the great men of the City of London will have it, of the world, whether we have arrived at such a point of civilization as to enjoy a fair share of liberty? In this, which ought to be the model city of England and the world, an example to all other civic communities, our cherished pride and boast, have we attained to true liberty?

First as to freedom from disease, have we achieved that? No, we have not. We are barbarians still; and, at our present rate of progress, shall continue such for a century to come. We still groan under the dirt-tyranny under foot, the filthtyranny under ground, and the smoke-tyranny in the air. The only people that have any real freedom are the people who should abate these nuisances. The parochial authorities are free to leave the thoroughfares pavements, and crossings unswept; the sewers commission to keep the drainage in statu quo; the manufacturers to fill the atmosphere with clouds of smoke; the pavingcommissioners to destroy and remake our thoroughfares at pleasure; the water companies to stint us in our supply of water; the Board of Health to fold their hands in resignation over the Interment Bill. The era of true civilization, when Art shall bring Nature back into the cities from which she has been so rudely expelled, and we shall revel again in the full enjoyment of light, air, and water, to the contentment of our rearts and the preservation of our health, is, alas! but too far distant.

Difficult! Yes, it is difficult. It always was, and it always will be, difficult to get anything well done. There are competent officials to be appointed, and fractious ratepayers to be kept in good humour. As to officials, who can be brought to be lieve in the competency of parochial boards? No one in his senses has a very exalted opinion of their talent. A Londoner must be simply demented to expect good serviceable work in the matter of paving, lighting, and cleansing from the fourscore paving-boards of the metropolis, or the nineteen paving-boards of barbarous and benighted St. Pancras. Four-score staffs to be paid for tyrannizing in inefficient ignorance over the roadways of the

metropolis are enough to dishearten any one. And when quarter-day comes round, with taxes for doing such work so badly, amounting, for a man of moderate means, to five pounds or more per annum, with perhaps twice that amount of poorrate, raised, among other things, for the purpose of perpetuating the race of paupers, the most tolerant and squeezable of mortals looks very blank at the thought of an augmented sewer's-rate or a new interment-rate, or any other impost, calculated though it be to save a future shilling by the sacrifice of a present penny. To go back for a moment to our fourscore paving-boards. Is it not monstrous that the crossings of our streets, which, be it recollected, are part and parcel of the pavement properly so called, instead of being swept clean by honest workmen honestly paid fair wages, must be left to the tender mercies of mendicant street-sweepers, to the disgust and mortification of every man who has a becoming sense of the evils of mendicancy, and the tyranny of being followed close at the heels by an unrelenting persecutor in rags. If these careless functionaries have no pity upon men who can fight their own battles, surely they ought to have some consideration for the unprotected female,' who has no alternative but to submit to a fine or endure persecution. Then, what are the police about? or, if the police have no power to interfere, what is our national Palaver doing, that the most crowded thoroughfares and most perilous crossings in the world are to be obstructed by every quack who takes it into his head to tyrannize over his neighbours by building a huge box on wheels, covering it with sheets of printed paper, and moving it through the streets at the rate of a mile an hour? Is it not enough that our omnibuses are allowed to cover themselves inside and out with advertisements, till they look for all the world like tattered beggars changed by enchantment into lifeless vehicles, wearing torn paper instead of rags?

Then, again, to return to the pavements, as if it were not enough to have every crossing in the hands of the beggars, we must needs have the streets themselves disfigured in the

same disgraceful way. Figure to yourself a gentlewoman, with a conscience, and some little instruction in the truth of things, the duty of self-restraint, and the true meaning of the holy word charity-figure to yourself, I say, this gentle creature followed for half-a-mile, and tormented by the disgusting sham which she has encountered in the same spot perchance every time she has had the courage to walk out since it was her misfortune to live in London. A ragged boy or girl, or a slattern of an English woman is bad enough, but an Irish woman, or worse still, an Irish man of the true beggar breed, with his accent of mixed entreaty and threat! think of that wretched being as the compulsory companion of a gentle lady's promenade. Does not every man who has a heart grieve for her. Does not every man who has one emotion of gallantry left feel his hand folding up of itself, and the sinews of his arm tightening as he witnesses this abominable tyranny? Does not every man who has a true English feeling left within him, blush for a country and a metropolis in which such things are possible? But is there no help for it? Cannot the police interfere to stop this infringement upon the true liberty of the subject? If they can interfere, it is clear they do not do so. We all know that begging is illegal, and the act of begging punishable. We know, too, that the beggar may be given in charge to the police; but the dificulty is to find these gentry when they are wanted, and to find the time for prosecuting the offender afterwards. A law is not worth having which is not easier of execution than that. Everybody feels, too, by a sort of instinct, that the law is unjust, so long as it punishes only one party to the offence-which imprisons the tempted, and lets the true criminal, the indiscriminate almsgiver (the Soft Tommy,' or "Tumbler of the mendicant's grateful vocabulary) gofree. Depend upon it, we shall make no step towards the true liberty of the pavé, till we fine the giver as we imprison the receiver.

