which we have placed her in our list; and should she be of too little value to deserve a place in it, he will vigorously root her from his imagination, and suffer himself no longer to hover round her perilous charms, "come al lume farfalla."

With what gratitude should I have hailed such a work as "The Bachelor's Vademecum" in my own days of freedom and matrimonial inquiry! What an influence would it have exerted on my comfort and my fate! I remember with horror the anxious days and sleepless nights which doubt, suspicion, and conjecture occasioned me; the fears of advancing too far, the dread of imposition, the vacillation in my conduct and manners which every new rumour produced. One day I was urging myself into ardour, the next studiously cold; one day I courted a smile as a blessing, the next feared it as a lure. And what at length was my fate? I affronted the only woman I ever liked on hearing a false, but general report, that she had lost the greater part of her fortune by the failure of a banking-house; and after unravelling a thousand artifices, avoiding a thousand snares, I was tricked into a marriage with a plain, disagreeable, healthy old maid, by her hoydening niece, whose artless manners I never suspected, and who told me as a great secret that her aunt had 40,000l. in the Bank of England, but did not wish it to be known. It was a spontaneous, unsuggested hoax on the part of the girl, intended to make me ask her aunt to dance; I asked a more important question, was favourably answered, and am tied to a termagant for life, with a paltry 5000l. strictly settled upon her to gild my misery. Let my own hard and unmerited fate be a warning to others; let it prove the insufficiency of caution if unassisted by accurate information; and as no mariner, however wary, could venture to despise the aid of a beacon, neither let the most prudent bachelor reject the proffered aid of our Vademecum. I am, Mr. Editor, Your obedient servant,

W. E.

STATE OF PARTIES.

PARTY divisions, whether on the whole operating for good or evil, are things, we fear, inseparable from a free Government. In this country they have, however, for the most part, been productive of good; but of late years, from the want of the highest grade of talent amongst the leaders, and of consequent union in their followers, their nature, and their results, have tended to lower the standard of public morals, and materially to alter, and, if not checked in time, to hazard the existence of our constitution. During the life of Mr. Fox, except in two wellknown instances (the Mission of Mr. Adair to Russia and the secession from Parliament), his party was of eminent service to the country. Mr. Pitt's party was so far of use, as a body, as to render it disgraceful for an individual to leave whatever banners he first appeared under, from motives of private and personal interest. We are old enough to remember the Irish Parliament in its full pride of power and of profligacy; and have not unfrequently seen the red-hot patriot of one day leading the ministerial band of placemen and pensioners on the following with no compunction and little disgrace. The practice was common, and by use made tolerably perfect. Here, if a party got into

power, it was in a body, and while such a practice continued, the country was benefited by the vigilance, the talent, and even the ardour of a regulated and skilful Opposition. The sagacious Lord Coke well observed, that "an inquiring Parliament" was good for the country; it kept ministers to their traces, and made their opponents attentive and active: the first were aware that no questionable act would be suffered to pass unquestioned; while the others knew that their weight with the country mainly depended upon their real or supposed acuteness and vigilance.

We have been led to these reflections by the change which has taken place in the House of Commons since the death of the two great leaders whom we have named.

Trading politicians have become numerous, who change their flags or their benches as it suits their convenience, and, as Mr. Grattan well observed, "they meander to their points," whenever they can do so with advantage to their own interests. Recent events in our political sphere have given a plausible pretext to these parliamentary girouettes. We have had, from various causes, some physical, some moral four administrations in about one year; and as each has been dissolved by death or disease, by intrigue or imbecility, large numbers have adhered to. one ci-devant minister or another. Our Houses, both of Lords and Commons, now resemble a county map; we have four or five subdivisions of each body, each parcelled out and divided with different-coloured lines, and acting under different leaders or banners. We have the "friends" or adherents of Lord Liverpool; the admirers of Mr. Canning; the followers of Lord Goderich; and the " troops" of the Duke of Wellington.

The supporters of Lord Eldon and prerogative; of emancipation in religion, and liberality in commerce, headed by Lord Lansdown in one House and Mr. Huskisson in the other.

The adherents of Lord Goderich, veering and tacking, after the example of their unsteady leader, between both the foregoing; and the band of our late Commander-in-Chief, now our prime minister; as obedient to his "orders," as if engaged in a military, instead of a political campaign.

