present that is to say, for less than nothing. Edinburgh is a genteel Whig; never happy but in singing the praises of Lord Melbourne, and in being represented in Parliament by some self-seeking lawyer, sprucebeer placeman, or treasury hack of one or other denomination; so that, when we talk of the public opinion of the Modern Athens on political mat ters, we must be understood to refer to the merely personal interests of the mercenaries selected to represent themselves in parliament by the burgesses of the Northern metropolis.

The expression of public opinion of Dublin is dictated by some pitiful fag of a faction, taken from the tail of the House of Commons and put at the head of the Irish executive, by some good-natured blubbering bumpkin, who, but for the accident of having been born the eldest son of a titled dunce, would have earned his bread at a Yorkshire fair, grinning through a horse-collar; or by some civetscented macaroni, who might have been removed from the groom-portership of a west-end gaming-house, to dispense the honours and patronage of the country.

A triumvirate of this sort the public opinion of Dublin delights to honour, calling it although no government at all-a paternal government; a triumvirate of this sort, although perpetrating the most outrageous and scandalous jobs daily under the nose of the nation, does not stink in its servile nostrils; a triumvirate like this is the theme of Dublin laudation, the object of Dublin servility; a triumvirate like this, magnanimous in little insults and great in retail tyranny, has its echo in the public opinion of a city delighting to flourish in an atmosphere of general dependence.

The public opinion of London, on the contrary, takes its tone and character from a thousand clashing and conflicting interests; extreme ends of the town represent extreme opinions, ever changing their extremes; the centre of this mighty motive power remains permanent, revolving steadily in a moderate but decided course; in the city alone has the public opinion of London any weight of authority-and the opinion of the city of London has materially influenced, and continues materially to influence, the public opinion of the empire.

This effect, however, is produced rather silently and imperceptibly, than by what are called demonstrations. These are few and far between, nor are resorted to save on occasions of overwhelming national interest. Matters of ordinary importance are left to take their ordinary course; and the grand distinction between the world of London and the world of the provinces, is in the extreme general indifference, wherewith in the former objects of particular interest are regarded.

The violence of expression upon political matters, characteristic of provincial places, and of them characteristic in the inverse ratio of their importance or intelligence, has no place in the city of London. No party has time or inclination for rampant speechification, for the organization of bludgeon men, or instigation to riot and disorder. Habits of business in their private relations, have taught them how public business may be carried on; and they carry on their public business accordingly.

Perhaps there never was an occasion upon which more decided differences of opinion were held and expressed by the empire than upon the occasion of the late general election, nor one when more violence of tone might have been expected in the expression of parties; yet, notwithstanding this, a stranger, incurious in leading articles and indifferent to politics, might have resided in the heart of the city of London, whose decision was not alone a decision for itself, but mainly for the empire, without being apprized that any important public business was in progress; and might have traversed the city, save in the immediate neighbourhood of Guildhall, on the day of election, without being at all aware of the tremendous contest then going on for the representation of the first city in the world.

When the event was known-when Lord John Russell, who, with that want of good taste, and that recklessness of public opinion-the only positive attributes of his party-allowed himself to be put forward for the representation of that city, whose privileges he had grasped at with a daring hand, for the purpose of transferring them to a batch of that stipendiary vermin with which his government has covered the face of the

land, was "let in" by a "glorious majority" of nine, the only wonder was that the votes of the nine tailors who supported his lordship (men they could not have been) had not been reduced to their proper dimensions, and recorded as one integral suffrage-a course which, if adopted, would have saved the city the disgrace of returning to Parliament, by even a "glorious majority" of one, the consistent and undeviating enemy of her rights, immunities, and privileges, confirmed not less by successive charters of monarchs than by the determination of the citizens who enjoy them, and the people of England, who are proud to remember how much the nation owes, on many occasions, to the intelligence, determination, and spirit of their presiding city.

Not in politics alone, but in all minor matters, social and personal, is the absence of pervading interest, or universal impulse apparent: in truth, it must be manifest that, when occasions of great national import produce so little general excitement in town, lesser matters must be noticed with almost general indifference, or, at the most, blaze up for half an hour into topics of general conversation, and then be extinguished for ever.

Talking of Lord John Russell reminds us of another great man, the indifference to whose untimely end may serve as an illustration of our present enquiry.

When Sam Patch, the American, hanged himself, by way of a lark, upon Waterloo Bridge, (by the way, what, may we ask, became of the enquiry whether or no the directors sanctioned that disgusting exhibition?) we happened to have occasion to walk up the Waterloo Road about ten minutes after the untoward event; the crowd had already dispersed, but some stray sentences dropped by the passers-by induced us to imagine something interesting might have occurred. Laying down sixpence to pay our toll, while awaiting the change, we took occasion to enquire of the gate-keeper what was the matter. "Only a Yankee diver hanged hisself on the bridge, sir-all right!" replied the functionary; whether the "all right" referred to the propriety of Sam Patch acting as his own hangman upon this occasion, or to the correctness of the change tendered me by the gate

keeper, I cannot say; however that may be, I could not help censuring the folly of Sam Patch in executing himself in London, where not merely the manner of his death, but his previous existence, was forgotten in some seconds less than five minutes; whereas, had he only taken the trouble to strangulate himself in Edinburgh or Dublin, he would have been talked of for a week, and remembered for a fortnight. Songs would have been sung, and sermons made, about him; public meetings would have been called to petition Parliament against capital punishments. Patch would have become a household word, and his effigy would have been seen in every shop hanging in mezzotinto; we would have had the Sam Patch quadrilles, and the Sam Patch magic strop, and the Sam Patch cravats; in short, if Sam had any sense, he might have been not only notorious in himself, but the cause of notoriety in others.

No

It is, therefore, sheer folly in intending suicides to think of creating a sensation by performing their antics in London. Rhadamanthus Wakley, sitting in judgment on half a score corpses a day, or thereabouts, cannot confer upon all an immortality: tumbling "from the monument” even has lost its novelty, and is now considered by the town a very "slow" way of cutting one's self off. suicide, therefore, who cannot strike out a new line of bold, dashing, and original felo de se, has the chance even of seeing his inquest headed "Suicide Extraordinary.' We therefore recommend all daring spirits, ambitious of immortality by hanging or otherwise, to take themselves off to the country, where a sensation is worth any money, and where they will have twelve columns of inquest in the county papers.

66

There is no town's talk in London : there is no use in coming to "star it" in our milky way, where ten thousand million nebulæ are lost and confounded in general brightness. Your lion is here a very tame beast, and must roar as gently as a sucking dove, nay, as 'twere a very nightingale; let him roar ever so loud, not a soul will think more of his roaring then of the rumbling of a cart. Though he "that it would do any man's heart good to hear him," what shall

roar