flashed with fire, but oftener brimmed with merriment. The noble head, sturdy plainly clad and careless-looking figure, consorted well with the _laisser aller_ expression of face. Strange to say, he, like Lord John Russell, usually stuttered out his speeches, thumping the table or desk before him as if to work out the sentences that would not get themselves delivered. The Reform Bill made him specially energetic. Sitting next to him was a very noble earl who wore his hat well over his brows, weighing the _pros_ and _cons_ of too much liberty--for other people. Melbourne in his heat took his own white hat in his right hand, beat the air with it in inarticulate struggle, and brought the white to bear, crown to crown, upon the black one. The blow was fair, the arm muscular; the very noble earl looked like the ancient White Knight, with head apparently wedged between his shoulders. He sat speechless for a moment, and then nimbly springing to his feet, amid roars of laughter, twisted his head free and regained his vision. And when the roar subsided, the Duke of Buckingham thought that the great statesman so suddenly beclouded could scarcely see his way out of the difficulty, and the laughter was renewed. To see a way out of the Canadian difficulty was to find a clue in a maze. Canadian Tories were triumphant over the fall of the Ministry on the Jamaica question. “We cannot guess,” says one editor, “into what hands Her Majesty may be pleased to commit the trust which Lord Melbourne has declared his unfitness to administer.” The incoming man, Peel, quoted the state of Canada as among the trying questions which made the office of premiership the most arduous, the most important that any human being could be called upon to perform ... the greatest trust, almost without exception, in the whole civilized world, that could fall on any individual. A few moments later he had to confess that there was one question worse than the Canadian one, greater than colonial politics, a “_question de jupons_.” So the Government, after forty-eight hours’ attempt at change, reverted to its former holders; Canadian Tories were as glum as ever, and said Melbourne was again the governor of the petticoatocracy.