We meet with something refreshing here. Although the extension of the franchise is so evidently nothing but "a calling in of new supplies of blockheadism, gullibility," etc., that Mr. Carlyle thinks his opponents to be men of "finished off and shut up intellect, with whom he would not argue," he feels a "malicious and _justice-joy_" in the fact of England's being about to take the Niagara-leap, and, after some ferocious experience of the horrors of democracy, having a chance to come up washed of her hypocrisy, "the devil's pickle in which she has been steeped for two hundred years," and thus to show herself regenerated and ready for heaven. The desperate philosopher must have been reminded at this point that most who "shoot" Niagara get smashed, and don't come up regenerated or unregenerated; for he runs out of his way to give a howl at her majesty's ministry for not having rewarded Governor Eyre, and then stops to dabble a little more in England's "hypocrisy," which he calls "the devil's choicest elixir." We fear you misname that curious brine, Mr. Carlyle. You have been drinking of it, and your language is unchoice and simply disgusting. Having taken a lesson in descriptive geography, Mr. Carlyle now opens his fourth paragraph, ready for the consequences of a trip over the falls. "From plebs to princeps there is no class intrinsically so valuable and recommendable as aristocracy;" and it is to "this body of brave men and beautiful polite women" that Mr. Carlyle looks with imploring, half-despairing eyes for the creation of a new and better England after the inevitable "immortal smash" of the present. {89} He thinks that, in the smash-up of all things English, this class will be alone unsmashed, because no other class dislikes it: "they are looked up to with a vulgarly human admiration, and a spontaneous recognition of their good qualities and good fortune." We are glad to have found one idea upon which we can agree with Mr. Carlyle. We believe that, of all the peoples of Europe, the English will be the last to assert the principle of political equality. Great and influential men are contending for its actuation, and powerful journals are lending it their aid, but their influence is in reality felt more upon the Continent than in England herself. It may be owing to the degrading ignorance to which the masses have been reduced, and it may not; but, with regard to their love of aristocracy, the same may be said as Mr. Carlyle says, though unjustly, perhaps, of England's hypocrisy, "they are saturated with it to the bone." Mr. Carlyle accuses, in most virulent terms, the varnishing proclivities of his countrymen, who, in spite of the agitation of centuries, he thinks, never really rebuild or even repair. But his going to the root of the evil would be somewhat averse to our poor ideas of propriety, if we may judge by his "devil's strap" theory. Yet no one can deny that English politicians, whether tory or liberal,