ia? A
French horseshoe was shown to him, as a curiosity; and he immediately
exclaimed, "What! not yet frost-roughed? These fellows don't know the
climate; the snows begin to-morrow!" So is it: ignorance and pretension
are infallibly discovered by "routine" people; they look to details, and
they at once detect him who mistakes or overlooks them.

Resolving, at all events, to make my "Old World" habits stand my part
in every difficulty, and to sneer down every-thing I did not understand,
I put on a bold face, and descended to the lower regions.

Great people, "Ministers" and Secretaries for the "Home" and "Foreign,"
little know how great their privilege is that in taking office they
are spared all unpleasant meetings with their predecessors. At least,
I conclude such to be the case, and that my Lord Palmerston, "stepping
in," does not come abruptly upon Lord Aberdeen "going out," nor does an
angry altercation arise between him who arrives to stay and he who is
packing his portmanteau to be off. I say that I opine as much, and that
both the entrance and the departure are conducted with due etiquette
and propriety; in fact, that Lord A. has called his cab and slipped
away before Lord P. has begun to "take up" the "spoons,"--not a bad
metaphor, by the way, for an entrance into the Foreign Office.

No such decorous reserve presides over the change of a domestic
ministry. The whole warfare of opposition is condensed into one angry
moment, and the rival parties are brought face to face in the most
ungracious fashion.

Now, my system in life was that so well and popularly known by the
name of M. Guizot, "la paix a tout prix;" and I take pride to myself
in thinking that I have carried it out with more success. With a firm
resolve, therefore, that no temptation should induce me to deviate from
a pacific policy, I entered the kitchen, where the "lower house" was
then "in committee,"--the "cook in the chair"!

"Here he com, now!" said Blackie; and the assembly grew hushed as I
entered.

"Ay, here he comes!" said I, re-echoing the speech; "and let us see if
we shall not be merry comrades."

The address was a happy one; and that evening closed upon me in the very
pinnacle of popularity.

I have hesitated for some time whether I should not ask of my reader to
enroll himself for a short space as a member of "the establishment,"
or even to sojourn one day beneath a roof where so many originals
were congregated; to witness the v