The Bystander (Volume 1) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Tarn worth, and Palmerston in sticking to Tiverton. But Sir John Macdonald's constituency is in the moon; not only is it in the moon, it is in the domain of the plaintiff in a suit for a prodigious sum in which we are the defendants. West Toronto will soon open her arms; let us hope not in vain. ?Art may restore the lost bloom to the cheek of beauty: no art can restore it to a peach or to a debutant. The interest that attached to Mr. Blake's appearance as an independent statesman six years ago can never be entirely revived. Still interest attaches to his second start. It is regarded as a victory of the more liberal and national element of a strangely compounded party over the other element, by which his reappearance is received in pensive silence. His election speech was a protest against party bondage. That the spirit in him is strong, we know; and we may hope that the flesh has become stronger. When Louis Napoleon, as a pretender, raised the standard of insurrection in the barrack yard at Strasbourg, the colonel rushed out and collared him; whereupon the aspirant to Empire immediately surrendered. The historian remarks that the appearance of the incensed colonel on the scene when his barrack yard was invaded was precisely the thing for which the Prince, if his enterprise was serious, ought to have been prepared. Mr. Blake has probably made up his mind, this time, to deal with the Colonel. Had he done so before; had he struck, however temperately and cautiously, one straight blow, he would have found that there was no very solid obstacle in his onward path. But at the decisive moment, it would appear, old political associates and timid advisers threw their arms around him. The column, at the head of which he had put himself, no sooner began to advance under fire, than it fou...