cans call Bunkum. The men who "cram" themselves with facts that they may discharge them in speeches, and speak that they may be reported, would eat their dinners with their wives and children in comparative calmness, if those magnificent senatorial efforts were discouragede.g.: "Mr. Chatterby then sketched the history of the question, in a speech of an hour and a quarter, and, reserving to himself the right of dissenting from details, supported the bill." This would save Mr. Chatterby a great deal of mnemonic promenading about his library, and many impassioned appeals to his arm-chair as Mr. Speaker. In the course of the parliamentary debates, the House is occasionally indulged with provincialisms and vulgarisms. The great majority of the members speak as educated men should do; but there are a few gentlemen who are somewhat "too appy to leave the matter in the ands of the Ouse." More than one of these is a Conservative. The Scotch accent and the Irish brogue may of course be heard the latter at most times, and in strange varieties, from the nipping, sneaking Dublin brogue to the rich low-comedy voice of the West. The Scotch members speak very little; they are understood to hold private Parliaments of their own on Scotch bills, which are there discussed in a business-like and sensible manner by those who understand them; and the House, which of course does not, is relieved from the trouble of doing much more than passing the measures, as it generally does about two in the morning. Of Parliamentary eloquence we would rather decline to speak. When there were such things as grand speeches-we are willing to believe they were very grand-they had seldom reporters with short-hand pens, and most of them died. Assuredly the art is extinct, and there are no great speeches now. There are long speeches, and sarcastic speeches, and crack speeches, but they are not such speeches as fell from the lips of Burke, Pitt, and Fox, or, more recent still, from Canning and Brougham. We have in our time heard five orations, whose united lengths would rather exceed the twenty-four hours. They were of very different calibre. One was Lord Palmerston's most able exposition of his whole foreign policy, in the summer of 1850, an effort-we speak without political reference-worthy of the energetic and accomplished man who made it. Another was a speech by Mr. Vincent Scully, an Irish member, who spoke avowedly against time for the express purpose of obstructing busi ness, and who occupied, if we remember aright, a whole morning sitting. Two others were Budget speeches, by Messrs. Disraeli and Gladstone, of five hours each; and the fifth was that of Sir Charles Wood's, “a good man, but a little o'ertasked," when he laid the East India Bill before the House. These are the great talking feats of late days. Lord Palmerston does not affect eloquence, but usually speaks in a frank, English manner, the franker that he frequently hesitates over a word, making no secret of the fact that he wishes to select the best. His action is energetic, even in giving a brief explanation. His long experience of business and of the House, combined with his own keen insight into character, tell him at a glance what manner of man his antagonist is, and in what way it would be acceptable to the House to have him treated. Though he is personally fearless, and never hesitates to close when the fight demands a grapple, it is evidently pleasanter to Lord Palmerston merely to exchange a few knightly blows with a worthy assailant, and then to charge upon the field, after the manner of one of the Froissart heroes, so much admired by John Graham of Claverhouse. Of Mr. Disraeli's masterly, passionless, finished delivery, we have already spoken. Like the warrior to whom Norna chants her witch-song, seldom "Lies he still, through sloth or fear, When point and edge are glittering near." An ever-ready speaker, his premeditated orations, that is to say, those over which he has had some time--no matter how short-to ponder, are nevertheless infinitely better than those prompted by the exigency of the moment. He will sometimes from this cause reply better to the earlier part of an antagonist's argument than to its close; and his own peroration is seldom so effective as what, in dramatic language, may be called the crisis of his speech. Unprepared, he has a tendency to verbiage, and to a repetition of the same idea, without a sufficient variety of treatment; prepared, and not a blow misses; not a platitude irritates; not a sarcasm is impeded by a weakening phrase. The arrow, stripped of all plumage except that which aids and steadies its flight, strikes within a hair's breadth of the archer's aim; whether it finds the joint of the harness, or shivers on the shield, is occasionally matter of opinion: but that it often wounds deeply would seem to be proved by the exceeding ferocity with which, out of the House, Mr. Disraeli is assailed. In the House, it is rare for any one but Mr. Gladstone to meddle with him. Mr. Macaulay's voice is now so seldom raised in Parliament that there is little to be told of him, save what was well known long ago. Twice only has he been Twice only has he been heard of late: once on the India Bill, when some persons expected a masterly survey of Indian history and politics, and an eloquent prophecy of the future, and were compelled to content themselves with some pleasant and sensible observations on education. His other effort was on the Judges' Exclusion Bill, when he spoke vigorously, and brought back reminiscences of old parliamentary battles which were wont to stir the pulses of the listeners. We hoped to have been gratified by a specimen of his ever-welcome eloquence on the Scotch Education Bill, seeing him in his place; but he came only to present the opinions