not blame-I will love you for it-I like a difficulty above all things-it is such a pleasure to get out of it. I never knew either despair or regret, and I defy the devil himself to subdue my hearty confidence in my own resources. But drink, Asmodeus-drink to the memory of that incomparable wit, who has left us in the Boy of Santillane, the epic of daily life how I envy you the honour of having made his acquaintance! By-the-by-hem!-pray what become of novel-writers in the next You see nothing of them, I hope."

world?

"They are punished according to their literary demerits," replied

the Devil," for a bad novel is a serious injury to mankind. Of good writers know we nought-for it is held that a man can do more good by a book than harm by a life, and it is not even asked in the next world whether or not Shakspeare loved le beau sexe et le bon vin."

"Monsieur le Diable, à votre santé. Your sentiments do the highest honour to your head and heart; and in future I will study the canons of criticism, instead of the laws of morality."

"They are one and the same, properly understood," said the Devil, coolly; and tossing off his last glass, for no sooner had he begun to moralize, than he made double haste towards the end of the bottlehe rose up, and proposed an Haroun-al-Raschid sort of excursion.

"With all my heart," said I, seizing my hat. So we paid the bill, and sauntered into the street. The Devil began to whistle. “I have summoned," said he, after he had finished an air from Der Freischutz,-"I have summoned a couple of notions of travelling from the mind of a German Prince-here they are-and will serve us for horses in our ride about the city. His Highness lately visited you, entered people's houses under a feigned name, and where he was received as the Prince, he lived as the spy. His notions of travelling are particularly useful to us in our excursion, for they are excessively rapid, so much so, that they distance recollection, and play the deuce with exactness. But that's nothing to us, we are not writing travels. Allons!" We sprang on our steeds, and I felt myself instantly seized with the furor of describing. Nay, the more I saw of a house, the more I felt inclined to abuse its inhabitants. But my horse shied so that I was all but over-when it came unawares on a house, called, from the English original, The Traveller's Club.'"

"Look," said Asmodeus, pointing to me the house of the Home Department; "do you see in that room those two gentlemen, who are very busily reading a despatch. That long-faced, bald man is M. Foudras, the secretary-general of Perier-the very man who was the bosom friend of Decazes and Corbiere: he is the best inventor and discoverer of mock conspiracies that Paris possesses-they are going to give him a patent for it. The other, he on the righthand, is Mr. Gisquet, the Prefet of Police-an ex-porteur of the house of Perier, and homme de paille of the present President of the Council. The paper they are reading is a denunciation against les amis du peuple, who are divided in several sections, and who assemble secretly in private houses to plot and to discuss political matters. According to the Arguses of Mr. Gisquet, they are everywhere, but are never found when the police makes a descent on the suspected rendezvous."

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While Asmodeus was giving me this information, the door opened; a thin, pale man entered. Foudras and Gisquet rose respectfully. "And who is he?" said I." That is no less a person than Casimir Perier," replied Asmodeus. "You see how attentively he is perusing that paper. It is the evening journal, The Mouvement.' Observe what contortions, and what grimaces, he makes: see how he trembles with rage. General Dubourg attacks him personally every evening. Look, now, how fiercely he falls upon the Prefet de Police. Satan! his Prefetship has no sinecure! He has ordered that two new spies should be directed to watch and follow every step

of General Dubourg. See, now, they have taken again to the denunciation! The Minister is furious, and has threatened to disgrace M. Foudras if he does not find out the chief rendezvous of the amis du peuple. Our gentlemen seem abashed. Perier has exposed to them his painful situation; strong suspicions are entertained that the conspiracy of Notre Dame has been one of his political stratagems; it is also to be apprehended, that before the Justice the persons arrested will prove it to be so. Perier will throw all the blame on M. Foudras and Gisquet, if he cannot by other means prevent certain disclosures of his conduct. This they will submit to. Hear them— they promise to take upon themselves all the blame in the transaction, should it come to light; but they have demanded a new supply of money to arrange the matter: it is granted. Money is the last thing a good Minister cares about, especially if it's the Nation's."

After this, the Prime Minister sat down to write. I begged Asmodeus to inform me upon what subject; the Devil replied that he was inditing a letter to Metternich, and that it related to the affairs of Italy. "Perier will not interfere, should the Austrians go again into the Roman States."-"Is it possible?" replied I.-"Nay, it is necessary!" retorted Asmodeus; "France has lost the opportunity of commanding respect, and she must now act with forbearance."

"But," continued my guide, "turn yourself this way, and I will show you a meeting of the amis du peuple." I obeyed, and saw a great number of young men, assembled in a large room: they were all standing, and a little man, with black hair, and very dark complexion, was haranguing them. "Who is he?" asked I. "That is M. Marrast, the most violent of the amis du peuple, and the most constant personal enemy of Louis Philippe and Casimir Perier. That tall man that stands by him is Mr. Fazy, the Editor of 'La Revolution;' and the dark and tall fine-looking man, whom you see next to Fazy, is General Dubourg." While Asmodeus was speaking to me, the assembly gradually warmed into great agitation. They seemed exasperated, and gesticulated vehemently :-those foreigners cannot get coolly into a passion, as we do! "And why all that agitation?" said I to Asmodeus. "Why? Because Marrast has ended his speech by advising his comrades not to lose time-to prepare for attacking openly the Government as soon as possible; for if they delay, there is little hope for them."

"And who is that young man now speaking so violently?"

"That is Gallois, the same who was tried for having threatened to murder Louis Philippe, and who was acquitted. That other next to him is Guinard, a true Republican, who has more respect for a chiffonnier than for Louis Philippe and all his Ministers. That little fellow with a bald head is Cauchois le Maire, a very liberal writer, and the only independent redacteur of The Constitutionnel.""

"Now I will show you a Comité Doctrinaire. In that drawingroom, you see those stern-looking gentlemen sitting around that sofa which is occupied by three persons? Well, that in the middle is the Duke de Broglie; the one on the right hand is M. Guizot, and that on the left is the President of the Chamber of Deputies. That very little man, now talking, is M. Thiers,—the great champion of the juste milieu,