initial commit of ebook 31685HEAD main

author: Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> 2025-10-14 19:56:14 -0700
committer: Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> 2025-10-14 19:56:14 -0700
commit: 0d707feee316944bbce960a5cabc2510e5f1dc8b (patch)
tree: eabc91993e832ba4b5ac1b53a2510a5340745571
68 files changed, 28900 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/31685-0.txt b/31685-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce50594
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,6806 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Nuts and Nutcrackers, by Charles James Lever
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Nuts and Nutcrackers
+
+Author: Charles James Lever
+
+Illustrator: Phiz.
+
+Release Date: March 18, 2010 [EBook #31685]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NUTS AND NUTCRACKERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+                            [Illustration]
+
+                         NUTS AND NUTCRACKERS.
+
+
+    “The world’s my filbert which with my crackers I will open.”
+
+                                      SHAKSPEARE.
+
+
+    “The priest calls the lawyer a cheat,
+      And the lawyer beknaves the divine;
+    And the statesman, because he’s so great,
+      Thinks his trade’s as honest as mine.”
+
+                                      BEGGAR’S OPERA.
+
+
+    “Hard texts are _nuts_ (I will not call them cheaters,)
+    Whose shells do keep their kernels from the eaters;
+    Open the shells, and you shall have the meat:
+    They here are brought for you to crack and eat.”
+
+                                      JOHN BUNYAN.
+
+
+                        ILLUSTRATED BY “PHIZ.”
+
+                            Second Edition.
+
+                                LONDON:
+                 WM. S. ORR AND CO., PATERNOSTER ROW;
+                 WILLIAM CURRY, JUN., AND CO., DUBLIN.
+
+                               MDCCCXLV.
+
+
+                                LONDON:
+              BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                       PAGE
+
+AN OPENING NUT                                          vii
+
+A NUT FOR MEN OF GENIUS                                   1
+
+A NUT FOR CORONERS                                       15
+
+A NUT FOR “TOURISTS”                                     19
+
+A NUT FOR LEGAL FUNCTIONARIES                            22
+
+A NUT FOR “ENDURING AFFECTION”                           31
+
+A NUT FOR THE POLICE AND SIR PETER                       37
+
+A NUT FOR THE BUDGET                                     44
+
+A NUT FOR REPEAL                                         49
+
+A NUT FOR NATIONAL PRIDE                                 55
+
+A NUT FOR DIPLOMATISTS                                   64
+
+A NUT FOR FOREIGN TRAVEL                                 71
+
+A NUT FOR DOMESTIC HAPPINESS                             77
+
+A NUT FOR LADIES BOUNTIFUL                               82
+
+A NUT FOR THE PRIESTS                                    85
+
+A NUT FOR LEARNED SOCIETIES                              87
+
+A NUT FOR THE LAWYERS                                    92
+
+A NUT FOR THE IRISH                                      99
+
+A NUT FOR VICEREGAL PRIVILEGES                          102
+
+RICH AND POOR--POUR ET CONTRE                           109
+
+A NUT FOR ST. PATRICK’S NIGHT                           114
+
+A NUT FOR “GENTLEMAN JOCKS”                             119
+
+A NUT FOR YOUNGER SONS                                  123
+
+A NUT FOR THE PENAL CODE                                128
+
+A NUT FOR THE OLD                                       131
+
+A NUT FOR THE ART UNION                                 133
+
+A NUT FOR THE KINGSTOWN RAILWAY                         137
+
+A NUT FOR THE DOCTORS                                   141
+
+A NUT FOR THE ARCHITECTS                                145
+
+A NUT FOR A NEW COLONY                                  148
+
+A “SWEET” NUT FOR THE YANKEES                           153
+
+A NUT FOR THE SEASON--JULLIEN’S QUADRILLES              157
+
+A NUT FOR “ALL IRELAND”                                 163
+
+A NUT FOR “A NEW COMPANY”                               168
+
+A NUT FOR “THE POLITICAL ECONOMISTS”                    175
+
+A NUT FOR “GRAND DUKES”                                 180
+
+A NUT FOR THE EAST INDIA DIRECTORS                      183
+
+A FILBERT FOR SIR ROBERT PEEL                           185
+
+“THE INCOME TAX”                                        186
+
+A NUT FOR THE “BELGES”                                  189
+
+A NUT FOR WORKHOUSE CHAPLAINS                           192
+
+A NUT FOR THE “HOUSE”                                   197
+
+A NUT FOR “LAW REFORM”                                  200
+
+A NUT FOR “CLIMBING BOYS”                               203
+
+A NUT FOR “THE SUBDIVISION OF LABOUR”                   206
+
+A NUT FOR A “NEW VERDICT”                               212
+
+A NUT FOR THE REAL “LIBERATOR”                          216
+
+A NUT FOR “HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS”                      221
+
+A NUT FOR THE LANDLORD AND TENANT COMMISSION            225
+
+A NUT FOR THE HUMANE SOCIETY                            228
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR MEN OF GENIUS.
