barn-orator, to calumniate its author. They succeeded; but their success was but shame to them; and that author is yet destined to triumph over them. I have seen no London paper for ten days until to-day; and I should not have seen this if the waiter had not forced it upon me. I know _very nearly_ what will happen by _next May_, or thereabouts; and as to the manner in which things will work in the meanwhile, it is of far less consequence to the nation than it is what sort of weather I shall have to ride in to-morrow. One thing, however, I wish to observe, and that is, that, if any attempt be made to repeal the _Corn-Bill_, the main body of the farmers will be crushed into total ruin. I come into _contact_ with few who are not gentlemen or very substantial farmers; but I know the state of the _whole_; and I know that, even with present prices, and with _honest labourers fed worse than felons_, it is _rub-and-go_ with nineteen-twentieths of the farmers; and of this fact I beseech the ministers to be well aware. And with this fact staring them in the face! with that other horrid fact, that, by the regulations of the _magistrates_ (who cannot avoid it, mind,), the honest labourer is fed worse than the convicted felon; with the breakings of merchants, so ruinous to confiding foreigners, so disgraceful to the name of England; with the thousands of industrious and care-taking creatures reduced to beggary by bank-paper; with panic upon panic, plunging thousands upon thousands into despair: with all this notorious as the Sun at noon-day, will they again advise their Royal Master to tell the Parliament and the world that this country is "in a state of unequalled prosperity," and that this prosperity "must be permanent, because _all_ the great interests are _flourishing_?" Let them! That will not alter the _result_. I had been, for several weeks, saying that the _seeming prosperity_ was _fallacious_; that the cause of it must lead to _ultimate_ and shocking ruin; that it could not last, because it arose from causes so manifestly _fictitious_; that, in short, it was the fair-looking, but poisonous, fruit of a miserable expedient. I had been saying this for several weeks, when, out came the King's Speech and gave me and my doctrines the _lie direct_ as to every point. Well: now, then, we shall _soon see_. RURAL RIDE FROM PETERSFIELD TO KENSINGTON. _Petworth, Saturday, 12th Nov. 1825._ I was at this town in the summer of 1823, when I crossed Sussex from Worth to Huntington in my way to Titchfield in Hampshire. We came this morning from Petersfield, with an intention to cross to Horsham, and go thence to Worth, and then into Kent; but Richard's horse seemed not to be fit for so strong a bout, and therefore we resolved to bend our course homewards, and first of all to fall back upon our resources at Thursley, which we intend to reach to-morrow, going through North Chapel, Chiddingfold, and Brook.