visionary upon all these matters, and so thoroughly unsound, that I should not like it to be generally known, for fear of its injuring my political prospects. In the mean time it will very much assist me in arriving at some of my conclusions, if you will kindly procure for me, from any leading member of the Legislature, lay or clerical, answers to the following questions:-- "First, Whether Jonah could possibly have had anything to say to Nineveh which would not apply with equal force to this Christian metropolis?--and if so, What? "Second, Specify the sins which were probably committed in Chorazin or Bethsaida, but which have not yet been perpetrated in London. "Third, As statecraft (assisted by priestcraft) consists not in making the State better but richer, explain why it is easier for a collection of rich men--called a nation--to be saved, than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, but not so easy for one man. "Fourth, Does the saying that the love of money is the root of all evil apply to a nation as well as to an individual?--and if not, how does it happen that the more we accumulate wealth, the more we increase poverty and misery and crime? "That is enough for the present. But oh! what a string of questions I could propound to these stumbling pagans, stupefied by the fatuous superstition that their country is safer than other countries which have come to judgment, because they are called by a particular name! Is there among them all not the faintest consciousness of an impending doom? or is the potency of the drug such that it is impossible to raise a cry loud enough to rouse them? Why will they go on vainly trying to solve the impossible problem of Government, never seeing that whatever system is introduced is merely a rearrangement of sinners; that voters are like cards--the more you shuffle them the dirtier they get; and that it is of no use agitating for a reform in the franchise without first agitating for a reform in the consciences of those who are to exercise it, and in the fundamental principles of the policy upon which we are to be governed. "Wisely saith the greatest poet of the age, as yet, alas! unknown to fame:-- "Reformers fail because they change the letter, And not the spirit, of the world's design. Tyrant and slave create the scourge and fetter-- As is the worshipper, will be the shrine. The ideal fails, though perfect were the plan, World-harmony springs through the perfect man. We burn out life in hot impatient striving; We dash ourselves against the hostile spears: The bale-tree, that our naked hands are riving, Unites to crush us. Ere our manhood's years, We sow the rifled blossoms of the prime, Then fruitlessly are gathered out of time.