A PASSAGE FROM LORD JOHN RUSSELL'S COMMONPLACE-BOOK.
IN the debate on Irish affairs on Monday night, Mr. HUME dealt • a blow at the Ministerial phalanx, Which hit hard. He said— He never witnessed a more humiliating spectacle than the situation of the honourable gentlemen opposite ; no men in England ever stood in so disgraceful &position. Having changed sides in the House, there was only one man on that side who had not changed his opinion, [who is he ?) and who still main- tained the sentiments which be had always professed.
This called up Lord Jours- RUSSELL; who concluded a speech in defence of his own consistency by hoping that Mr. HUME • • . . would not again indulge in a strain so unbecoming to him, but would confine himself to those economical speculations so peculiarly suited to the cha- racter of his mind. Mr. Hume reminded him of one of the heroes in the Dun- clad, who, having Shot t.0 iceclimledaisstsra, anndr de ter' ohweniglriigtiit The serious judgment all the crowd admire, Who, but to sink the deeper, rose the higher."
The quotation was not happy. SHERIDAN could keep another's witticism, or his own, corked up for years, and then let it off ex- actly at the right time at the right man. But Lord JoHN Rus- Sara. is no SHERIDAN ; and his abortive sneer at the man who propped him up, with his tottering colleagues, on the 10th of May last, fell, as it deserved, dead-born from his lips. Is this the style of language which would become a grave senator, a member of the Cabinet, the proposer of the Great Bill? or is it not rather what we might expect from the mincing litterateur and the would-. be epigrammatist?
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