"What, then, do ye mean to preach us into the belief that it is a crime for us ever to have a hearty, harmless laugh, at a queer fellow when we chance to see him?" Not exactly so, my lads; but we ought never to forget that we are queer fellows ourselves. Nor ought we to fail in the reflection that, if we were fully acquainted with that queer fellow, it might happen we should discover him to be of infinitely more moral value than ten thousand of the smooth-trimmed estimables in the eye of the world, who conform to all its precepts so obediently that they never anger it. And, much more, if we know enough of the "queer fellow" to be aware that a true, warm, glowing, fraternal heart for his fellow-creatures beats in his bosom, notwithstanding a few outward traits of somewhat striking difference from the crowd, why, then, it becomes our bounden duty,--I will not say, never to smile at his peculiarities, for that sort of puritanism will not make us better men,--but to dwell upon his virtues and excellencies,--to extol them, yea, to enthrone them, whenever he is seen, or heard, or talked of, by those with whom we company. Perhaps political party is more universal than any other bad influence without, in misguiding Englishmen into ill-natured, or contemptuous, or depreciatory judgments of their neighbours and fellow-townsmen. The last dozen or fifteen years, especially, have engendered a superabundance of this foul canker;--so many new rivalries have sprung up with the great changes in political and municipal institutions; and men, from the mightiest to the meanest, have been caught up, and whirled along, in many instances so involuntarily, into the rush and torrent of change. And yet, how the lapse of these dozen or fifteen years hath altered the judgment of many of us, with regard to some men and their party-cries. What a wide-spread "liberal" laudation, for instance, there was about the famous definition of a Tory, in the _Times_,--and yet how soon it became its own "duck-legged drummer-boy," and all that! Nay, how soon did some of the very chiefs of the potential reforming party,--from idols of the multitude,--by their refusal to complete what they had begun, and, indeed, in some instances, by their open manifestation of a will to undo what they had done,--become its scoff and scorn, nay, even its detestation!