+
+
+If Providence, instead of a vagabond, had made me a justice of the
+peace, there is no species of penalty I would not have enforced
+against a class of offenders, upon whom it is the perverted taste of
+the day to bestow wealth, praise, honour, and reputation; in a word,
+upon that portion of the writers for our periodical literature whose
+pastime it is by high-flown and exaggerated pictures of society,
+places, and amusements, to mislead the too credulous and believing
+world; who, in the search for information and instruction, are but
+reaping a barren harvest of deceit and illusion.
+
+Every one is loud and energetic in his condemnation of a bubble
+speculation; every one is severe upon the dishonest features of
+bankruptcy, and the demerits of un-trusty guardianship; but while the
+law visits these with its pains and penalties, and while heavy
+inflictions follow on those breaches of trust, which affect our
+pocket, yet can he “walk scatheless,” with port erect and visage high
+who, for mere amusement--for the passing pleasure of the moment--or,
+baser still, for certain pounds per sheet, can, present us with the
+air-drawn daggers of a dyspeptic imagination for the real woes of
+life, or paint the most common-place and tiresome subjects with
+colours so vivid and so glowing as to persuade the unwary reader that
+a paradise of pleasure and enjoyment, hitherto unknown, is open before
+him. The treadmill and the ducking-stool, “_me judice_,” would no
+longer be tenanted by rambling gipsies or convivial rioters, but would
+display to the admiring gaze of an assembled multitude the
+aristocratic features of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, the dark whiskers
+of D’Israeli, the long and graceful proportions of Hamilton Maxwell,
+or the portly paunch and melo-dramatic frown of that right pleasant
+fellow, Henry Addison himself.
+
+You cannot open a newspaper without meeting some narrative of what, in
+the phrase of the day, is denominated an “attempted imposition.” Count
+Skryznyzk, with black moustachoes and a beard to match, after being
+the lion of Lord Dudley Stuart’s parties, and the delight of a certain
+set of people in the West-end--who, when they give a tea-party, call
+it a _soirée_, and deem it necessary to have either a Hindoo or a
+Hottentot, a Pole, or a Piano-player, to interest their guests--was
+lately brought up before Sir Peter Laurie, charged by 964 with
+obtaining money under false pretences, and sentenced to three months’
+imprisonment and hard labour at the treadmill.
+
+The charge looks a grave one, good reader, and perhaps already some
+notion is trotting through your head about forgery or embezzlement;
+you think of widows rendered desolate, or orphans defrauded; you
+lament over the hard-earned pittance of persevering industry lost to
+its possessor; and, in your heart, you acknowledge that there may have
+been some cause for the partition of Poland, and that the Emperor of
+the Russias, like another monarch, may not be half so black as he is
+painted. But spare your honest indignation; our unpronounceable friend
+did none of these. No; the head and front of his offending was simply
+exciting the sympathies of a feeling world for his own deep wrongs;
+for the fate of his father, beheaded in the Grand Place at Warsaw; for
+his four brothers, doomed never to see the sun in the dark mines of
+Tobolsk; for his beautiful sister, reared in the lap of luxury and
+wealth, wandering houseless and an outcast around the palaces of St.
+Petersburg, wearying heaven itself with cries for mercy on her
+banished brethren; and last of all, for himself--he, who at the battle
+of Pultowa led heaven-knows how many and how terrific charges of
+cavalry,--whose breast was a galaxy of orders only outnumbered by his
+wounds--that he should be an exile, without friends, and without home!
+In a word, by a beautiful and highly-wrought narrative, that drew
+tears from the lady and ten shillings from the gentleman of the house,
+he became amenable to our law as a swindler and an impostor, simply
+because his narrative was a fiction.
