have been enlarged,; that they might keep pace with the growing wants and claims of a growing population. But if the numbers in a deliberative assembly are increased beyond the convenient sum, its proceedings retain less of the character of deliberation, and the assembly itself partakes of the heat and temper of a popular meeting.

MONTESINOS.

In the Commons especially the alloy of numbers has debased the old standard. The more numerous such an assembly is, the greater must be the proportion of men who have less pretensions, whether natural or adventitious, to be entrusted with so momentous a charge as that of the national interests.

SIR THOMAS MORE.

This is a consideration which should be borne in mind, wherever old governments are to be improved, or colonies founded. But there is another evil which every increase of the peerage in its consequences increases. The younger sons of noble houses were formerly disposed of in comfortable abbeys, if they did not take the course of rapine in the bloodier ages of Europe, or of maritime adventure when the age of discovery arrived. They now form a class of men whose claims cannot be overlooked by a govern

ment which is carried on wholly by influence, and has no other means of maintaining itself. They are not indeed in this country, either physically or intellectually, a degenerate class, (there are parts of Europe in which the twofold degradation is apparent.) Luxury has not effeminated them, nor is it considered a point of honour for men of quality to hold learning in contempt, as it was in my days, among some of the Italians.

MONTESINOS.

I have heard however of a knight of Malta, (remembered at Lisbon in my youth) who used to say in his English, I tank my God dat I 'never in all my life read a book dat was ticker 'dan my tum.' Our young fidalgos resemble this Cavalleiro as little as they do the Circassian gentry, whose habit of life it was, according to Tavernier, to sit still, say little, and do nothing*. The wind of fashion and the tide of society have set in, both, in a contrary direction; and literary accomplishments are now considered as hardly less essential for persons of a certain rank in life, than it was for them formerly to be skilled in arms. They show themselves therefore, ge

*Ceux qui tiennent parmi eux le rang de gentils-hommes, sont tout le jour sans rien faire, demeurent assis, et parlent fort peu.-lib. iii. c. 12.

nerally speaking, as diligent and as ambitious in their youthful studies, as those of their competitors who have nothing but their attainments and themselves to trust to for their success in the world.

SIR THOMAS MORE.

This I was about to say when you interrupted me with your knight of Malta; and to have remarked in sequence, that notwithstanding this, there is a great inconvenience in multiplying a class of men, who, independently of personal qualifications or merits, have on the score of their influential connections pretensions for employ and promotion in the public service, which being, as they are, valid to a certain extent, are not easily withstood when pushed beyond that extent, as they so frequently must be. The injurious effect of this has been felt abroad and at home, in your army and navy, in your colonies, your diplomacy, and, .. worse than any where else, because the miserable consequences of an unfit appointment are there, though less immediately, more permanently felt,.. in your church establishment.

MONTESINOS.

This inconvenience is surely part of the price which must be paid for the blessing of a government so balanced and so guarded, that we can

neither, on the one hand, be oppressed by the reckless obstinacy of an arbitrary will; nor on the other, hurried into disgraceful and iniquitous courses by the violence of popular counsels.

SIR THOMAS MORE.

It is so; but it is also the reason why the French government has always been served by abler agents than yours. And though a price must necessarily be paid for what you rightly deem a blessing, there is no necessity that the price should be so large. A minister, before he swells the peerage for any other cause than that of great and manifest desert, should bear in mind that by so doing he weakens the government in the worst way, and is adding to a burden which clogs it more than the national debt.

150

COLLOQUY XIII.

THE RIVER GRETA.-TRADE.-POPULATION.-COLONIES.

St.

OUR Cumberland river Greta has a shorter course than even its Yorkshire namesake. John's beck and the Glenderamaken take this name at their confluence, close by the bridge, three miles east of Keswick, on the Penrith road. The former issues from Leatheswater, in a beautiful sylvan spot, and proceeds by a not less beautiful course for some five miles through the vale from which it is called to the place of junction. The latter, receiving the streams from Bowscale and Threlkeld tarns, brings with it the waters from the southern side of Blencathra. The Greta then flows toward Keswick; receives on its way the Glenderaterra first, . . which brings down the western waters of Blencathra, and those from Skiddaw forest,.. then the smaller stream from Nathdale; makes a wide sweep behind the town, and joins the Derwent, under Derwent Hill, about a quarter of a mile from the town, and perhaps half that distance from the place where that river flows out of the lake; but