ature. How
much history goes to prove this, showing that the House of Lords--like the
Solomons of the _fleur-de-lis_--have learned nothing, and forgotten
nothing! To attempt to instruct a Peer would be as gross an impertinence
to the instinct of his order as to present MINERVA--who no doubt came from
the head of JOVE a Peeress in her own right--with a toy alphabet or
horn-book.

For the skulls of the House of Commons,--that is, indeed, another
question! We are so far utilitarian that we would have the pictures for
which Mr. BARRY offers a thousand feet selected solely with a view to the
dissemination of knowledge amongst the many benighted members of the House
of Commons. We would have the subjects so chosen that they should entirely
supersede _Oldfield's Representative History_; never forgetting the wants
of the most illiterate. For instance, for the politicians on the fifth
form, the SIBTHORPS and PLUMPTRES, whose education in their youth has been
shamefully neglected, we would have a nice pictorial political alphabet.
We do not pride ourselves, be it understood, upon writing unwrinkled
verse; we only present the subjoined as a crude idea of our plan, taken we
confess, from certain variegated volumes, to be had either of Mr. SOUTER,
St. Paul's Churchyard, or Messrs. DARTON and HARVEY, Holborn.

A was King ALFRED, a monarch of note;
B is BURDETT, who can well turn a coat.

Here we would have the chief incidents of Alfred's life nicely painted,
with BURDETT, late Old Glory, and now Old Corruption. As for the poetry,
when we consider the capacities of the learners, _that_ cannot be too
simple, too homely. The House, however, may order a Committee of
Versification, if it please; all that we protest against is D'ISRAELI
being of the number.

C is the CORN-LAWS, that famish'd the poor;
D is the DEBT, that will famish them more.

Here, for the imaginative artist, is an opportunity! To paint the wholesale
wickedness and small villanies of the Corn-laws! What a contrast of scene
and character! Squalid hovels, and princely residences--purse-proud,
plethoric injustice, big and bloated with, its iniquitous gains, and gaunt,
famine-stricken multitudes! Then for the Debt--that hideous thing begotten
by war and corruption; what a tremendous moral lesson might be learned from
a nightly conning of the terrific theme!

We have neither poetic genius nor space of paper to go through the whole
of the alphabet; we merely thr