+
+In the name of all justice, in the name of truth, of honesty, and fair
+dealing, I ask you, is this right? or, if the treadmill be the fit
+reward for such powers as his, what shall we say, what shall we do,
+with all the popular writers of the day? How many of Bulwer’s stories
+are facts? What truth is there in James? Is that beautiful creation of
+Dickens, “Poor Nell,” a real or a fictitious character? And is the
+offence, after all, merely in the manner, and not the matter, of the
+transgression? Is it that, instead of coming before the world printed,
+puffed, and hot-pressed by the gentlemen of the Row, he ventured to
+edite himself, and, instead of the trade, make his tongue the medium
+of publication? And yet, if speech be the crime, what say you to
+Macready, and with what punishment are you prepared to visit him who
+makes your heart-strings vibrate to the sorrows of _Virginius_, or
+thrills your very blood with the malignant vengeance of _Iago_? Is
+what is permissible in Covent Garden, criminal in the city? or,
+stranger still, is there a punishment at the one place, and praise at
+the other? Or is it the costume, the foot-lights, the orange-peel, and
+the sawdust--are they the terms of the immunity? Alas, and alas! I
+believe they are.
+
+Burke said, “The age of chivalry is o’er;” and I believe the age of
+poetry has gone with it; and if Homer himself were to chant an Iliad
+down Fleet Street, I’d wager a crown that 964 would take him up for a
+ballad-singer.
+
+But a late case occurs to me. A countryman of mine, one Bernard
+Cavanagh, doubtless, a gentleman of very good connections, announced
+some time ago that he had adopted a new system of diet, which was
+neither more nor less than going without any food. Now, Mr. Cavanagh
+was a stout gentleman, comely and plump to look at, who conversed
+pleasantly on the common topics of the day, and seemed, on the whole,
+to enjoy life pretty much like other people. He was to be seen for a
+shilling--children half-price; and although Englishmen have read of
+our starving countrymen for the last century and a-half, yet their
+curiosity to see one, to look at him, to prod him with their
+umbrellas, punch him with their knuckles, and otherwise test his
+vitality, was such, that they seemed just as much alive as though the
+phenomenon was new to them. The consequence was, Mr. Cavanagh, whose
+cook was on board wages, and whose establishment was of the least
+expensive character, began to wax rich. Several large towns and
+cities, in different parts of the empire, requested him to visit them;
+and Joe Hume suggested that the corporation of London should offer him
+ten thousand pounds for his secret, merely for the use of the livery.
+In fact, Cavanagh was now the cry, and as Barney appeared to grow fat
+on fasting, his popularity knew no bounds. Unfortunately, however,
+ambition, the bane of so many other great men, numbered him also among
+its victims. Had he been content with London as the sphere of his
+triumphs and teetotalism, there is no saying how long he might have
+gone on starving with satisfaction. Whether it is that the people are
+less observant there, or more accustomed to see similar exhibitions,
+I cannot tell; but true it is they paid their shillings, felt his
+ribs, walked home, and pronounced Barney a most exemplary Irishman.
+But not content with the capital, he must make a tour in the
+provinces, and accordingly went starring it about through Leeds,
+Birmingham, Manchester, and all the other manufacturing towns, as if
+in mockery of the poor people who did not know the secret how to live
+without food.
+
+Mr. Cavanagh was now living--if life it can be called--in one of the
+best hotels, when, actuated by that spirit of inquiry that
+characterises the age, a respectable lady, who kept a boarding-house,
+paid him a visit, to ascertain, if possible, how far his system might
+be made applicable to her guests, who, whatever their afflictions,
+laboured under no such symptoms as his.
+
+She was pleased with Barney,--she patted him with her hand; he was
+round, and plump, and fat, much more so, indeed, than many of her
+daily dinner-party; and had, withal, that kind of joyous, rollicking,
+devil-may-care look, that seems to bespeak good condition;--but this
+the poor lady, of course, did not know to be an inherent property in
+Pat, however poor his situation.
+
+After an interview of an hour long she took her leave, not exhibiting
+the usual satisfaction of other visitors, but with a dubious look and
+meditative expression, that betokened a mind not made up, and a heart
+not at ease; she was clearly not content, perhaps the abortive effort
+to extract a confession from Mr. Cavanagh might be the cause, or
+perhaps she felt like many respectable people whose curiosity is only
+the advanced guard to their repentance, and who never think that in
+any exhibition they get the worth of their money. This might be the
+case, for as fasting is a negative process, there is really little to
+see in the performer. Had it been the man that eats a sheep; “_à la
+bonne heure!_” you have something for your money there: and I can even
+sympathize with the French gentleman who follows Van Amburgh to this
+day, in the agreeable hope, to use his own words, of “assisting at the
+_soirée_, when the lions shall eat Mr. Van Amburgh.” This, if not
+laudable is at least intelligible. But to return, the lady went her
+way, not indeed on hospitable thoughts intent, but turning over in her
+mind various theories about abstinence, and only wishing she had the
+whole of the Cavanagh family for boarders at a guinea a-week.
