IN OTHER LETTERS, 'Runnymede' mounts a per- sonal poison-pen attack
on each member of the Whig Establishment separately; the one to Palmerston begins—'My Lord, the Minister who maintains himself in power in spite of the con- tempt of a whole nation must be gifted with no ordinary capacity'—and goes on—'there is no conceivable idea of degradation which has not been at some period or another associated with your career.' Lord John Russell is told : 'You were born with a strong ambition and feeble in- tellect,' and the writer goes on to recall his maiden speech : 'cold, inanimate with a weak voice and mincing manner—the failure of your intellect was complete; but your ambition wrestled for a time with the indifference of your opponents and the ill-concealed contempt of your friends.' The news that Lord Brougham is bringing out a German edition of his Treatise on Natural Theology prompts Runnymede to observe : 'the translation of a work on a subject of which you know little, into a tongue of which you know nothing, seems the climax of your fantastic freaks of ambitious superficiality.' Runnymede helpfully suggests a literary project of more general utility—`a memoir of the late years of your career might afford your fellow-countrymen that of which at present they are much in want—a great moral lesson.'
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