“The honour of the Most High!” Surely, Isaac, the best way to show such honour is to love your fellow-creatures as the greatest work--so far as we know--of the Most High; and not, poor small things as we are, to walk about the earth, and when we poke up our noses highest in the face of heaven, think we have then the best right to tread the hardest on the necks of everybody that don’t agree with us. To hear a few folks talk in Parliament, you’d think that they’d assured to themselves all Paradise as a freehold, and standing upon their rights, would set up in it man-traps and spring-guns against all intruders. However, never mind, Isaac. There was a time when a King of England would have drawn a tooth a day out of your jaws, if you didn’t undraw your purse-strings; and now--so do this wicked world roll on--you may wear a Lord Mayor’s chain, and, as a magistrate, commit vagrants to gaol like any Christian.--Your friend, JUNIPER HEDGEHOG. LETTER XX.--_To Mrs Hedgehog, New York._ DEAR GRANDMOTHER,--September’s so near we can almost put our hand upon it, and yet I’m in London. It’s a dreadful confession of poverty, but I can’t help it. If I’m not ashamed to be seen on my stand, I’m not a licensed cabman. The only comfort there is, everybody that stays in town must be as poor as myself, and that, according to some folk’s notions, is a blessing to think of. A purse that was dropped on the pavement of Regent Street lay there a week, and was at last picked up by a policeman. London never looked so poor and dull; for all the world like a fine lady in an undress gown, with all her paint wiped off. The opera is shut up, and the manager has had a silver bed-candlestick given him by lords and dukes, because he has been so full of public spirit as to make his own fortune. By the way, grandmother, I don’t know how it is with the player-folks in New York; but here with us, if a man or woman want a bit of plate they’ve only to take a theatre. A playhouse is a short cut to a silversmith’s. There isn’t a London manager who isn’t plated after this fashion, which shows there is no place for true gratitude like the green-room; but I ask your pardon for talking of such matters, knowing what a low place you think the theatre. Parliament, like a goose that has been set upon too many eggs, has risen with half of ’em come to nothing. But this, grandmother, is the old trick. When the Parliament first opens, and Ministers come down with new law after law, why, what busy, bustling folks they seem! What a look of business it gives to the whole thing! But half of ’em is only for show; just so many dummies to take in what shopkeepers call “an enlightened public.” You know the bottles of red and blue that they have in apothecaries’ shops? Well, half the folks think ’em physic, when they’re nothing in the world but coloured water. Sir James Graham’s Medical Bill was just one of these things: nothing real in it; but something made up for show; just to give a colouring