which the power of Napoleon menaced Such grievances were serious indeed, British freedom, our Roman Catholic but the social condition of the people fellow-citizens were denied the privi- involved even graver peril. The crimleges of equal citizenship. When Great inal code was steeped in barbarism. Britain, in the crisis of the struggle, The law recognized two hundred and could not afford to sacrifice a single twenty-three offences punishable by man, a Roman Catholic might not hold death. In the year 1810, at one time, a commission in our army or our navy. fifty-eight persons were lying in prison While Ireland was seething with dis- under a capital sentence. In a single content, the Roman Catholic could not year more than one hundred thousand sit in either House of Parliament. persons were committed to gaol. The The same tyranny pursued him in the criminal administration was as scanordinary details of life, and as Grattan dalous as the criminal law. Convicted declared in a famous sentence, "the felons and men, women, and children, law stood at his cradle, it stood by his awaiting trial, were crowded together bridal-bed, and it stood at his coffin." in the wards. Money would buy any Such a policy was as repugnant to the indulgence; vice reigned supreme. instincts of common sense, as to the Such a system, as Sydney Smith principles of religious toleration, and pointed out, maintained at the public so long as the conflict lasted Sydney expense a school in every county "for Smith took his share of the fighting. the encouragement of vice, and for proBut in this instance, his most impor-viding a proper succession of housetant contribution to the controversy breakers, profligates, and thieves." appeared in a series of letters, and not He urged that the various classes of in the pages of the review. Peter prisoners should be properly discrimi Plymley's "Letters to my Brother nated; that matrons should be apAbraham, who lives in the Country," pointed to take charge of the women; put the case for the relief of Roman that untried prisoners should not be Catholics in the simplest form. They ironed, and that they should not be set showed that such disabilities as the law to the treadmill; in short, that an acthen imposed were ineffectual as well cused person should be treated as innoas iniquitous. The Roman Catholic, it cent till his guilt was proved; that the was alleged, was essentially disloyal, gaol should be made a house of correcand paid no regard to oaths of alle- tion and not a centre of corruption. giance and similar pledges. The retort He also pleaded that persons charged was obvious. It was only the man with felony should be allowed to emwhose respect for an oath would not ploy counsel in their behalf, and that suffer him to take it lightly that the an unfortunate creature whose very life existing test excluded from positions was at stake, should not be denied a of authority and trust; the man who privilege conceded to those brought to was ready to forswear himself escaped trial on some trivial charge. scot-free. Even a. vicar, who from long residence upon his living had become "a kind of holy vegetable," could hardly fail to appreciate the force of the argument. But it was not with his pen alone that Smith entered the field. At more than one clerical meeting in Yorkshire, he faced a hostile audience of his brother clergy - on one occasion with his own curate among them and almost unsupported pleaded his case before an assembly of violent partisans, only to find himself outvoted at the time and suspected afterwards.

He did not stop short here. It was obvious to any clear-sighted observer that crime was artificially fostered by the game-laws, and he attempted to remove some of the incitements to evil doing. To make a clean sweep of those laws, and to abolish property in game, was not in his mind. He would have been content with much less than this. He desired to put an end to some of the worst anomalies of the system as it then existed; to remove the restrictions which made it criminal to buy or to sell game, which prevented

comes, stretches himself upon the lifeless form; breathes into it the fire of passion and the fervor of faith; and the heart begins to stir, the eyes brighten, the color returns; the truth that was dead lives and moves once more. This was the power that Sydney Smith possessed. He was not one of those who discover truth. His part was to make truth vital and effective.

a man from shooting on his own land, the majesty of death. There is neither unless he possessed a certain property voice nor motion. But another man qualification; to put down the mantraps and spring-guns which could not discriminate between the poacher and unoffending people. All he asked for was that a man should have "an absolute property on the game upon his land, with full power to kill, to permit others to kill, and to sell," and that game, as an article of food, should be made accessible to all classes, without infringing the laws." But even this change, he foresaw, would go far towards emptying half the gaols in the kingdom, and would at the same time help to make the law respected and obeyed.

