chafed nobody, because of the good understand-delights in art and nature. I naturally had at ing between prince and people. Three-fourths once a seat and voice in the ministry, and, of this people are the moderately well-to-do being active, trained to business, besides regard occupants of the plain, who had gradually been ing as an impartial stranger the men and maacquiring an independence of their own, as the chinery of state, it was easy to see the strong nobles gave less and less attention to the ma. and the weak points of the government. From nagement of their estates, and lived chiefly at my earliest youth, says this duke, I gave court. The other fourth part consists of the almost instinctive allegiance to liberal demoruder inhabitants of the mountain, and the cratic principles. I was, in the right sense of townsfolk, whose industry had been for the the word, a child of my time. In month-long century repressed by interference of their guilds, visits to Paris, London, and especially Brussels, and who are still too much the listless followers where we two brothers dwelt for the purpose of of custom. This state of affairs endured through-study, our family position and our own impulses out the French revolution, the wars of the Em- had easily brought us into intellectual interpire, and the German war of liberty. Gotha remained, therefore, a little patriarchal state when in the year 'twenty-six the line of its own dukes became extinct, and after much controversy Gotha, parted from Altenburg, was joined to Coburg under the rule of my father. We are not quoting Duke Ernest verbally, but are giving his published thoughts, and in the first person. My father, energetic and independent, was not received with enthusiasm by the all-powerful bureaucracy of Gotha, which dreaded interference with its privileges, while there was fear also that Gotha would sink into the position of a secondary capital, for the duke must reside also at Coburg. My father, although active, keen-witted, and energetic, was too personally amiable to leave an opposition unconciliated. He overcame great difficulties, and, without disturbing the old course of things, put fresh life into every branch of the government. He was the father of his people, and of much of the prosperity that Gotha now enjoys he was the founder. But he had been born in days of revolution and political catastrophe; he had spent his youth rather in the camp than in the university; modern theories and philosophical views of life and history were strange to him; he was a practical man who opposed every political theorist. Yet for all that he had been the first German prince who (in 'twenty-one) gave to his land (Coburg Saalfeld) a form of liberal constitution. The patriarchal system was destroyed in Coburg when neither prince nor people had in their hearts the spark of an idea of true constitutional government. The result was in Coburg much trouble and dissension, with the growth of a rough democracy as the weed proper to ill-tilled political soil. In Gotha, on the other hand, all went in the old way pleasantly. Gotha was, therefore, the favourite care of my father, and the disorder on the other side of the Thuringian forest was all laid by him at the door of constitutional government, which had had its trial and failed under it. There was a time, we remember, when a son of the same father told us that in England constitutional government was on its trial. So matters stood, says Duke Ernest, when, after an absence of six years, not counting short visits, I came home at my father's request, in the year 'forty-two. My father and I were one in affection, one in aspiration, sharing the same course with notable men, who were not exactly, like Quetelet, our teachers; for example, the two Brouckères, Gerlache, the two brothers Bulwer, Arivabeni, Berger, Count Arconati, and others. Interest in political questions had early been awakened in us, and I went to the University of Bonn with my mind made up and in direct opposition to the reactionary aristocratic views of the professors. It is easily to be understood that when I went home I must often oppose in the cabinet narrow-minded action of an official world, liberal only in name; and although, out of respect for my father, I did not break with the men I opposed, I let them see my mind so clearly that they were little disposed to be my friends. There were few people of real mark then in Gotha. I was obliged to look abroad for higher intercourse, while there were men at home not disposed to forget it if I failed to take them at the valuation they would set upon themselves. The two happy years between my marriage and my father's death, in January, 'forty-four, I spent at home or in travel. When my father's death added to my responsibilities, I began work on a defined plan. Above all, peace was to be restored in Coburg; constitutionalism preserved there, and the jarring interests honestly reconciled. The task was hard, but I succeeded so well that the storms of eighteen 'forty-eight left us unhurt. To do that I had to put aside a whole ministry, and to break with the bureaucratic aristocracy. Every change made in so small a state is felt as an affair of persons rather than of inevitable policy. To this hour there remains the coldness against me of many members of these offended families. In a lower rank, also, the noisy demagogues, sent back into the quiet of their families, deplored their lost importance, and could not forgive the constitutional duke by whom it was taken from them. They kept up in a smaller way their trade of fomenting irritations, and thus partly they still influence the poorest. But the poorest class is prejudiced against me by a more important accident of my