“While the honour and independence of the State were sold to a foreign Power, while chartered rights were invaded, while fundamental laws were violated, hundreds of thousands of quiet, honest, and industrious families laboured and traded, ate their meals, and lay down to rest in comfort and security.  Whether Whig or Tories, Protestants or Jesuits were uppermost, the grazier drove his beasts to market; the grocer weighed out his currants; the draper measured out his broadcloth; the hum of buyers and sellers was as loud as ever in the towns; the harvest-home was celebrated as joyously as ever in the hamlets; the cream overflowed the pails of Cheshire; the apple juice foamed in the presses of Herefordshire:  the piles of crockery glowed in the furnaces of the Trent; and the barrows of coal rolled fast along the timber railways of the Tyne.”

This reads like a parody, but it is a literal transcript of the original; and Hayward justly observes that there is no reason why this rigmarole should ever stop, as long as there is a trade, calling, or occupation to be particularized.  The pith of the proposition (which needed no proof) is contained in the first sentence.  Why not continue thus?—­

“The apothecary vended his drugs as usual; the poulterer crammed his turkeys; the fishmonger skinned his eels; the wine merchant adulterated his port; as many hot-cross buns as ever were eaten on Good Friday, as many pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, as many Christmas pies on Christmas Day; on area steps the domestic drudge took in her daily pennyworth of the chalky mixture which Londoners call milk; through area bars the feline tribe, vigilant as ever, watched the arrival of the cat’s-meat man; the courtesan flaunted in the Haymarket; the cab rattled through the Strand; and, from the suburban regions of Fulham and Putney, the cart of the market gardener wended its slow and midnight way along Piccadilly to deposit its load of cabbages and turnips in Covent Garden.”

Twice has Mr. Gladstone publicly called attention to the merits of this “effective morsel of parody,” as he styles it; and he judiciously adds that what follows (by the late Dean Hook) is “a like attempt, but less happy.”  Most people remember the attack on the constitution of the Court of Chancery in the preface to Bleak House.  Dean Hook, in a laudable attempt to soothe the ruffled feelings of his old friend Vice-Chancellor Page Wood, of whom Dickens in that preface had made fun, thus endeavours to translate the accusation into Macaulayese:—­

“REIGN OF VICTORIA—­1856.

“THE COURTS OF JUSTICE.

“The Court of Chancery was corrupt.  The guardian of lunatics was the cause of insanity to the suitors in his court.  An attempt at reform was made when Wood was Solicitor-General.  It consisted chiefly in increasing the number of judges in the Equity Court.  Government was pleased by an increase of patronage; the lawyers approved of the new professional prizes.  The Government papers applauded.  Wood became Vice-Chancellor.  At the close of 1855 the Equity Courts were without business.  People had become weary of seeking justice where justice was not to be found.  The state of the Bench was unsatisfactory.  Cranworth was feeble; Knight Bruce, though powerful, sacrificed justice to a joke; Turner was heavy; Romilly was scientific; Kindersley was slow; Stuart was pompous; Wood was at Bealings.”