NOTES OF THE MONTH. 415 



vernment for the importation of foreign wines, at very moderate duties, into 

 the Austrian dominions. Champaign, which has been hitherto unapproach- 

 able, may then be had cheaply." 



We are very fearful that this new enactment will militate greatly 

 against the sober habits of the good people of Vienna. As English- 

 men are remarkably fond of interfering in every thing that does riot 

 at all concern them, we have great hopes that a public meeting will 

 be called to enter into a series of resolutions to enforce sobriety in 

 this distant capital. Surely Mr. Buckingham, who is always on the 

 high scramble for notoriety, will not suffer this opportunity to slip by 

 him. It must occur to him that to have ten thousand copies of the 

 parliamentary report made by his committee on drunkenness printed 

 in two or three languages and circulated throughout Vienna would 

 be the best means of annihilating the forth- coming evil. This would 

 be an expensive proceeding, but what of that ? there are always to 

 be found in London people with empty heads and full pockets who 

 are suffered to walk about keeperless, and who can be turned to ca- 

 pital account by every confident pretender who will take the trouble 

 to mystify them. This useful class of the community would soon be- 

 come extinct if it were not for the patronage bestowed upon them by 

 those who have the good taste to appreciate what they possess, and 

 never neglect them while their infatuation and money last. 



September 7. CABINET-MAKING IN FRANCE. The Parisian Mo- 

 niteur of this date furnishes us with the following list of the new 

 French ministry : 



" Count Mole is to be Minister of Foreign Affairs ; M. Persil, Justice ; Ad- 

 miral de Rosamel, Marine ; M . de Gasparin, Interior ; M. Guizot, Public In- 

 struction; M. Duchatel, Finance/' 



In that useful branch of political machinery, namely the manufac- 

 turing of a cabinet, Louis Philippe does not appear to be remark- 

 ably felicitous. The materials he selects do not remain dove-tailed 

 together very long ; they become slippery, then get loose, and finally 

 divide, and split away altogether, leaving the discomfited workman 

 in the lurch, who has again to look around him for fresh timber to 

 work with. These, if difficult to manage, are dismissed in turn, and 

 thus every six months (we had almost said six weeks) France 

 affords the enlivening spectacle of a new ministry. The vacillating 

 and insincere sovereign is now reaping the reward of his intermin- 

 able duplicity, and a pleasant time we should suppose he must have 

 of it. If, as Shakspeare says, " There is a divinity that doth hedge 

 a king," the Gallic king we suspect must be so close to the hedge as 

 to be tolerably well pricked by the thorns. The gang of councillors 

 he has in this last instance gathered round him are the most inimical 

 to liberty he could possibly have selected. They are a knot of sena- 

 tors worth gold or diamond to any northern despot. 



The French, it is |true, have been literally surfeited with revolu- 

 tions and the convulsions consequent on acts of tyranny and oppres- 

 sion ; yet should the monarch and his " heaven-born ministers" goad 

 the people by some gross act of aggression, either the kingly days of 

 Louis Philippe are numbered or France in the eyes of Europe will be 

 shorn of the last feeble glory that still clings to her, and sink at once 

 into a cowardly and crouching mendicant, without internal spirit, 



