London to John O 'Groat's. 269 



tances the Chartists altogether in his programme, and 

 adds several new points to their political creed. He 

 not only advocates manhood suffrage, but womanhood 

 suffrage, and woman-seats in Parliament. Then he is 

 a great friend of a reform which the Chartists grieviously 

 overlook, and which would make thousands of them 

 voters if they would adopt it. That is, Total Absti- 

 nence from Tobacco, as well as from ardent spirits. 

 Thus, no report of modern times equals the good 

 Squire's summing up, which he gives on these occa- 

 sions, from the great farm-wagon tribune, to the mul- 

 titudinous and motley congregation assembled under 

 his park trees. This year it was unusually rich and 

 piquant, from the expanded area of events and aspects. 

 In presenting these, as bearing upon the causes of 

 Temperance, Peace, Anti-War, Anti-Slavery, Anti- 

 Tobacco, Anti-Capital Punishment, Anti-Church-Eates, 

 Free Trade, Woman's Eights, Parliamentary Eeform, 

 Social Eeform, Scientific Progress, Discovery of the 

 Sources of the Nile, and other important movements, 

 he was necessarily obliged to be somewhat discursive. 

 But he generalised with much ease and perspicuity, 

 and conducted the thread of his discourse, like a rivulet 

 of light, through the histories of the year ; transporting 

 the mind of his audience from doings in Japan to those 

 in America, from Poland to Mexico, and through stir- 