+
+Late in the evening of the same day this estimable lady, whose
+inquiries into the properties of gastric juice, if not as scientific,
+were to the full as enthusiastic as those of Bostock or Tiedeman
+himself, was returning from an early tea, through an unfrequented
+suburb of Manchester, when suddenly her eye fell upon Bernard
+Cavanagh, seated in a little shop--a dish of sausages and a plate of
+ham before him, while a frothing cup of porter ornamented his right
+hand. It was true, he wore a patch above his eye, a large beard, and
+various other disguises, but they served him not: she knew him at
+once. The result is soon told: the police were informed; Mr. Cavanagh
+was captured; the lady gave her testimony in a crowded court, and he
+who lately was rolling on the wheel of fortune, was now condemned to
+foot it on a very different wheel, and all for no other cause than
+that he could not live without food.
+
+The magistrate, who was eloquent on the occasion, called him an
+impostor; designating by this odious epithet, a highly-wrought and
+well-conceived work of imagination. Unhappy Defoe, your Robinson
+Crusoe might have cost you a voyage across the seas; your man Friday
+might have been a black Monday to you had you lived in our days. 964
+is a severer critic than _The Quarterly_, and his judgment more
+irrevocable.
+
+[Illustration: The Man of Genius.]
+
+We have never heard of any one who, discovering the fictitious
+character of a novel he had believed as a fact, waited on the
+publisher with a modest request that his money might be returned to
+him, being obtained under false pretences; much less of his applying
+to his worship for a warrant against G. P. R. James, Esq., or Harrison
+Ainsworth, for certain imaginary woes and unreal sorrows depicted in
+their writings: yet the conduct of the lady towards Mr. Cavanagh was
+exactly of this nature. How did his appetite do her any possible
+disservice? what sins against her soul were contained in his sausages?
+and yet she must appeal to the justice as an injured woman: Cavanagh
+had imposed upon her--she was wronged because he was hungry. All his
+narrative, beautifully constructed and artfully put together, went for
+nothing; his look, his manner, his entertaining anecdotes, his
+fascinating conversation, his time--from ten in the morning till eight
+in the evening--went all for nothing: this really is too bad. Do we
+ask of every author to be the hero he describes? Is Bulwer, Pelham,
+and Paul Clifford, Eugene Aram, and the Lady of Lyons? Is James, Mary
+of Burgundy, Darnley, the Gipsy, and Corse de Leon? Is Dickens, Sam
+Weller, Quilp, and Barnaby Rudge?--to what absurdities will this lead
+us! and yet Bernard Cavanagh was no more guilty than any of these
+gentlemen. He was, if I may so express it, a pictorial--an ideal
+representation of a man that fasted: he narrated all the sensations
+want of food suggests; its dreamy debility, its languid stupor, its
+painful suffering, its stage of struggle and suspense, ending in a
+victory, where the mind, the conqueror over the baser nature, asserts
+its proud and glorious supremacy in the triumph of volition; and for
+this beautiful creation of his brain he is sent to the treadmill, as
+though, instead of a poet, he had been a pickpocket.
+
+If Bulwer be a baronet; if Dickens’ bed-room be papered with
+bank-debentures; then do I proclaim it loudly before the world,
+Bernard Cavanagh is an injured man: you are either absurd in one case,
+or unjust in the other; take your choice. Ship off Sir Edward to the
+colonies; send James to Swan River; let Lady Blessington card wool, or
+Mrs. Norton pound oyster-shells; or else we call upon you, give Mr.
+Cavanagh freedom of the guild; call him the author of “The Hungry
+One;” let him be courted and _fêted_--you may ask him to dinner with
+an easy conscience, and invite him to tea without remorse. Let a
+Whig-radical borough solicit him to represent it; place him at the
+right hand of Lord John; let his picture be exhibited in the
+print-shops, and let the cut of his coat and the tie of his cravat be
+so much in vogue, that bang-ups _à la_ Barney shall be the only things
+seen in Bond-street: one course or the other you must take. If the
+mountain will not go to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain: or
+in other words, if Bulwer descend not to Barney, Barney must mount up
+to Bulwer. It is absurd, it is worse than absurd, to pretend that he
+who so thoroughly sympathises with his hero, as to embody him in his
+own thoughts and acts, his look, his dress, and his demeanour, that
+he, I say, who so penetrated with the impersonation of a part, finds
+the pen too weak, and the press too slow, to picture forth his vivid
+creations, should be less an object of praise, of honour, and
+distinction, than the indolent denizen of some drawing-room, who, in
+slippered ease, dictates his shadowy and imperfect conceptions--visions
+of what he never felt, dreamy representations of unreality.
