idal in abolition of corn-laws and free trade. Nay,
as--

"Great genius to great madness is allied."

the genius of these days looks even to St Luke's, like Oxford, as a
berth in _dernier ressort_, where a sinecurist may enjoy bed and board
at the cost of the state, and as a fair _honorario_ for the trouble of
concocting a new scheme for raising the wind, or getting a living. The
time may come, and sooth to say, seems drawing near, when Gibbon
Wakefield, seated on the woolsack, shall be charged specially with the
guardianship of all the fair wards in Chancery. Wo to infant heiress
kidnappers, when a chancellor, more experienced than Rhadamanthus, more
sanguineous than Draco, shall have the care of the innocent fold, and
come to deal with abduction! In womanly lore, his practice and
experience are undoubted; for has he not had the active superintendence,
and the arduous task, of transportation of all the womankind, virgin,
and matronly as well, exported to New Zealand on account, with other
goods and chattels, of that moral corporation, the New Zealand trading
and emigration company, which so liberally salaries him with L.600 per
annum for the use of his "principle?" Again, who so fitted as the
renowned Rowland Hill, the very prig pragmatic of pretension, for the
post of Chancellor of the Exchequer, or First Lord of the Treasury if
you will? A man who could contrive a scheme for annihilating some two
millions of post-office revenue at one stroke, must be qualified beyond
all other pretenders for dealing with a bankrupt treasury; for upon the
homoeopathic principle, the physic which kills is that alone which
should cure. The scientific discovery, indeed, is not of the modern date
exactly which is assumed; for the poet of ancient Greece, his "eyes in a
fine frenzy rolling," must have had homoeopathy in view when he sang--

"So Telephus, renown'd of yore, can tell
How cured the fatal spear by which he fell."

The disinterestedness of Rowland (not he of Roncesvalles, nor even of
the honest Macassar oil) need not be doubted, because he claims a large
reward for a penny-post scheme, ruinous as it is, utterly unavailable
and impracticable, even if as excellent as notoriously prejudicial, but
for the really ingenious discovery of the pre-paying stamp system, by a
party preferring no title to remuneration, and through which alone,
unfortunately, the pretentious project could be practically placed in
operation.