"Bubbles," mean by talking of the musical turn of the Maltese? Why, when I was

strange, one-sided representation of our public schools and universities in the other, which representation, with a full admission on my part of their defects, or rather deficiencies, or still rather their paucities, amounts to a double lie, —a lie by exaggeration, and a lie by omission. And as to the universities even relatively to Oxford thirty years ago, such a representation would have been slander — and relatively to Cambridge as it now is, is blasphemy. And then how perfectly absurd is the writer's attribution of the national debt of seven or eight hundred millions to the predominance of classical taste and academic talent. And his still stranger ignorance, that without the rapidly increasing national debt, Great Britain could never have become that monstrous mammon-bloated Dives, or wooden idol of stuffed pursemen, in which character the writer thinks it so worthy of his admiration.

at an

"In short, at one moment, I imagine that Mr. Frere, or or any other Etonian, or alumnus of Westminster or Winchester, might be the author; other, I fall back to Joseph Hume, Dr. Birkbeck, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen." Perhaps if the author of the "Bubbles" had not finished his classical studies at fourteen, he might have seen reason to modify his heavy censure on Greek and Latin. As it is, it must be borne with patience.— ED.

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in Malta, all animated nature was discordant! The very cats caterwauled more horribly and pertinaciously there than I ever heard elsewhere. The children will stand and scream inarticulately at each other for an hour together, out of pure love to dissonance. The dogs are deafening, and so throughout. Musical indeed! I have hardly gotten rid of the noise yet.

No tongue can describe the moral corruption of the Maltese when the island was surrendered to us. There was not a family in it in which a wife or a daughter was not a kept mistress. A marquis of ancient family applied to Sir Alexander Ball to be appointed his valet. "My valet!" said Ball, "what can you mean, Sir?" The marquis said, he hoped he should then have had the honour of presenting petitions to his Excellency. "Oh, that is it, is it!" said Sir Alexander "my valet, Sir, brushes my clothes, and brings them to me. If he dared

:

to meddle with matters of public business, I should kick him down stairs."

In short, Malta was an Augean stable, and Ball had all the inclination to be a Hercules.* His task was most difficult, although his qualifications were remarkable. I remember an English officer of very high rank soliciting him for the renewal of a pension to an abandoned woman who had been notoriously treacherous to us. That officer had promised the woman as a matter of course - she having sacrificed her daughter to him. Ball was determined, as far as he could, to prevent Malta from being made a nest of home

more

I refer the reader to the five concluding essays of the third volume of the "Friend," as a specimen of what Mr. C. might have done as a biographer if an irresistible instinct had not devoted him to profounder labours. As a sketch and it pretends to nothing is there any thing more perfect in our literature than the monument raised in those essays to the memory of Sir Alexander Ball? — and there are some touches added to the character of Nelson, which the reader, even of Southey's matchless Life of our hero, will find both new and interesting. — ED.

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patronage. He considered, as was the fact, that there was a contract between England and the Maltese. Hence the government at home, especially Dundas, disliked him, and never allowed him any other title than that of Civil Commissioner. We have, I believe, nearly succeeded in alienating the hearts of the inhabitants from us. Every officer in the island ought to be a Maltese, except those belonging to the immediate executive: 1007. per annum to a Maltese, to enable him to keep a gilt carriage, will satisfy him where an Englishman must have 20007.

May 1. 1834.

CAMBRIDGE PETITION TO ADMIT DISSENTERS.

THERE are, to my grief, the names of some men to the Cambridge petition for admission

of the Dissenters to the University, whose cheeks I think must have burned with shame at the degrading patronage and befouling eulogies of the democratic press, and at seeing themselves used as the tools of the open and rancorous enemies of the church. How miserable to be held up for the purpose of inflicting insult upon men, whose worth and ability and sincerity you well know, and this by a faction banded together like obscene dogs and cats and serpents, against a church which you profoundly revere! The time the time the occasion and the

motive ought to have been argument enough, that, even if the measure were right or harmless in itself, not now, nor with such as these, was it to be effected !