political, and not personal.  The friends of the ex-ministers, it is understood, have succeeded in engaging him; and he is about to put in operation a very extensive system of counter-irritation among the canaille of the French capital.  Should his exertions be attended with success, he will, on his return, be retained by the Home-office, and despatched into the disturbed districts to counter-irritate the erring disciples of “Swing.”

On the whole, we are convinced that St. John Long will be seriously missed at the West-end.  His house was a pleasant lounge; his chocolate was unimpeachable, whatever his honesty might be; no one could ever question the strength of his coffee, whatever might be surmised of his science; and the sandwiches which promenaded the rooms regularly every half-hour, were a triumphant answer to all the aspersions that his patients lived upon air.  We have no doubt that it was a much pleasanter place than the bazaars, to which such hosts of old peeresses order their carriages every day at one, with such matchless punctuality, to buy sixpence-worth of ribbon, and kill three hours.  To this, St. John Long’s promenade was a paradise.  The comfortable manner in which all the comforts of the old ladies were provided for; the pleasantries arising from the nature of the scene between the various rubbed:  the files of young women, with their mouths fixed to gas-pipes, and imbibing all sorts of vapours; and, never to be forgotten in the catalogue of attractions, the men of all ages who came to learn the art of being cured of all calamities, that of the purse inclusive.  Then, too, St. John’s own judicious generosity; the presents of invaluable snuff, of first-growth Champagne, of Mocha coffee to one, and of gunpowder tea to another, showed a knowledge of women and human nature, that must, but for the malice of justice, inevitably have led to fortune.  What will now become of the countess, who led her daughters to this palace of Hygeia as regularly as the day came; and with a spirit worthy of the great cause, declared that, if she had twenty daughters, she would take every one of them every day to the same place, for the same rubbing?  What will become of the heavy hours of him who declared St. John’s gas a qualification for the Cabinet, and that a sick minister applying to this dispenser of all virtue, would be on his legs in the House, and making a victorious speech within the twenty-four hours?  What will become of the battalion of beauties who, at every puff of the gas-pipe, ran to their mirrors, and received the congratulations of the surrounding dandies, or the revived carnation of their cheeks?  “Othello’s occupation’s o’er.”  But a St. John Long, of some kind or other, is so essential to the West-end world, that a successor must be rapidly erected in his room.  Every age has its St. John Long, formed by the mere necessities of the opulent and idle.  A new Perkins, with a packet of metallic tractors on a new scale