barterings and borrowings we never hear the name of the nation. No whisper announces that there is such a thing in existence as the people. No allusion ever proceeds from the stately lips, or offends the "ears polite," of the embroidered conclave, referring to either the interests, the feelings, or the necessities of the nation. All was done as in an assemblage of a higher race of existence, calmly carving out the world for themselves--a tribe of Epicurean deities, with the cabinet for their Olympus, stooping to our inferior region only to enjoy their own atmosphere afterwards with the greater zest, or shift their quarters, like the poet's Jupiter, when tired of the dust and clamour of war, moving off on his clouds and with his attendant goddesses, to the tranquil realms of the Hippomolgi. And this highbred condition of affairs was the more repulsive, from the fact that the greater number of those disposers of office and dividers of empire were among the emptiest of mankind. The succession of ministers, from the days of Walpole, (unquestionably a shrewd, though a coarse mind, and profligate personage,) with the exception of Chatham, was a list of silken imbeciles; very rich, or very highborn, or very handsomely supplied with boroughs, but, in all other senses, the last men who should have been entrusted with power. We have to thank the satirists, the public misfortunes, and even the demagogues, for extinguishing this smooth and pacific system. Junius, with his sarcastic pen, the American war, and even the gross impudence of Wilkes, stirred the public mind to remember that it had a voice in the state. A manlier period succeeded; and we shall no more hear of the government being divided among the select party, like a twelfth cake, nor see the interests of a nation which represents the interests of the globe, compromised to suit the contending claims of full-dressed frivolity. As a specimen of this courtly affair, we give a few fragments from a confidential letter of Burke to the Marquis of Rockingham. "Lord Shelburne still continues in administration, though as adverse and as much disliked as ever.--The Duke of Grafton continues, I hear, his old complaints of his situation, and his genuine desire of holding it as long as he can. At same time, Lord Shelburne gets loose too. I know that Lord Camden, who adhered to him in these late divisions, has given him up, and gone over to the Duke of Grafton. The Bedfords are horridly frightened at all this, for fear of seeing the table _they had so well covered_, and at which they sat down with so good an appetite, kicked down in the scuffle. They find things not ripe at present for bringing in Grenville, and that any capital move just now would only betray their weakness in the closet and the nation." Thus, those noble personages had it all to themselves. Again--