walk through the streets or ride over the
country, good Justice Talfourd's dying words
remain unheeded; class looks upon class with
cold and stony gaze; and England is almost
the only country where a man dares not
associate on friendly and familiar terms with
persons whom he presumes to call his
inferiors. Not many days since, I spent the
evening in a public room, where wealthy
employers, around scattered tables, were
playing their games, smoking their pipes,
and drinking their beer, their brandy, or
their wine, as the case might be. In the
same room, around similar tables, were
assembled sundry of their workmen, engaged
in the very same amusements. Solid capitalists
and hand-to-mouth earners to the amount of
a few shillings per week were thus congregated,
and civil words exchanged, without
any sense of intrusion on the one hand or
pollution on the other. The main formality
appeared to be that every new-comer, on
entering the apartment, uncovered his head
to salute the company. It is hardly necessary
to make the statement that this strange
scene was not acted within the limits of
Albion. But why not? There are a few explanations
of the fact which I could suggest,
but will not venture. Some trifle may be
owing to the lingering influence of a foolish
set of books called fashionable novels, and the
silver-fork school of literature. I have often
wondered why the inferiors don't turn round
and set up a system of exclusiveness on
their part also. I once tried it myself, with
very satisfactory success.

"Come and dine with us this evening,"
said a superfine lady and gentleman whose
acquaintance I had lately made during a run
through Italy.

"I thank you, I can't," was my quiet
reply.

"To-morrow, then."

"I cannot, to-morrow."

"The day after to-morrow we shall quite
expect you."

"I thank you, no."

"In short," said the gentleman, turning
very red, "you will not dine with us. You
do not think us fit society. It is almost an
insult."

"I will not dine with you; and I will tell
you why. I have not the slightest wish to
insult you; but I do not know whether you
are fit company for me. Your town-house is
in Highflyer Square; my town-lodgings are
in Little Crinkum Street, and I do not belong
to any Club. Several young men of good
family do lodge in Little Crinkum Street,
but also merchants' clerks and at least one
tailor's foreman. If you should meet me
hereafter in London, and discover there, that
the world to which I belong is less decorated
with gilt and varnish than your own, you
would cut me dead the first time you met
me, though I had dined with you every day
during your stay in Naples. But I have a
slight objection to being cut, and nobody has
ever cut me twice."

"The hit is a fair one," said the lady,
laughing. "Come, come; jump into the carriage,
and drive with us to the Elysian Fields.
On the way, we'll arrange the cutting question,
I promise you, to our mutual satisfaction."

Suppose, however, that, instead of declining
to partake of a dinner, plebeians, like myself
were to refuse to take part in a battle, unless
commissions and decent treatment were made
indispensable conditions of acceptance! We
surely want a little revolution here. Classes
constituting at least three-fourths of the
population are refused the privilege of fighting
for their country. And so, even in battle for
life and death, for honour and freedom, we
cannot allow villainous, that is low-born,
dead bodies to come between the wind and
our nobility. Your father is Mayor of Swilton
this year; mine was "his Worship,"
three hundred years ago, and afterwards retired
to his landed estates. Therefore, it is
not to be tolerated that you should hold a
commission in the same regiment, and eat at the
same mess table with me. If you get in by
hook, or by crook, we will make the barracks
too hot to hold you. Yes, were you stationed
at Windsor itself, your epaulet shall be no
introduction to aristocratic circles. You have
no marshals' batons hidden in your knapsack.
Unless you are born—not with a silver
spoon in your mouth, that is not sufficient—
but with a crest on your head, a coat of arms
on the pit of your stomach, and a label bearing
the motto "EXCLUDO" twisted round your
feet and ankles, presume not to put on a
British officer's uniform. A French officer's
uniform is altogether a different thing. The
French are strange in many matters. But, a
multitude of their singularities, depend upon
it, are the result of that horrid first Revolution.

Yes! I repeat it seriously; that awful
word Revolution is not to be despised, but
understood. What has brought Russia,
for another instance, into her present awkward
antagonism with the Western Powers,
but the misfortune of having conceived a
wrong idea of what Revolution ought to
mean? Russia would revolve after the fashion
of a whirlpool, sucking in, at first, stray sticks
and straws, to be followed soon by more valuable
prey. And then, as the tide of time
flows on, the whirlpool, increasing its circuit
hourly, would swell into a mighty and
irresistible Maelstrom, engulphing whole fleets
laden with the treasures of nations. But the
bed of this Maelstrom is a faithless quicksand.
Too fierce and long-continued a rotation may
make the bottom give way altogether, and
precipitate the whole insatiable whirl of
waters deep down into the fathomless abyss.
All vital movement in a healthy organisation,
is founded on the principles of "give and
take." Russia will take, but will not give.