ing
left without a check, he turned upon his restless, ignorant allies, and
slaughtering them by thousands, succeeded in prostrating their liberties
and the freedom of his country: the speaker adding,

"I fear the worst fate of Rome is hanging over us; whether that of Sylla
be in store for our despot, I know not. Should he, however, abdicate at
the end of three years (Sylla's term), he will be hunted by the cries of
a guilty conscience and by the curses of an outraged people, more
intolerable than the pangs which tortured in his last moment the Roman
tyrant!"

In anticipation of another speaker's assault, a journalist says,

"We may, when he delivers his sentiments,--which will be indeed the
reflex of public opinion,--look to behold the fur fly off the back of
the treacherous old usurper, our implacable tyrant," &c. &c.

On the other hand, the adulation of the administration exhausts
panegyric in the President's praise: his qualities are proclaimed to be
superhuman, his intuitive wisdom and farsightedness approaching to
omniscience; by this party he, indeed, is all but deified. The
vice-president proclaims that he shall consider it honour enough to have
it known that he held a place in his counsels. Members of the
legislature, of sound age and high character, dispute in their places
within the house their seniority of standing as "true _soldiers_ of the
General's administration;" an odd title, by the way, independent of the
strangeness of the avowal, for a representative of the people.

The assumption of the act of responsibility, and its exercise, it is
argued by this party, have been decisive as to the conservation of the
_morale_ of the country, without which their liberties were held by a
tenure liable to be quickly subverted, and the blood, and toil, and
treasure of their predecessors spent in vain; that the integrity of
their institutions was by this act assured, and the continuance of the
people's happiness and prosperity based upon marble, unimpeachable and
to endure for ever!

In every society, in all places, and at all times, this subject is
all-absorbent amongst the men. Observing with pity a very intelligent
friend arrested in the lobby of a drawing-room which was occupied by a
whole bevy of beauty, and there undergo a buttoning of half an hour
before he could shake off his worrier, I inquired with a compassionate
air, just as he made his escape, "whether he would not be glad when the
present ferment