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ment and experience were aware of the public loss, and wished to show their respect and gratitude towards the memory of so able and upright a guardian. Interested men thought only of their own private ends. Upon the news of Vortex's danger, the gloomy faces of the Opposition brightened; the unshaven were shaved; their vacant, unemployed countenances assumed an unusual air of business and importance; the stockings were gartered, the breeches-knees buttoned, and the shoes cleaned; which was not usual. They carried their heads erect, which before hung down for fear of meeting the eyes of a creditor, and seemed like vultures snuffing up the air to catch the scent of a departing sigh, On his death, they could not contain themselves any longer within the bounds of common decency; they seized every place, either of honour or profit; and when it was proposed in the Common-Hall to erect a grateful monument to the memory of the late Pali nurus, the motion was opposed by ALL the Talents,-in his life-time the tail of the household. We do not believe, in this instance, that Brush acted from the impulse of his heart; but, un

fortunately, he could not, with the least appearance of consistency, acquiesce in erecting a monument to the memory of a man whom, as well as his measures, he had incessantly pelted and reprobated in his life-time.

This act of gratitude and justice was therefore left to the people to perform; and, we trust that could not have been left in better hands.

If the Brushites had been well read in the Scriptures, they would have gathered from the parable of the talents, the immense responsibility with which they had loaded themselves, and they would have dreaded lest their lord should have found them deficient in the use of them, and have passed upon them the judgement on the man, who had hid his one talent in the earth;"Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." But they had been so long in outer darkness; that is, out of place, that they were ready to have run every risk for present relief.

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Brush began a negociation for peace, which, whatever might have been the end of it if he had

lived, was soon knocked up by his colleagues after his death. If there had been ever any talents among the party, they were all buried with him; but the survivors would not own it; he had left the talents all behind him, and they could go on as well without him, as with him; even under the guidance of the stripling steward, Master Minikin. They were aware that they had lost their sole prop, but they intended, with the same arrogance and self-conceit, by which they had climbed into office, to bluster through their parts and remain there as long as they could. To have confessed their weakness, would be to endanger their being turned off the ladder.

There were many reasons for inducing Brush and his party to prefer green youth at their head to tried, experienced age. Vortex was a statesman ab adolescentiâ:—they would show the public that he was not a rara avis, and that they had not only talents themselves, but the power of communicating them to any greenhorn. Besides, just at that period, the popular current ran in favour of juvenile actors. A

boy, who had been taught some scenes of plays, and who repeated them, very well for a boy to be sure, but just as a parrot talks,—without feeling, or knowing what it says,-was produced on the boards of Merryman's theatre, and received with a degree of public admiration and applause verging on lunacy. The delusion continued for a while, till the proprietor of another theatre, also wishing to turn it to advantage, produced a girl (about eight years old) to personify the parts of grown women, and that not in some of the chastest of our dramatic works. This still more ridiculous exhibition, (there could not have been a more severe satire upon the depravity of the public taste, even if the manager had intended it as such) fully opened the eyes of the people, and made them perceive the caps and bells on their own heads.

As Merryman had succeeded so well in his juvenile actor, his colleagues thought they might as well exhibit a juvenile steward, by which contrivance they should not only be able to act as they pleased, but also to un

dermine the reputation of Vortex with the public.

With this view they had cast their eyes upon the petty youth, Master Minikin, who, like the juvenile actor on the other stage, had given some proof of his genius by delivering a splendid speech in the Common-Hall, against a modern Piso, which had, perhaps, been composed for him by his tutor, who had, probably, cribbed it from Cicero and others of the Greeks and Latins. If this éleve should turn out another Vortex, all the talents would enjoy the credit of discovering and bringing forwards immature genius; if not, they might give what impulse they chose to their puppet. After the decease of Brush, his colleagues would have had it believed, that both Vortex and Brush had been mere cyphers, and that they themselves were all the talents. But they had been employed for years in pointing out the faults, or supposed faults, of Vortex; and the public now expected that they should either retrieve them, or act better: they had been long enough feasted upon words, and they now began to look for deeds. But they might as well have

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