Each and all of these parties, except the last, range occasionally under the "Grand divisions" of Whig and Tory, of Ministry and Opposition. The Whigs, purely as such, are reduced to a small, but able and compact force. We have a detachment of the young nobility, classed under Lord Althorpe; of reformers, under Brougham and Tierney; of accountants and scrutineers, under Hume; of emancipators, under Lord John Russell; while Sir J. Macintosh and M. A. Taylor, aided by a detachment of rising lawyers, keep up an unremitting and powerful fire on the inveterate abuses and complicated chicanery of the Court of Chancery. The remainder of the Whigs consist of various denominations, some more, some less active and ardent, but few "of sufficient mark" to be separately enumerated. In the House of Lords we have the stern and fiery, but able and constitutional Lord Grey; the mild, sagacious, cool, and lucid eloquence of Lords Lansdowne and Holland, enlivened, sometimes by the wit, and always by the acuteness of the latter, and of Lord King; but we have to lament the want of cordial feeling, and sacrifice of personal, to public opinion,

where so much talent is still to be found; and above all, we want the concentrated effort of a united body under an acknowledged leader.

In the Tory party there is considerable talent, and even energy; though we think both to be so mingled and oppressed by such narrow views of national policy, such selfish aspirations after ranks and ribands, or even more solid rewards, such a keen scent after pensions and places that we expect little good from such a body, while we fear much danger. The danger we anticipate is from the divided state of the Whigs-no master-mind to calm or awe them into quiet or obedience, and to constitute a powerful phalanx vigilant and united; while on the other side all is union and concentration, because all have one common end and object, to rule their King, and the country in his name, henceforth, as they have hitherto done, with little interval, for nearly half a century; making its best institutions, its press, and its Parliament, the engines of their own power, the sources of their own wealth, and the causes of national degradation.

To the Tories we owe an accumulation of debt almost beyond calculation. They found England with, perhaps, a useful debt of two hundred, and left it tottering under the oppressive weight of one amounting to near nine hundred millions!

They found us with a small standing army, proportioned to our wants as possessors of colonies; and with a powerful fleet, the natural guardian of an insular position. Our fleet is now turned into a sort of hospital for the "incurables" of our aristocracy. Our army has been encreased till it has become an object of rational fear to its country; while, from the nature of things, it never can be so numerous as to enable it to take an eminent station on the Continent of Europe; or, as the Great Frederick said of a military nation, so powerful as not to let a shot be fired in Europe without its permission. The army, too, has been made, by certain officers, more remarkable for their rank than for any military talent or quality, a source of great expense to the country, and we think a means certainly not of improving the military character of our soldiers. Some of our troops are made, in appearance, to resemble Russians, Prussians, or Germans; and considerable sums have been paid for mouse's skin, and other artificial modes of giving whiskers and moustaches to particular regiments; as if, after the severe lessons which both our cavalry and infantry have given to the best troops in Europe, the well-shaved lip and smooth chin of a ruddy English soldier does not present as formidable an appearance, and certainly a much cleaner one, to an enemy, than any other that he can meet in the field of battle. At the gigantic contest of Waterloo, our Horse Guards, in their cloth coats, encountered and destroyed the French cavalry, cased from their chins to their hips in steel; they picked, as we heard a soldier say, "the fish out of these lobster shells," and the next thing done, by some of our military men-milliners, was to case our fine fellows in these shells, which had been insufficient to protect their original wearers in that sanguinary conflict! This we have noticed here as connected with our subject, because it marks a desire to make our men resemble the troops of the Continent, while, in fact, they should have been preserved as "purely English" as possible; and, like our tars, in their "plain blue jackets," the ornament and defence of their own country, rather than the silly copyists of the fashions or the follies of any other.

Recent events, as we have elsewhere noticed, have thrown the whole of the Tory power, backed by this overgrown army, into the hands of the most successful, if not the most able General of modern times, and the result will hazard, we greatly fear, the permanence of our most celebrated institutions.

The Tory Oligarchy does not personally like his Grace; but then he is one of their “ own body," and it will support him, not only upon that ground, but because they have no individual amongst themselves who has sufficient talent, or acknowledged character, to take his office.

