and, something more, a very Protectionist of private society, imposing a prohibitory duty upon every colloquial commodity not of his own production, and that "had a good deal in it of what made Coleridge so remarkable: his talk was a sort of sparkling mist: the majority applauded, but nobody understood." En passant, we may observe that we honour the courage of our author in this little backhanded slap at that most overrated mystifier, whom it has hitherto been the fashion to extol as one of the gods of British literature.

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The following description of his talk is pointed and clever, and constitutes a cap that will fit many a living model.

THE MYSTIC.

You knew what he was talking about, but never could tell exactly what he was saying about it. If there was a meaning, it was beyond the depth of the expertest divers; but for that very reason it was presumed to be a pearl. He was particularly given to illustration, and his similes, metaphors, quotations, and anecdotes (of which, as we have seen, he had a bank of his own where his credit was

unlimited), were very pleasing and pretty in themselves,

but what they illustrated was a difficult thing to find out. In short, it was just the kind of eloquence to wrap all sorts of absurdities, paradoxes, and delusions in: it captivated visionaries, it delighted enthusiasts, it charmed mountebanks, it won the hearts of women especially. It was just the oratory for Exeter Hall, the Dublin Rotunda, or the Caledonian Chapel: it would never have answered for the bar, the House, or even for the pulpit of a quiet unfanatical parish.

This gift of eloquence is still more cherished by lessons which he now takes from a professor of rhetoric, and it is not long before an occasion presents itself to put them in practice. The Dean had been more distinguished than any other dignitary of the church for the violence of his philippics against the emancipation of the Catholics, and this, it was thought, would ultimately secure him the long-coveted mitre from a ministry so staunch in support of the Protestant constitution as England was then blessed with. Unpleasant rumours, however, were abroad that concessions were about to be made, either to reason or clamour, and that there were not wanting eminent churchmen who were ready on this question to wheel about with the government. Reuben could not for a moment believe that his venerated grandfather was to be numbered with such traitors, and accordingly he committed the youthful and pardonable mistake of believing that there was still such a thing as principle in the world, or at least that Astræa still lingered amongst the bulwarks of the English Church. A sort of Penenden-Heath meeting, to avert the meditated destruction of our Protestant constitution, was convoked to ineet at Chichester. Now was an opportunity

* Our modesty compels us to abandon to our contributors the whole honour of this original discovery.-Ed. N. Q. R.

for the "coming man" to "come out," and he was nothing loth to avail himself of it. Peer is procured to fill the chair; squires and parsons throng in crowds to the good work. Our hero appears on the platform, with parted hair, and blooming bouquet, and white kid gloves; and the enthusiasm with which he is received would have abashed any one of less assurance and more modesty. The grand hit, however, of his speech was his portrait of a certain renegade divine, whom, in falling from his once high position of a Protestant luminary, the orator compares to Milton's Fiend. Scarcely had the last peal of applause rung on his delighted ear, than a letter is put into the orator's hands, announcing that his grandfather has just had conferred upon him " the Bishopric of Shrewsbury" as the price of his fall from the sky, and of his Erastian apostasy from the Protestant cause.

"Here is a pretty kettle of fish!" exclaims the more homely eloquence of Reuben's father, at this most astounding intelligence: and a pretty kettle of fish it indeed turns out; for Reuben's speech, duly pointed by the ma lignancy of the newspapers, produces a quarrel between the new prelate and his uncompromising grandson, which lasts almost to the term of their mutual existence. After this, all hope vanishes of being provided for in the church through his grandfather; and Reuben determines, in his twenty-fifth year, to try the bar. With a view of qualifying himself for this, he masters, in an incredibly short space of time, the State Trials, Montesquieu, Bentham, Vattel, Grotius, and the Code Napoleon! On the eve of his "call," he publishes a pamphlet on the Codification of the English Law, besides seve ral other productions. These publications procure him an introduction to a bookseller named Trevor, who introduces him to a proctor, aptly enough named Reynard, and an attorney, whose name of Fox was probably quite as little a mis

nomer.

He is now diverted from a profession that would have led him to fame and fortune, by every passing opportunity that seemed likely to make him notorious. He enters warmly into the wrongs of Poland, subscribes £50 to the very questionable cause of its natives, and is persuaded to move a resolution at the next public meeting to be held on their behalf. In the neighbourhood of Chichester a very general impression prevails that our hero is to be the man who is to compel Russia and Austria to disgorge their several shares of the plunder of unhappy Poland. Of all his friends and relations, the good old vicar thinks the most sensibly on this occasion.

He wanted to know what Reuben had to do with the Poles. Mrs. Medlicott said he might as well ask what he

had to do with the Protestants. The Vicar shrugged his shoulders, and wished, with considerable bitterness, Reuben would let both Poles and Protestants alone, and attend to his profession.

