And then the old "Guilds," or "Corporations," to which the new "Town-Councils" have succeeded,--what a general tendency to exaggeration there was in the mode of judging of them, and in the tone of talking and writing about them, especially in the public prints. How witty were the newspaper people in their conceits of conserving, or pickling, or embalming an alderman, and having him placed in the British Museum, as a curiosity for antiquaries to form profound speculations upon, some ten or twelve centuries into futurity! Ay, and how eloquently abusive was the prevailing Whig strain about "nests of corruption," and "rotten lumber," and "fine pickings," and "impositions, and frauds, and dark rogueries of the self-elect!" And how the scale has turned, since, in the greater share of boroughs, where the poor and labouring classes threw up their hats for joy at "municipal reform,"--and now mutter discontent at the pride of upstarts become insolent oppressors,--or openly curse, as in the poverty-stricken and hunger-bitten manufacturing districts, at the relentless and grinding tyrannies of the recreant middle-classes whom municipal honours have drawn off from their hot-blooded radicalism, and converted into cold, unfeeling, merciless wielders of magisterial or other local power. There was, it cannot be denied, in the droll trappings and antiquated mummeries of the old guilds,--in their ermined scarlet cloaks, and funny cocked hats, and in their maces and staves,--and above all, in the starch, and march, and swelling, and strut, and pomposity, with which these were worn or borne,--much that was calculated to tickle the spectator into mirth; but, really, when one thinks of it, are the horse-hair wig of a bishop, a judge, or a barrister, the robe and coronet of a peer, or the crown and sceptre of a king or queen, less like playthings for upgrown children than were the "regalia" and antique habits of the old corporation-men? Was Cromwell so far beside the mark when he called the Speaker's mace a "fool's bauble?"--and might not the expression be applied with as much fitness to many other "ensigns of office," as they are called? And again: though it is true that a grand uncurtaining of robbery,--for that is the plain English of it,--was made in some, at least, of the old boroughs, by the inquest of that parliamentary commission which preceded the sweeping away of the old corporations,--yet are we not, now, become conscious, that amid the party heat and animosity of the period, much private excellence was over-shaded or forgotten in the rage of public censure, nay, that much virtue was denied, even where it was known to exist, lest the recognition of it should mar the scheme for overthrowing the party to which that virtue was attached?