576 NOTES OF THE MONTH. 



love of fraud, even when he could attain his object as easily by a straight 

 one ;" and his representative in England, Lord Aberdeen, is held up 

 to public reprobation as a politician of the same school. Whether the 

 writer of the two articles is the same, we cannot say ; it is enough 

 that the management was precisely the same then as now ; and this 

 much is certain, that it was the identical person who wrote that, (the 

 " Silent Member") that afterwards, when the Reform Bill came on, 

 endeavoured to frighten the king with the idea that the fate of Louis 

 XVI. awaited him, if he granted it. And the writer himself of the 

 late article has the effrontery, in the very same place, to designate the 

 narrative of Pellico as "affecting and beautiful/' giving it even a 

 merit that does not belong to it, for it neither is nor affects to be 

 beautiful : affecting indeed it is ; and for this sole reason that it holds 

 up to the strongest possible abhorrence that same system, and those 

 same individuals, that this writer would hold up to our estimation 

 and that, too, after having formerly denounced the head of it as a 

 " monster of duplicity and perfidy !" Such is the consistency of men 

 whose sole end and aim is the advocacy of a party ! 



IN THE MIDST OF LIFE WE ARE IN DEATH. At an inquest held 

 lately in Surrey on the body of a female pauper, some delay arose in 

 consequence of the jury having to inspect a certain apartment re- 

 ferred in the evidence of the witnesses. One of the " twelve good 

 men and true" availed himself of the interruption to wend his way 

 homewards, being somewhat more interested in the fate of a couple 

 of partridges preparing for his dinner than in that of his duty. An 

 officer of the coroner was forthwith sent after the delinquent jury- 

 man, whom he found despatching his prey. The gourmand threat- 

 ened vengeance against any intruder, and denied him (as the func- 

 tionary elegantly expressed it) even C( a sniff" of the winged victim 

 of the inquisitor's voracity. The delinquent having terminated, re- 

 paired to his incensed superior ; but instead of feeling that univer- 

 sally benevolent and philanthropic suavity which is said to pervade 

 most men when certain umbilical symptoms are assuaged, defended 

 the propriety of his action, and declared his repugnance to the doc- 

 trine that would inculcate attention to the defunct in preference to 

 the living. The coroner, overcome, we imagine, with the novelty of 

 the logic, yielded the contest. We suppose that the old system of 

 starving a verdict out of a jury may henceforth be looked upon as 

 exploded. We have long been inwardly persuaded the opinions of 

 men are regulated by their appetite ; who can expect public virtue 

 to resist a brace of roast partridges ? many men have fallen before a 

 devilled kidney ; no man is perfect. Had the juryman above been 

 thwarted in his repast, we have no hesitation in saying that he would 

 have pronounced " wilful murder" against the first well-fed witness 

 who appeared. 