position. My father and my predecessors having absolute command of the revenues, were the ostensible and immediate benefactors in all cases of public expenditure from which the poor derived benefit. They were looked up to for the direct support of public undertakings where now there is interposed between the duke and the people a constitutional ministry; every public gift has to be countersigned by a minister, and every doit must be accounted for. For this reason, in a small country, if the ruler happens to be benevolent and active, the patriarchal system is, on the whole, best; but all depends, be it observed, upon the ruler's cha racter. We have in Gotha three groups of the popu lation: 1. Nobles, state pensioners, &c.; 2. The well-to-do citizens, with the whole body of the bureaucracy; 3. The smaller mechanics, and the people here, as elsewhere whose, condition is not one easily to give content. Group one sees in me the personification of the revolutionary work of 'forty-eight, and makes me answerable where it had only itself to thank. It cannot forgive any abolitions of bedchamber lords and pages; that the court, which is my house, is open to every one whom, for his worth or in obedience to usage, I think proper to invite. It offends them, also, that I do not claim divine right for my actions. On In Gotha, for a little time, I left things as I found them. But the difficulty of applying a different rule to two neighbouring districts became felt, and I earnestly wished also to bring the ministry of Gotha into harmony with right political principles. I met with a settled opposition from the ministry, the host of officials, and even a majority of the townspeople of Gotha. The nobility at once set me down for Group two includes what are called the its worst enemy, and the saying was current modern liberals, and many of these liberals that in the duchy of Gotha there was but one who will make no sacrifice for their cause. democrat-the duke. I expressed my constitu- this group I should be able to place my chief tional ideas at the opening of the Diet in 'forty-reliance, but I cannot. The old prince, whom six, and raised so general a cry that nothing men could put to their private uses when they for the moment could be done. With deep got his ear, is gone, and they are referred to a sorrow I foresaw the coming political storms in responsible ministry, which they must propitiate Germany, and laboured among high and low to but cannot bribe, for they must propitiate the explain that wholesome reforms are to be made duke also who keeps personal watch and check only in time of peace. I was only the more over affairs; so there is every difficulty put in bitterly opposed. the way of family considerations and the public following of private wishes. The duke is too impartial to be popular, especially where, as in all small capitals, men and women are split into many antagonistic cliques. Mere physical pleasures were too exclusively indulged in. I tried to awaken in Gotha a more intellectual life, with only partial success. Many took it ill that in an open meeting, where weekly papers were volunteered on scientific questions, I myself read rather a long paper on Psychology and Anthropology. Group three would like me were I hostile to groups one and two, but it has little regard for a liberality that gives no unjust advantage to the poorer democrat over his richer neighbour. I went to Berlin in January, 'forty-eight, and family affairs carried me thence to England, ex- In every one of the three groups I have many pectant of the impending troubles. When the isolated friends who form no phalanx of supFrench government fell I was in England, and porters, and who are too sensible to waste much travelling back home by day and night, came at time in noisy argument. These usually, when the right hour into Gotha, where, by proclama- they hear detraction, will, for comfort's sake, pass tion and amnesty, issued on the very night of it by on the other side. So the detraction and the my arrival, I quieted a people that was claiming gossip have their way in Gotha. I am not proud of me, by way of revolution, what, during the enough to be indifferent to this, common failing past four years, it had refused to let me give as it is among our good Germans; but I think them in the way of peace. We outlived the I have so far done my duty that I may set in dangers of that time; but I stood, for months, my own favour the good word of a patriot literally alone. The official world was paralysed; against the declamation of a tavern politician. well-meaning folks were dumb. But my per- As to free opinion, I frankly say that while I sonal influence being allowed to suffice, we will be accessible to every honest word adended in festival the revolutionary days, and dressed to me with a true motive, I will always men knew then or cared so little what they re-enforce the laws against unjust judgments and joiced about, that communities afterwards came false, injurious assertions. But there is much to me for lease of the chases that had been made slanderous chatter that no law can touch, among wholly over to them. The cries of the day died which I reckon the too common assumption that out of hearing, every man looked to his own the Diet of Gotha is packed with officials. Study provincial interests, and in a few months I and the list of deputies and see the contrary; though a few persons of like opinions were the only it is true that where there is no right public inmen in Gotha with minds really active in a pa-terest in the elections the best public represen triotic German sense. The wide German popu-tatives are hardly to be found. larity of the war in Schleswig was not enjoyed Although I am thus isolated