corroborate an evil originating in the present day, the clearest and most
satisfactory proof; but the minutest defence is sufficient for an evil
handed down to us by the barbarism of antiquity. We reason from what
even in old tunes was dubious, as if we were adducing what was certain in
those in which we live. And thus we have made no sanction to abuses so
powerful as history, and no enemy to the present like the past.





FROM THE LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE TO MRS. ST. JOHN.

At last, my dear Julia, I am settled in my beautiful retreat. Mrs.
Dalton and Lady Margaret Leslie are all whom I could prevail upon to
accompany me. Mr. Mandeville is full of the corn-laws. He is chosen
chairman to a select committee in the House. He is murmuring
agricultural distresses in his sleep; and when I asked him occasionally
to come down here to see me, he started from a reverie, and exclaimed--
"--Never, Mr. Speaker, as a landed proprietor; never will I consent to my
own ruin."

My boy, my own, my beautiful companion, is with me. I wish you could see
how fast he can run, and how sensibly he can talk. "What a fine figure
he has for his age!" said I to Mr. Mandeville the other day. "Figure!
age!" said his father; "in the House of Commons he shall make a figure to
every age." I know that in writing to you, you will not be contented if
I do not say a great deal about myself. I shall therefore proceed to
tell you, that I feel already much better from the air and exercise! the
journey, from the conversation of my two guests, and, above all, from the