+
+“The poet,” as the word implies, is the maker or the creator; and
+however little of the higher attributes of what the world esteems as
+poetry the character would seem to possess, he who invents a
+personage, the conformity of whose traits to the rule of life is
+acknowledged for its truth, he, I say, is a poet. Thus, there is
+poetry in Sancho Panza, Falstaff, Dugald Dalgetty, and a hundred other
+similar impersonations; and why not in Bernard Cavanagh?
+
+Look for a moment at the effects of your system. The Caraccis, we are
+told, spent their boyish years drawing rude figures with chalk on the
+doors and even the walls of the palaces of Rome: here the first germs
+of their early talent displayed themselves; and in those bold
+conceptions of youthful genius were seen the first dawnings of a power
+that gave glory to the age they lived in. Had Sir Peter Laurie been
+their cotemporary, had 964 been loose in those days, they would have
+been treated with a trip to the mill, and their taste for design
+cultivated by the low diet of a penitentiary. You know not what
+budding genius you have nipped with this abominable system: you think
+not of the early indications of mind and intellect you may be
+consigning to prison: or is it after all, that the matter-of-fact
+spirit of the age has sapped the very vitals of our law-code, and that
+in your utilitarian zeal you have doomed to death all that bears the
+stamp of imagination? if this be indeed your object, have a good
+heart, encourage 964, and you’ll not leave a novelist in the land.
+
+Good reader, I ask your pardon for all this honest indignation; I know
+it is in vain: I cannot reform our jurisprudence; and our laws, like
+the Belgian revolution, must be regarded “_comme un fait accompli_;”
+in other words, what can’t be cured must be endured. Let us leave then
+our friend the Pole to perform his penance; let us say adieu to
+Barney, who is at this moment occupying a suite of apartments in the
+Penitentiary, and let us turn to the reverse of the medal, I mean to
+those who would wile us away by false promises and flattering speeches
+to entertain such views of life as are not only impossible but
+inconsistent, thus rendering our path here devoid of interest and of
+pleasure, while compared with the extravagant creations of their own
+erring fancies. Yes, princes may be trusted, but put not your faith in
+periodicals. Let no pictorial representations of Alpine scenery, under
+the auspices of Colburn or Bentley, seduce you from the comforts of
+your hearth and home: let no enthusiastic accounts of military
+greatness, no peninsular pleasures, no charms of campaigning life,
+induce you to change your garb of country gentleman for the livery of
+the Horse-Guards,--“making the green one red.”
+
+Be not mystified by Maxwell, nor lured by Lorrequer; let no panegyrics
+of pipe-clay and the brevet seduce you from the peaceful path in life;
+let not Marryat mar your happiness by the glories of those who dwell
+in the deep waters; let not Wilson persuade you that the “Lights and
+Shadows of Scottish Life” have any reference to that romantic people,
+who betake themselves to their native mountains with a little oatmeal
+for food and a little sulphur for friction; do not believe one
+syllable about the girls of the west; trust not in the representations
+of their blue eyes, nor of their trim ankles peering beneath a jupe of
+scarlet--we can vouch it is true, for the red petticoat, but the rest
+is apocryphal. Fly, we warn you, from Summers in Germany, Evenings in
+Brittany, Weeks on the Rhine; away with tours, guide-books, and all
+the John Murrayisms of travels. A plague upon Egypt! travellers have a
+proverbial liberty of conscience, and the farther they go, the more
+does it seem to stretch; not that near home matters are much better,
+for our “Wild Sports” in Achill are as romantic as those in Africa,
+and the Complete Angler is a complete humbug.