Reuben's Polish speech of course makes a great sensation, more especially as several of the townsfolk of Chichester came expressly to London to listen to it.

"Let the Czar answer that-if he can!" cries an admirer, at the end of a passage in which Reuben had put the European despots in a logical difficulty: and, thus encouraged, our orator pours forth so copious a stream of eloquence, with so à propos a peroration about the shriek of freedom at the fall of Kosciusco, that the audience positively howl with applause. There is here a good deal of quiet and exquisitely-managed satire upon the propensity of John Bull to expend his blood and treasure in fighting the battles of ungrateful foreigners; a mistake, however, which we scarcely think they are very likely to commit, after the crowning insult flung at the British nation on the recent occasion of the funeral of our glori ous Duke, by the ungrateful despotism of Austria; a despotism which the hero had, alas! fought so bravely to rivet on the fairest portions of unhappy Italy!

The loudest panegyrist of Reuben's eloquence was Mr. Reynard, the attorney; but-it is significantly observed-he sent the orator no brief the next day other solicitors, also, began to fight shy of him after his demonstration on behalf of the Poles.

These men, however, put some law-bookmaking in the way of the young aspirant, by which he soon nets the fabulous sum of five hundred pounds. This, produces nothing but disgust to our most unreasonable genius, and he soon vows he will drudge no more for the law-booksellers. A few guineas, however, come in from attor neys to make him amends; and in the third year of his practice he is represented as actually making a thousand pounds! When will novel writers cease to impose upon the British public? Probability ought to be preserved, even in a novel; but where is the probability -we had almost said possibility-of a young barrister, under thirty, making a thousand pounds in the third year of his career? How ever, here is a word of warning which may profit others than those who are gaining a thousand a-year.

"Reuben lost one attorney by not keeping time; another, by not keeping to his instructions; a third, by not keeping to himself the contempt he entertained for the formalities and peculiarities of the profession."

Amongst the county visitors who come to visit London expressly to hear Reuben's last public speech is a young Quakeress, the daugh

ter of his quondam schoolmistress. This young woman our hero marries; and this is decidedly the most improbable, and the worst-managed part of the story. Of lowly birth, not possessed of any extraordinary talents, and endowed with the most unquakerlike propensity for always bursting into uncontrollable laughter on every trivial occasion short, stumpy (trapue is the more appropriate French word), and not handsome; such is the mate with whom, by a gross violation of all probability, our author makes his handsome, accomplished, and ambitious hero fall violently in love. We suspect, however, that this was done as an excuse to connect him with the Quaker-fraternity, and thus to make less improbable the subsequent events of the novel; and we certainly owe a good scene or two to that connection. The Bishop of Shrewsbury had published a virulent attack on the drab-coated fraternity, and a Quaker bookseller, named Harvey (ever a fast friend of Reuben's), had persuaded him to indite a reply. The prelate himself drives up to the bookseller's in his one-steed carriage, in order to procure a copy, and, pushing his way into the shop, thus addresses

THE BIPLIOPOLIST.

"You have published an attack upon me: I want to see it."

"What is thy name, friend?" "The Bishop of Shrewsbury, Doctor Wyndham," was the reply, given very drily and impatiently.

"This is the work thou alludest to, friend Wyndham ; but thou must permit me to observe, that the book is not an attack upon thee, but a reply to thy attack upon us." "Who is the writer?"

"Thou mayest not be informed friend." "I put my name to my tract."

"Thou wert free to publish thy observations with thy name, or without thy name, at thy pleasure, friend." You took a long time to answer my observations." "Peradventure, friend Wyndham, thou wilt take a longer time to answer ours.

The Bishop put down his shilling, disdaining to bandy more words with the bookseller, and, returning to the coach, drove off.

In the third volume we are introduced to a Matthew Cox. This character is shewn to the most worthy tobacconist at Chichester, named life, but we have not space for extracts. He is persuaded by Alderman Broad, a most enthusiastic friend and admirer of Reuben, to form city, the honour of having it represented in one of a deputation to solicit, for their ancient Parliament by so great a genius as our hero. Reuben's reception in London of this deputascribed: here is his dress. tion is quite in character, and admirably de

A light-brown body-coat, with gilt buttons, white waistcoat, light drab or pearl-coloured trousers, and a blue silk cravat; all rather flowing and ample, as if his taste for looseness and prolixity had extended from his mind to his apparel. A gold watch-chain with a bunch of seals hung from his fob; and a superb cluster of flowers,

such as were then in season, completed, as usual, the decoration of his person.

THE RECEPTION OF THE DEPUTATION.

