So it was with our late monarch, and hero's patron, George IV. It is not known that the last George was the inventor of the artful stitch called finedrawing. Mr Hunt, who happened to be acquainted with the fact that the honour of the invention belonged to the monarch, wrote upon the occasion a popular song, beginning

"Our King is a true British Tailor!"

which became a great favourite with the trade, and has indeed been parodied in a song in honour of his present Majesty. As a proof of the value in which the late King held Mr Hunt may be instanced the lodgings at Ilchester he gave him, in one of those houses the doors of which our sovereigns never shut against their people. Here Mr Hunt resided two or three years, which he has often declared were the best spent and happiest of his life. Here he enjoyed the conversation of a benignant governor; and received the visits of the neighbouring magistracy, whose especial regards he had fixed. From this period up to the late election for Preston, Mr Hunt's life has flowed in an even tide, his happiness only disturbed by the event which plunged the whole empire into a grief unparalleled in the history of affliction-we mean the deplored demise of his late Majesty, and some time father of his people, and friend, and protector, George IV.

The terms of the contest at Preston have been much misrepresented by the public press, which

never ceases to employ the arts of disparagement, or to blacken all that is estimable, great, good, and exalted in society. The fact is, that Mr Hunt and Mr Stanley were noble rivals, but not unfriendly or unmatched ones, for the honours of Preston. Indeed, Mr Stanley, on the occasion of Mr Hunt's offering himself, observed, in the language of Shakspeare

"We will this brother's wager frankly play :

I will be thy foil, friend Hunt."

The issue is known. The stronger patrician claim of Mr Hunt, descended as he is from the De Heyntes, of Hounde Hall, Westmoreland, was preferred by a people penetrated with reverence for the worth and honour that come from a long line of ancestors, and who feel that men who thrill with the recollection of their sires' deeds are not likely to deviate from the paths of glory that have illustrated their names.

BIRMINGHAM MORALITY.

WE regret to see the following vulgar course of remark in a provincial paper :—

" PAGANINI.—We have more than once felt

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disgust at the accounts we have heard of the "extreme sordidness and rapacity of this musical phenomenon.' But seeing in what manner the

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public treated him; seeing how they applauded, "exalted, and almost deified him, for his fiddling on "one string; seeing such universal homage paid "to his 'genius,' and so much adulatory incense "offered to propitiate his powers; seeing, in short, "almost all the rank and fashion, and even talent, " in the metropolis, ready to fall down and worship "the modern Orpheus, we thought, that perhaps, "after all, the public deserved more blame than "Paganini. It is well known, that even some of "our own most gracious and religious kings,' "who could do no wrong,' have been poisoned "out of their senses by excessive admiration— "how, then, could a poor Genoese fiddler be

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expected to stand proof against it? No wonder "his head became giddy, and that his demands "rose with his own opinion of himself, till the exorbitancy of his avarice at last awoke his "admirers from their stupor; and, like the

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Orpheus of mythology, he drew the very stones about him,' if not to listen to him, at least "to pelt him."

We should have thought that a writer, even in Birmingham, might have found sufficient exercise for his disgust at sordidness and rapacity, without laying hold of the example of a stray foreigner.

Paganini asks as much as he can get. Is the practice solitary in this money-getting nation? As Paganini's is an art of luxury, there is more excuse for his exaction. People will not pine or die who are unable to afford the price for his performance. It is not essential to health of body or peace of mind. The worst that can be said is, that he takes his advantage, and makes his profit of the curiosity of the world. It is envy of his success which is at the root of the disgust at his conduct. If virtue would employ its indignation on examples of grasping avarice, abundant subjects are to be had at home, and as we would first encourage native talent, let us first discourage the native vices. Is it ever asked by what vile means, by what base and grovelling arts, the respectable gentleman, the man of property and consequence, has accumulated his 20,000Z. a-year? Are his bargains criticised, his practices on the necessitous reviewed and held up to abhorrence, his extortions reprobated, his vast profits from administering instruments to mischief execrated? Oh no, he is "the architect of his own fortune "-it matters not where or how the foundations were laid-he may have driven his stakes through the hearts of patriot heroes, so that by his own sordid skill he has crowned his own fortune. Look at the merchant who transacts a loan with a barbarous despot, for the subjugation of a gallant

people, struggling for their dearest rights-is he picked out for a scorned example of sordidness and rapacity? No, he does not make his hundreds a day by playing on a single string-it is only by lending power to mischief for the destruction and misery of thousands !

In the town of Birmingham, in which the paragraph quoted is published, manufacturers are employed in furnishing the Emperor of Russia with arms, to be turned against the Poles. Might not the writer of the Birmingham paper have exhausted his disgust upon these examples of sordidness and rapacity? Is the profit made by furnishing guns to play on the Poles, less base than the exorbitant profit made by playing on a fiddle? Oh, but the profit on the fire-arms supplied for that devilish use is not exorbitant-there is no exaction, no imposition on the Emperor of Russia. True, and why not? Because there is a competition in the marketbecause there are a hundred manufacturers ready to fabricate tools for the Devil himself, if he bade for them. And can we then rail at the sordidness and rapacity of a fiddler? Were there but one armourer, he would be a Paganini in his prices for daggers. The rapacity reviled in one, who has the field to himself, is common to many, but the competition of the market keeps them within bounds, and they who cannot give