Christian in the House of Commons, because the
expression occurred in an oath invented as well for
English Jews as for other English subjects, and to
which it would therefore be absurd to regard those
words as essential, there is another baron ready with
the shrewd remark that because a thing is absurd it
need not follow of necessity that the legislature did
not mean it. This latter Daniel found two others to
support that view, which clearly appears to have most
of that kind of reason on its side in which our
English law delights. At the same time all the barons
appeared to countenance and join in a humane
suggestion that the law thus proved hostile to the worthy
alderman—unintentionally so as one of them thought
it, mischievously so as a second of them thought
it, and substantially absurd as a third of them
characterised it—should be in some way or other
overhauled by the legislature. Mr. Salomons really
comes better off than our less fortunate selves.

Materials have been largely accumulating, during the
month, for a book upon the mysteries of Paternoster-
row. The ancient bibliopolic Isis bids fair to stand
stripped of her usual worship and obedience before
many moons are over. The old lady had been too
exacting. Not content with arranging her own
profits, she must needs arrange the profits of other
people; and having so fixed her own wholesale
price as to cover all the cost of production, would
fain also fix the precise retail price which is to satisfy
the cost of distribution. Whereupon there has been
a revolt against her authority, charges advanced,
counter-charges provoked, the public made a party,
and a Chief Justice the umpire; nor is it at all
improbable but that the quarrel may end, as such quarrels
have heretofore been known to end, in honest
folk getting more than they expected of their own.
Certainly if a particular sum has sufficed to defray
all the charges of producing a book; if it has been
possible, by selling the book at such a price, to satisfy
all demands of printer, paper-maker, bookbinder,
publisher, and author, it does seem a little hard that the
purchaser should be taxed to the tune of an
additional 33 per cent. for what would appear to involve
no more additional outlay than the handing the book
across a counter, or the tying it up in a parcel. But
next month more will have to be said of this, and
with greater certainty.

Prince Schwartzenburg has been struck by the sudden
death which so often awaits men of violent passions,
in the very act of using all his energy to obtain a seat
for M. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte among the hereditary
continental rulers. But Nicholas won't receive
him in any other character than as a warming-pan
for legitimacy; and Frederic William says ditto to
Nicholas. M. Bonaparte himself has continued to
exhibit unabated activity in closing up, as far as possible,
the old fields of knowledge cultivated in the University
of Paris. He has degraded history and philosophy
by the dismissal of Michelet and Quinet. He has
prescribed courses of study of which the design is to
qualify the bourgeoisie of France to serve their masters
in future, and no longer to criticise them. He has
opened his parliament of mutes with significant
recommendations to do his bidding implicitly, telling them
that his desire is to do everything for France, and
nothing for himself; and illustrating this abnegation of
selfishness by securing a civil list practically amounting
to about double the sum of that which Louis
Philippe enjoyed. Sooth to say, indeed, M. Bonaparte
is become just as unquestioned a potentate, to all
outward appearance, as that other sovereign chief
with whom Lord Palmerston has also been doing his
best to establish us in friendly relations. Guezo,
king of Dah's belly, does not sit more absolute amid
his 18,000 warrior-wives and his pannikins of rum,
stifling in swamps or cutting the throats of all who
happen to entertain doubts of his title, than does
M. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte amid his million-
and-a-half of bayonets, his sausages, and his
champagne. Next month is expected to inaugurate an
empire, but it is hard to see what advantages an
empire would substitute for the many obvious
advantages a dictatorship would lose. For neither
the "pannikins of rum," nor even the yielding
embraces of a prostitute army, can bar the danger
they involve to the very system they support;
already weakness is said to have declared itself in
many unexpected and as yet silent quarters against
the bayonet-propped presidency; already the judges
of the Tribunal of the Seine, in a spirited decision
against the confiscation-decree, have openly
pronounced against the usurper: and it is not with
anything like the same alarm of French invasion
which prevailed a dozen weeks ago that our House
of Commons is again engaged in the discussion of a
second Militia Bill. Meanwhile, as the old world is
shipping off its rebels to the new, the new world
is shipping off its tyrants to the old; and Rosas,
thrust out ignominiously from one continent of
America, crosses the last batch of German patriots
and French philosophers on their way to the other.

A little gleam of belief in the safety of Franklin and
his comrades has dawned upon us from the drifting
icebergs that come down each year towards the equator
from more distant frozen seas, on one of which, there
seems little doubt, two deserted ships that might have
been Franklin's were seen last year, five miles off,
by a trading brig bound for Quebec. Beside this
shadowy hope of safety for many gallant countrymen,
we have to place the too-certain and terrible loss of
more than four hundred and fifty brave fellows in the
wreck of a government steam-ship bound with
detachments for the Cape. Nothing could save them.
If the calmest and most heroic fortitude could have
turned away calamity, these men would have been
spared. It was not to be; but not in vain did they
show how the discipline of English soldiers can face
any form of death. 'See,' the military journals of the
Continent have since been saying, 'what the English
strength consists in. Don't be too easily persuaded
that corporal punishments and promotion by purchase,
now retained in that army alone, make it less fit to
cope with its adversaries. Lay not too much stress
on its imperfect equipments, on its inferior arms, on
its unequal examinations and service, on its comparatively
scanty numbers; but view the conduct of its
raw recruits on board the sinking steamer, Birkenhead.'
So important is it that duty should be done,
however hopeless and utterly desperate the time and
circumstances.

Such other leading topics of the month as invite
the reader's attention our Narrative will faithfully
present to him. A new notion of a franchise
propounded by Mr. Walpole to give a county vote to
every militia man after two years' service, turned
out to be a grave man's construction of a dull man's
joke; and its sober reception in the House of
Commons before the truth was known, can only be
taken for proof that that part of our venerable
constitution is now become quite too old to be
startled at anything. The benchers of the four inns
of court have at last agreed on a measure of reform in
legal education, which will extend the preparatory
discipline for a barrister's degree some short way
beyond the proof of having eaten so many legs of
mutton. Those horrible instruments of legal torture
which have hitherto passed by the name of Masters
in Chancery, are about to be abolished by a bill of
the Lord Chancellor's; which it is to be hoped will
also so effectually lay their ghosts, as to prevent them