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In the House of Lords the conciliatory resolution respecting the Catholics, admirably calculated to quiet, if not altogether to satisfy them, has been negatived by a majority of forty-five; uniting in this small majority churchmen and placemen, and the debris of the military and legal professions, with one splendid exception, in Lord Plunkett, in himself a host! Lord Eldon has changed his tone, and instead of cheering" Protestant ascendency, now talks of" Catholic securities." . Lord Grey did not speak, thus verifying and justifying our preceding observations; a silence, we suspect, resulting from the late divisions between him and his old friends. He thus affords a practical proof of the danger of party, if it be not united. Its admitted existence justifies the union of his opponents, while the schism between himself and a part of the Whigs renders his own, and their eloquence, and talent, useless to his country, and dangerous to the cause of civil and religious liberty. Mr. Calcraft has deserted the Whigs, to become Paymaster of the Army; thus imitating the practices and the scenes so often witnessed in the Irish Parliament, where the minister of the day, provided his gun was sufficiently "loaded," brought down the bird at whom he discharged it, whether it was a goose or a woodcock! When we recollect the events in this same office during his father's and the first Lord Holland's time, we cannot help rejoicing that half a century cannot be required to pass a paymaster's accounts, as was then not unfrequently the case; nor half a million be left in a functionary's hands, who may not have been worth six pence during the whole course of his public life. Nor has this been the only secession which we have heard whispered, and which the recess may bring into open daylight. The Clare lesson may retain in the ranks of the "unemployed," a knight who represents a neighbouring county, and who perhaps fears that were he sent back to his constituents, in consequence of having taken a halbert in the Duke's regiment, he might possibly not be returned" to the place from whence he came." This apprehension may keep him steady, as out of Parliament he would not be worth the powder and shot used to bring him down; and except for his own county, he has neither interest, nor means, we suspect, to ensure a return. That he has been coquetting with the Duke, is well known to us; and we therefore have written him off the roll of the Whig regiment, though he still sits with it. Another "gallant knight," we have also heard, has tendered his services; and as he has been a military man, we could the more readily excuse him for wishing to enlist amongst the Duke's troops, under whom he has served in his former capacity; but we are sorry to find that the Whigs should thus be mouldering away, and joining the banners of the enemy, from motives and causes at least "highly questionable." That the member for Wareham should have gone over, we own

has not surprised us; and though he professes to have done so with all his principles untouched, it will require either the friendship or the credulity of Sir James Graham, to put implicit confidence in the assertion. The Duke of Wellington is too good a disciplinarian to allow of such "reserves;" he must be served heart and hand, by every officer under him, or he will soon give the Paymaster General leave of absence from that office, and send him to graze, once more, on the barren plains which surround Wareham.

In our observations on the state of affairs immediately following the secession of Lord Goderich, and the strange and almost unnatural reunion in the same cabinet of those who had driven his lordship to that measure by their differences, the following passage will be found; not discreditable, we would fain hope, to our political sagacity: "Mr. Huskisson, whatever his talents may be (and they are great), in his anxiety for office, has essentially forfeited the confidence of his late friends without obtaining that of his present coadjutors, and will furnish a memorable example that honesty is the best policy,' to all rising aspirants for political power, public estimation, or private regard. That which the Duke so recently feared may now be urged by his Grace in terrorem-a dissolution of Parliament; and he will soon, therefore, possess a majority in the House of Commons, as he has one already in the House of Lords, having first dismissed his disgraced ally, Mr. Huskisson." An interval of not more than three months has verified our predictions. Mr. Huskisson has been consigned by the Duke to his political cemetery, "with all his glory about him;" while his friends, at least those in the House of Commons,-have cowered to the power, or the threats, we suspect, of his military opponent. From the discordant materials of which the late Administration (composed of the fragments of several parties) was put together, we at first supposed that a dissolution at this moment was inevitable; but the well-timed and boldly applied hints of his Grace and his staff, "that he should consider every man his opponent who was not his supporter," has decided the wavering policy of all those who feel an habitual dread of an election contest, or the renewal of a course of borough caresses; or who value their own consistency, or the ties of personal or political friendship, less than they dread a recurrence to the individuals whom they humorously call "their constituents." His Grace has found a sufficient number of "recruits," and we shall have no dissolution; no breaking of bones (as surgeons sometimes do), to re-unite them again the more firmly.

With some occasional changes, of "red" coats for blue or black ones, the wearers of which latter will find it pleasant, or useful, to solicit from his Grace the peaceful, if not profitable, retirement of the Chiltern Hundreds, we shall see a new corps, as strong, and more "steady under arms," than those who so recently filled, if they did not adorn, the Ministerial benches.

After a correspondence, half angry, and on the part of Mr. Huskisson not very wise, the Duke" compelled" him to resign his office. At the letters, now in every body's hands, one is tempted to laugh, if the reflection, on its possible results to the country, did not check all risible tendency. England has lost a very able minister, in his particular official line of duty; and notwithstanding all his "explanations," we cannot