THE SORROWS OF IGNORANCE. 245 



Magazine, in every thing at home and abroad, she read some augury of 

 her own ruin, and the advancement of her fell enemy, Knowledge. 



In the tenderness of my nature, nevertheless, I made another effort. 



" The Marquis of Londonderry," I said, " is great." 



Again it was visible I had touched her. With a faint smile she 

 replied 



" I know it." 



" And so/' I continued, " do my Lords Brougham and Plunket. 

 How have I not seen them wince and tremble under the lash of his 

 eloquence !" 



" But they still live," she said with a sigh that shook her entire frame, 

 ff and are Lords Chancellors." 



" Aye, madam," said I, " but shorn of their beams, and their glory 

 withered. They stand on the floor of Parliament like two blasted 

 pines : the next thunderbolt will shiver and lay them prostrate." 



" My Londonderry," she cried, " my own Londonderry ! His mother's 

 spirit is upon him." 



When I first alluded to Wellington and Peel she was sad ; she had 

 deceived them, she said, on the question of parliamentary reform, im- 

 parting to them her own delusion, that the rotten boroughs would last 

 as long as the globe itself; and she now feared that they would with- 

 draw their confidence from her, and desert her in her extreme need. 



" Most high and puissant lady !" I replied, waxing bolder than I had 

 yet been during this strange colloquy, " your alarms are groundless ; 

 you do your children a gross wrong. Fear not that they will ever dis- 

 honour or disobey you. The sons of Ignorance they are ; the sons of 

 Ignorance they will ever be : my life upon the stake ! they will never 

 leave you nor forsake you." 



I then touched upon a recent pamphlet by the Duke of Newcastle ; 

 but out of the sweet she extracted bitter : 



" Woe is me !" she exclaimed, " when the proud peers of England 

 write pamphlets." 



She paused for a moment, and then went on 



" It was not so in the times past. I recal the day " 



Here a flood of glorious recollections rushed upon her memory. She 

 started up, and stood dilated into stature more than human ; her voice 

 was queenlike, and the waving of her arm shewed that she was wont to 

 wield a sceptre. I stood before her shrunk and overawed, as if all the 

 Norman blood in England was mingled together in her veins, or as if 

 she united in her single person the majesties of the Guelph and the 

 Bourbon. 



She recalled the day when the Barons of England left the pen to the 

 cloistered monk, and made their way to glory with the sword. It was 

 not ink, in that day, that dabbled the hands of Dukes, but the red blood 

 of Frenchmen or rebels. She recalled the times of the Johns and the 

 Henrys. The field of Runnimede rushed upon her view ; and her iron- 

 clad sons, who conquered Magna Charta with their arms, but had not 

 learning enough to subscribe it with their names, passed before her in 

 beatific vision. 



" Bright examples," she exclaimed, " of immaculate valour ! Paragons 

 of true nobility \" 



Having reached this climax, transport bereaved her of utterance. I 

 was then sufficiently self-possessed to take up the discourse ; and I did 

 so with some warmth, defending the coronet from the charge of dege- 



