1829. ] Affairs in General. - 647 
has transpired is, that we are obliged to raise a loan. It is our decided 
opinion that the revenue, instead of improving, will go on from bad to 
worse, that financial difficulties will thicken on us, and that the perjuries of 
the people will primarily be scourged in that wealth for which so many 
have made the most guilty sacrifices. 
The French maxim, that “ no man is a hero to his valet de chambre” 
is true only in France, where the footman is the confidant, the compa- 
nion, the fellow-intriguer, and, on occasion, the fellow-knave. In Eng- 
land we have not the habit of this footman-familiarity, and our servants 
know little of that taste which levels a French duke to the population of 
the servants’ hall: But if a man, even here, may not be a hero to his 
valet de chambre, we are quite satisfied that every little location and 
assemblage of Englishmen looks upon itself as something very impor- 
tant to the universe besides. The papersare perpetual evidences of the 
fact. The memoirs of P. P., parish-clerk, are less parodies than fac-similes 
of the intelligence that reaches us in the shape of matters which our 
country friends think interesting to the world at large. For example :— 
« The village of Sandgate was on Sunday afternoon visited with a hurri- 
cane, accompanied with hail and thunder. Mr. Roberts had 61 squares 
of glass broken and starred ; Mr. Brockman 12 squares and part of a 
himney blown down. A boat, fifteen feet in length, belonging to 
dward Lawrence, was carried off the beach to a distance of about 300 
feet, and was so greatly damaged as to be unworthy of repair ; two 
other boats in the village were very much injured.” Thus it is con- 
ceived by the chroniclers of the pretty little village of Sandgate essential 
to the well being of the empire, that Messrs. Roberts’ and Brockman’s 
panes of glass should not be broken without their share of the national 
regret, nor the transit of Mr. Lawrence’s boat effected in a silence un- 
worthy of so important a transaction. A neighbouring paper, too, has 
its storm, with very formidable damage to a hedge-row, half a dozen 
band-boxes blown into the street, several mignionet pots put hors de 
combat, and the calamity of a life lost—that of a promising “ pig belonging 
to Mr. W. Uwins, of Wisbrook-farm.” Scotland was long in the habit of 
laying wait for public sympathy by a regular export of grievances. But 
the steam-boats have, in some degree, cured her misfortunes. Evil has 
been found to be distributed with considerable impartiality every where ; 
and except an annual earthquake at Inverness, of whose reputation the 
town is remarkably jealous, few things of note add to the imperial 
sympathy for the northern portion of the island. 
_ The departure of the court from Brighton to Windsor, or, in other 
words, the descendancy of Sir Matthew Tierney, and the ascendancy of 
Sir William Knighton, has transferred a vast quantity of ‘local intelli- 
gence” into the more favoured regions of Berkshire. Windsor now sup- 
plies us with the only authentic arrivals and non-arrivals of the king’s 
messengers, the disasters of post-chaises going down overloaded with 
ministers and cabinet-boxes, and the exploits of the buck-hounds, with 
little old Lord Maryborough acting the part of Nimrod in their rear. 
We propose to the men of genius in and about London, a number, 
probably as Swift has it— 
* Computing by their pecks of coals, 
About a hundred thousand souls,” 
‘to form an establishment for enabling the newspapers to get through thre 
dull season from June to November. During those fatal months the 