He knew Mr. Trevor was anxious about the law of copyright; he expatiated accordingly for ten minutes on that subject. To please Isaac Hopkins, he was prolix on temperance for a quarter of an hour. To gratify the Proctor, he went to an unnecessary length into the abuses of the common law; and then, to compensate the Attorney, he held forth with equal superfluity upon the reform of the ecclesiastical courts: after all which he unluckily caught the fanatical eye of Friend Wilson, who was the president of a Peace Society; and his ideas rushing forthwith into that new train, off he went at a tangent, dashing into the Horse Guards, demolishing the army estimates, and inveighing against iron and saltpetre, very much in the belligerent strain of Mr. Cobden at the sent day, and nothing daunted by the presence of Captain Shunfield, who, to do him justice, took the assault upon the profession of arms in the utmost good humour, though the old Quakeresses were afraid he would draw his sword every instant.

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He finishes by accepting the flattering offer. The Quakers find the needful, and our hero is soon immersed in the delights of a contested election. The Bishop of Shrewsbury's opinion of this new presumption of his grandson is expressed, without reserve, at a dinner party. We subjoin it, as not being altogether inapplicable to the present times.

PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATES.

The Bishop instantly broke out into the stormiest abuse of his relation, greatly to the distress of Mrs. Wyndham, who was present. As usual, there was a great deal of truth mingled with the violence of his invectives. He never once mentioned his grandson's name, but assailed him with equal effect as one of a class of talking adventurers, who were springing up everywhere like mushrooms, and becoming the pest of the community. Men

who failed at every thing else, for want of knowledge, or industry, or the commonest abilities, aspired to be statesmen, and thought themselves perfectly qualified to legislate for the kingdom: the offcasts of all the professions

doctors without patients, lawyers without briefs, fellows without either an idea in their heads, or a guinea in their pockets, were talking themselves into notoriety, and there were plenty of fools to listen to them. The next Parliament would be a Parliament of quacks and coxcombs, of asses and parrots. The only fortunate circumstance was, that the same ignorance and emptiness which made such people politicians, usually made them paupers also: elections cost money, and he was glad of it. A few thousand pounds could not possibly be better laid out, than in defeating the impudent attempts of those worthless adventurers to thrust themselves into the legislature.

At Chichester, our hero is opposed by the younger Pigwidgeon, the son of the village apothecary, a candidate who is put forward. by Barsac out of toadyism to the Bishop, who, however, leaves the worthy wine-merchant to pay the expenses. The vulgarity, fights, manœuvres, and mysteries of a contested election are well described, though without much no

velty. We have heard of a candidate who, possessing a somewhat volatile wife, conjured her on the eve of his election to confess if she

had ever been unfaithful to him in thought, word, or deed; adding, that if she had, he was sure to hear of it on the hustings! True to this amiable propensity of an English mob, the events of our hero's life are epigrammatically laid before him by the rabble of Chichester, and he is greeted with such cries as

"Who burned his grandfather's house?"
"Are you a parson, or a lawyer? What are you?"
"He's a Quaker, You wont do for us, friend Reuben!"
"He's a Jack of all trades!"

"Who ran away with his grandmother?"
"Have you her love letters about you?" &c. &c. &c.

However, he carries his election, and returns to London prepared to do his duty as M.P. with a vengeance. His fame reaches the ears of one of the Secretaries of State, who very appositely observes to a colleague "these talking men are like the dog in the manger; they neither do any business themselves, nor permit us to do it."

He delivers his maiden speech on the Address, which is listened to, as such, with polite attention, though much too redolent of tropes and illustrations to promise well for his future success in such an assembly. Just at this time an admirer at Chichester dies and leaves him

ten thousand pounds; and what with dinner giving, attending at public meetings, and otherwise playing at M.P., the next few months constitute the culminating point of his fate. Fortunately for his own happiness, he is not able, during all this time, to catch the Speaker's eye; though he frequently comes down dressed like "Young England" for the express pur pose the pitying Fates also delay his doom by rendering "counts out" against him successful. But at length comes the disenchantment of all this rosy delusion. He gets up to move for leave to bring in seven bills at one sitting, with a speech on each bill: seven bills and seven speeches! this beats Urquhart. At the third, ominous laughter commences, until at length

THE SENSE OF THE HOUSE.

The laughing and coughing increased every moment, and made Mr. Medlicott so indignant, that instead of immediately condensing his observations, in wise submission to the manifest feeling of the House, he actually expanded them, in order to punish the men who interrupted him. The consequence was, that, when he rose for the seventh time, there was a general outery: a number of members rushed out into the lobby, while those who remained, with their united clamours, effectually drowned the voice of the speaker, and compelled him to do at last what a man of common sense would have done an hour before.

