always have borrowed in an honourable independence. Yet it is curious that these two negatives, the beggar and the thief, make up that grand affirmative, the Borrower. It is simply so. How weak the elements that compose this strong and subtle spirit! Anybody can beg, anybody can steal; but to unite the two—to BORRow, requires profound genius.

Now the world, as we daily see, is full of profound genius.

THE MAN WHO BELONGS TO NO PARTY.

THIS gentleman is the living personification of the Malaprop Cerberus; three gentlemen at once. He is Tory, Whig, and Radical, and belongs to neither party. In his excess of impartiality he joins all three, and discards them in turn. The three goddesses are continually contending on the little Mount Ida of his imagination, and each wins the prize once a-day. At breakfast Sir Robert Peel is unanswerable; by dinnertime, Lord John has stammered out something convincing; and with the third bottle, O'Connell reels in, to the air of "See the conquering hero comes." He is a more exquisite monster than that of the enchanted island, for he has three voices; and if he had three votes would give one to each party, to preserve the balance, and prove his independence.

His is a comfortable creed, for it entirely excludes the workings of that antiquated inconvenience called a conscience. The man who belongs to no party can support each in succession, without damage to his character. Deviate as he may from the direct path, he cannot forfeit his consistency. It is his privilege, and his only, to take that course upon every occasion which his inclinations or his interests point out. He it is

who can, with perfect impunity, with no possibility of impeachment, allow fair play to be the first law of nature, that of self-preservation. He is bound by no principle but that which is comprised in the duty of "taking care of yourself." That he considers to be the Whole Duty of Man. Teach us that, he thinks, and you have taught us all. If every subject would but fulfil that duty, if every individual only knew how to "take care of himself," the doctrine of perfectibility would be no longer a dream, and the Millennium no longer moonshine.

It is one of his maxims, that the man who is indifferent to his own interests can have no concern about those of other people. If he be unmindful of himself, how can he be thinking of his fellow-creatures? And yet, he remarks, nothing is more common than to hear self-sacrifices lauded. People not only neglect their duty towards themselves and abandon the very interests they are most bound to guard; but afterwards they walk abroad into the public streets and proclaim what they have done; as though there were nothing criminal, but something glorious, in inflicting injury upon a human being. Nay, so strong is this delusion, that the very people (and this indeed is curious) the very people who are prone to take care of themselves, are generally the first to boast their self-sacrifices. The innocent absolutely stand self-accused, and beg to be condemned, quite glad to be even suspected of the very folly they would be ashamed to commit.

Amongst these you will not find the "Man of no Party." He is a gentleman of too much decision of character; too upright and too downright. According to his creed, that man is the true patriot who never misses an opportunity of serving himself; he alone is the real lover of his country who constantly devotes his

mind, through good and ill report, to the prosperous working out of his own individual ends.

Although these ends may be often attained by an obstinate attachment to a particular party, and the shallow think this the certain way; they are only to be effectually accomplished through the medium of a delicate independence of all parties, and this the cunning know. Independence is nothing more than a sense of dependence suppressed; as contentment is the art of hiding your desires, or as innocence is guilt undetected. The man of no party, then, is independent, because he contrives to conceal the fact that all parties are essential to him. Concealing that, he becomes essential to all parties. Now suppose him to make choice of one; directly he does so, he ceases to be of consequence. He is a convert to the right creed, and is never heard of afterwards. A party cannot afford to reward a friend whose suffrages it is sure of for nothing. It is throwing a good thing away to bestow it where it has been earned; favours in the political world should be employed to bribe, and not to recompense. He is a party-man, and must look for his reward in the triumph of his cause. With his party he must vote, right or wrong; that is, for or against his own interests, being equally sure of receiving no indemnification from the other side. He has made up his mind, and he may die a beggar when he likes. His opinions are known, his vote certain; there is an end of him.

But look at him as he is, a Man of no Party; joining either of the three when it suits him, bound fast to none, an object of desire to all:

"What more felicity can fall to creature

Than to enjoy delight with liberty?"

He is a creature who has both; whose movements are

matters of importance, whose intentions are universally speculated upon. Everybody is curious about his opinion on the subject, because it is only to be guessed at; everybody wants to know what he thinks, because he has not made up his mind; everybody conceives his vote to be of consequence, because they wonder on which side it will be given. Each party fancies him its own, and "the eyes of Europe are upon him." Meantime he saunters from side to side, prying into everything and looking out for the shortest and surest path to his own advantage:

"There he arriving round about doth flie,

And takes survey with busie, curious eye,
Now this, now that, he tasteth tenderly—”

deciding at last according to his sovereign will and pleasure. He has no predilections, no prejudices; he is bound to no pledge, trammelled by no party; he is himself alone, and is like no brother; he can do what he likes with his own opinion and his own vote; the minister going out and the minister coming in are the same to him; he is a free-born, independent Englishman, who proves his anxiety for others by taking care of himself, and his good wishes for the interests of his country by assiduously promoting his own.

THE ANTI-PUNSTER.

THE man who would scruple to make a pun would not hesitate to commit a burglary. Why we think so, we don't know; but we have just as much right to our opinion that there is a direct connection between a dislike of puns and a taste for burglaries, as Dr. Johnson had to his, when he chose, most arbitrarily and alliteratively, to confound a pun perpetrated with a pocket to be picked.

The anti-punster is the incarnation of the spirit of intolerance. His aversion knows no cold medium. He has no mercy for the man who differs from him, on the point of a pun. He is a man of one idea, and that, though an odd one certainly, is no joke. His singleness of apprehension cannot stand the shock of a doublemeaning. One is as much as he can manage to comprehend; and he can no more stand up against the force and confusion of two, than he could brave the discharge of a double-barrelled gun at his head. Besides, he regards a pun as a most reckless and extravagant waste of meaning. He would rather you used a word that meant nothing. "True no-meaning" does not puzzle him more than wit; and a passage that leads to nothing, affords him more profit and recreation than an insane attempt to walk in two paths at a time,

"Like to a man on double business bound,
Who both neglects."

He would infinitely prefer a stroll in the dark through grounds beset with traps and spring-guns, to joining in conversation with a punster. He resents an unprovoked quibble as a personal insult. He never called anybody out on this score, because, in his opinion, a man once convicted of a premeditated pun has forfeited all claim to be treated as a gentleman; but he never fails to kick. the offender down-stairs, with his mind's foot. Horatio, having discovered that his eldest son had called the cock an ornithological Cerberus-three birds at once, his throat being a swallow, and his voice a crowthreatened to cut the culprit off with a shilling; and ascertaining that the young wag had remarked upon the difficulty of "cutting off" a son with a shilling, a shilling being undeniably "blunt," he put his threat into execution. He sneers. at Shakspeare as an inspired