Tom Hood.

cooking , and one day made some potted beef , which was produced at tea , when Mr . de Franch was present . Hood asked with apparent interest how it was made , and was told that it was pounded in " a pestle and mortar . " " But

then , dear , " he gravely remarked , " you know we have not got them . " In short he insisted that like the Otaheitan cooks , his wife had chewed it small , and as she happened ( having the face ache ) to put her hand to her jawit seemed like a

cor-, roboration of his statement . He would persist iu calling it "Bullock jam , " and and when his wife asked him what he would eat , replied " What you chews . " Hood seems to have been beforehand with Lord Beaconslield—if the present Prime

Minister ever really supported such a scheme as was suggested on the Dis-establishment of the Irish Church , and which after all has a good deal to be said in its favour , at all events in the estimation of liberal-minded readers of the MASONIC

MAGAZINE . I allude to concurrent endowment , for I find the following in a letter to his great friend , Mr . Dilke , afterwards Sir Wentworth Dilke , the accomplished

editor of the Athenceum , and the father of Sir Charles Dilke , who boasts in this age of loyalty to the Crown and love for the kingdom , nay pride in the empire—that he is a Republican . "The plan here , " he says , writing in 1836 from Coblentz" which is goodis

, , , that , of both religions , the ministers are paid by the King or State , an arrangement I should like for England or Ireland , or let every one pay their own , as in America . As to Education , I think our Government does wisely not to interfere too rashl .

y Something may be left to the sense of the people . The infamous boarding schools of former times are dying or dead , and replaced by proprietory ones , without Government interference . " In the same letter he speaks of the

military men there , and remarks— " There are some here , in appearance to the eye , ai yything but gentlemen in the best sense of the word . You cannot mistake them . Perhaps they have got the worst attributes ° f the French Revolution , a nominal equality which puts the low , base , vulgar and ^ rich on a false level with God Almi ghty ' s gentlemen , which rank I do

seek with all my heart ; and endeavour that the English character shall not suffer at my hands , and though I resent on jmblic grounds what I meet with I am content to be a dweller here , whose character is to be judged by its own merits . " In another passage , Hood , speaking of

the Prussian system as compared with our own , solves in his way the Land and Labour Question , Avhich is traubhug us so much now .

He says— "The two countries are widely different : what a good absolute King can do here in Germany , cannot be done with us . If our jjeasantry wei-3 free and proprietary , I think they would work as hard and be as contented as the Germans . But the English labourerlabour as he may ,

, can but be a pauper ; and it seems a little unreasonable to require him to sit at Hope ' s or Content ' s table , eating nothing with the same cheerfulness and gaiety as the barber ' s brother at the Barmecides . " The following is a little bit very

characteristic of Hood , and very much like some of Sydney Smith's jokes , and like the scorjiion , the sting is in its tail . I am afraid Hood was an awful Radical : — "I was very much amused the other clay with R ' s account of his taking an

emetic . He says he sat for an hour expecting naturally something would come of it ,, but nothing stirred . It agreed with him just as well as if he had taken any other wine than antimonial . It was rather comfortable than otherwise . So he

had recourse to warm water , of which he drank a dozen large cups consecutively , but they made themselves quite at home with the wine . Then he tried tea , in hopes of tea and turn out , but it stayed with the wine and water . So he had recourse to

the warm water , which stayed still , and so did some soup which he took on the top of all ; and then despairing of the case he went to bed with his corporation unreformed ! Now was not this a tenacious , retentive stomach , so determined never to give up anything it had acquired , good or

bad : a lively type of a Tory !" Living amongst the Roman Catholics for so long , he does not seem by any means to have become converted .

' He says— " I have never had any of the vulgar insane dread of the Catholics . It appears to me too certain that they are