The reader of Fraser has heard

these sentiments before, and if the powers that rule her pages do not interfere, they will hear them again. It is no small credit to a periodical to be the first propounder of a good theory; and many of the readers of these pages will remember that before the great leader of the daily press thundered forth against the beggars, Fraser had blown the monthly trumpet of warning, and taught the world the true secret of mendicancy in the Plague of

Beggars.'t Will no benevolent person republish that essay in a cheap form, and send it forth as an antidote to the poison of mock-philanthropy? Something ought to be done. It is high time to move in this matter when the City of London, with the Worshipful the Lord Mayor in the chair, and Mr. Charles Cochrane and M. Alexis Soyer as his instructors, can hit upon no better method of checking mendicancy than importing the nuisance of Leicester Square into the sacred precincts of the City. It is all very well for M. Soyer to assure us that there is no difficulty whatever in supplying an unlimited quantity of cheap soup. The magnates of the city, by the bye, would seem, of all people in the world, to stand least in need of such teaching; as the production of soup on the large scale is an art in which our citizens already excel. With a boiler large enough, and meat, vegetables, spices, and water in quantities liberal enough, and coals without stint, there can be no difficulty in supplying soup to every vagabond that can make up a face, and muster a befitting costume to ask for it. The City of London could contrive with equal ease to supply a bowl of the best turtle to every welldressed gentleman or lady who would consent to take it as a gift. The money to buy the soup is the only difficulty; and those who know their right hand from their left will wait till these wise philanthropists are able to assure them that this mendicant soup supply will not be taken out of the fund which belongs to the honest working man, as every farthing does that is spent in any way-ay, even in turtle-soup and venison. There

tumultuously from one part of the two cities to another, as the misgivings of individuals, taken up at random, swelled into rumours, while every insignificant item of intelligence was distorted and magnified into an appalling event. At one time, the shouts of the populace were hushed into absolute silence, as the tale crept from lip to lip that Jellachich had left his cantonments-that he was marching upon the capitalthat the Croats were at Stuhlweissenburg. Again it was said that an Austrian conspiracy had been 'discovered. The commander of

Buda intended to steal the Hungarian crown, the crown of St. Stephen, and the Regalia, which, in the minds of the people, were connected with so many cherished traditions and wild superstitions. The crown of St. Stephen was to be taken to Vienna! As the populace turned in horror and dismay to oppose this sacrilegious intention, it was met by another distorted fact. Count Lamberg, the dictator, was at Buda - the commander of the fortress submitted to his authority— he had ordered the gates to be closed the batteries were about to open upon Pesth and the Parliament House. As this news was carried through the crowd with the rapidity of lightning, the infuriated people, uttering wild cries, and brandishing their swords, pikes, scythes, and pickaxes, rushed to the bridge, to occupy the fortress and prevent the closing of the gates.

On the bridge they met Count Lamberg, on his way to Pesth, where he intended to announce his mission to the parliament. He was recognised, and dragged into the road. He had been denounced by Kossuth and sentenced by the parliament.

In

vain did the unfortunate man sue for mercy; vainly did he plead his duty and his master's orders; and vainly was the Emperor's decree, with the Sovereign's seal and sign manual, held forth by his trembling hands. It was a scene of unutterable confusion: a storm of oaths, the clatter of arms, a long, piercing death cry-and as the dense masses parted and rolled back, they dragged the Emperor's representative at their heels-a distorted and

mangled corpse. The murderers

ran through the streets of Pesth showing their blood-stained weapons, and one man, it is asserted, entered the Parliament House, with his sword still reeking with the blood of the victim.

