AN ELECTION.
G.A. Steevens says an election is "madman's holiday;" but in the last Quarterly Review we find the following ludicrous supplemental illustration.
Let a stranger be introduced, for the first time, to an election, let him be shown a multitude of men reeling about the streets of a borough-town, fighting within an inch of their lives, smashing windows at the Black Bear, or where
"High in the street, o'erlooking all the place,
The Rampant Lion shows his kingly face;"
and yelling like those animals in Exeter 'Change at supper time; and then let him be told that these worthies are choosing the senate of England—persons to make the laws that are to bind them and their children, property, limb, and life, and he would certainly think the process unpropitious. Yet, in spite of it all, a number of individuals are thus collected, who transact the business of the nation, and represent its various interests tolerably well. The machinery is hideous but it produces not a bad article.
SPANISH COMFORTS.
In Spain, there are few or no schools in the villages and small towns, that would have the effect of releasing the minds of the natives from monkish tyranny, which at present influences their principles, and biasses their choice, with regard to political, and indeed almost all other pursuits. Nor is any attention paid to trade. The peasantry simply exist, like cattle, without any other signs of exertion, than such as the necessity of food requires. They have no idea of rising in the world; and where there is no interest there is no activity.