Sometimes, however, I think that it is the newspapers are not so amusing as they used to be. The racy old bitterness of party spirit is dying out, and all the spicy drollery and epigrammatic fun of former days gone with it. It strikes me, too, Tom, that "Party," in the strong sense, never can exist again amongst us. Party is essentially the submission of the many to the few; and so long as the few were pre-eminent in ability and tactical skill, nothing was more salutary. Wal-pole, Pelham, Pitt, and Fox stood immeasurably above the men and the intelligence of their time. Their statecraft was a science of which the mass of their followers were totally ignorant, and the crew never dreamt of questioning the pilot as to the course he was about to take. Whereas now--although by no means deficient in able and competent men to rule us--the body of the House is filled by others very little their inferiors. Old Babbington used to say "that between a good physician and a bad one, there was only the difference between a pound and a guinea." In the same way, there is not a wider interval now between the Right Honorable Secretary on the Treasury Bench and the Honorable Member below him. Education is widely disseminated,--the intercourse of club life is immense,--opportunities of knowledge abound on every hand,--the Press is a great popular instructor; and, above all, the temper and tendency of the age favors labor of every kind. Idleness is not in vogue with any class of the whole community. What chance, then, of any man, no matter how great and gifted he be, imposing, his opinions--_as such_--upon the world of politics! A minister, or his opponent, may get together a number of supporters for a particular measure, just as you or I could muster a mob at an election or a fair; but there would be no more discipline in the one case than in the other. They'd come now, and go when they liked; and any chance of reducing such "irregulars" to the habits of an army would be downright impossible! There is another cause of dulness, too, in the newspapers. All the accidents--a most amusing column it used to be--are now entirely caused by railroads; and there is a shocking sameness about them. They were "shunting" wagons across the line when the express came up, or the pointsman did n't turn the switch, or the fog obscured the danger signal. With these three explanations, some hundreds of human beings are annually smashed, smothered, and scalded, and the survivors not a whit more provident than before.