genius to aspire to? I modestly make these
suggestions to you, Swallow, with an
assurance that you are at liberty to make any
use of them you may think proper.

While I dissent from some of your proceedings,
I must say you deserve high commendation
for the masterly manner in which you
concealed your impatience, when the porter,
who had expressed his intention of opening
your case of brandy, stood by in idleness waiting
for "his book," which clerk number three
was making up. You would have enjoyed
with a keener relish his conversation relative
to the proper mode of nailing up bottles, and
the probability of your importing eau-de-
Cologne under the name of brandy to escape
the higher duty, if you had not felt that
the residuary of your fellow-travellers were still
clamouring outside for admittance. This
conviction prevented you also from deriving all
the amusement which another official would
under other circumstances have afforded you,
when, coming forward with one hand in his
trousers pocket, he took tip with the other
one of your bottles; shook it, timed the
appearance and subsidence of the bead, and
pronounced your brandy "very weak;" but
still brandy. On paying the duty, you
murmured at the unnecessary length of time the
transaction had occupied; but I could prove
to you that had your box arrived as
merchandise instead of baggage; or, had you
been in greater haste than you were and had
left an agent to clear your effects, the operation
would have occupied two days' dodging
backwards and forwards, from one office to
another.

I could see that it was a great relief to you
when you safely handed the widow and her
luggage into a cab. The alderman was con-
sulting his watch. "It is now," he said,
"seventeen minutes to seven o'clock, and
we landed at ten minutes to five.
Consequently we have been detained by these
——" (I shall not repeat the expression)
"Custom House people two hours all but
seven minutes."

I must say I heard you repeat your intention
to expose publicly the treatment we had
all received—the treatment which everybody
receives who lands from abroad in London,
and has been receiving, to my knowledge, for
the last twenty years—with pleasure. I trust
you will indulge the public with a sound,
temperate, and practical paper on the subject, in
an early number of the "Warrior for Peace."
Pray point out that while the vexatious
system of levying Customs duty on passengers'
baggage lasts (which assuredly will not be
long), it ought to be effected in a decent,
orderly, and systematic manner. You will
not, I hope, take it amiss when I own that
I have ventured to address these lines to
you in order to refresh your recollection of
our wrongs, and to suggest what might, if
tried, prove remedies. Permit me humbly
to add, that if anything I have mentioned
be thought worthy of a place in your
excellent journal, I shall feel very much
flattered.

EDWARD BAINES.

THERE is a class of men in England who
may be described as of the tribe of
Whittington; men typified by the Whittingtonian
mythus. Their ambition is civic, and their
virtues domestic. They are industrious and
clear-headed. The apex of their aspirations
is to become Mayors, Knights, Commissioners,
or Members of Parliament. They found
respectable families; die the idols of their native
towns; and are usually commemorated, we
regret to say, in dull epitaphs and ugly
statuary. In the last century this class was
usually Conservative in the extreme, and
provincial members of it rose in the world by a
sturdy deference to county families. But since
Reform became the object of the English—the
one work of the working English public—
Whittington's men have been the most active
of reformers. They have been in wholesome
antagonism to antiquity for the last half-
century; have, in a spirit of true, brave, solid
industry, steadily helped to correct abuses and
extinguish wrongs. But withal no class has
opposed so formidably your violent physical-
force agitators. Accordingly, no class has
really such claims on the gratitude of the
Conservative party as this decorous band of
opponents.

A volume lying on our table modestly,
dutifully, tranquilly, records the life-history
of an admirable specimen of such men. It is
entitled the "Life of Edward Baines, late
M.P. for the Borough of Leeds; by his son
Edward Baines;" and illustrates in an instructive
manner the history of the half-century
of time which expired a few months ago.

Throughout the whole of last century, the
moors of that part of Yorkshire which
contains the village of Marton-le-Moor, Rainton,
Topcliffe, and Dishforth, were being steadily
enclosed and cultivated by sturdy yeomen—
among whom certain tall, florid-looking,
healthy men, of the race of BAINES, were
the most notable. They held and cultivated
their farms under the Duke of Devonshire;
father and son giving life after life to the
soil with unceasing industry, and quietly
lying down inside of it when their work was
achieved.

Mr. Richard Baines, a younger son of the
family, an exciseman, while quartered at
Preston in that capacity, married a Miss
Chew, daughter of a merchant there; and,
resigning his office, commenced business
as a grocer. It seemed, however, that
grocers (particularly Whig grocers—their
wares being of course highly deleterious to
health in those days!) could not traffic in
the corporate town of Preston without having
served seven years' apprenticeship. Parchments
of dignified antiquity made that impossible;