native language is not Italian, but
a patois-Genoese. Cavour was called a linguist with almost as little
truth; but people repeat the story, just as they repeat that Napoleon I.
was a great chess-player. If his statecraft and his strategy had been on
a par with his chess, we should never have heard of Tilsit or Wagram.

Lord Castlereagh, the Duke of Wellington, and George Canning, each of
whom administered our foreign policy with no small share of success,
were not linguists; and as to Charles Fox, he has left a French sentence
on record that will last even as long as his own great name. I do not
want to decry the study of languages; I simply desire to affirm that
linguists--and through all I have said I mean colloquial linguists--are
for the most part poor creatures, not otherwise distinguished than
by the gift of tongues; and I want to protest against the undue
pre-eminence accorded to the possessors of a small accomplishment, and
the readiness with which the world, especially the world of society,
awards homage to an acquirement in which a boarding-school Miss can
surpass Lord Brougham. I mean to say a word or two about those who have
skill in games; but as they are of a higher order of intelligence, I'll
wait till I have got "fresh wind" ere I treat of _them_.

THE OLD CONJURORS AND THE NEW.

As there are few better tests of the general health of an individual
than in the things he imagines to be injurious to him, so there is
no surer evidence of the delicate condition of a State than in the
character of those who are assumed to be dangerous to it. Now, after all
that has been said of Rome and the corruptions of Roman government, I do
not know anything so decidedly damnatory as the fact, to which allusion
was lately made in Parliament, that the Papal Government had ordered Mr
Home, the spiritualist, to quit the city and the States of his Holiness,
and not to return to them.

In what condition, I would ask, must a country be when such a man is
regarded as dangerous? and in what aspect of his character does the
danger consist?

Do we want ghosts or spirits to reveal to us any more of the iniquities
of that State than we already know? Is there a detail of its corrupt
administration that the press of Europe has not spread broadcast over
the world? What could Mr Home and all his spirits tell us of peculation,
theft, subornation, bigotry, and oppression, that the least observant
traveller has not brought home w