His Parliamentary doings are thus summed up:

and delay the business of legislation by repeated abortive attempts to speak. His obstinacy was extraordinary. He might often have been listened to, if he had not been studiously prolix, or if he had been contented to rise between seven and ten o'clock, when many a speech is received with patience that nobody would brook at a later and busier hour; but Mr. Medlicott disdained to subject his

genius to any law or restraint whatsoever, and soon began to incline his ear to the melodious flatterers who told him that he failed in Parliament as he had failed in divinity and failed at the bar, expressly because his talents were too various and too splendid.

We must hasten over the rest of his career. He determines to visit America, with the intention, like Lord Carlisle, "to take a general survey of Transatlantic civilization," and, like his philosophical Lordship, to enlighten on his return a few gaping Mechanics' Institutes with his opinions and his experience. This leads to an address from his constituents, requesting the resignation of bis seat, with which he is obliged to comply. However, on his return from the land of stripes, he is returned for the Irish borough of " Blarney," by the influence of the great Catholic boroughmonger, one of the joints in whose tail he consents to become. However, he scruples not to absent himself from anti-Saxon divisions, in spite of priest and demagogue, and is ultimately coughed down in an attempt to pledge the house to the principles of the Peace Society. About this time he is reconciled to his grandfather, and, principally through his influence, is nominated to an office in the Court of Chancery, worth a thousand a year; the chief duty attached to which is signing his name several times a day. Every thing else he leaves to a clever clerk, while the master is occupied with the new fancy of the Vegetarian Society. The office he is persuaded by the clerk to resign in favour of the latter, on the condition that Reuben is to receive from the said clerk a clear annuity of four hundred a year, which the clerk, of course, cheats him out of. Our hero then enters into a Joint-Stock Educational Company, with a Governor, a Board of Direc tors, and a capital of fifty thousand pounds; he himself assuming the imposing title of Preceptor-General. In the description of this establishment, the original of which is, no doubt, Swift's Laputa, many of the new-fangled schemes of modern education are glanced at: the superseding tasks by lectures, the teaching botany and natural history peripatetically, and the substitution of "remonstrances" for punishments, may all be found in reality not a hundred miles from London.

Misfortunes now crowd thick upon our unhappy Genius: his establishment falls to pieces, his father dies, and he quarrels with the ecclesiastical authorities at Chichester, on account of the exorbitance of their charges for authorizing a monument to be erected to his

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memory. This leads to his quarrelling with the Church of England, and turning Quaker. His principal means of subsistence are now reduced to quartering himself in the houses of "the friends" in his pious visitations, repaying their hospitality with endless speeches, containing metaphor, allusion, quotation, and anecdote, with no drift and no end." He now loses his wife; and he quits the Quakers in disgust on their refusing to send him on a distant mission. Ultimately he ekes out a miserable existence by re-editing his travels in America, until at length he is seized with a paralysis in his limbs, and continues, to the close of his unprofitable but most exemplary life, a wretched and disappointed invalid.

One more scene, and we have done. He is found one summer evening sauntering by the banks of the Cam by two students of the same college where he had received his education. They address him, and are surprised by the abundance of his knowledge, the brilliancy of his language, and the extent of his experienceas lawyer, author, traveller, politician, and divine. They marvelled much who the man could be, possessing every talent, and yet wandering there, needy and unknown. At length

ONE THING NEEDFUL.

"I have excited your admiration, young men," he said, "while I only merit your compassion. You see in me a

signal example of what little is to be done in this busy world by much knowledge, much talent, much ambition, nay, even by much activity, without singleness of aim and steadiness of purpose. For want of these two undazzling qualities, my life has been a broken promise and a perpetual disappointment. My views also were too exalted. I aimed too high, and overshot the mark. Like Percy's, my heart was great, too great; and Harry's farewell may be my soliloquy

Ill-weaved ambition, how much art thou shrunk!
When that this body did contain a spirit,
A kingdom for it was too small a bound,
But now two paces of the vilest earth
Will soon be room enough.'

A tear rolled down the old man's hollow cheek when he came to the last words of the quotation. The young men were much affected, and waited in respectful silence

for him to resume his discourse; but he broke it off abruptly with an ejaculation in so low a tone, that it scarcely reached the ear. "Alas!" he sighed, “what I might have been!"

Not many weeks later, the same infirm old man was seen in one of the green lanes in the neighbourhood of Chichester. He took up his abode as a lodger in a small cottage, from which he only removed to lie in the same grave with his father in the quiet churchyard of Underwood, where an ancient raven, hopping from an adjoining garden through a stately row of yews, croaked his requiem.

Again we must repeat our strong recommendation of this very clever novel, and our conviction that it may be perused with infinite profit by many, an Idealogist" and would-be "Coming Man" of the present generation.