in my own land by it in Gotha. I, as its soldier, was received I do not part myself from the people. I believe more coldly in my own Gotha than in any other town through which we passed. There remains in Gotha the same indifference to German interests, and for my own devotion to them since eighteen 'fifty, I have not had the good will of my people. that without the sympathies of the people no man can do them solid service. It is detestable to cultivate the vulgar arts of popularity; without them, between a people and its leader there should be mutual trust, mutual kindness of interpretation, and the people that would make the work of its leader fruitful for its own good should itself protect his name from aspersion, and support his efforts with a wholesome strength of opinion. For good and for bad there are, in fewer words, the whole contents of the yellow pamphlet that has jaundiced many a high aristocratic German eye, royal and noble, and that should interest England, with its curious photograph of the political condition of the Germans; for the people of Gotha are but as the people of Vienna or Berlin. It should interest England also in her Majesty's most excellent brotherin-law, and make us all wish the day long distant when Prince Alfred succeeds to his ducal throne. AN UNREPORTED SPEECH. portfolio of drawings, but this does not happen often after all. But, sir, in the case of music, we find ourselves altogether in a different position. While, as I have pointed out, literature and art both wait till we seek them, and let us alone if we let them alone, music is altogether of a less retiring character, comes to us often uninvited, often continues with us unsolicited, and sometimes even refuses to withdraw its beneficent influences when directly requested to do so. As to its coming to us uninvited, I suppose there is no member of this House who cannot remember many occasions when he has found himself in a society where music has come upon him-if I may so speak-without his having any voice in the matter. He has been taking a hand at whist, we will say, and has been getting on successfully, he has a good knowledge of his partner's cards, and can make one or two shrewd I WISH with all my heart that some gentleman surmises as to his adversary's trumps-sudwould "get up in his place in parliament" when denly the first notes of a symphony make themnext it meets, and, having caught the Speaker's selves heard, and in a very short time he begins eye, would direct that brilliant orb towards cer- to find himself all abroad; his partner's trumps tain dark spots in the social life of the present and his adversary's become mixed up in his day, certain blemishes in our civilisation which mind, and his enjoyment of the game is over. decidedly want looking to:-Sir, he might say, I give this trifling example of the case I have calling attention at once to one of the very asserted, that music often comes to us unworst of these blemishes, I wish to say a few invited. That it frequently remains with us words on the subject of music. I think that unsolicited is equally easy to prove. It is not anything, be it an art, a science, or what not, unfrequently the case that a lady or gentleman occupying so high a social position, and possess--and it must be owned that gentlemen, when ing so great a social influence among us as they do sit down to the piano, most often offend music undoubtedly does, I consider, I say, that in this sort-it is frequently the case, I say, that any such thing is a fit and appropriate subject to an individual will establish himself on the musicclaim the attention of this honourable House, stool and will remain wedded to that piece of and that it is in no wise derogatory to this furniture long after his music has ceased to give House that such a subject should be brought pleasure. One thing will remind him of another, before it. Sir, there is this great difference and from regular musical performances such as between music and other arts-and it is just this opera selections and well-known morsels, he difference which makes it peculiarly necessary will get on to a "little thing that he picked up to legislate for it-music does not wait till it is among the peasants in Calabria," or a favourite wanted, but, on the contrary, comes to us self-national air in Hungary," till at last one gets to invited, and often unsought. Let me make my-wish that he had never visited either of these self better understood. In the case of literature, countries, and to be so impatient of his musical it will be obvious to every one I am addressing memory as to wish that on the whole it were a that a book does not force itself upon us, it re- little less retentive. mains on the book-shelves till we go, knowing what we are doing, and take it down and read it. It does not come out of the library and bellow its contents in our ears whether we like it or not. Except on the rare occasions-for which I would also legislate-when a lady or gentleman volunteers to read his own or somebody else's poem aloud, except in this rare instance, literature lets us entirely alone, and it is our own doing if we are troubled or amused by it. With regard, again, to painting, drawing, and sculpture, the same observations apply which I have just made on the subject of literature. We go to the Royal Academy or some other exhibition, or to the Louvre, the National or Vernon Galleries, if we want to see the pictures. The pictures do not detach themselves from the walls and follow us about the streets, or pursue us into the retirement of home. It is true that a friend will occasionally compel us to look over a 66 It is not, however, to such disfigurements of our social system as these that it is necessary I