But I’m coming to another part of the business. Sir J. C. Hobhouse, who, after all, has not lost his speech, as was for a long time supposed, lifted up his voice for Sir Henry. What do you think he said? “If he” (Sir Henry, mind) “were refused the reward now asked, the result would be this: he was only a lieutenant-colonel, although he had the brevet of major-general, and he would be obliged to leave England; _he could not live here_.” At this the House cheered, and I’m afraid, Mike, Hobhouse spoke the truth. As I’m an honest cabman who never takes less than his fare, if I didn’t blush like a poppy when I read this. Why, what a shabby, mean, outside set of folks we must be! Supposing Sir Henry had not got this pension--supposing that, wanting to stay in England, he had lived in a smallish house, had not given grand parties, but, content with the thoughts of the great things he had done, he had jogged on plainly and humbly, would folks have looked down upon him? Would the hicky do-nothings, born to their tens of thousands a year, have forgotten all about the Chinese peace and ransom, and tremendous trade opened by Sir Henry, unless they saw him in a crack carriage, and knew that he lived in a first-rate mansion? Wouldn’t it have been enough for them to know that a great and good head--one of the heads that rule the world, though the world won’t acknowledge it, at least until the aforesaid head may be rolled about by boys in the churchyard--that such a head had all its laurels about it, even though sometimes it went under a cotton umbrella? Wouldn’t they have acknowledged this? No, Michael; no, no, no! The great man, in the eyes of our English world, would have been lost in the smallness of his income. Pull down Apsley House, deprive the Duke of Wellington of his fortune, let him for three months be seen as a general living at a club upon nothing but his half-pay, and it’s my belief that in three months after that some folks would more than doubt whether he ever won Waterloo. I once read of a Roman who was called from his turnips to save his country. What a small fellow he’d have seemed among us! We never could have understood a hero upon turnips alone. No; with us Cincinnatus must have had a fine leg of Southdown to his vegetables, butter and capers, and above all things, a silver fork. I’m called for a fare, so yours in haste, JUNIPER HEDGEHOG. _P.S._--I don’t know whether you’ll care much about the news at Hong-Kong, but we shall have a tidy hay season. LETTER XVIII.--_To Richard Monckton Milnes, Esq., M.P._