the absence of all exaggerated declamation; the strictly constitutional character of his views; and above all,
the unanswerable case he made out for Hungary; satisfied them too thoroughly, not to leave them very
much unprepared for the marked change that speedily ensued. This change took them wholly by
surprise. But whether sought to be accounted for by the disappointment which M. Kossuth is said to have
felt at the coldness of his reception by the English aristocracy (whose favours are apt to run in quite other
and less respectable directions), by the fact of the present movement in France seeming to offer new chances
for the success of extreme democracy, or by the very distinctions even in the character of the assemblies
successively addressed acting on the susceptibility of a man of his nervous temperament, the principles
announced in those later speeches he left uncontradicted to the last, and by them it became necessary to
judge him. So tested, he no longer appeared to represent fairly the Hungarian cause, which, if connected
with such doctrines from the first, would in their judgment have failed to attract a tithe of the sympathy
won over to it in England, and which therefore they would again disconnect as soon as may be. To this
end they do not scruple to remind M. Kossuth that the deposition of the House of Hapsbuxg was passed
by the diet of Debretzen, in which a large part of Hungary was not represented; that a considerable number
of the deputies were strongly opposed to that act; and that the rest were only induced to adopt it by such
representations of its urgent necessity, and of the strong desire of the army for its completion, as the facts
afterwards belied. They remind him also of the discontent with which the news of the deposition was
received by the army, and the more intelligent classes throughout the country, while both yet continued
strenuously bent on asserting their constitutional demands against all the power that could be collected to
oppose them. Nay, they go so far as to believe, that, even when the war had been brought to its
iniquitous close, could but the Austrian Government have been induced to confirm what it had formerly
granted, and reinstate the diet and the country in their rights, great as his oratory and administrative talents
had been, the name of M. Kossuth would no more have been remembered save as that of an infinitely
able but sadly restless politician, who had troubled the country's peace and sacrificed her welfare to visions
of independence which he had not the means to carry out, and in behalf of which he had sacrificed so many
thousands of lives, while he had shown no remarkable readiness to imperil his own. But Messrs. Schwartzenberg
and Bach had not the sense to see this. The policy they have pursued has been as though purposely
designed to justify the assertion that never again should Hungary acknowledge the house of Hapsburg.
They have heaped on her, fallen as she was, every indignity that could possibly have been suggested by
cruelty and fear; and this wretched policy, basely and unshrinkingly pursued, has again made M. Kossuth's
name a rallying point for discontent, a spectre at whose mention Austria grows pale. Yet, great as this
oppression has been, and weight as are the wrongs under which Hungary is groaning, signs nevertheless
appear to show themselves, in the judgment of the class of thinkers of which we speak, that not even yet
has the old monarchal and constitutional spirit been trampled out of Hungary. Even little circumstances
accompanying the late appointment of the Arch-Duke Albrecht as governor seem to them significant. The
renewed use of the word kingdom in place of crownland, the sight of their national colours, the resumption of
the national dress, the hope implied in these paltry concessions that a constitutional government may one
day still be restored, and the amount of popularity that has greeted the Arch-Duke in consequence, are to
these thinkers as the small straws thrown up to show the current of the wind. Still they have an instinct
that any such anticipations are but desperate after all; and nothing would satisfy them so much, and nothing
appear so hopeful for the future, as the awakening of M. Kossuth from-what appear to be his present
dreams of Urquhartism and Republicanism, and his return once more to that clear-sighted leadership of the
Constitutional cause for which his genius qualifies him beyond any other Hungarian. They grudge him
none of the enthusiasm that has attended him here, remembering how much aud how unjustly he has
suffered in a righteous struggle; and remembering also what a heavy debt England still owes his country, in
having allowed the intervention of Russia against her without a protest or attempt to save her.

The reader amid these labyrinths of opinion will probably have no great difficulty in finding that which
is most in accordance with his own; and he will have still less difficulty, in this respect, in following us
to St. Albans. Here the case admits of no difference of judgment whatever. The revelations are disgraceful
to all parties; and singularly disgraceful to the reformers, if a distinction is to be made at all. But really,
as one of the witnesses candidly remarked, political parties are so merged in money matters at St. Albans
that it is almost impossible to trace them. It is no longer to be denied, however, that the money matters
at least have been clearly traced, and the gold found sticking everywhere. The one party has at the same
time in such matters so much more reputation, or pretence to it, to lose than the other, that it is manifest
where the damage has most heavily fallen. Indeed it is not disguised by men of ultra-liberal views that
there is not one of their candidates who is not likely to suffer, at the next election, from the doubts and
jealousies awakened by these disclosures. The chance of safety for all parties now rests on the anticipated
Reform Bill, which, at last, bids fair to be no party question; and should the gratifying spectacle present
itself next session, of Mr. Disraeli outbidding Lord John in the way of pledges for future electoral purity,
the country will have no small reason to be grateful to those two thousand five hundred sovereigns which
Mr. Jacob Bell so worthily represents in the imperial parliament.

Public opinion does not appear as yet to be quite made up as to the working of the new law of Evidence.
The committals for perjury are so frequent as to be somewhat startling; juries naturally wince a little under
the sense of an increased responsibility; and judges are notoriously indisposed to what is novel or newfangled,
especially when it brings with it duties also new and painful. On the other hand, the advocates of the
measure assert that the frequent perjury exhibited by its means is perjury that already existed in all such
cases, and was invariably practised to the advantage of the wrong-doer. Thus the only change effected by
it is, that what used to be secret and successful, is now discovered, baffled, aud punished. Still the open
exhibition of the disregard of oaths, though really less immoral than the less direct and more flourishing
practices it replaced, acts as such a painful jar to public feeling, that it has again brought in question the
value of administering oaths at all in our courts of justice; and while it is admitted that much has been
unquestionably gained by bringing plaintiff and defendant to tell their respective stories orally in open court,
and expose themselves to cross-examination, it is suggested that this advantage might be equally attained by
simply obliging the counter-statements to be made without the intervention of an oath, and affixing instant
penalties of fine or imprisonment to the discovery of falsehood. It is argued that by thus punishing the