should direct the attention of this House. Distressing as these things are, we can scarcely interfere in cases of so essentially private a nature. But what I do wish to lay before this House (as a matter in which it ought undoubtedly to act, and that with as little delay as may be) is the state of the case with regard to what may be called our public music-the music which not only, as I have before said, comes to us uninvited, and remains with us unsolicted, but declines to leave us when distinctly requested to do so. Sir, I am well aware that there are many members present here to-night who would be in clined to correct me at this point, and who would remind me that it has been established by law that any musician playing upon any instrument in the public street, may be requested to move out of hearing, and is under the necessity, when so requested, of complying forthwith with the injunction. I am quite conscious that this is indeed the state of the law, but what I contend is, that this law does not practically affect the state of things of which I complain. To what purpose is it that one musician should be removed from before my house, when in the course of a few minutes his place is filled by another? Consider, too, the loss of temper that ensues after a row with one of these men-and they will seldom go without a row; consider how a man is unfitted for his work, and thrown out of cue by a disturbance of this sort. There are some quiet streets in London where ten or twelve of these musicians will turn up in the course of a single day; why, one need keep a servant (and a man-servant, too) on purpose to drive them away. The notions of these musicians, again, on the subject of distance, and their idea of being "out of hearing," are generally widely different from those of the person they are annoying, and their removal from the step before one's own house has generally to be followed by at least two subsequent sallies to drive them away from No. 20 (five doors farther up), or even 25, where they are still distinctly audible. Now, the question for whien I have been paving the way all this time is simply this: Why should we have street musicians at all? Why should not a clean sweep be made of the whole organ and hurdy-gurdy tribe, and, at the same time, considerable restrictions be laid on the performances of the brass and other bands by which our streets are frequented? What do we want with organs? When the professional poet comes in between Brutus and Cassius, at the end of the celebrated quarrel scene between them, Cassius asks with pardonable irritability, "What do the wars do with these jigging fools?" Substituting "the streets" for "the wars" in the above quotation, may we not make the same inquiry with regard to our street musicians? They do us no good, they give us no pleasure, they interfere with our occupation, they chafe our nerves; what do we want with them? I am afraid the answer to this question is ready on the lips of those to whom it is addressed: You are an exceptional person; you belong to a class so small that it cannot reasonably be legislated for. The great mass of workers in this town are, by the localities in which their professional avocations are conducted, safe from the annoyance you complain of. The lawyer in the Temple, the judge in Westminster Hall, the merchant in a City court or on 'Change, is safe from organs, and those men whose work is carried on in offices, are the great important classes of society for whom alone it is needful to legislate. You, the student, who carry on your profession in your own house, are altogether an exceptional person, whom really we cannot stay to consider. You must get on as well as you can. But, I would contend, that in weighing the importance of any particular class, the test of numbers is not the only test to be applied, but that quality should be considered as well as, or perhaps even more than, quantity; and I would also contend that the class who suffer under the nuisance with which we are concerned, is by no means so small a one as might at first be imagined. The writer, the artist, the calculator, the comparative anatomist, the clergyman composing his sermon, the scientific man his treatise, surely the class of which such individuals as these form the component parts, is scarcely a small, and still less an unimportant one. And who are the people who would oppose these? Who are the people who wish the organ nuisance to remain as it is-to whom "Bob Ridley” is a solace, and "Dixie's Land" a refreshment? They may exceed us in numbers, but certainly not outweigh us in importance. The servant-maids, the wives and children of some members of the lower middle classes. These are all, for how many are there who, not ranking among the studious classes mentioned above, are yet, from ill-health or nervousness, almost equally disturbed by the organ nuisance. To those in trouble of mind or pain of body, to the neuralgic, to those who strive, for the time, perhaps ineffectually, with their labour, the music made by the organ-grinder amounts to something little less than a torment. Let us, as much as possible, have our music when we want it and where we want it. There is no reason whatever why the supply of this delightful recreation should be stopped; simply it should run in another channel. In Paris an excellent band plays in the afternoon in the Palais Royal, the central square of the French capital; why should not this be the case with us? Why not have a band every afternoon in the middle of Trafalgar-square. Or if it should be argued, and with some show of reason, that the hideous objects dotted about that ghastly enclosure would so distress the eyes of those who came to listen to the band that they