There can be no doubt that the death of Count Lamberg at Pesth, as well as the assassination of the Prince Lichnowsky and Major Auerswald at Frankfort, are chargeable on the absurd interpretation of the doctrine of popular sovereignty, which in 1848

was

rife throughout the countries of the continent. The advocates and

parasites of popular power had so long and so loudly proclaimed that the will of the sovereign people was a sacred law, and that the people's will was the voice of God, which must be right, that every part and fraction of the people claimed the sanctity of inspiration for its whims, passions, and prejudices. But the burden of the guilt does not lie only on the agitators of that fatal period: no! part of it falls on those who, by precept and example, accustomed the continental nations to consider sovereign power, no matter with whom it rested, entitled to defy all laws, human and divine, and to believe that the strong hand must do right, whatever it may do. Those who accuse Mr. Kossuth of directing the weapon which struck down Count Lamberg, ought not to spare Francis II., who forged it.

There is no evidence to show that Mr. Kossuth and the members of the Pesth parliament instigated the populace to the murder of Count Lamberg, although they placed themselves in the position of accessories after the fact.' They voted, indeed, an address to the Emperor, lamenting the unfortunate accident, and they instructed the magistrates of Pesth to arrest and punish the assassins. But even Mr. Kossuth's warmest admirers cannot pretend that due diligence was used in the execution of this decree; for the assassins were allowed to go at large and boast of their crime. So notorious were they, that, at a later period, they were with the greatest ease captured, tried, and convicted by the Austrian authorities.

What Mr. Kossuth's friends can plead in extenuation of this culpable

were opposed by the national guards of Tolna, and finally compelled to surrender to an Hungarian corps of 6000 men, under Colonel M. Perczel, and Major Arthur Georgey. On the 6th of October, these two young officers received the swords of two generals, and fifty-one officers of various grades, and returned to Pesth with 8000 prisoners, twelve pieces of artillery, and a large number of baggage and ammunition wagons. Another Croatian force of 3000 men, which had been left in charge of the depôts of Gross and Klein Kansisha, was attacked and routed by the national guards of the countries of Zala and Eisenburg. Of the 40,000 troops which the Ban Jellachich led into Hungary, he brought but 15,000 into Austria; and so poor and neglected was the condition of this remnant, that the disaffected among the Viennese used to say that the Ban's soldiers had lost their shoes by dint of hard running.

The court and the cabinet had, meanwhile, presumed to anticipate Jellachich's success. His own reports and bulletins caused them to believe him marching from victory to victory. So great was the confidence of the leader and his officers, that they issued instructions to have their letters sent to Pesth. The Ban

announced on the 28th of September, that Buda and Pesth were to be occupied within the next three days. His dispatches to that effect reached Vienna simultaneously with the news of the assassination of Count Lamberg. To reward the success of their ally, and to retaliate upon the people which defied the court and murdered its agents, it was resolved to strike another, and this time a decisive blow against the cabinet, the parliament, and the nationality of Hun

and command,' was to be considered

as ordered, regulated, determined, and commanded' by the Emperor himself. Letters were at the same time addressed to the military commanders in Hungary, ordering them to obey the Ban's instructions in all things, and to subject all their measures to his approval. Care was taken to defeat the constitutional opposition of the Pesth parliament by a strict adherence to forms; and Baron Recsey, a lieutenant in the guards, consented, for a donation of 16007., to endorse these arbitrary and violent edicts. The rest, it was thought, might safely be left to the victorious Jellachich. But as some resistance was expected in the Magyar districts, measures were taken to convey troops and artillery into Hungary. These auxiliaries were to leave Vienna on the 6th of October. On their march through the town, they were surrounded by a mob, and entreated not to fight against the Hungarians, since the Austrian liberties were bound up with those of Hungary. The soldiers wavered and hesitated. The officers in command urged them on. Violent language was resorted to: blows followed. Some companies fired upon the populace, others supported the people. A frightful carnage ensued. The labourers, national guards, and students, supported by the mutineers, put the troops to flight, stormed the arsenal and the War-office, and killed Count Latour, the secretary at war, whose duplicity and treasonable correspondence with Jellachich, though long suspected, had but lately been exposed. The Emperor and his family fled to Moravia in the course of the night, and on the morning of the 7th October, when the fugitive Ban approached Vienna, he was met by the news of a successful revolution.

Foremost among the charges which the Austrian writers in the cabinet and the press have advanced against the Hungarian parliament, stands the accusation that the Vienna revolution and the assassination of Count Latour were provoked by Hungarian advice and bribes. The Count Louis Batthyanyi, in particu lar, has been charged with having, by means of Francis Pulszky, notoriously the least scrupulous and