BY SHAGGYQUILL.

"Your vote and interest are solicited."-Canvassing Card. IF you look out of the window of your railway carriage at a certain point on the Grand Northern line, you will see that you are going over a bridge which crosses a little brook. If you look up the brook, following the line of its pollards, you will see them mix with a clump of trees which looks as if it had been left to show where a great wood was once growing. The trees are too high and too full of rooks, and rooks' nests, to have been born since the Reformation. Through their trunks certain yellow flickerings of oil-lamps in the night, and certain red glimmerings of brick in the day time tell of a human settlement. If unsatisfied with a mere glance, turn you to that "Commercial Gent.," who is to be found, we presume, in every carriage on every line in the kingdon-who is a kind of walking "Murray's Hand-book"-who knows everything, and has a word to put in upon everything, from Constitutions to crops, from Ministers to manure-who wears a pair of stupendous whiskers and a crumpled shirt-front,-who takes snuff and studies "Bradshaw" with the same gusto as you would peruse "Vanity Fair"-he is the man! Question him respecting the half-seen locality; he will inform you that its name is Lower Fleecington; that it is a market-town; that it returns one Member to Parliament (giving the name of that Member), and that it does a tidy business in the woollen line, in which "line" (drawing a card from his pocket) he informs you that he is.-This is well; he can tell you so far: but about the antiquities of the place, the character of its people, and the scenery round it, he knows nothing. "They aint business, and he is a man of business”"they waste time, and time is money." However, as we happen, reader, (fair or foul) to be of a different mind, we will enlighten you. "Lower Fleecington," then, is a dull little place, with the rime of age thick upon it, nothing much within it seeming to flourish but old maids, tea re-unions, scan-mag trebly distilled, cats, and curates.

It is, we said, a very old place, and very proud indeed are its inhabitants of its antiquity-like the denizens of cities they must have their "lions"-and it isn't for want of endeavour that the animals turn out sometimes no better than lap-dogs. These amiable people (the lion-exhibitors) sorely victimise their town relations by dragging them up a fœtid court out of a back street, to fall down and worship a shapeless lump of powdery stone-work which they call "The Castle," and disturbing a litter of "unclean beasts," to show the stye built with the stones of "The Abbey."

It was always rather an aristocratic place, and it is prouder of that than of anything, the neighbouring scenery being made up entirely of a patchwork of parks, manor lands, glebe, and mansions, a stylish turn-out is no rarity in its streets; then, indeed, as the carriages roll in, are the townsfolk in their glory, and hold forth to their said visitors largely upon the character, income, and appearance of the lordly equipages' lordly owners. Well-up, are these people in the liveries, in plush, and boots, and braiding; and no wonder, for looking in on the place on market mornings, one might fancy it a colony of "disbanded serving-men," or a scene from "High Life below Stairs."

Getting their bread so directly from the upper classes and the farmers their tenants, it is needless to say of what politics are the bulk of the tip-top tradesmen, still less so those of the professionals; the gold-headed cane of the old doctor, the frizzled wig of the lawyer bent with practice, keeping the "New Generation" far aloof, like a flock of young birds from an old scarecrow; and the “divine right of kings" being a crack theme in the Norman Church, with its cushioned beds for the rich and its stone purgatories for the poor, with its crusader and prelate in the middle aisle, with its banners and hatchments. At the date of this tale, a few years ago, all this was yet worse; then, so rampant were the " country party," that a servant girl would have been discharged for daring to mount in her cap the blue ribbon, and I truly wonder how the sky could manage to keep its colour.

There was a certain aristocratic little academy in the neighbourhood, kept by a certain unaristocratic little churchmanrumour said he had been a footman, but that knowing more of his master's career than convenient, had been grafted into the church's body and stowed out of the way.-But this may pass. Truly painful was it to see the Tartar-sway held by the beardless young honorables of this select school over the steady tradesman of forty years in business and pepper-and-salt whiskers-worse still the ungrumbling manner in which those gray-heads bowed to any insult from "honorables," and allowed them to poach their fishing-ponds, break their windows, and insult their daughters. But then the rector preached "obedience to superiors," and the gold flowed well into the till from the pockets of the offenders' lordly fathers, and the daughters liked to be seen with the young gentlemen,"—and their parents "put up with it."

And now for our hero!-(and here I think I see one of our lady-readers, who has been all-but lulled to slumber by the foregoing-brush up, suddenly smooth down her dress, adjust her

bracelets, replace the anti-macassar on the back of her American easy chair, and, laying her fair head against it, compose herself for an hour's reading-glad to have "got rid of that nasty political stuff," and hoping to "have a little love.")

But we forgot our hero! Tom Suffrage, at the time we write of, was a youth of two and twenty, of a supernatural height when his width was taken into consideration, his hair naturally of the colour of packthread, had become (we are sorry to say in consequence of the application of certain washes) of a dubious brownblack with a suspicion of purple. The light linty down upon his upper lip moreover threw out in fine relief his dark hair, he had a great notion of an eye-glass, and a still greater notion of a watch chain; both of which notions were taught to him by London, where he had been once or twice, in that not-very-distant time which he was pleased to call his youth! He had also peculiar ideas respecting his garments, which ideas came from London too, and sadly puzzled the poor jog-and-trot country tailors. He was independent of all, young as he was, for his parents had long been carried through the crumbling arch of the church gateway, and their executors had husbanded Tom's little fortune well, and had set him up in a neat little shop, with a neat little stock of grocery, and having so done had "washed their hands of him."

