Notes of the Month on f APRIL, 



should call Mr. Newlight, educated at the London University ; and the other, 

 Mr. Bigot, educated at Cambridge conversing on the subject of a gentleman's 

 eye. ' Oh ! Mr. Bigot/ says Newlight, ' what a bad condition that gentle- 

 man's eye is in ! He has an anomaly in his eye.' ' I really don't understand,' 

 observes the other, ' what you mean by an anomaly.' ( Why, don't you see 

 that all the objects, at the back of his eye, are turned upside down. That is 

 an anomaly and out his eye must come.' They all knew very well that 

 objects were thus represented, topsy-turvy, on the "back of the eye, and that 

 circumstance was explained by the laws of refraction ; but no person had yet 

 been able to assign a satisfactory reason why, when we use our eyes, every 

 object appears in its natural and proper place. Mr. Newlight would, however, 

 take out the eye, because he could not account for the phenomenon ; and, in 

 the same manner, the enemies of boroughs would annihilate them, because 

 they were ignorant of the system of which they formed a part." 



Why will the City of London which must comprehend some sensible 

 and manly men always suffer itself to be represented by a set of fellows 

 who have, in all their previous lives, represented nothing on earth but a 

 yard of ribbon, or a pig of iron ? The leading merchants, we are told, 

 are too proud for the office. The more fools they ; and they will find the 

 benefit of this ridiculous pride in being embarked in the same boat with 

 boobies, and stigmatized with the same thickness of skull. There will 

 soon be an opening for them to shew their sense of this degradation : 



" The discussion of the Reform Question has set parties by the ears in the 

 City ; and it is very generally rumoured that one of the representatives, Mr. 

 Ward, will retire, in consequence of the decided hostility which was mani- 

 fested towards him at the Common Hall on Monday, when he declined sup- 

 porting the Petition of the Livery in favour of the measure. Sir Peter Laurie 

 has been invited to come forward as a candidate on the first vacancy, with 

 the strongest assurances of support, by a most influential party ; and it is 

 equally certain that the invitation will be accepted." 



Nobody can doubt anything of the kind, and he would make a much 

 better representative than the mob of his predecessors. But why should 

 the City be abandoned to the aldermen ? The men who live east of 

 Temple Bar may be considered to be human beings at least ; they have 

 voices, read newspapers, and talk politics, like those living in the more 

 favoured regions which commence on the west side of that venerable and 

 odious line of demarcation. Why should not some man of sense, though he 

 never stood behind a counter, think it worth his while at least to make 

 the trial of whether they could understand him ? We are satisfied that 

 even a denizen of Cornhill would not think the worse of a candidate for 

 being a gentleman by birth and education, even though he should not be 

 quite au fait at the manipulation of a pair of curling-irons, or at deve- 

 loping the mysteries of a bale of cotton. Let some such try. We long 

 to see the Aldermanic breed routed for ever. 



While we are sick to death with the nonsense of " Political Economy" 

 that science of the ignorant that problem of the puzzled and pertina- 

 cious that discovery of the dull that eloquence of those who forget that 

 a man may be prosed to death of sages who rise from the desk or the ditch 

 to instruct mankind who turn money into metaphysics, in the hope, we 

 presume, of turning metaphysics into money and who, being supremely 

 in the dark upon all points of human knowledge, avow themselves the 

 general illuminators of commerce, politics, and national power; why 



