This is what the Jesuit Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes led to. This is what the
Grand Mouseigneur tolerated.

THE PIXHAM EXPLANATION,

WE had a grand gathering of townsfolk
here at Pixham, a few evenings ago, at the
Queen's Assembly Rooms, to receive the
explanations of the sitting member with regard
to his misdeeds in Parliament. Mr. Carelittel,
Member of Parliament, is only a warming-
pan for the son of Viscount Firstchop of
Pixham Park, at present a minor, but he
could scarcely behave more cavalierly if he
had the borough under his thumb.

He has voted in favour of the bill for the
suppression of dog-driving, by which several
thinking costermongers and one influential
toffy and Albert-cake man had been compelled
to give up their establishments and put down
their carriages; in favour, too, of diminishing
the tax upon wines, though fear of which
enactment Messrs. Druggeon and Company
of the High Street, had almost delrium
tremens; of teaching the dangerous classes
to read and write, and of an educational
suffrage, whereby it was urged from dinner-
table and pulpit, universally, that Pixham
would be unchristianised and the constitution
subverted. He had vexed Mr. Cash, our
banker, by not doing something about Limited
Liabilities; he had, according to Mr. Smallbehr,
the brewer, trifled with hops; and,
lastly, there was neither man, woman, or
child in Pixham who had got any office nor
emolument whatsoever in consequnce of Mr.
Carelittel's election. All which facts, save
the concluding one, had been placarded in
red, white, and blue (to the exclusion of the
honourable gentleman's own colours) upon
our walls, set forth in largest type in the
local journals, and sung to the popular airs, for a
fortnight at least, beneath the drawing-room
windows of the house which had secured to
him a qualification, and was therefore, very
falliciously indeed, supposed to be his own.

Never had the Queen's Assembly Rooms
witnessed such a meeting as this; never had
its galleries been crowded by so many
patriotic and indignant citizens. It had had
its public balls, from time to time, with the
Dowager Lady de Larkyn and party, and the
top of the room and the Srnallbehr connection
uncomfortably near the door; it had had its
Wizard of the West upon a raised scaffolding,
and its Hungarian echo-producer concealed
under its boards with a sax-horn; the
cylindrical-pillar family had stood seven piled
within it with their step-brother at the top;
the American amphibite had walked upon its
ceiling like a fly—but never, I repeat, had it
exhibited from roof to basement so striking
a spectacle as on the occasion to which I am
now alluding.

I myself, being of humble extraction, had
placed myself in that portion of the building
has been since denominated by the
country papers the Body of the Magnificent
Hall, amid some five hundred of my fellow
mortals, packed as closely as the lowest
section of tigs in a drum; another grade of the
community clustered upon the stairs like
bees; and a still less distinguished order clung
on both window-sills, outside, in a manner,
as far as I know, without a parallel. The
orchestra was filled with the reporters for
the public press (with a little square table
and candles all to themselves, as though they
were to conjure or play at cards), with ten-
pound householders, with agrarian gentlemen
in top-boots and top-coats, with lawyers'
clerks, and with one or two temporary officials,
doorkeepers, and the like, who gave
themselves all the airs of aides-de-camp and
ministerial placemen combined.

Another department—the very penetration
and stronghold of dignitaries—upon the
platform was separated from us by a rail, behind
which sat the magistrate, the officers of the
depôt in the town, and the clergy; and in the
centre of these and in front of them, at
another very small table, all to himself, was our
mayor, the chairman, with Mr. Fitzblazer,
Queen's Counsel, on one side, and Colonel
Chuttybung, Honourable East India
Company's Service, on the other; of both of whom
(I say it with pride) Pixham is the native
place. Fitzblazer is the most eloquent person
of the present age, it is believed, with the
exception, perhaps, of Mr. Kossuth; while
the colonel, save and except the Rothschild
brothers, is perhaps the richest. They are,
too equally influential not to hate one another
immensely; but public wrongs and a common
grudge against Carelittel had brought them
on the same side for once. Poor Razon,
the mayor, a week-minded grocer, placed
between these eminent personages, cringing
to the one and grovelling before the other,
without a hope of conciliating either, from
seven P.M. until eleven, seemed like an
unhappy Faintheart passing an uncheerful
evening between the two Lions of the Gate,
or some helpless non-conductor of electricity
with a couple of galvanic batteries playing
savagely across it.

Below this gentleman, but in a most
prominent position, was a little pen, or pound,
with an arm-chair in it, wherein Mr.
Carelittel was presently to take his place as in a
prisoner's dock, and answer, in person, before
that mighty concourse for the high crimes
and misdemeanors which were laid to his
charge.

Expectation had been already half-an-hour
upon tiptoe for the honourable  gentleman's
appearance, and it had begun to get not a little
tired of that position. For thirty-five minutes
the grandees on the platform had been making
believe to talk together (like people at the
back of a stage scene) in an off-hand manner,
and with vacant and uninterested looks, as
though they were unconscious of being the