When you made a holiday last Whitsuntide to see the Sights of London, in your way to the Waxwork and Westminster Abbey, you probably noticed a vast pile of buildings in Palace Yard, and you stood and scratched that shock head of yours, and wondered whose fine houses they were. Seeing you to be a country clodpole, no doubt some well-dressed vagabond, by way of putting a hoax upon the hawbuck, told you that in those buildings congregated all the talent, all the integrity and public spirit of the country--that beneath those roofs the best and wisest, and the most honest men to be found in three kingdoms, met to deliberate and enact the most wholesome, and just, and judicious laws for the good of the nation. He called them the oracles of our constitution, the guardians of our rights, and the assertors of our liberties. Of course, Bushell, you were told all this; but nobody told you, I dare say, that within those walls your master had lifted up his voice, and delivered the only sound, rational, and wholesome, upright, and able speeches that were ever uttered in St. Stephen’s Chapel. No, nobody told you that. But when I come home, Bushell, I will lend you all my printed speeches, and when you have spelt them, and read them, and studied them, and got them by heart, bumpkin as you are, Bushell, you will know as much of legislation as all our precious members together. [Illustration: “OUR CONSTITUTION’S GONE!”] Well, Bushell, the fine houses you stood gaping at are burnt down, gutted, as the vulgar call it, and nothing is left but the bare walls. You saw Farmer Gubbins’ house, or, at least, the shell of it, after the fire there: well, the Parliament Houses are exactly in the same state. There is news for you! and now, Bushell, how do you feel? Why, if the well-dressed vagabond told you the truth, you feel as if you had had a stroke--for all the British Constitution is affected, and you are a fraction of it, that is to say, a British subject. Your bacon grows rusty in your mouth, and your table-beer turns to vinegar on your palate. You cannot sleep at night, or work by day. You have no heart for anything. You can hardly drag one clouted shoe after another. And how do you look? Why, as pale as a parsnip, and as thin as a hurdle, and your carroty locks stand bolt upright as if you had just met old Lawson’s ghost with his head under his arm. I say thus you must feel and look, Bushell, if what the well-dressed vagabond told you is the truth. But is that the case? No. You drink your small-beer with a sigh and smack of delight; and you bolt your bacon with a relish, as if, as the virtuous Americans say, you could “go the whole hog.” Your clouted shoes clatter about as if you were counting hobnails with the Lord Mayor, and you work like a young horse, or an old ass, and at night you snore like an oratorio of jews’ harps. Your face is as bold and ruddy as the Red Lion’s. Your carroty locks lie sleek upon your poll,