moment when dialogue ceases, and the real interchange of ideas begins. The fine touch, the keen _aperçu_, belongs alone to those who have had to exercise these same qualities in the treatment of great questions; and hence it is that though the Public be often much struck, and even enlightened, by the powerful “article” or the able “leader,” the Statesman is rarely taught anything by the journalist, save the force and direction of public opinion. I had a deal to say to you about poor Glencore, whom you tell me you remember; but, how to say it? He is broken-hearted--literally broken-hearted--by her desertion of him. It was one of those ill-assorted leagues which cannot hold together. Why they did not see this, and make the best of it,--sensibly, dispassionately, even amicably,--it is difficult to say. An Englishman, it would seem, must always hate his wife if she cannot love him; and, after all, how involuntary are all affections, and what a severe penalty is this for an unwitting offence! He ponders over this calamity just as if it were the crushing stroke by which a man's whole career was to be finished forever. The stupidity of all stupidities is in these cases to fly from the world and avoid society. By doing this a man rears a barrier he never can repass; he proclaims aloud his sentiment of the injury, quite forgetting all the offence he is giving to the hundred and fifty others who, in the same predicament as himself, are by no means disposed to turn hermits on account of it. Men make revolutionary governments, smash dynasties, transgress laws, but they cannot oppose _convenances!_