THE THREE KINGDOMS.

ENGLAND'S greatest general now lies buried by
the side of her greatest admiral, in the heart of
the city which their valour protected, and which
their example will continue to guard. The
orderly and quiet conduct of the people who thronged
the streets on the day of the military pageant
that accompanied the Duke's remains to the grave,
formed an act of homage to the great soldier's
memory transcending infinitely the mere state
ceremonial. It was the sincere and deep expression
of a feeling full of reverence. If our clever Chancellor
of the Exchequer, pronouncing the Ministerial eulogium
on the hero, could but have felt in the house
of commons something of what the hard-handed
London artisans felt in the streets, a discreditable
exposure might have been spared to him. Words
suited to his emotion would not have been wanting
in that case, nor his memory have been taxed for
second-hand praise. Apart from the moral delinquency
of appropriating another man's thoughts as
one's own, which Mr. Disraeli in his speech so
flagrantly committed, it has not been sufficiently
remarked of this now celebrated speech that it was in
every other respect also a miracle of bad taste. The
key-note of all its praise was struck in two lines of
absolute nonsense, in which the orator begged his
hearers to remark that the greatness of the Duke's
exploits was perhaps surpassed by the difficulties he
had to encounter—as if the two things were separable,
and the very measure of greatness were not precisely
the difficulties met in achieving it. Afterwards enumerating
those difficulties, Mr. Disraeli displayed his knowledge
of history by asserting that the invincible army
which the Duke had created, "worthy of the Roman
legions and of himself" (an odd parallel of worthies),
was broken up on the eve of the greatest conjuncture of
his life:—when he ought to have known that the
Peninsular army was not broken up at all, but had
simply set sail for the United States on the breaking
out of the second American War. Then, still pursuing
that argument of praise, and speaking absolutely
within hearing of envoys from Russia, Prussia,
Portugal, and Spain who had come over to represent
at the funeral the powers combined against Napoleon,
the leader and first minister in our English house of
commons had the taste to count among the Duke's
difficulties, his "scandalous allies." But even more
egregious was the allusion to France. At a time when
by common consent every source of irritating reference
should have been religiously closed—even M. Bonaparte
having so far done homage to the occasion as to
command his ambassador's presence in St, Paul's—
Mr. Disraeli threw out from his place as minister the
insulting assertion, that the Duke of Wellington had
the same right as Napoleon to be called the "subjugator"
of France. Is it conceivable that the Duke
himself would ever have advanced such a claim?

At the time Mr. Disraeli was thus betraying great
inaptitude for the office he holds, the urns were
opening throughout France to lift M. Bonaparte to
the office he has so long coveted; and in the short
interval since, they have been filled and have been
emptied, and the farce of professed election is over,
and the hero of Strasburg, Boulogne, and Satory, is
become Napoleon the Third. The new Emperor has
a retentive memory, and there can hardly be a doubt
that the word "subjugate" will be faithfully stored
up in it.

Contemporaneous with the Imperial triumph has
been the subjection of the popular oppositions in
Belgium and in Piedmont, the last places on the
continent of Europe where the forms of constitutional
government survived. All the capitals where freedom
once dared lift its head have now capitulated, happy if
they managed to escape being first sacked and
bombarded. All the printing presses are under censorship.
Exile or the dungeon has disposed of the troublesome
classes by thousands and hundreds of thousands.
Popery is aggressive and triumphant, the priests have
got education wholly into their hands, nowhere in Italy
can the Bible now be read, the Jesuits are masters
everywhere, and at last France announces herself satisfied.
The good folks who adopt the inference that therefore
the world must be tranquil, point to the fact that even
M. Kossuth finds his vocation to be so utterly gone
that he positively declines to make a speech. This
curious occurrence took place at a late meeting in
London, where, however, what few words M. Kossuth
did say, had sufficient significance to be worthy of
special note. "There is a time and a season," he
remarked, "for everything in the world. There is a
time and a season to speak, and there is a time and a
season to be silent. You English are happy. You
may hope to carry all that you require by the peaceful
means of the free word. For us, we can carry
nothing with words. And therefore I have taken,—as
a duty I have taken,—the rule, that for the future I
have only a single speech, which is reserved for the
due time, and which, depend upon it, shall be spoken in
due time. That only speech is, Up, boys, and at them!"

Well, if the pregnant threat implied here should
have given a twinge to any of the continental despots,
their equanimity will probably be restored at hearing
through their respective embassies of the grand
debate which has been going on in our English
House of Commons as a sequel to a precisely similar
threat thrown out but a little year ago by the Prime
Minister of England. "If there be but one district,"
said Lord Derby to his Chowlers and Fosketts
assembled in great force in 1851, "in which a
suspicion is entertained that I am flinching from,
or hesitating in, my advocacy of those principles
on which I stood, in conjunction with my talented
friend Lord George Bentinck, I authorise you, one
and all, to assure those whom you represent, that
in me they will find no hesitation, no flinching,
no change of opinion. I only look for the moment
when it may be possible for me to use the memorable