London had given Tom every intention of making the most of himself, and setting the fashion in Lower Fleecington, and the regal air with which he gave poor people change, and the condescending manner with which he adjusted his scales and weighed out his "four shilling black," and "five shilling green," made enormous breaches in the hearts of all beholders.

We think we said that Tom's hair had gotten a purpleish hue from inordinate dying,-ignorant people might have gone about wildly, seeking a motive for such a proceeding; but had they turned towards the substantial, jolly, John Bullish dwelling of Mr. Simon Brancrust, the miller, whose ponderous wheels kept spitting such beautiful foam into the clear brook just out of the town, as though they were overworked monsters caged by Mr. Brancrust, within his mill-if they had looked (as Tom often did) into the lavender-smelling little parlour, and seen the coquetish little angel, Ada Brancrust, working so industriously into her canvass those wonderful animals and trees which ladies patronize, working with her lustrous ringlets hanging over her face, hardly to be told from the golden threads between her fingers, except in being so very much brighter-if they had heard, (as Tom often did) her sweet little voice bubbling pertly through her sweet little lips, and de

claring how she hated light, and how she adored dark hair,-why, they would have gone home instanter, and dyed themselves from head to foot in the choicest "lamp-black."

Now, Mr. Simon Brancrust, the miller, was a decided "character" in the place. He had a great notion of his high gentility as a purveyor of victuals to the million; he therefore made the most of himself, and being a short, a very short man, carried his head frightfully high in the air, so high, indeed, that people trembled lest it should take a downward and backward turn; his rather small skull was covered with a scanty crop of herbage, grizzled, (men knew not with age or flour); his linen was white, immaculate, and his frill, in starched grace, sticking up like white palisading under his chin, told of the work of a fairer hand than the red ones stuck deep in his drab-small pockets.

Mr. Simon's mind, as his body would seem to show, was cast in rather a pompous mould, and yet (strange to say) with the seventh glass and the seventh pipe, when his frill grew crumpled, it was wonderful how his manners bent; he would discourse for hours and hours on the boon and blessing of an aristocracy, and the improvidence of the "lower classes;" but, as the seventh glass declined, a spirit of benevolence seemed to shadow over him, and he sank in his old leathern chair with a hiccup on his lips, peace and goodwill in his heart, a broken pipe in his hand, and sleep on his eyelids.

Such was the individual who saw in Tom Suffrage a steady young man, who minded his business, and had sensible views on things political (Tom, up to a certain date, always pulled in the same boat with the old man). Such was he, who, looking at the decent sum which a kind aunt had divided between a lap-dog with silky ears and Tom Suffrage, had no objection for his Ada to knit him purses of the true blue, sing him ballads of true love, and hang on his arm to church "of a Sunday.”

These things Mr. Simon allowed, but there were other things done, and other things given, in which Ada's golden ringlets and Ada's pouting lips played prominent parts-these, perhaps, might have been objected to by the precise Mr. Simon Brancrust.

Now, when Tom had been a shopkeeper some little time, and discovered that the people of quality did not leave off their old tradesfolks to come to his shop, he began to think himself foolish for having had such a kindness towards the aristocracy, and on enquiry he found that many of the new generation of shopkeepers thought with him. So Tom and the little shopkeepers began heartily to hate the large shopkeepers, and to scowl at them when

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ever they met them, and to heap in secret on them such terms as "tyrants," "monopolists," "grinders," "aristocracy of wealth," &c., &c.-leaving all the while their "businesses" to take care of themselves, which their "businesses” didn't do!

Of course the representation of Fleecington had always gone on as regularly as the old mill of Mr. Brancrust ;- -a very old Tory family, of the very oldest Tory principles, had held it so long that nobody knew how they got it; but every body supposed they had a right to it, and so they kept it.

For a century before the time of which I write, the circumstance of any one opposing the old family upon the hustings, would have been as wonderful a thing as to find now-a-days a government steamer without a fault in her. I rather think that the advent of a second deluge, or a new monarch, would not, at one time, have produced half so much excitement as the standing of a liberal candidate for Lower Fleecington-at that one time I feel certain that to hint such a thing, would have been death to the rector, collapse to the lawyer, and Mr. Brancrust, in his agitation, would have let his millstones grind themselves away for want of grist, and would have poisoned his customers with powdered stone.

But everybody gets into everything by degrees; or, to speak more gracefully, "use lessens marvel;" Fleecington was becoming by degrees a different place-people actually had the impudence to get married-babies actually had the impudence to get born-many, and what is worse, to grow up, leave their schools, and set up their shops, or put on their aprons for the small woollen factories-some had even passed in the law, and had dared to open offices and expect clients.

Now Tom was one of these babies ; and the other small tradesmen who hurled with him the hard names at the large tradesmen, were the other babies who had been impudent enough to grow up-Fleeeington was becoming a populous place.

But, probably, neither Tom nor his companions would have been half so discontented if there had not been some one to stir them. There was a clerk of the old lawyer's—a new one from London. He was a mighty person in the eyes of many; a gigantic one in his own. He had spread about a legend that he had once lived in the Temple, which (in the minds of his hearers) was mixed up with Jerusalem, and caused great awe !

He had paralyzed the small circles of Fleecington, by giving out as his rooted opinion that the Queen was but a woman—and that a lord was but a human being—that a President was cheaper than a Monarch, and did more work-and such like-which