1030.] The Club Room. 433 



bcr of a profoundly puzzled ministry ; and, I suppose, thinks that he Was 

 asleep when he gave up the rolls for the infinite bore of the woolsack ; 

 or wishes, like another Othello, he could taste that sleep he enjoyed 

 before. The lady watching beside his slumbers, too, confirms the idea. 

 Her attitude of attention, and her hushing him to rest, all are in favour 

 of the interpretation. 



Megrim. Poh ! The lady is as old as my grandmother ; as round as 

 the dome of St. Paul's ; and as loving as the great key of the tower, 

 that love which keeps fast all that it has once got hold of. But the 

 room is evidently a nursery. The floor is strewed with play-things, 

 a little wooden life-guardsman, a little grenadier, a yacht, fit for 

 the navigation of a slop-bason, a giraffe, three inches above the life- 

 guardsman and his steed, and a baby palace, six inches long by two. 

 Pray, Icicle, what put Frankland Lewis in place ? 



Icicle. The grand deity of fools, luck ! He had been haunting the 

 Treasury until the very messengers used to lose their appetites at the 

 sight of his spectral visage. He had hung himself on the skirts of every 

 set of men that have worked their way up the Treasury stairs for the 

 last thirty years, and had contrived, byindefatigability of pushing, to reach 

 the enviable distinction of being notoriously a gentleman who, if not 

 fit for every thing, had made up his mind, on the two points, that he 

 would do for every thing, and that any thing would do for him. Yet a 

 man of this kind is a convenience in the train of a ministry. Sure to be 

 forgotten, of course, in the first five minutes of his absence ; and, from 

 his perfect conviction of this, sure never to be five minutes out of the 

 way ; a minister is as certain of having him at his call as any of the 

 messengers that stand on the staircase. The first tingle of the bell 

 brings him up to the door ; and there stands the bowing receptacle of 

 the great man's commands. A letter is to be sent to some sulky peer, 

 five hundred miles off, in the wilds of Inverness. The man is there 

 who will jump into the mail in the next quarter of an hour, and, 

 without drawing bit, lay the letter on the library table of the per- 

 son purchasable. If we have a wrangle with the Chan of Tartary, or 

 the Emperor of Madagascar ; there is the flying pacificator. If a com- 

 mission is to be dispatched to the Cape for the purpose of stopping 

 John Bull's clamours for an indefinite time (no commission that knows 

 its business ever making a report in less than from fourteen to twenty 

 years, and ministers, all the while, referring all complaints to " its 

 honourable board;") there is the willing commissioner, or the willing 

 clerk, or the willing any thing. If the Irish government are of opinion 

 that the children in the charity-schools are not whipped enough, and 

 thereon apply, ft as in duty bound," to the superior wisdom of their 

 masters and makers in Downing-street ; there stands the man who is 

 proud and ready to go on the " flagellation committee," or the " pota- 

 toe-bread council," or the (( mud-cabin board/' or the " human expor- 

 tation inquiry ;" and as ready to go to Canada, or Columbia, or Caca- 

 fogo Island, or the Devil's A e-a-Peak, or the Moon, by the first 

 vessel for that voyage, as to Ireland. 



Saveall. Those are merits, I allow ; but you see how little they have 

 served me. I defy all the Frankland Lewises, or Monk Lewises, since 

 the conquest, to have been more eager to catch service ; and what is 

 my reward ? Three pint pots, which I verily believe to be pewter, 

 though the unwashed rascals (who, I suppose, stole them, for a display 



M."M. New Series VOL. IX. No. 52. 3 K 