of other people on the measure. Sir Bulwer Lytton, who early won reputation by his speeches in Parliament, has distinguished himself since his recent return to the House in the conservative ranks; and has more than once been appointed to the post of honor, and shown himself worthy of it. His trained intellect, great energy, and command of language, make him formidable, both in attack and in defence; and we presume that as there are few other achievements he has not accomplished, we shall one day see him holding the Castle Dangerous of office. Mr. Gladstone is the most polished speaker in the House of Commons. His verbal resources are as remarkable as his management of them; and his manner is invariably that of a gentleman. He is charged with "subtlety" by coarser minds, but we fancy that the English intellect, which is not distinguished for its analytical power, treats the subject in a somewhat jumbling fashion. Mr. Gladstone inclines to the Tractarian party-Tractarians are no better than Jesuits-Jesuits are proverbially subtle and, therefore, when Mr. Gladstone is defining, very elaborately, the difference between long annuities and deferred annuities, he is talking jesuitically. We believe that Mr. Gladstone would be a more popular orator if he would be less explicit; but, while he exhausts the subject, he sometimes exhausts the listener. His refined and scholarly periods the creation of the moment, but as elegantly balanced and as keenly pointed as if they had been written and studied-are always marvels of fluency, and often specimens of eloquence. Mr. Walpole's carnest, thoughtful, gentle- manly style, is a model for young members; and, though a lawyer, he never metes out lawyer measure. His rising commands instant and respectful attention, and we never heard an unkind thing said by or to the late Home Secretary. Lord Stanley inherits his father's intellect, but not his declamatory power; he is, however, struggling successfully against a difficulty of delivery, and speaks so well, that no one grudges the trouble of following him. We incline to think he will achieve a distinguished position. Mr. Bright, notwithstanding the disadvantage of advocating opinions which are often extravagant, is among the very ablest speakers in the House. Though it is a general remark, that his tone during the present session has been less defiant than formerly, his worst defect is still the arrogance and intolerance of his language, insomuch that a friend is reported to have said of him that, had he not been a Quaker, he would have been a pugilist. On the other hand, he is extremely ready, and can both reason and declaim with unusual power. Mr. Cobden has a down look, and a manner which is neither masculine nor polished. He hammers away, with a narrow, niggling action of the fore-arm; and his arguments partake of the same small but continuous character; till at the close you find that, despite your dislike at being jolted onwards in such fashion, he has proved his case from his premises. The ultra-montane champion, Mr. Lucas, has a disagreeable, vinegar voice; but his taste for superstition makes him so habitually wrathful with every thing Protestant, that the voice is amusingly suitable to the themes he chiefly selects. He is one of the few smart agents of the priests; and his perverse oratory, which hurts nobody but himself and the Roman Catholic interest, is always a relief from the average dulness of the House. Mr. Bernal Osborne used to be a showy declaimer, and a capital hand at letting off prepared fireworks; but he has taken office; and whereas in that very 1850 debate, of which we have spoken before, he assailed Sir James Graham mercilessly, and ridiculed. his career and consistency, calling him the successor to Mr. Urquhart, in 1854 he is Sir James's decorous First Secretary, and squibbeth no more. Sir James's own style of speak ing is pretty well known. A perfect master of his subject and of himself, and by no means afraid to use a strong word upon occasion, he is among the most dangerous antagonists in the House. The steam-engine rapidity of Sir George Grey, whose concentrated energy of speech is a curiosity-the exuberant action of Lord Claude Hamilton, faintly imitated by Mr. 18 The puzzled look of the criminal as he sits down: that "what have I done?" is part of the sport; and we almost fear that by publishing the secret we shall be depriving the House of one of its innocent diversions. Apsley Pellatt-the tears in the voice of Lord raising a terrific cry when a member new to Bernard, the downright groan of Mr. Edward parliamentary manners accidentally walks beBall, the continuous garrulity of Mr. Aglion- tween the Speaker and the member speaking. by when once set going-the ill-rewarded This unpardonable violation of etiquette brings efforts of Mr. Miall to speak effectively on a from all sides the most indignant exclamations. subject on which he has thought earnestlythe twelve or fourteen perorations of Mr. Hume to every speech the veteran delivers may be matter of good-natured note, but they have, of course, little to do with oratory. There are some earnest men, chiefly young, We originally proposed to speak of the who are "coming up," and will, we trust, do House of Commons only, and have endeavorgood service; for they speak as single-minded ed to restrict ourselves to that single topicEnglish gentlemen, who eschew quackery and one which can never be otherwise than intercant. Lord Stanley, on one side, and Mr. esting to Englishmen. We have wished to Layard, "the member for Nineveh," on the treat the subject on the Trosve, Tyriusve other, are excellent types of a class to which principle, so unhesitatingly laid down by the we look with hopefulness, for the world is father of gods and men in a case reported by a