We state thus much, that
our readers may know with what pains we prepare ourselves for them.
Besides, when BULWER thinks it right that the world should know that the
idea of "La Vailiere" first hit him in the rotonde of a French diligence,
modest as we are, can we suppose that the world will not be anxious to
learn in what coloured coat we think, and whether, when we scratch our
head to assist the thought that sticks by the way, we displace a velvet
cap or a Truefitt's scalp?)
Reader, the above parenthesis may be skipped or not. Read not a line of
it--the omission will not maim our argument. So to proceed.
If we cast our eyes over the debates of the last six months, we shall find
that hundreds of members of the House of Commons have exhibited the most
extraordinary powers of ill-directed labour. And then their capacity of
endurance! Arguments that would have knocked down any reasonable elephant
have touched them no more than would summer gnats. Well, why not awake
this sleeping strength? Why not divert a mischievous potency into
beneficial action? Why should we confine a body of men to making laws,
when so many of them might be more usefully employed in wheeling barrows?
Now there is Mr. PLUMPTRE, who has done so much to make English Sundays
respectable--would he not be working far more enduring utility with
pickaxe or spade than by labouring at enactments to stop the flowing of
the Thames on the Sabbath? Might not D'ISRAELI be turned into a very
jaunty carpenter, and be set to the light interior work of both the
Houses? His logic, it is confessed, will support nothing; but we think he
would be a very smart hand at a hat-peg.
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