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From The Leisure Hour. HAPPY QUOTATIONS IN PARLIAMENT. To quote what has been said or writ ten by others is a matter of common usage. The aptness or patness of such quotation is at once appreciated and approved, not only by critics but by every intelligent hearer or reader. In the pulpit the citation of a striking or appropriate text is always felt to be "telling," and something of a similar feeling occurs when in speech or book we meet with a familiar quotation. The subject is too large and wide for general treatment, so let us confine our attention to examples of happy quotation in the Houses of Parliament.

These were but portions of his work. There are others, some affecting a class, others the nation at large, which must pass unnoticed. He was one of the first to take up the cause of the wretched "climbing boys," the chimney-sweepers, who were treated with inhuman cruelty, and were not unfrequently suffocated or roasted in the flues which they were set to climb. As an advocate of Parliamentary Reform, if not in the first rank of leaders, he was one of those who stood next to them, helping to shape public opinion and to restrain popular excitement These may be divided into two sorts, within the bounds of moderation. His popular and classical. Of popular quofamous speech at Taunton added a new tations the most obvious and common figure to our national gallery, and are proverbial sayings, or homely prov“Dame Partington, trundling her mop erbs. These are occasionally heard in and vigorously pushing away at the the House of Commons from speakers Atlantic," never fails to recur with of "the thin-edge-of-the-wedge" style each new crisis in our political affairs. There is, no doubt, a certain measure of truth in the criticism that Sydney Smith, though remarkable for force and freshness, is rarely original and never profound in his thought. He does not seek after novelties; he gives us no discoveries, no speculations. He deals in the main with truths familiar to us and to those for whom he wrote. But there is an infinite difference between the ways in which men approach truth. In the presence of some, it remains still and cold. It is full of majesty and loveliness; but the loveliness is the loveliness of repose, and the majesty is

of reasoning, but homely proverbs do not tell much in argument or in eloquence. We may hear that "half a loaf is better than no bread," or that "more haste is less speed," but too much of this uttering of wise saws would make any man as ridiculous as Sancho Panza himself. What is said may be very true, but is felt to be out of place in the speeches of the House.

Very different is the case with classical quotations. On one occasion Dr. Johnson met Mr. Wilkes at dinner, when the subject of quotation came up. Wilkes said he thought quoting was rather pedantic. "No, sir," was

Johnson's immediate reply. "No, sir, | quantity, vectigal. Lord North, who it is a good thing; there is a commu- seemed asleep, had heard the blunder, nity of mind in it. Classical quotation and in loud, clear voice merely said is the parole of literary men all over vectigal. Thanking the noble lord for the world." It is true that the literary the correction, Burke said it gave character of the Houses of Parliament him the opportunity of repeating the has changed greatly from the days of maxim, the enforcing of which was so Johnson, and the great debates of the much needed · Magnum vectigal est times of Walpole and Pulteney, Fox parsimonia. and Pitt, or even since Mr. Gladstone Sometimes a quotation has been first entered into public life. In our made occasion of a wager, as when a own days classical quotation has sadly member gave notice that he should fallen, and the high classical culture of charge Sir Robert Walpole with corscholars and gentlemen, so far from ruption. Walpole listened with digbeing a recommendation for success in nity, and said that he would be present the House, would be a hindrance rather when the charge was brought, for he than otherwise. The memory of old was not conscious of any crime detimes is still fresh, however, and the serving censure. He put his hand on reader of history and biography finds his breast, and said, Nil conscire sibi, delight in records and anecdotes such nulle pallescere culpæ. Pulteney imas seldom are seen in the modern mediately rose, and remarked that newspaper reports of Parliamentary Walpole's defence would prove as weak proceedings. Let us recall a few ex- as his quotation was inaccurate, for amples, not in order, but as they occur Horace had written nullâ pallescere to memory. culpâ. Walpole defended his quotation, and Pulteney offered a wager of a guinea that he was right. The dispute was referred to Nicholas Hardinge, clerk of the House, a distinguished scholar, who decided that Walpole was wrong. The guinea was thrown to Pulteney, who caught it, and holding it up, said it was the only honest money that had come from the Treasury for many years! This guinea was deposited in the British Museum, accompanied by a full description of the incident in the handwriting of Pulteney. There is a recent order of the trustees of the museum that a selection of coins from the Medal Rooms should be exhibited to the public in open cases. Let us hope that this guinea, lost by Walpole for a false quotation, may be exhibited to the world. It will show to the young the use of knowing Latin, and of quoting it accurately, as was said in Mr. Pulteney's manuscript.

