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EDITORIAL COLLOQUIES, 

 POLITICAL, LITERARY, AND MORAL. 



Political extremes Novel writers Prospects of Literature Literary properly 

 Geologists and their creations Poor-Law Commissioners. 



" I AM surprised, knowing your opinions as to the subjects best 

 suited for Magazine-reading, that you have not altogether expunged 

 politics from the ' Monthly/ " 



" Under any other circumstances than the present, I would have 

 done so, but party is just now so rife, and the press is either so 

 furious or so wavering, that we have felt it needful to put our oar 

 into the troubled stream of politics. Simonides, you know, called 

 Sparta Aa/m07)u/3jooros, ' the tamer of men ; ' we may apply the term 

 very appropriately to party-spirit at the present moment, which seems 

 to swallow up alike consistency and principle." 



" True enough, the Tories and the Radical- Whigs present an 

 extraordinary simularity of aspect. Both are swearing 



' Till their very roofs are dry, 

 With oaths of great Reforms/ 



Impartial men are therefore placed between the horns of a some- 

 what awkward dilemma. The suspicion is however very rife in my 

 mind with regard to both parties, that 



1 ubi panis ibi deus.' " 



" You have heard perhaps of Erskine's jeu-d'esprit on Dr. Lett- 

 som's signature 



* If any patients send in haste, 

 I physics, bleeds, and sweats 'em; 

 If, after this, they choose to die 

 Why what cares I ? * I Letts 'em! ' 



" That applies capitally public opinion is the patient in the case ; 

 I wish we could inoculate it with our caution. The political doc- 

 tors at present in repute will, we are sure, make but tinkering work 