+
+There is no faith--no principle in any of these men. The grave writer,
+the stern moralist, the uncompromising advocate of the inflexible rule
+of right, is a dandy with essenced locks, loose trousers, and looser
+morals, who breakfasts at four in the afternoon, and spends his
+evenings among the side scenes of the opera; the merry writer of whims
+and oddities, who shakes his puns about like pepper from a
+pepper-castor, is a misanthropic, melancholy gentleman, of mournful
+look and unhappy aspect: the advocate of field-sports, of all the
+joyous excitement of the hunting-field, and the bold dangers of the
+chase, is an asthmatic sexagenarian, with care in his heart and gout
+in his ankles; and lastly, he who lives but in the horrors of a
+charnel-house, whose gloomy mind finds no pleasure save in the dark
+and dismal pictures of crime and suffering, of lingering agony, or
+cruel death, is a fat, round, portly, comely gentleman, with a laugh
+like Falstaff, and a face whose every lineament and feature seems to
+exhale the merriment of a jocose and happy temperament. I speak not of
+the softer sex, many of whose productions would seem to have but
+little sympathy with themselves; but once for all, I would ask you
+what reliance, what faith can you place in any of them? Is it to the
+denizen of a coal mine you apply for information about the Nassau
+balloon? Do you refer a disputed point in dress to an Englishman, in
+climate to a Laplander, in politeness to a Frenchman, or in
+hospitality to a Belgian? or do you not rather feel that these are not
+exactly their attributes, and that you are moving the equity for a
+case at common law? exactly in the same way, and for the same reason,
+we repeat it, put not your faith in periodicals, nor in the writers
+thereof.
+
+How ridiculous would it appear if the surgeon-general were to open a
+pleading, or charge a jury in the Queen’s Bench, while the
+solicitor-general was engaged in taking up the femoral artery! What
+would you say if the Archbishop of Canterbury were to preside over the
+artillery-practice at Woolwich, while the Commander of the Forces
+delivered a charge to the clergy of the diocese? How would you look if
+Justice Pennefather were to speak at a repeal meeting, and Daniel
+O’Connell to conduct himself like a loyal and discreet citizen? Would
+you not at once say the whole world is in masquerade? and would you
+not be justified in the remark? And yet this it is which is exactly
+taking place before your eyes in the wide world of letters. The
+illiterate and unreflecting man of under-bred habits and degenerate
+tastes will write nothing but a philosophic novel; the denizen of the
+Fleet, or the Queen’s Bench, publishes an ascent of Mont Blanc, with
+a glowing description of the delights of liberty; the nobleman writes
+slang; the starving author, with broken boots and patched
+continuations, will not indite a name undignified by a title; and
+after all this, will you venture to tell me that these men are not
+indictable by the statute for obtaining money under false pretences?
+
+I have run myself out of breath; and now, if you will allow me a few
+moments, I will tell you what, perhaps, I ought to have done earlier
+in this article, namely, its object.
+
+It is a remarkable feature in the complex and difficult machinery of
+our society, that while crime and the law code keep steadily on the
+increase, moving in parallel lines one beside the other, certain
+prejudices, popular fallacies--nuts, as we have called them at the
+head of this paper--should still disgrace our social system; and that,
+however justice may be administered in our courts of law, in the
+private judicature of our own dwellings we observe an especial system
+of jurisprudence, marked by injustice and by wrong. To endeavour to
+depict some instances of this, I have set about my present
+undertaking. To disabuse the public mind as to the error, that what is
+punishable in one can be praiseworthy in another; and what is
+excellent in the court can be execrable in the city. Such is my
+object, such my hope. Under this title I shall endeavour to touch upon
+the undue estimation in which we hold certain people and places--the
+unfair depreciation of certain sects and callings. Not confining
+myself to home, I shall take the habits of my countrymen on the
+Continent, whether in their search for climate, economy, education, or
+enjoyment; and, as far as my ability lies, hold the mirror up to
+nature, while I extend the war-cry of my distinguished countrymen,
+not asking “justice for Ireland” alone, but “justice for the whole
+human race.” For the gaoler as for the guardsman, for the steward of
+the Holyhead as for him of the household; from the Munster
+king-at-arms to the monarch of the Cannibal Island--“_nihil à me
+alienum puto_;” from the priest to the plenipotentiary; from Mr.
+Arkins to Abd-el-Kader: my sympathy extends to all.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR CORONERS.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+I had nearly attained to man’s estate before I understood the nature
+of a coroner. I remember, when a child, to have seen a coloured print
+from a well-known picture of the day, representing the night-mare. It
+was a horrible representation of a goblin shape of hideous aspect,
+that sat cowering upon the bosom of a sleeping figure, on whose white
+features a look of painful suffering was depicted, while the clenched
+hands and drawn-up feet seemed to struggle with convulsive agony.
+Heaven knows how or when the thought occurred to me, but I clearly
+recollect my impression that this goblin was a coroner. Some confused
+notion about sitting on a corpse as one of his attributes had,
+doubtless, suggested the idea; and certainly nothing contributed to
+increase the horror of suicide in my eyes so much as the reflection,
+that the grim demon already mentioned had some function to discharge
+on the occasion.
