eem that
buoys up this kind of man. It is the only enthusiasm he is capable of
feeling---but it serves as well as the "real article."

For the mere adventurer, the man of ready wit and a fearless
temperament, politics offer the best road to fortune. The abilities that
would have secured a mere mediocrity of position in some profession
will here win their way upwards. The desultory character of reading and
acquirements, so fatal to men chained to a single pursuit, is eminently
favourable to him who must talk about every thing, with, at least, the
appearance of knowledge; while the very scantiness of his store suggests
a recklessness that has great success in the world.

In England we have but one high road to eminence--Parliament.
Literature, whose rewards are so great in France, with us only leads
to intimacy with the "Trade" and a name in "the Row." It is true,
Parliamentary reputation is of slow growth, and dependent on many
circumstances totally remote from the capacity and attainments of
him who seeks it. Are you the son of a great name in the Lords, the
representative of an immense estate, or of great commercial wealth? are
you high in the esteem of Corn men or Cotton men? are you a magnate of
Railroads, or is your word law in the City? then your way is open
and your path easy. Without these, or some one of them, you must be a
segment of some leading man's party'.

My own little experience of Parliament--about the very briefest any man
can recall--presents little pleasurable in the retrospect. Lord Collyton
was one of my Christchurch acquaintances, and at his invitation I spent
the autumn of 18-- at his father, the Duke of Wrexington's.

The house was full of company, and, like an English house in such
circumstances, the most delightful _sejour_ imaginable. Every second day
or so brought a relay of new arrivals, either from town or some other
country-house full of the small-talk of the last visit,--all that
strange but most amusing farrago which we designate by the humble title
of "gossip," but which, so far as I can judge, is worth ten thousand
times more than the boasted _causerie_ of France, and the perpetual
effort at smartness so much aimed at by our polite neighbours.

The guests were numerous, and presented specimens of almost every
peculiarity observable in Englishmen of a certain class. We had great
lords and high court functionaries, deep in the mysteries of Buckingham
House and Windsor; a sprinkling