inaccurate estimate of the full extent of its provisions. It is, in our judgment, emphatically a bad bill; and we trust that after this, its third defeat, it will never again be permitted to appear in either house of parliament. Our representatives have done no more than their duty in giving it their most strenuous opposition; and, though a few individuals may mourn over the frustrated hopes, occasioned by the ruthless blight of a crop of expected offices, they can look for no sympathy from the people. We can assure Lord John Russell, that he never acted more wisely than in refusing to force through the final stages such unpalatable bills as these; and we hope that, in future, he will give the Scottish people credit for understanding their own affairs, and not suffer their deliberate and expressed opinion to be treated with undeserved contempt, simply because it may be possible, by "making a house," to swamp the suffrages of their representatives. THE CAXTONS.--PART XVI. CHAPTER XCV. The stage-scene has dropped. Settle yourselves, my good audience; chat each with his neighbour. Dear madam in the boxes, take up your opera-glass and look about you. Treat Tom and pretty Sal to some of those fine oranges, O thou happy-looking mother in the two-shilling gallery! Yes, brave 'prentice boys, in the tier above, the cat-call by all means! And you, "most potent, grave, and reverend seigneurs," in the front row of the pit--practised critics and steady old play-goers--who shake your heads at new actors and play-wrights, and, true to the creed of your youth, (for the which all honour to you!) firmly believe that we are shorter by the head than those giants our grandfathers--laugh or scold as you will, while the drop-scene still shuts out the stage. It is just that you should all amuse yourselves in your own way, O spectators! for the interval is long. All the actors have to change their dresses; all the scene-shifters are at work, sliding the "sides" of a new world into their grooves; and, in high disdain of all unity of time as of place, you will see in the playbills that there is a great demand on your belief. You are called upon to suppose that we are older by five years than when you last saw us "fret our hour upon the stage." Five years! the author tells us especially to humour the belief by letting the drop-scene linger longer than usual between the lamps and the stage. Play up, O ye fiddles and kettle-drums! the time is elapsed. Stop that cat-call, young gentleman!--heads down in the pit there! Now the flourish is over--the scene draws up:--look before.