The Press.
London, England, 1854-09-09 00:00:00

853

As I am the Bureaucratic Blight—
As I am the pimp of the Muscovite—
We're severally and conjointly agreed
We've a good Report to-night."
And so—and so on, in this business-like way,
These imps discussed till the morning grey,
Much in the style of their betters,
With this distinction chiefly, that they
Had fewer conventional fetters ;
Possibly, if we could but know
What had passed between Greville and One down below,
We should find they were a commission,
(Of course with arrangements for future pay),
Appointed while the chiefs are away
To work for the Coalition.

X.

CURIOUS AND IMPORTANT FRAGMENT.

;The following portion of a cancelled proofaheet evidently of a late American work of high
authority In all matters relating to fashionable and political people has been forwarded to ua
for publication.]

THE "COALITION "—SIDNEY HERBERT, ETC. 209
MY DEAR —,—There's an everlasting talk here about some kind
of thing they call a " Coalition," and though, as you may suppose,
I felt quite an undertone of emotion to discover what on earth it
could be, I did not permit it to be seen. One morning quite an
amiable old gentleman, Mr. Sidney Herbert (not the one of
Cherbury, but probably his nephew), said something about it in
connection with a " Ministry," and " its dreadful and discouraging
efforts to keep peace ; " so I concluded to set it down for a mis-
sionary society, but some one else said, quite sneerishly, that it
was " a set of old women ; " so I chalked it off for a Dorcas
association—" but," said he, afterwards, " what can you have of it
and Aberdeen at the head of it?"
"Oh ! " said I, "now I quite see it. It's a new schism in the
Kirk."
" New what? my dear Mrs. 5.," said the angelic Duchess of
Pimlico. " Gracious me ! why they're talking of the Govern-
ment! "—and so, indeed, it was the Government they were
illuminating upon, as of course the Duchess was aware, she being
the sister of the Duke of Holborn and the Earl of Lambeth, and
aunt to Lord Hoxton and Sir Ratcliff Highway. And now you'll
say what I said, " What on airth can they mean by a Coalition
Government? " You would never guess. Much as I have it
borne in on me that America cannot compete in everything, this
gave it a deeper touch. We are not advanced enough yet for a
Coalition. We may gloss up as we please, but that's a fact. But
I'll endeavour to describe it.
A Coalition, then, you must know is a Ministry consisting of
"Hard-Shell-Hunkers," " Froe-Soil-Democrats," " Loco focos,"
" Soft-Shells," " Free-Gravel-Abolition-Whigs," " Loafers," and
" Know-Nothings," and all depending out-and-out on nothing but
the " Irish-Ticket." Now, you cannot in any reasonableness
realise such a Government as that located to Washington. Yet
it's here, and if it aintjustgoing ahead it's a filling the public offices
and writing despatches beautiful. An illnatured person persisted
in saying that it had caused the war; but that was all starlight,
for Lord Aberdeen, who was presented to me, though it was quite in
an elbow-crush of lords, and sirs, and bishops, I could see would not
be the man to have a hand in the war any more than my friend
Joseph Sturge. Indeed, I was told that his lordship would have
gone to try to persuade Nicholas to cool down, but that there
was no room in the sledge, and he exceptioned to join the Friends
without they would call Nicholas " Gracious Majesty," and other
things which they could not pocket away. Besides, somebody told
me that Mr. Herbert has married the Emperor's aunt; and as
Mr. H. is the head of the War Department, and shortly going out
to command the troops, be has told them all to grow moustachios
just like the Emperor's, with " one inch between the moustache and
the whisker." That would be no easy job you will say in New

210 THE " COALITION"-SIDNEY HERBERT, ETC.
England, but their cheeks are considerable broader here in the old
country.
" '

lam quite at rest at last about the Coalition. Mr. Gladstone
has given me such an account of it as almost lifted me off my
feet.
" A Coalition," said he, " Mrs, S., is a mutual misunderstand-
ing come to by several persons holding no opinions to sacrifice
them by entering into a dissentient consent to pursue no general
object each by separate, and at times divergent, but occasionally
parallel, circles."
" Gracious me! " said I, so astonished that there was scarcely
a chip of me left, " how beautiful—l see it all !"
" No," said he, " not yet. I suppose you, who are a very
superior woman, my dear Mrs. S., will admit that if any two sides
of a triangle are prolonged they will meet at some unknown
point? "
I signified that I realised the thing, and he went on.
" Then, geometrically speaking, that is the precise nature of
the Coalition. As anon as they have squared the political circle
and found out their own longitude, they will extract the root, and
just as the innate ideas are doubtless created by the impression of
outward objects, and the various objects of political men are only
various in appearance but quite identical in contradiction, so you
see, Mrs. S. how it is."
I thanked him very much, and thought, with a few months'
reading of Jonathan Edwards, what a reviving New England
preacher he would make.
(Cetera Daunt.)