very weary both of Red Tape and of Cotton Latin author of eminence; and if we have deTwist. viated from impartiality, it is because it is with We have frequently heard it asked whether opinions as with the rays of light, that the there is much wit in the House, and have distortions produced by the medium through never known any variation in the reply. Very which they pass are not apparent to our perseldom, indeed, is "a good thing" said within ceptions. It is possible that our sketches these walls. Yet the House of Commons is may facilitate, with those who have not, like an indulgent audience, where it likes the Ingenuus, paid a visit to the House, the future speaker; but it is here as elsewhere, the most studies of senile anecdote, execrably told, will be endured from a favorite, while an unknown man will receive a groan in return for an epigram. The last deliberately conceived neat thing within our recollection was said by the late Mr. Sheil, But, inasmuch as we have talked only of those who, complimenting a noble lord who is ever who talk, we cannot find it in our hearts to active in the cause of Christian civilization, said conclude without a tribute to the invaluable that he "had made Humanity one of Shaftes- men who do not talk, and who follow the adbury's Characteristics." One jest delights the vice of John Locke, given to his cousin, Mr. House very much; indeed, it never fails; and King:-"I would not have you speak in the it must have been heard a good many thou- House, but you can communicate your light sand times. It is when a speaker confuses and apprehensions to some honest speaker the name of the member to whom he refers who may make use of it. For there have alwith that of the place for which that gentle-ways been very able members who never man sits. Accidentally, or (such things are) speak, who yet, by their penetration and foreby design, let a senator speak of the noble sight, have this way done as much service as lord the member for Palmerston, or the hon-any within those walls." These are truly exorable baronet the member for Molesworth, cellent men, and would there were more of and the House goes off into a roar. It is a them! Let it not be forgotten that when the safe point, like Mr. Hardcastle's anecdote of present universe is brought to the close preOld Grouse in the gun-room: "your worship dicted by the northern legends, a new system must not tell that story, if we are not to is to be established, of which the grand prinlaugh; I can't help laughing at that: we have ciple is to be Silence. If the new system laughed at it these twenty years." Among includes a Parliament, we shall canvass the the smaller recreations of the House is the electors. The grand debate, The popular harangue, the tart reply. From the Eclectic Review. HENRY ROGERS.* MR. ROGERS has only risen of late into universal reputation, although he had long ago deserved it. It has fared with him as with Thomas Hood and with some others who had for many years enjoyed a dubious and struggling, although real and rising fame, till some signal hit, some "Song of the Shirt" or "Eclipse of Faith," introduced their names to millions who never heard of them before, and turned suddenly on their half-shadowed faces the broadest glare of fame. Thousands upon thousands who had never heard of Hood's "Progress of Cant" or his "Comic Annuals," so soon as they read the "Song of the Shirt" inquired eagerly for him, and began to read his earlier works. And so, although literary men were aware of Mr. Rogers' existence, and that he was an able contributor to the "Edinburgh Review," the general public knew not even his name till the "Eclipse of Faith" appeared, and till its great popularity excited a desire to become acquainted with his previous lucubrations. We met with the "Eclipse of Faith" at its first appearance, but have only newly risen from reading his collected articles, and propose to record our impressions while they are yet fresh and warm. Henry Rogers, as a reviewer and writer, seems to think that he belongs to the school of Jeffrey and Macaulay, although possessed of more learning and imagination than either, of a higher moral sense and manlier power than the first, and of a freer diction and an easier vein of wit than the second; and the style of deference and idolatry he uses to them and to Mackintosh, might almost to his detractors appear either shameful from its hypocrisy, ludicrous from its affectation, or silly from the ignorance it discovers of his own claims and comparative merits. We defy any unprejudiced man to read the two volumes he has reprinted from the "Edinburgh Review," and not to feel that he has Essays, selected from Contributions to the “Edinburgh Review." By Henry Rogers. 2 vols. 8vo. London: Longman & Co. encountered, on the whole, the most accomplished, manliest, healthiest, and most Christian writer who ever adorned that celebrated periodical. If he has contributed to its pages no one article equal in brilliance to Jeffrey's papers on Alison and Swift, or to Macaulay's papers on Milton and Warren Hastings, his papers, taken en masse, are more natural, less labored, full of a richer and more recondite learning, and written in a more conversational, more vigorous, and more thoroughly English style. His thought, too, is of a profounder and, at the same time, clearer cast. Jeffrey had the subtlety of the lawyer rather than the depth of the philosopher. Macaulay thinks generally like an eloquent special pleader. Henry Rogers is a candid, powerful, and all-sided thinker, and one who has fed his thought by a culture as diversified as it is deep. He is a scholar, a mathematician, a philosopher, a philologist, a man of taste and virtu, a divine, and a wit; and if not absolutely a poet, yet he verges often on poetical conception, and his free and fervid eloquence often kindles into the fire of poetry. Every one who has read the "Eclipse of Faith"-and who has not?