tering-place
of Bath, in Somersetshire, elected the fierce little man as their
representative in the Imperial Parliament. This was a great start in
life for the new-fledged barrister, and, had he moderated his
overweening vanity, and studied wisely, and with some self-abnegation
and honest adherence to party, he might have risen to some useful
position, and been saved, at least, from the indignity of fetching and
carrying for the Emperor of Austria, and from the impertinence of
intruding himself into the august presence of Mr. Kinglake's amiable and
virtuous friend, the Emperor of France. The English nation might then
possibly have pointed to his portrait in their historical gallery as
that of an efficient public servant who had deserved well of his
country, and he might have escaped a ludicrous immortality as the Dog
Tear-'em, in the recent admirable sketch in "Punch."

But, in the words of a political song,--

"There weren't no such luck
For John A. Roebuck,
And he thought he would teach the whole nation
That the Tories were fools,
And the Whigs only tools,
But Roebuck was England's salvation."

And he, according to this programme, set himself to reform the
Constitution and protect the Colonies.

"Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri,"

he was an eclectic in politics,--acknowledged no leader, had himself no
followers. A chief without a party, an apostle without disciples, a
critic without the merest ordinary penetration, a cynic whose bitterness
was not enlivened by wit or humor, a spouter whose arguments, when he
had any, were usually furnished from the mint, John Arthur Roebuck was
for many years that impersonation of terrific honesty, glaring purity,
and indignant virtue, known in English politics as an INDEPENDENT member
of Parliament. When party-spirit runs high, and many party-men are
disposed to be unscrupulous in the measures and artifices by which they
win or retain place and power, such a position, occupied with judgment
and fortified by modesty and good sense, is a most powerful and a most
beneficent one; but it is useless when seized on by one whose obtrusive
egotism and more than feminine vanity disqualify him for any serious or
permanent influence on his fellow-men. When a Pocket-Diogenes rolls his
little tub into the House of Commons, and complains that everybody is
standing between him and the sun,--why, in an assembly of educated and
sensible men the sham is soon dis