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the most real aspects of thy wide dominion, see no trophy of idle vanity, but a silent indication, whether designed or not, of the possible grandeur enshrined in thy nature; which realize to the extent of thy power,

woman,

'And show us how divine a thing

A woman may become.'

Precisely at this stage of my advancement I was, and but just entered on that revolution which I have described, when, as I have said, I became a resident in the family of Lord C. Lady C. was a beautiful and still youthful who acted upon me powerfully through the newborn feelings I have described, and would have done much more so, had she not been known to me from my childhood. A young Irish peeress, who was visiting at the same time in this family, aided Lady C.'s purposes in stimulating my ambition upon all the paths which interest the sympathies of woman. Lady C. was anxious that I should become a sort of Alcibiades, or Aristippus, of ambidexterous powers, and capable of shining equally in little things and in great. Accordingly, whilst I taught her Greek enough to read the Greek Testament, she took measures for my instruction in such accomplishments as were usually possessed by the men of her circle. In particular, she was anxious that I should become a good shot; and, for this purpose, put me under the care of one of her husband's gamekeepers. Duly, for many weeks, I accompanied the zealous keeper into the L-xt-n woods, and did my best to improve. But my progress was slow indeed; and at last my eyes opened clearly to the fact, that my destiny was not in that direction which could command the ordinary sympathies of this world or of woman, even though accomplished woman, moving under common and popular impulses. My sense of Lady C.'s kindness made me persevere in all

the exercisings and pursuits which she had originated, so long as I remained at L-xt-n. But, internally, I felt that my sphere was not exactly what she pointed out to my ambition, nor the prizes which glittered before my eyes exactly such as almost any woman could be expected to understand. Even then, in the depths of those Northamptonshire woods and ridings, oftentimes I exclaimed internally, that, if it were possible for me to work some great revolution for man, or to put in motion some great agency upon man's condition, equal, for example, in power and duration, to that wrought by Mahomet, I would set a value upon fame. But else, and as respected the little trivial baubles of literary or social honors; were these only at my disposal, whether it were through defect of power in myself, or defect of opportunity, in that case, I would prefer to pass silently through life, by quiet paths, and without rousing any babbling echo to my footsteps. Vulgar ambition was already dead within me. And living as I did at this time with two young matrons of rank, both emphatically fine young women, and one a celebrated beauty, who had seen the first men of the day at her feet, and grateful in the liveliest degree, to persons of so much distinction, for the interest they condescended to show in my future fortunes, I grieved that it should be so. However, I dissembled, and lost no part of their regard. And, meantime, one great advantage incident to my present situation, I took good care to cultivate as much as was possible. Northamptonshire, partly from its adjacency to the finest sporting grounds in England, and partly from its relation to the capital, (the distance even at that day being easily accomplished between breakfast and dinner,) is crowded with a denser resort of the aristocracy than any other part of the island. Lord C. was absent at his Irish estates in Limerick and perhaps her own taste

would have led Lady C. to stay much at home. But, with a view to the amusement of her young Irish friends, Lord and Lady M-sy, but chiefly the latter, she accepted invitations almost daily. Lord M-sy was often called away to London or Ireland; but I was the invariable attendant of the two ladies; and thus, under Lady C.'s protection, I came to see the English aristocracy, the great Houses of Belvoir, (pronounced Beevor,) Burleigh, &c., and the crowds of subordinate families, with their winter visiters, more extensively than ever I had seen the aristocracy of Ireland; and this with a freedom of intercourse which would not have been conceded to me at a more advanced age.

CHAPTER VI.

TRAVELLING.

THE revolution in the system of travelling, naturally suggested by my position in Birmingham, and in the whole apparatus, means, machinery, and dependencies of that system a revolution begun, carried through, and perfected within the period of my own personal experience merits a word or two of illustration in the most cursory memoirs that profess any attention at all to the shifting scenery of the age and the principles of motion. at work, whether manifested in great effects or in little. And these particular effects, though little, when regarded in their separate details, are not little in their final amount. On the contrary, I have always maintained that in a representative government, where the great cities of the empire must naturally have the power, each in its proportion, of reacting upon the capital and the councils of the nation in so conspicuous a way, there is a result waiting on the final improvements of the arts of travelling, and of transmitting intelligence with velocity, such as cannot be properly appreciated in the absence of all historical experience. Conceive a state of communication between the centre and the extremities of a great people, kept up with a uniformity of reciprocation so exquisite as to imitate the flowing and ebbing of the sea, or the systole and diastole of the human heart; day and

night, waking and sleeping, not succeeding to each other with more absolute certainty than the acts of the metropolis and the controlling notice of the provinces, whether in the way of support or of resistance. Action and reaction from every point of the compass being thus perfect and instantaneous, we should then first begin to understand, in a practical sense, what is meant by the unity of a political body, and we should approach to a more adequate appreciation of the powers which are latent in organization. For it must be considered that hitherto, under the most complex organization, and that which has best attained its purposes, the national will has never been able to express itself upon one in a thousand of the public acts, simply because the national voice was lost in the distance, and could not collect itself through the time and the space rapidly enough to connect itself immediately with the evanescent measure of the moment. But as the system of intercourse is gradually expanding, these bars of space and time are in the same degree contracting, until finally we may expect them altogether to vanish: and then the whole empire, in every part, will react upon the whole through the central forces, with the power, life, and effect of immediate conference amongst parties brought face to face. Then first will be seen a political system truly organic — i. e. in which each acts upon all, and all react upon each: and a new earth will arise from the indirect agency of this merely physical revolution.

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The reader whose birth attaches him to this present generation, having known only Macadamized roads, cannot easily bring before his imagination the antique and almost aboriginal state of things which marked our travelling system down to the end of the eighteenth century, and nearly through the first decennium of the present. very few lines will suffice for a few broad notices of

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