-must remember how that remarkable work has collected all these varied powers and acquisitions into one burning focus, and must be ready to grant that since Pascal no knight has entered into the arena of religious controversy better equipped for fight, in strength of argument, in quickness of perception, in readiness and richness of resource, in command of temper, in pungency of wit, in a sarcasm which "burns frore" with the intense coolness of its severity, and in a species of Socratic dialogue which the son of Sophroniscus himself would have envied. But as the public and press generally have made up their minds upon all these points, as also on the merits of his admirable" Defence," and have hailed the author with acclamation, we prefer to take up his less known preceding efforts in the "Edinburgh Review," and to bring their merits before our readers, while, at the same time, we hope to find metal even more attractive in the great names and subjects on | melancholy seriousness of thought; the scale of their spirits, as it rises or sinks, either lifts them up to piercing laughter or depresses them to thoughts too deep and sad for tears. It was so with Plato, with Pascal, with Hood, and is so, we suspect, with our author himself. Shakespere, perhaps alone of writers, while possessing wit and imaginative wisdom to the same prodigious degree, has managed to adjust them to each other, never allowing either the one or the other unduly to preponderate, but uniting them into that consummate whole which has become the admiration, the wonder, and the despair of the world." theon,") these are a few out of a hundred proofs that he possessed that most brilliant species of wit which is impregnated with imagination. But the truth is, that Burke, an earnest if not a sad-hearted man, was led by his excess of zeal to plead the causes in which he was interested in general by serious From his political papers we abstain, and weapons, by the burning and barbed arrows propose to confine ourselves to those on of invective and imagination rather than by letters and philosophy. His first, and one the light-glancing missiles of wit and humor. of his most delightful papers, is on quaint Jeremy Taylor, with all his wealth of fancy, old Thomas Fuller. It reminds us much of was restrained from wit partly by the suba brilliant paper on Sir Thomas Browne, jects he was led through his clerical procontributed to the same journal, we under- fession to treat, and partly from his temperstand, by Bulwer. Browne and Fuller were ament, which was quietly glad rather than kindred spirits, being both poets among wits, sanguine and mirthful. Some writers, again, and wits among poets. In Browne, however, we admit, and as Mr. Rogers repeatedly imagination and serious thought rather pre-shows, vibrate between wit and the most ponderate, while wit unquestionably is, if not Fuller's principal faculty, the faculty he exercises most frequently and with greatest delight. Some authors have wit and imagination in equal quantities, and it is their temperament which determines the question which of the two they shall specially use or cultivate. Thus Butler, of "Hudibras," had genuine imagination as well as prodigious wit, and had he been a Puritan instead of a Cavalier, he might have indited noble, serious. poetry. Browne, again, was of a pensive, although not sombre disposition, and hence his "Urn - burial" and "Religio Medici" are grave and imaginative, although not devoid of quaint,queer fancies and arabesque devices, which force you to smile. Fuller, on the other hand, was of a sanguine, happy, easy temperament, a jolly Protestant father-confessor, and this attracted him to the side of the laughing muse. Yet he abounds in quiet, beautiful touches both of poetry and pathos. Burke had, according to Mr. Rogers, little or no wit, although possessing a boundless profusion of imagery. To this we demur. His description of Lord Chatham's motley cabinet, his picture in the "Regicide Peace," of the French Ambassador in London, his description of those "who are emptied of their natural bowels and stuffed with the blurred sheets of the Rights of Man,"" his famous comparison of the "gestation of the rabbit and the elephant," his reply to the defence put in for Hastings that the Hindoos had erected a temple to him, ("He knew something of the Hindoo mythology. They were in the habit of building temples not only to the gods of light and fertility, but to the demons of small pox and murder, and he, for his part, had no objection that Mr. Hastings should be admitted into such a Pan Mr. Rogers, alluding to the astonishing illustrative powers of Jeremy Taylor, Burke, and Fuller, says finely, "Most marvellous and enviable is that fecundity of fancy which can adorn whatever it touches, which can invest naked fact and dry reasoning with unlooked for beauty, make flowerets bloom even on the brow of the precipice, and, when nothing better can be had, can turn the very substance of rock itself into moss and lichens. This faculty is incomparably the most important for the vivid and attractive exhibition of truth to the minds of men." We quote these sentences not merely as being true, so far as they go, (we think the imagination not only exhibits, but tests and finds truth,) but because we want afterwards to mark a special inconsistency in regard to them, which he commits in a subsequent paper. We have long desired to see what we call ideal geography, i. e., the map of the earth run over in a poetical and imaginative way, the breath of genius passing over the dry bones of the names of places, and through the link of association between places and |