enlarged his grasp and quickened his faculties,
the Public Departments have been drearily
lying in state, a mere stupid pageant of
gorgeous coffins and feebly-burning lights;
and that the windows must now be opened
wide, and the candles put out, and the
coffins buried, and the daylight freely
admitted, and the furniture made firewood, and
the dirt clean swept away. This is the lesson
from which our Public is nevermore to be
distracted by any artifice, we all know. But, that
other Public. What will they do ? They are
a humane, generous, ardent Public; but, will
they hold like grim Death to the flower
Warning, we have plucked from this nettle
War? Will they steadily reply to all
cajolers, that though every flannel waistcoat
in the civilized, and every bearskin and
buffalo-skin in the uncivilized, world, had been
sent out in these days to our ill-clad countrymen
(and never reached them), they would
not in the least affect the lasting question, or
dispense with a single item of the amendment
proved to be needful, and, until made, to be
severely demanded, in the whole household
and system of Britannia? When the war
is over, and that other Public, always
ready for a demonstration, shall be busy
throwing up caps, lighting up houses, beating
drums, blowing trumpets, and making
hundreds of miles of printed columns of speeches,
will they be flattered and wordily-pumped
dry of the one plain issue left, or will they
remember it? O that other Public! If we—
you, and I, and all the rest of us—could only
make sure of that other Public!

Would it not be a most extraordinary
remissness on the part of that other Public, if
it were content, in a crisis of uncommon
difficulty, to laugh at a Ministry without a
Head, and leave it alone ? Would it not be a
wonderful instance of the shortcomings of
that other Public, if it were never seen to
stand aghast at the supernatural imbecility of
that authority to which, in a dangerous hour, it
confided the body and soul of the nation?
We know what a sight it would be to behold
that miserable patient, Mr. Cabinet, specially
calling his relations and friends together
before Christmas, tottering on his emaciated
legs in the last stage of paralysis, and feebly
piping that if such and such powers were not
entrusted to him for instant use, he would
certainly go raving mad of defeated
patriotism, and pluck his poor old wretched
eyes out in despair; we know with what
disdainful emotions we should see him gratified
and then shuffle away and go to sleep: to
make no use of what he had got, and be heard
of no more until one of his nurses, more
irritable than the rest, should pull his weazen
nose and make him whine—we know what
these experiences would be to us, and Bless
us! we should act upon them in round
earnest—but, where is that other Public, whose
indifference is the life of such scarecrows, and
whom it would seem that not even plague
pestilence and famine, battle murder and
sudden death, can rouse?

There is one comfort in all this. We
English are not the only victims of that
other Public. It is to be heard of,
elsewhere. It got across the Atlantic, in the
train of the Pilgrim Fathers, and has
frequently been achieving wonders in America.
Ten or eleven years ago, one Chuzzlewit
was heard to say, that he had found
it on that side of the water, doing the
strangest things. The assertion made all
sorts of Publics angry, and there was
quite a cordial combination of Publics to
resent it and disprove it. But there is a
little book of Memoirs to be heard of at the
present time, which looks as if young
Chuzzlewit had reason in him too. Does the
"smart " Showman, who makes such a
Mermaid, and makes such a Washington's Nurse,
and makes such a Dwarf, and makes such a
Singing Angel upon earth, and makes such a
fortune, and, above all, makes such a
book—does he address the free and
enlightened Public of the great United States:
the Public of State Schools, Liberal Tickets,
First-chop Intelligence, and Universal
Education? No, no. That other Public
is the sharks'-prey. It is that other
Public, down somewhere or other, whose
bright particular star and stripe are not yet
ascertained, which is so transparently cheated
and so hardily outfaced. For that other
Public, the hatter of New York outbid
Creation at the auction of the first Lind seat.
For that other Public, the Lind speeches were
made, the tears shed, the serenades given. It
is that other Public, always on the boil and
ferment about anything or nothing, whom the
travelling companion shone down upon from
the high Hotel-Balconies. It is that other
Public who will read, and even buy, the
smart book in which they have so proud a
share, and who will fly into raptures about
its being circulated from the old Ocean
Cliffs of the Old Granite State to the Rocky
Mountains. It is indubitably in reference to
that other Public that we find the following
passage in a book called AMERICAN NOTES.
"Another prominent feature is the love of
' smart ' dealing, which gilds over many a
swindle and gross breach of trust, many a
defalcation, public and private; and enables
many a knave to hold his head up with the
best, who well deserves a halter—though it
has not been without its retributive operation;
for, this smartness has done more in a
few years to impair the public credit and to
cripple the public resources, than dull
honesty, however rash, could have effected
in a century. The merits of a broken
speculation, or a bankruptcy, or of a successful
scoundrel, are not gauged by its or his
observance of the golden rule, ' Do as you
would be done by,' but are considered with
reference to their smartness. The following
dialogue I have held a hundred times:—' Is