ng establishment, with
much "having the honor to be," to teach it her.

No:--she has in fact certain cottons, hardwares and such like to sell in
foreign parts, and certain wines, Portugal oranges, Baltic tar and
other products to buy; and does need, I suppose, some kind of Consul, or
accredited agent, accessible to British voyagers, here and there, in the
chief cities of the Continent: through which functionary, or through the
penny-post, if she had any specific message to foreign courts, it would
be easy and proper to transmit the same. Special message-carriers, to be
still called Ambassadors, if the name gratified them, could be sent when
occasion great enough demanded; not sent when it did not. But for all
purposes of a resident ambassador, I hear persons extensively and well
acquainted among our foreign embassies at this date declare, That a
well-selected _Times_ reporter or "own correspondent" ordered to reside
in foreign capitals, and keep his eyes open, and (though sparingly) his
pen going, would in reality be much more effective;--and surely we see
well, he would come a good deal cheaper! Considerably cheaper in expense
of money; and in expense of falsity and grimacing hypocrisy (of which no
human arithmetic can count the ultimate cost) incalculably cheaper!
If this is the fact, why not treat it as such? If this is so in any
measure, we had better in that measure admit it to be so! The time, I
believe, has come for asking with considerable severity, How far is it
so? Nay there are men now current in political society, men of weight
though also of wit, who have been heard to say, "That there was but one
reform for the Foreign Office,--to set a live coal under it," and with,
of course, a fire-brigade which could prevent the undue spread of the
devouring element into neighboring houses, let that reform it! In
such odor is the Foreign Office too, if it were not that the Public,
oppressed and nearly stifled with a mere infinitude of bad odors,
neglects this one,--in fact, being able nearly always to avoid the
street where it is, _escapes_ this one, and (except a passing curse,
once in the quarter or so) as good as forgets the existence of it.

Such, from sad personal experience and credited prevailing rumor, is the
exoteric public conviction about these sublime establishments in Downing
Street and the neighborhood, the esoteric mysteries of which are indeed
still held sacred by the initiated, but believed by the worl