664

LIFE OF OOBDRN. [omA®

1857. and this view I have urged upon Wilson and Bright eve!
Xr. 68. since the League was, or ought to have been, abolished. 1
Bright should recover his health and be able to head @
party for parliamentary reform, in my opinion Birmingham
will be a better home for him than Manchester,
“ Charles Sumner has been here, and is now on his Way
bo see De Tocqueville. We had some very long adjourned
debates, as you may suppose. What a talker he ig! One
night, or rather morning, I had to warn him to bed at
half-past one, which to us rustics is a late sitting, for af
this harvest-time folks are thinking of gotting up to work
soon after that. But excepting for his own health’s sake I
would have gladly protracted our noctes to daylight, It i
refreshing to meet with a man of his intellectnal calibre
and of such accomplishments, one too so capable in every
way of playing a politician’s part, giving up all to conscience.
 I really hardly know such a case. We can’t pub
ourselves in such a comparison, for we have mot the same
temptations even had we his powers. For in this aristocratic
 country we know that the chief seats must be ocoupied
 by men of a given class, or their nominees. In his
country every post was accessible to him, if he could only
speak successfully to Bonknm.”
“July 28. (To Mr. Parkss.)—Very many thanks for your
thinking of me sometimes. Iam deep in mangolds and pigs:
and unless you brought me occasionally in contact with
the great maglstrom of politics, I should be in danger of
forgetting that there are such things as Whigs and Torie#
in the world. Believe me I am in no hurry to get back to
the House. ‘When I saw the other day that the House sab
till half-past fonr, I hugged myself, and looked out on the
South Downs with a keener relish. The tone of Parliament
is unlike anything I have ever witnessed, and I should nob
like to be made more closely acquainted with it. There is 8