rsaries; that his party
would now, as it ever had done, carry itself with the meekness of
the dove, and the wisdom of the serpent,--all this, I say, was so
generally felt by gentlemen on both sides of the House to be "leather
and prunella" that very little attention was paid to it. The great
point was that Lord de Terrier had resigned, and that Mr. Mildmay had
been summoned to Windsor.

The Queen had sent for Mr. Mildmay in compliance with advice given
to her by Lord de Terrier. And yet Lord de Terrier and his first
lieutenant had used all the most practised efforts of their eloquence
for the last three days in endeavouring to make their countrymen
believe that no more unfitting Minister than Mr. Mildmay ever
attempted to hold the reins of office! Nothing had been too bad
for them to say of Mr. Mildmay,--and yet, in the very first moment
in which they found themselves unable to carry on the Government
themselves, they advised the Queen to send for that most incompetent
and baneful statesman! We who are conversant with our own methods of
politics, see nothing odd in this, because we are used to it; but
surely in the eyes of strangers our practice must be very singular.
There is nothing like it in any other country,--nothing as yet.
Nowhere else is there the same good-humoured, affectionate,
prize-fighting ferocity in politics. The leaders of our two great
parties are to each other exactly as are the two champions of the
ring who knock each other about for the belt and for five hundred
pounds a side once in every two years. How they fly at each other,
striking as though each blow should carry death if it were but
possible! And yet there is no one whom the Birmingham Bantam
respects so highly as he does Bill Burns the Brighton Bully, or with
whom he has so much delight in discussing the merits of a pot of
half-and-half. And so it was with Mr. Daubeny and Mr. Mildmay. In
private life Mr. Daubeny almost adulated his elder rival,--and Mr.
Mildmay never omitted an opportunity of taking Mr. Daubeny warmly by
the hand. It is not so in the United States. There the same political
enmity exists, but the political enmity produces private hatred. The
leaders of parties there really mean what they say when they abuse
each other, and are in earnest when they talk as though they were
about to tear each other limb from limb. I doubt whether Mr. Daubeny
would have injured a hair of Mr. Mildmay's venerable head, even for
an assurance of