could derive no pleasure from it, a good place might be found in St. James's Park, where the music would be an offence to no one, and would give a vast deal of pleasure to all sorts of people. Sir, I have it upon the evidence of credible witnesses that their labours are frequently im peded, and that a considerable loss of time, and consequently of emolument, has been occasioned to them by the organ nuisance. We are all well acquainted with the case of a gentleman distinguished by his powers as a calculator, and by a remarkable invention in connexion with what I may call the science of numbers. We all know what this gentleman has suffered through the annoyance of itinerant musicians. That gentleman's name has become almost proverbial as identified with the organ nuisance. His onslaughts on the organ-grinders have been numerous and terrific. At the very first click of "Bob Ridley" he is out upon them from his ambush, and then they may give themselves up for lost. But this distinguished personage does not stand alone in the conflict. I am told by gentlemen in the literary world, and that of art, that they often lose a day's work, owing to the excess of irritability into which they are thrown by a severe attack of "Beautiful Star" early in their day's work. Whatever people may think, it is not a good preparation for a day of intellectual labour to rush out into the street, after being told by your maid-servant that "the Frenchman don't seem to understand that he's to go," and threaten a grinning Italian with a policeman. The performance of this feat half a dozen times in the course of a morning lays in a stock of bad blood, which is apt, during the remainder of the day, to get into the brain and clog the ideas which might otherwise have flowed with some degree of smoothness to the pen's nib, or the pencil's point. A day's work spoilt not uncommonly interferes with a man's capacity for enjoying the evening which ensues, and so a day that might have been a profitable and a pleasant one, is doubly lost. Sir, I have now said, not all that might be said on this topic, but enough, I trust, to prove that the evil for whose extermination I am pleading is not a trivial or unimportant one. I might have enlarged at greater length on the troubles of those for whom "music hath not always charms." I might have described their sufferings more minutely, but to have done so would only have been to heap together minute points of evidence when the great fact to be demonstrated was already proved. The organs are a nuisance they interrupt labour, they interfere with comfort-in Heaven's name let us be rid of them. will not bear it, I will go out just as I am and hunt those men out of Sciatica-row, if it takes me the whole morning; and a nice state I shall be in when I come back for the remainder of my day's work. AT THE ROADSIDE. I, FOR a time, have left behind I sit at ease within mine inn; And watch the workings of the soil, To feel the pauses of the brain And by the tinkling of the rain. The shining pewter sound and good; That cooks my dinners to a turn? Dwells not for seventy miles around. His calm predictions cannot fail; So here I sit within mine inn, Secure to-day from fortune's frown, Are something sweeter than the town; Shall take to town when I depart. TOWN AND COUNTRY CIRCUS LIFE. With this earnest cry, 1 would conclude that speech which, had I the luck to be an M.P., and to get as much as a wink of the Speaker's eye, I would assuredly let fly at him. I appeal to the large class whose interests I am advocating, whether in this torrent of eloquence I have outstepped the boundaries of truth and justice? I appeal to all scientific and literary characters, to all calculators, arithmeticians, mathematicians, to all cultivators of the fine arts, to hard readers, to the nervous lastly, and the sickly, whether I have been too hard on the organ-grinding fraternity? I believe that every member of every one of these classes will cordially endorse everything I have said. Why, even as I write these last words sitting in Lumbagoterrace, the strains of a band playing before the HAVING been engaged in a large Circus, I houses in Sciatica-row, a considerable distance think I can enlighten the public, who are said off, reach me quite audibly. The tune is the to delight in obtaining a glimpse behind the "Last Rose of Summer," and for the last half-scenes, about the ground and lofty tumbling, hour this has been preceded by other dirges of a and the other extraordinary novelties which are like nature. Between each of these there has to be seen in that wonderful institution "The been a pause just long enough to make me hope Imperial British Hippodrome," as the bills now that the musical entertainment was over. How call the Circus. Clever tumblers, professors of the can a man write under such circumstances? His single and double trapeze, riders of trick acts, expen is paralysed, and the words of the song with hibitors of trained ponies, Shakespearean jesters, which these artists are dealing, ring in his ears. and champion vaulters of the world; the glitWhat, I ask, can a man do under these circum-tering paraphernalia incidental to the gorgeous stances? Sciatica-row is too far off for me to send my servant to order those wretches off, and even if she were to go they would only move a little farther, and I should still hear that disgusting trombone pumping away at the solemn passages. No, I must either bear it, or-no, I spectacle of The Camp of the Cloth of Gold, or The Sprites of the Silver Shower; or the tortuous pyramidal feats of the dusky children of the desert; have not been invented quite at a moment's notice, but have grown to perfection by slow degrees and by means of incessant prac |