Lord North, an easy-going man of the world, used often to sit in the House asleep, or appearing to sleep. On one occasion, when Colonel Barré brought forward a motion on the navy, Lord North said to a friend at his side, "We are going to have a long, tedious speech, from the very beginning, not omitting Drake and the Spanish Armada. Let me sleep, and waken me when he comes near our own times." His friend at length gave him a nudge. "Where are we?" said North. "At the battle of La Hogue, my lord." "Oh, my friend, you have woke me a century too soon," was the reply, and he turned off again. But Lord North had once a more effective awakening. A speaker, in describing the state of the navy, said that "in the midst of these perils, the noble lord is asleep. Even Palinurus nodded at the helm !" The loud cheers and laughter caused by the happy quotation from Pope's "Dunciad" roused Lord North from his slumber.

Mr. Burke was declaiming once on the reckless extravagance of the ministry, and quoted the saying, Magnum vectigal est parsimonia, making a false

Coming down to later times, for we have space only for a few examples. No one ever excelled Lord Derby in happy quotations. In his well-known poem, "The New Timon," Lord Lytton, with his admirable sketches of men and events in the House, while he calls

Sir Francis Burdett, in his reply, took up the quotation, and said that D'Israeli's own quotations were the honorable gentleman had forgotten numerous and effective. In his series to quote the first line of the distich:

Certainly a happy reply to the quota

tion.

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Our space is exhausted, and with these few specimens we must leave the subject of happy quotations in Parliament. There are in our day many volumes of classical extracts, and books of familiar quotations," by aid of which speakers and writers may quote, with very little knowledge of the originals. It may also be remarked that, though ancient quotations are now seldom heard, there are occasions when a passage from our own English classics may be effectively used. We have heard lines and sentences, verba et voces, from Gray and Goldsmith, Cowper and Byron, Wordsworth and Tennyson, quoted and applauded as much as the older words of Virgil, Milton, and Shakespeare which delighted our forefathers in former times.

J. M.

A VEGETABLE PYTHON.

whole tree trunk is bound in a series of irregular living hoops. The strangler is now ready for its deadly work. The forest giant, like all exogens, must have room to increase in girth, and here he is bound by cords which are stronger than iron bands. Like an athlete, he tries to expand and burst his fetters, and if they were rigid he might succeed. . . . The bark bulges between every interlacing - bulges out, and even tries to overlap; but the monster has taken every precaution against this by making its bands very numerous and wide.

...

- Woe betide | ing out side branches which flow into and the forest giant when he falls into the amalgamate with each other until the clutches of the clusia or fig. Its seeds being provided with a pulp, which is very pleasant to the taste of a great number of birds, are carried from tree to tree and deposited on the branches. Here it germinates, the leafy stem rising upward and the roots flowing, as it were, down the trunk until they reach the soil. At first these aërial roots are soft and delicate, with apparently no more power for evil than so many small streams of pitch, which they resemble in their slowly flowing motion downward. Here and there they branch, especially if an obstruction is met with, As the tree becomes weaker its leaves when the stream either changes its course begin to fall, and this gives more room for or divides to right and left. Meanwhile its foe. Soon the strangler expands itself leafy branches have been developed, which into a great bush almost as large as the push themselves through the canopy above mass of branches and foliage it has effaced. and get into the light, where their growth. . . If we look carefully around us we see is enormously accelerated. As this takes examples of entire obliteration—a clusia, place the roots have generally reached the or fig, standing on its reticulated hollow ground and begun to draw sustenance from pillar, with only a heap of brown humus at below to strengthen the whole plant. its base to show what has become of the Then comes a wonderful development. trunk which once stood up in all its majThe hitherto soft aërial roots begin to esty on that spot. harden and spread wider and wider, throw

James Rodway, in the "Guiana Forest."