+
+When, after the lapse of years, I heard that the eloquent and gifted
+member for Finsbury was a being of this order, although I knew by that
+time the injustice of my original prejudices, yet, I confess I could
+not look at him in the house, without a thought of my childish
+fancies, and an endeavour to trace in his comely features some faint
+resemblance to the figure of the night-mare.
+
+This strange impression of my infancy recurred strongly to my mind a
+few days since, on reading a newspaper account of a sudden death.--The
+case was simply that of a gentleman who, in the bosom of his family,
+became suddenly seized with illness, and after a few hours expired.
+What was their surprise! what their horror! to find, that no sooner
+was the circumstance known, than the house was surrounded by a mob,
+policemen were stationed at the doors, and twelve of the great
+unwashed, with a coroner at their head, forced their entry into the
+house of mourning, to deliberate on the cause of death. I can
+perfectly understand the value of this practice in cases where either
+suspicion has attached, or where the circumstances of the decease, as
+to time and place, would indicate a violent death; but where a person,
+surrounded by his children, living in all the quiet enjoyment of an
+easy and undisturbed existence, drops off by some one of the ills that
+flesh is heir to, only a little more rapidly than his neighbour at
+next door, why this should be a case for a coroner and his gang, I
+cannot, for the life of me, conceive. In the instance I allude to, the
+family offered the fullest information: they explained that the
+deceased had been liable for years to an infirmity likely to terminate
+in this way. The physician who attended him corroborated the
+statement; and, in fact, it was clear the case was one of those almost
+every-day occurrences where the thread of life is snapped, not
+unravelled. This, however, did not satisfy the coroner, who had, as he
+expressed it, a “duty to perform,” and, who, certainly had five
+guineas for his fee: he was a “medical coroner,” too, and therefore he
+would examine for himself. Thus, in the midst of the affliction and
+bereavement of a desolate family, the frightful detail of an inquest,
+with all its attendant train of harrowing and heart-rending inquiries,
+is carried on, simply because it is permissible by the law, and the
+coroner may enter where the king cannot.
+
+We are taught in the litany to pray against sudden death; but up to
+this moment I never knew it was illegal. Dreadful afflictions as
+apoplexy and aneurism are, it remained for our present civilisation to
+make them punishable by a statute. The march of intellect, not
+satisfied with directing us in life, must go a step farther and teach
+us how to die. Fashionable diseases the world has been long acquainted
+with, but an “illegal inflammation,” and a “criminal hemorrhage” have
+been reserved for the enlightened age we live in.
+
+Newspapers will no longer inform us, in the habitual phrase, that Mr.
+Simpkins died suddenly at his house at Hampstead; but, under the head
+of “Shocking outrage,” we shall read, “that after a long life of great
+respectability and the exhibition of many virtues, this unfortunate
+gentleman, it is hoped in a moment of mental alienation, went off with
+a disease of the heart. The affliction of his surviving relatives at
+this frightful act may be conceived, but cannot be described. His
+effects, according to the statute, have been confiscated to the crown,
+and a deodand of fifty shillings awarded on the apothecary who
+attended him. It is hoped, that the universal execration which attends
+cases of this nature may deter others from the same course; and, we
+confess, our observations are directed with a painful, but we trust, a
+powerful interest to certain elderly gentlemen in the neighbourhood of
+Islington.” _Verb. sat._
+
+Under these sad circumstances it behoves us to look a little about,
+and provide against such a contingency. It is then earnestly
+recommended to heads of families, that when registering the birth of a
+child, they should also include some probable or possible malady of
+which he may, could, would, should, or ought to die, in the course of
+time. This will show, by incontestable evidence, that the event was at
+least anticipated, and being done at the earliest period of life, no
+reproach can possibly lie for want of premeditation. The register
+might run thus:--
+
+Giles Tims, son of Thomas and Mary Tims, born on the 9th of June, Kent
+street, Southwark--dropsy, typhus, or gout in the stomach.
+
+It by no means follows, that he must wait for one or other of these
+maladies to carry him off. Not at all; he may range at will through
+the whole practice of physic, and adopt his choice. The registry only
+goes to show, that he does not mean to sneak out of the world in any
+under-bred way, nor bolt out of life with the abrupt precipitation of
+a Frenchman after a dinner party. I have merely thrown out this hint
+here as a warning to my many friends, and shall now proceed to other
+and more pleasing topics.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR “TOURISTS.”
