My next care was to present myself below stairs; and although some may smile at the avowal, I had far more misgivings about how I should pass muster with the underlings than with the head of the department. Is the reader aware that it was a farrier of the Emperor Alexander's guard who first predicted the destruction of the "grand army" in Russia? A French horseshoe was shown to him, as a curiosity; and he immediately exclaimed, "What! not yet frost-roughed? These fellows don't know the climate; the snows begin to-morrow!" So is it: ignorance and pretension are infallibly discovered by "routine" people; they look to details, and they at once detect him who mistakes or overlooks them. Resolving, at all events, to make my "Old World" habits stand my part in every difficulty, and to sneer down everything I did not understand, I put on a bold face, and descended to the lower regions. Great people, "Ministers" and Secretaries for the "Home" and "Foreign," little know how great their privilege is that in taking office they are spared all unpleasant meetings with their predecessors. At least, I conclude such to be the case, and that my Lord Palmerston, "stepping in," does not come abruptly upon Lord Aberdeen "going out," nor does an angry altercation arise between him who arrives to stay and he who is packing his portmanteau to be off. I say that I opine as much, and that both the entrance and the departure are conducted with due etiquette and propriety; in fact, that Lord A. has called his cab and slipped away before Lord P. has begun to "take up" the "spoons,"--not a bad metaphor, by the way, for an entrance into the Foreign Office. No such decorous reserve presides over the change of a domestic ministry. The whole warfare of opposition is condensed into one angry moment, and the rival parties are brought face to face in the most ungracious fashion. Now, my system in life was that so well and popularly known by the name of M. Guizot, "la paix à tout prix;" and I take pride to myself in thinking that I have carried it out with more success. With a firm resolve, therefore, that no temptation should induce me to deviate from a pacific policy, I entered the kitchen, where the "lower house" was then "in committee,"--the "cook in the chair"! "Here he com, now!" said Blackie; and the assembly grew hushed as I entered. "Ay, here he comes!" said I, re-echoing the speech; "and let us see if we shall not be merry comrades." The address was a happy one; and that evening closed upon me in the very pinnacle of popularity.