SHOCKING OCCURRENCE IN HIGH LIFE.
ACCORDING to a current rumour, repeated with as much regret as amusement, a serious calamity has befallen one of our most leading statesmen : an incubus has fastened on him.
It is related of Theodore Hook, that he carried impudence to an& exquisite lengths as to count with certainty on dining in any Louse upon which he pleased to fix his eye. If he doomed a given establishment to entertain him as a guest, the thing was done. He entered the house by the force of impudence, and it only re- mained for his wit to reconcile the host to his false position. The effrontery, it is said, has been paralleled in the modern instance of this tradition ; but we cannot so certainly answer for the sequel— either for the wit or for the reconcilement.
It is said of a robustious professor of statesmanship who prowls about the back settlements of the Ministerial side and the Opposi- tion side, whose roar is terrible, and who goeth seeking whom he may devour, that he has destined the present Cabinet to destruc- tion ; for it is the Cabinet in which Lord Palmerston sits : " Delenda eat "—Manchester has decreed it, and Manchester never decrees in vain. But how to destroy it? The fable of the Lion and the Four Bulls suggests one method ; the example of the ichneumon fly suggests another. The four bulls, united, could defy the lion; but he per- suaded them to quarrel, and then he took them in detail. The ichneumon fly fastens upon his victim, embraces him with mortal closeness, penetrates his very vitals, and lays within the egg of a fatal parasite. The ingenious invention is to combine these two processes—to be both ichneuffion and lion. In condemning the Cabinet, at a late meeting of his partisans at Manchester, Mr. Bright implied exoneration of one member of that body. Lord John Russell, said the Member for Manchester, would be more liberal, but he is under coercion. If the story to which we allude is true, this statement also is true : but it is not by colleagues that Lord John Russell is coerced; and it would be interesting to have the remainder of the story from Mr. Bright. Supposing that the tale is true, is it possible to imagine any- thing more horrible than the position of a Minister, accustomed to independence, but now accustomed to be ridden by an incubus ? fibbed the Sailor, with the Old Man of the Sea on his shoulders, was free in comparison ; for the Old Man did not talk, and he was not one of John Cassell's disciples. Sinbad therefore had not only the prospect of freedom, but he realized it. The young man whom the Barber insisted upon helping, and whom that persecuting co- adjutor constantly dragged into detection, punishment, and dis- grace, approached nearer to the present case. Still nearer
that respectable lord in one of Miss Ferrier's novels, who is tormented by a busy Miss White, constantly teaching bun haw to carry on his own affairs, and at last terrifying him into the grave by coming to visit him one morning, conveniently and economically, in a hearse. The door of a Cabinet Minister's closet is usually under control; but imagine the frame of mind in which that Minister must sit who is not sure at any moment that it will not open and his terrible patron come in to pat him on the back with ponderous paw—to teach him what to do, with sturdy voice—to encourage him in trans-gangway. Liberalism! A living philosopher tells a ridiculous story of a boy at school, whose friends visited him and asked how he got on. Well, he said, save that he was " sair hauden down by Bubblie Jock"—sorely held down by the turkey-cock. Only to think that the statesman whom we see leading the most powerful body in the most powerful em- pire in the world may retire from that scene of power—retire, as we suppose, to the sacred privacy of his own closet—and there be in the situation of the schoolboy that lived in subjection to Bubblie Jock!
Previous page
