the City of London, of which I had heard so
much; that great civic Amphyctyony formed
of deputies and members from the City
wards, and with the objects of whose league
was intimately bound up the protection, not
indeed of the worship at Pytho, but of the
market in Smithfield. The Amphyctyony was
an honour to the age in which it was
established, the Corporation of London is an
honour to our own age. I am not one of its
detractors. It is one of the few nooks into
which the wisdom of our ancestors has, in
the present day, been able to retreat and
stand like a great boar at bay. If it be true,
as Heyne suggested, that the Amphyctyony
was a confederation against the Pelasgians,
I know well that there is equal reason for a
theory which would make the Corporation of
London a confederation against the Pelasgians
of our own day— the dull men who will think—
as if the thinking had not all been done; and
do not know that the world is five thousand
eight hundred and fifty-six years old, and
needs no teaching from the pert young fellows
of thirty, forty, fifty, ay, or seventy, who talk
about improved lights and reform. The
Corporation may be an anachronism in these evil
days, just as it sometimes occurs to me that
I myself might have felt more at home in
better times. If I could only have lived in
the days mentioned by Manetho, when
Mis-phragmuthosis liberated Egypt from the
Hycsos, I should have seen some patriotism
then, and my chest would have expanded, as
it never can expand in these dull days. The
nearest approach to a sense of patriotism
that I have ever known, was that which I
felt in the recesses of Guildhall when I first
looked forth upon the grand scene of the
assemblage of the Common Council. There
sat the great Lord Mayor upon his chair of
state, the solemn dignity of whose appearance
has suggested the fine parallel of a modern
poet—

"Jove in his chair
Of the skies Lord Mayor,"

and over the head of this grand, living Jove,
towered upon a pedestal the statue of King
George the Third, under which was inscribed
the single patriotic sentiment "Born and
Bred a Briton"— please to observe the B's.

I looked about me to take more notice of
the bees, by whom the buzz and humming was
created. Light from the ceiling streamed into
their hive, around the walls of which, pictures
were hung— pictures of royal personages,
judges, mayors, admirals, and naval engagements.
There were also busts. I trembled
and blushed when I observed, for the first time,
that by the hyphen of a long table, which
ran down the centre of the floor, I was in
some manner connected with the Chief Magistrate
of London. The benches of the House
of Common Councilmen arose on each side of
the central table in rows; row behind row;
well-cushioned and padded. Those benches
were well filled by members, each of whom
held in his hand a printed paper, on which I
understood to be inscribed petitions, notices
of motion, and the other business of the day.
The dry and legal voice of the clerk of the
House, who, gowned and wigged, stood at a
table, was filing its way through a wedge of
formal documents. There was a great rustling
of the members' papers, and a great hum from
the peopled banks on each side of the table.
Between, the banks also on each side of the
long table, I observed a constant current
produced by the movement of two gentlemen in
wigs and gowns, who now had somebody to
speak with near the door under the gallery,
and then returned to the town clerk under
the Mayor, and so like ghosts upon the
margin of the Styx continually flitted to
and fro.

The town clerk sat at a cross table near the
feet of his Gamaliel, the Mayor. The Mayor's
platform was extended on either side of him,
and was supplied with seats sufficiently
capacious; from which aldermen, who are
entitled there to sit and thence to speak,
looked down over a brass railing (like the
greater gods of Olympus encompassing their
Jove) upon the multitudes of lesser gods—
Dii Minores of the corporation.

With what rapt attention I listened, on my
first visit, to the proceedings in the recesses
of the Hall of Gog that winter's day, I do
not mean to tell. There was a fine debate.
The stream of reading, after flowing long
through the breezy murmur and the rustle
on the benches, ceased at last, and a young
man stood forward to address the House of
Common Councilmen on business in which
strong interest was taken. Noble passions
were aroused. The gentleman upon his legs
looked tranquil. He said that he had been
put down very often, but to-day he was
determined that his business should come on.
Others were determined that it should not
come on. He was told that he was in order,
he was told that he was out of order; he was
told to sit down, he was told to speak up; and
a roar as of Smithfield on a market-day
surrounded him. The clerk rose to explain the
forms and ceremonies of the House: deciding
that the honourable gentleman was perfectly
in order. The clamour was resumed, and the
clerk of the House was contradicted. Mr.
Speaker, the Mayor, Jove himself, then rose
to order, and endeavoured to appease all
parties by the nectar of compromise. The
honourable member, who had been declared
in order, said, that being in order, he should
wait for order, and would certainly not waive
his claim to speak. At last an Alderman
proposed over the brass railing that the question
be adjourned to that day six months. Nobody
seconded; and the opposition, having been
aldermanized, fell asleep.

The question of the honourable member
proved to be some question about gas, a thing
in which I do not myself believe. It was so