However, they all agreed in condemning all the seven great measures of the Government; although upon widely diverse grounds, disagreeing very warmly, as to what their badness was. And this made me doubt, when I came to dwell upon it, whether after all they could be so very bad. When a dog is tail-piped, sympathy arises in every bosom that has tails behind it; as soon as he is pelted, his merits grow on every one, who cannot find a stone to throw at him; but let him have sticks, bottles, tiles, flints, brickbats, each expressive of a different stand point, yet all promiscuously hurled at him,--and to every candid mind, that cannot get the window open, what is he, before he turns the corner? Why, a hero, a martyr, a saint of a dog. CHAPTER XLI. THE RIGHT WAY TO SURRENDER. It is not in my power, to describe to you all the mixture, or the magnitude, of my feelings, when I entered what our noble journalists--who choose words, like oysters, by their fatness--call the "Portals of St. Stephen." It is superfluous to say, that a policeman met me; the _differentia_ of that species being to jump up (like the teeth of Cadmus) outside of all requirement, and to vanish (like Berenice's hair) inside it. "You can't come in here, young man." He made this remark (looking over my head, for his stature was six feet four, and his mouth opened upwards, as all good police-mouths do) in a tone, which conveyed that it was unofficial, and required some apology for excess of affability. "Peeler, yes he can though! He have a right in there;" exclaimed a voice behind me. "He don't look very nobby p'raps, with all that hair, but he have the same right as I have, Master Bobby. In marches Tommy Upmore, M.P. Tommy, now won't you shake hands with me? One old friend is worth a score of new ones. Without me, so help me Sammy, never would you be here, my boy! But I bears no malice, if your mind is the same. Shake hands, Tommy. There's worse gen'lemen to be found, than Joseph Cowle, Esquire, M.P." Perhaps I have never received, or inflicted, a stronger sensation of surprise. This may have been, to find my own importance (which must have been growing too rankly) assaulted by a policeman, and asserted by a chimney sweep. "Mr. Cowl?" I asked, while giving him my hand; though his own would not have been the worse for a "_repetatur haustus_" of the little boiler engine; "Have you quite recovered from your dreadful cold?" "All Liberals suffers from throatiness," he replied; "same as Tories does from cheekiness. M.P. for Chimneystacks now I am, Tommy; with an e to the tail of my name as well. The missus would have it, with her education; though beyond me to pronounce it, without 'Cowly.' How you are going up the tree, hot cockles!" "And you up the chimney!" I replied, with a glance at his dress, which was worthy of the first of May. "I never could have guessed who you were; and how could you recognise me, Mr. Cowly?"