There are persons who cannot bear the uninterrupted ticking of a pendulum in their chamber. The sustained converse of a wife vexes many. I have heard of a prisoner who was driven mad by the continued plashing of water against the wall of his cell. Such things are lively illustrations of the disquiet I endure. It is not that I am thwarted in an argument or beat on a division; it is not that I have a horror of innovation, or a hatred of intolerance; you are welcome to trample upon my opinions, if you will not tread upon my toes. I will waltz with any fair Whig who has a tolerable ear and a pretty figure; and I will gladly dine with any septuagenarian Tory who is liberal in his culinary system and puts no restrictions upon his cellar. The Question kills me: no matter in what garb or under what banner it come. Brunswick and Liberator, reasoner and declaimer, song and speech, pamphlet and sermon--I hate them all. Look at that handsome young man who is so pleasantly settling himself at his table at the Travellers’. He spends two hours daily upon his curls, and the rings on his fingers would make manacles for a burglar; surely he has no leisure for the affairs of the nation? The waiter has just disclosed to his view the _anguilles en matelotte_, and the steward is setting down beside him the pint of Johannisberg. And he only arrived yesterday from Versailles; it is impossible he can have been infected in less than four-and-twenty hours. Alas! there is the _Courier_ extended beside his plate; and the dish grows cold, and the wine grows warm, while Morrison sympathizes with the feelings of the Home Secretary, or penetrates the mysteries of the Attorney-General’s philippic. Watch Lady Lansquenet as she takes up her hand from the whist-table. With what an ecstasy of delight does she marshal the brocaded warriors who are the strength of her battle; how indignantly does she thrust into their appointed station the more ignoble combatants, who are distinguished, like hackney-coaches, only by their number; how reverentially does she draw towards her those three last lingering cards, as if the magic alchemy of delay were of power to transmute a spade into a club, or exalt a plebeian into a prince. Then, with what an air of anxiety does she observe the changes and chances of the contest; now flushed with triumph, now palsied with alarm; and bestowing alternately upon her adversary and her ally equal shares of her impartial indignation. Lady Lansquenet is neither pretty nor young, nor musical nor literary. She does not know a Raphael from a Teniers, nor a scene by Shakespeare from a melody by Moore. Yet to me she seems the most conversible person in the room; for at least the Question is nothing to Lady Lansquenet. One may ask her what her winnings have been without fear. “I have lost,” says her ladyship, “twenty points. I am seldom so unfortunate; but what could I expect, you know--with a Popish partner!”