ast information and indefatigable exertions. The week
during which the committee sat on their report was a very anxious
one; the divisions were known every day in the House of Commons; the
alternations of success and discomfiture, and the balanced numbers that
so often called for the interposition of the chairman, were calculated
to sustain the excitement; and when, on the 29th of May, it was known
that the report was at length agreed to, and that a committee of free
traders had absolutely recommended a differential duty of 10s. in favour
of our own produce, one might have fancied from the effect visibly
produced, that a government was changed.

A few days before--it was the day after the Derby, May 25th--the writer
met Lord George Ben-tinck in the library of the House of Commons. He
was standing before the book-shelves, with a volume in his hand, and
his countenance was greatly disturbed. His resolutions in favour of
the colonial interest after all his labours had been negatived by the
committee on the 22nd, and on the 24th, his horse Surplice, whom he
had parted with among the rest of his stud, solely that he might pursue
without distraction his labours on behalf of the great interests of the
country, had won that paramount and Olympian stake, to gain which had
been the object of his life. He had nothing to console him, and nothing
to sustain him except his pride. Even that deserted him before a heart
which he knew at least could yield him sympathy. He gave a sort of
superb groan:--

'All my life I have been trying for this, and for what have I sacrificed
it!' he murmured.

It was in vain to offer solace.

'You do not know what the Derby is,' he moaned out.

'Yes, I do; it is the blue ribbon of the turf.'

'It is the blue ribbon of the turf,' he slowly repeated to himself, and
sitting down at the table, he buried himself in a folio of statistics.

But on Monday, the 29th, when the resolution in favour of a 10s.
differential duty for the colonies had at the last moment been carried,
and carried by his casting vote, 'the blue ribbons of the turf were all
forgotten. Not for all the honours and successes of all the meetings,
spring or autumn, Newmarket, Epsom, Goodwood, Doncaster, would he have
exchanged that hour of rapture. His eye sparkled with fire, his nostril
dilated with triumph, his brow was elate like a conqueror, his sanguine
spirit saw a future of continued and illimitable success.

'We have saved the