as well qualified to sway the destinies of discontented England as a virgin pumpkin; and together with my ever amiable Lord Clarendon, would set a world at war good-naturedly.  These very high functionaries, Mr. Smooth was informed, could not at present be seen by common people, inasmuch as they were contemplating the problem:—­’I don’t know what to do!’ Nicholas’s appetite for Turkey breakfasts had made work too profound for the brains of Downing Street.  ’Don’t seem a subject of this atmosphere,’ said the stupid, significantly canting his head, and giving a queer look out of the corner of his right eye.  ‘You fellows don’t seem to know me,’ I interpolated, ’Citizen Smooth—­they call me Solomon Smooth, Esq., that is my name.’  A door now opened near where I was standing, and in I walked—­right among the Dukes and dough-heads.  It only wanted a bold push, in the right go-ahead sort of way, to make myself respected.  Dukes were not only flesh and blood, but owed much of their importance to the ignorance of the people they aspired to frown upon.  Dukes, Earls, and Lords, were, at this moment, playing at very un-English games for England.  They affected to believe it right that the loyal people (I mean the simple and vulgar, who have hitherto proved mean the simple and vulgar) who have hitherto proved true to their noble traditions, should remain ignorant of the game played at their expense.  This, Mr. Smooth thought too bad; however, his friend Urquhart was devising a scheme for remedying the evil, which, did he not himself fall into evil, might do great good to the nation in general.  But Urquhart was so modest that he never accused Lord Palmerston of anything worse than bringing about the potato rot in Ireland.  ‘Hallo hallo!’ a dozen voices echoed from the table around which the all-accomplished sat:—­’A rustic intruder is upon us!’ half muttered the man who followed me in.  ’It’s only Solomon Smooth, Esq., from the Cape,’ returned I, with a good, wholesome laugh.  Believe me, Uncle Sam, there sat round a table ten of the most solemn-looking fellows, with faces as dreary as a wet moon in November.  Some of this unique body looked as if they had seen hard usage and lean pay.  Others were grey with thinking, instead of moving.  Be not surprised either when I say that the gravity of their countenance left no visible room for anything else.  Hard at it were they, straining their antiquated imaginations over a secret game of thimble-rig, which seemed of momentous importance.  Only five, however, could play at the game; and Sawny Dablerdeen, who always played on two small pipes, and paid sundry small pipers to do a deal of blowing, seemed in the greatest fuddle.  And then there was my Lord John Littlejohn, as crusty a little snap as ever declaimed against tyrant in one breath, or turned a political summersault in another;—­bricks to the back-bone was he, and all for old England, though he was not bigger than one of Betsy Perkin’s well-grown cucumbers, and could be turned to as many