Occasionally there is an exceeding great and bitter cry over all this from the depths of the body politic. Some great paper in a moment of deep mental agony publishes an article like that, to which I have called attention, by Mr. Parton; occasionally some preacher, nobly daring, thinks it necessary to direct attention, from his pulpit, to the progress of corruption. Dr. Talmage delivered a very remarkable discourse whilst I was in America on the text from Job. xv. 34: "Fire shall consume the tabernacles of bribery." Although I do not profess exactly to understand to what particular sect he belongs, he is one of the leaders of religious thought, dividing with Beecher and others the popular favour in the Empire City. The State buildings at Albany ought to be heavily insured if the reverend gentleman's vaticinations are right. It was an American discourse. I cannot give the whole oration. The people of the Brooklyn Tabernacle were presented with a muster-roll of the people who had distinguished themselves amongst the great ones of the world. Cobden, Brougham, O'Connell and Rowland Hill were placed in juxtaposition as leaders on our side of the water. Of course it was impossible to resist the allusion to Francis Bacon and to Macclesfield; but it was scarcely correct to say that the Lord Chancellor Whiteberry--I presume a misprint for Westbury--"perished," nor do I quite understand what the preacher meant by the awful tragedy of the _Credit Mobilier_. Washington, Ben Butler, and John McClean were linked together for the benefit of Americans. They were, Dr. Talmage declared, great politicians, but "out of politics there has come one monstrous sin, potent and pestiferous, its two hands rotten with leprosy, its right hand deep in its breeches pocket. This is bribery." Dr. Talmage called upon the American people to judge the crime. "Under the temptation of this sin," he exclaimed, "Benedict Arnold sold the fort in the Highlands for thirty-one thousand three hundred and seventy-five dollars; Gorgy betrayed Hungary, Ahitophel forsook David, Judas killed Christ. I think," he says, "when I see the strong men who have gone down, of the Red Dragon in Revelation, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon its head, drawing the third part of the stars of heaven after it." And therefore he proceeds to preach against bribery. He thought it was the right time, "because the Legislature in New York is busy in investigating charges of bribery. The whole country woke up in holy horror at the charge that two thousand dollars had been offered to influence a vote in the Legislature, as if this was something new; as though in one State nine hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars had not been paid a legislator of the State Government by a railway company to get its charter and secure a dedication of public lands; as though three-quarters of the legislators of the United States had not, through bribery, gone into putrefaction whose stench reached heaven.