on having vindicated the principle of local self-
government from the assaults of those who
wished to make every parish in London a
corporation with a Lord Mayor and aldermen and
a state coach. There was a feeble laugh at
this, and then the vindicators of the principle
slowly left the hall, stood for a little while
in knots at the door, and presently dispersed—a
few going over the way to "liquor."

In precisely the same manner have the
Ratepayers' Association of the eight wards into
which the important and populous parish of St.
Piggins is divided recommended candidates,
and in the same snug quiet manner have those
candidates been elected to their office.

The result is, that among one hundred and
forty vestrymen, to whom are committed the
management of the local affairs of this parish,
there are not more than twelve who could, either
by courtesy or warrant of law, be called gentlemen.
There are butchers, bakers, bricklayers,
grocers, buttermen, oilmen, fishmongers,
undertakers, corn-chandlers, coffee-house keepers,
tailors, publicans, beer-shop keepers, pawnbrokers
rate collectors, gas inspectors, and
petty tradesmen of every kind, but only four
or five professional men; and these, it seems,
never attend the vestry, disliking to be
associated with the rest.

When the affairs of the London parishes are
mismanaged, it is the fault of the great middle
class. So long as the members of that class
shirk their duty, and are unwilling to make
some sacrifice for the good of the community in
which they live, so long will the parochial affairs
of London be mismanaged by ignorant,
intolerant, and perfectly incapable men.

                    CUAGNAWAGHA.

CUAGNAWAGHA! Cuagnawagha! it is but a
word. I may plead, at least, that it is fertile in
vowels, and has not the spiky, chevaux de frise
appearance when written down which Polish
and Hungarian and others of the Sclavonic
family, those quadrilaterals of orthography,
present. To me, even Cuagnawagha looks pretty
in black and white. I have adopted the spelling
accepted by those who rule over Cuagnawagha,
and are neighbours to it; but the Cuagnawaghians
themselves are not much given to reading or
writing.

Cuagnawagha! Cuagnawagha! will you agree
in the premiss that there are certain words—the
names of things and places, and sometimes, but
very rarely, of men—the bare sound of which
will haunt you? That they should do so is not
always the result of the associations they recal.
Windermere is close to Patterdale, yet the first
is a name that haunts you, and is full of a soft
and mysterious beauty. Patterdale is one of
the loveliest spots in Europe, but its sound is
harsh, severe, and ugly.

In all human probability, I shall never more
behold Cuagnawagha—on this side the grave, at
least. On the other we may all see sights that
shall astonish us. I was never in Cuagnawagha
but once in my life; I only passed fifty minutes
within its confines; I was thoroughly
disappointed in all that I had come to see; yet
Cuagnawagha, its name and itself, have haunted
me from the day on which I first beheld it until
this, and in my dreariest moments its dear
name passes like soft music over the chords of
my heart, and lights up the grim old Vauxhall
of my twilight with thrice fifty thousand
additional lamps. I do not know why. I have
seen the lions of the world, their manes and
their tails, and have heard them roar. I can
gaze upon the ocean without addressing it as
vast, and interminable, and blue, and without
bidding it roll on—a request which, on my part
or any one else's, I hold to be one of surplusage,
if not grossly impertinent. I have lost most of
my enthusiasm about great rivers. Since I last
set down to pen an article for this joumal, I
have seen the Guadalquivir, the Ebro, the
Tagus, the Rhône, the Rhine, the Mincio, and
the Danube; but I am of opinion that the
Thames at Ditton, in that priceless half hour
between your ordering the stewed eels and the
cutlets to follow and the arrival of the banquet
itself, is brighter and more shining than any
other river which I might have asked, again
impertinently, to "flow on." The lions and
the rivers, the cataract and the Alpine passes,
are apt, indeed, to pall upon you when they are
seen, not from choice but from necessity; and,
goodness gracious, how many miles would I
willingly travel, and with peas in my shoes, to
get out of the way of an old master or a
connoisseur given to talking about one! I almost
blush to recal the irreverent terms in which I
heard one of her Majesty's messengers allude,
the other day, to that sublime chain of
mountains, the exploration of which has been
undertaken by an association of climbing-boys,
and whose peaks, passes, and glaciers are so
fascinating to our landscape painters that they
seem to be quite unaware of the existence of any
more sublime mountain scenery in the world.
The Queen's messenger called the sublime chain
those something Alps. So would you, if you
had to carry a bag across them twenty times a
year, in hail, rain, or sunshine. But Cuagnawagha
has not lost one iota of its primeval charms
to me. My love for it is as fresh as what
shall I say?—as your love for the face you
always love; for the face which, like that of
Queen Victoria on the postage-stamps, never
grows older. As it was in 1840, so is it in
1866, only younger, and fresher, and prettier;
so was it when your life began, so is it now you
are a man, so may it be when you grow old.
And I am sure, had Wordsworth ever seen
Cuagnawagha, he would have written as
melodiously about it as he has written of Grasmere
or Dungeonghyll.

Cuagnawagha is only an unpretending little
Indian village on the bank of the river Saint
Lawrence, over against the French village of
La Chine, one of the earliest settlements of the
Jesuit missionaries in Canada (and so called by