There is another point connected with the legitimate influence of the higher classes on which the writer speaks, we fear, either from a theory of what ought to be, or from some very exceptional cases:— “The offices of magistrate, of poor-law guardian, or even of churchwarden, are so many modes of honourable employment offered to those who feel in themselves some capacity for business and some wish to be useful. It will be understood that a considerable number of gentlemen of independent income, retired tradesmen, and officers not employed on service, having thus before them the prospect of a useful and active life, gather round an English village, instead of remaining buried in the great towns, as too often is the case in our own country.” We fear the foreign reader will be mistaken if he understands anything of the sort. The county magistracy offers, without doubt, a position both honourable and useful; but it is seldom open to the classes mentioned. We do not say that the offices of parish guardian and churchwarden are highly attractive objects of ambition; but we do think that in good hands they might become very different from what they are; immense benefit would result in every way to many country parishes, if men of the class whom the writer represents as filling them would more often be induced to do so, instead of avoiding them as troublesome and ungrateful offices, and leaving them to be claimed by the demagogues and busybodies of the district. It may not be pleasant for a gentleman to put himself in competition for an office of this kind; but it may be his duty to do so. The reproach which the writer addresses to the higher classes in France is only too applicable to those in England also:— “If all those whose education, whose intelligence, whose habits of more elevated life, give them that authority which constitutes a true aristocracy, would but make use of their high position to exercise an influence for good upon public matters—if only the honest and sensible party in our country would shake off its apathy and fulfil all the duties of citizens—our institutions would have a life and power which at present are too often wanting.” True words for the conservative spirit both in the English Church and in the English nation to lay to heart; for, so long as education and refinement are too nice to stain themselves with the public dust of the arena, they have no right to complain if candidates, less able but less scrupulous, parade themselves as victors.