her class, in any
country. I was greatly struck with this last evening. The topics
wandered far a-field, varying from the Poor Laws to Hong Kong, from
the Health of Towns to the state of the Peninsula: Austria, Ireland,
Switzerland, the Navigation Laws, the policy of Louis Philippe, and the
rot in the potatoes; and on each of these themes he not only spoke
well, but he spoke with a degree of knowledge that smacked of a special
study. "How comes it," I asked myself, "that this man, with the weighty
cares of a mighty empire on his brain, has time to hear and memory to
retain little traits of various people in remote quarters of the world?
How, for instance, did he hear, or why remember, these anecdotes of the
present Landamman of Switzerland, Ochsenbein?" And yet there were good
reasons perhaps, to remember them. The man who has personally shewn the
white feather will scarcely be courageous as the head of a government,
though there is great reason to suspect that he may exhibit all the
rashness of cowardice--its worst, because its most dangerous, quality.

I had often suspected, but I never knew before, how completely this
Minister had usurped every department of the Cabinet, and concentrated
in himself the Home, the Foreign, and the Colonial Governments. The very
patronage, too, he had assumed; so that, in fact, his colleagues were
comparatively without influence or occupation. I confess that, on
hearing him talk so unconcernedly of mighty events and portentous
changes, of great interests and powerful states, that my heart beat
strongly with an ambitious ardour, and a feverish throbbing of my
temples suggested to me that the longing for rank, and station, and
power, had not yet died away within me. Was it with serious intention
that he spoke to me of again entering Parliament and taking office in
some future arrangement, or was it merely from a sense of compassion
that he ministered this meed of encouragement to the hopes of a sick
man? Whatever the motive, the result has been an increased buoyancy,
more of vitality about me, than I have known for some time--a secret
wishing for life and strength to "do something" ere I die.

He rather appeared pleased with a suggestion I threw out for augmenting
the elective franchise in Ireland, by making the qualification "an
intellectual one," and extending the right of voting to all who should
take a certain degree or diploma in either the University of Dublin
or any of the provinc