Her lord appeared and misbehaved himself; my lord won't show himself at all,--which I think is worse." Our old friend Phineas Finn, who had now reached a higher place in politics than even his political dreams had assigned to him, though he was a Member of Parliament, was much away from London in these days.

New brooms sweep clean; and official new brooms, I think, sweep cleaner than any other.

Who has not watched at the commencement of a Ministry some Secretary, some Lord, or some Commissioner, who intends by fresh Herculean labours to cleanse the Augean stables just committed to his care?
Who does not know the gentleman at the Home Office, who means to reform the police and put an end to malefactors; or the new Minister at the Board of Works, who is to make London beautiful as by a magician's stroke,--or, above all, the new First Lord, who is resolved that he will really build us a fleet, purge the dock-yards, and save us half a million a year at the same time?
Phineas Finn was bent on unriddling the Irish sphinx.

Surely something might be done to prove to his susceptible countrymen that at the present moment no curse could be laid upon them so heavy as that of having to rule themselves apart from England; and he thought that this might be the easier, as he became from day to day more thoroughly convinced that those Home Rulers who were all around him in the House were altogether of the same opinion.

Had some inscrutable decree of fate ordained and made it certain,--with a certainty not to be disturbed,--that no candidate could be returned to Parliament who would not assert the earth to be triangular, there would rise immediately a clamorous assertion of triangularity among political aspirants.