+
+
+Among the many incongruities of that composite piece of architecture,
+called John Bull, there is nothing more striking than the contrast
+between his thorough nationality and his unbounded admiration for
+foreigners. Now, although we may not entirely sympathize with, we can
+understand and appreciate this feature of his character, and see how
+he gratifies his very pride itself, in the attentions and civilities
+he bestows upon strangers. The feeling is intelligible too, because
+Frenchmen, Germans, and even Italians, notwithstanding the many points
+of disparity between us, have always certain qualities well worthy of
+respect, if not of imitation. France has a great literature, a name
+glorious in history, a people abounding in intelligence, skill, and
+invention; in fact, all the attributes that make up a great nation.
+Germany has many of these, and though she lack the brilliant fancy,
+the sparkling wit of her neighbour, has still a compensating fund in
+the rich resources of her judgment, and the profound depths of her
+scholarship. Indeed, every continental country has its lesson for our
+benefit, and we would do well to cultivate the acquaintance of
+strangers, not only to disseminate more just views of ourselves and
+our institutions, but also for the adoption of such customs as seem
+worthy of imitation, and such habits as may suit our condition in
+life; while such is the case as regards those countries high in the
+scale of civilisation, we would, by no means, extend the rule to
+others less happily constituted, less benignly gifted. The Carinthian
+boor with his garment of sheep-wool, or the Laplander with his snow
+shoes and his hood of deerskin, may be both very natural objects of
+curiosity, but by no means subjects of imitation. This point will
+doubtless be conceded at once; and now, will any one tell me for what
+cause, under what pretence, and with what pretext are we civil to the
+Yankees?--not for their politeness, not for their literature, not for
+any fascination of their manner, nor any charm of their address, not
+for any historic association, not for any halo that the glorious past
+has thrown around the common-place monotony of the present, still less
+for any romantic curiosity as to their lives and habits--for in this
+respect all other savage nations far surpass them. What then is, or
+what can be the cause?
+
+Of all the lions that caprice and the whimsical absurdity of a
+second-rate set in fashion ever courted and entertained, never had any
+one less pretensions to the civility he received than the author of
+‘Pencillings by the Way’--poor in thought, still poorer in expression,
+without a spark of wit, without a gleam of imagination--a fourth-rate
+looking man, and a fifth-rate talker, he continued to receive the
+homage we were wont to bestow upon a Scott, and even charily extended
+to a Dickens. His writings the very slip-slop of “commerage,” the
+tittle-tattle of a Sunday paper, dressed up in the cant of Kentucky;
+the very titles, the contemptible affectation of unredeemed twaddle,
+‘Pencillings by the Way!’ ‘Letters from under a Bridge!’ Good lack!
+how the latter name is suggestive of eaves-dropping and listening; and
+how involuntarily we call to mind those chance expressions of his
+partners in the dance, or his companions at the table, faithfully
+recorded for the edification of the free-born Americans, who, while
+they ridicule our institutions, endeavour to pantomime our manners.
+
+For many years past a number of persons have driven a thriving trade
+in a singular branch of commerce, no less than buying up cast court
+dresses and second-hand uniforms for exportation to the colonies. The
+negroes, it is said, are far prouder of figuring in the tattered and
+tarnished fragments of former greatness, than of wearing the less
+gaudy, but more useful garb, befitting their condition. So it would
+seem our trans-Atlantic friends prefer importing through their agents,
+for that purpose, the abandoned finery of courtly gossip, to the more
+useful but less pretentious apparel, of common-place information. Mr.
+Willis was invaluable for this purpose; he told his friends every
+thing that he heard, and he heard every thing that he could; and, like
+mercy, he enjoyed a duplicate of blessings--for while he was delighted
+in by his own countrymen, he was dined by ours. He scattered his
+autographs, as Feargus O’Connor did franks; he smiled; he ogled; he
+read his own poetry, and went the whole lion with all his might; and
+yet, in the midst of this, a rival starts up equally desirous of court
+secrets, and fifty times as enterprising in their search; he risks his
+liberty, perhaps his life, in the pursuit, and what is his reward? I
+need only tell you his name, and you are answered--I mean the boy
+Jones; not under a bridge, but under a sofa; not in Almacks, obtaining
+it at second-hand, but in Buckingham Palace--into the very apartment
+of the Queen--the adventurous youth has dared to insinuate himself. No
+lady however sends her album to him for some memento of his genius.
+His temple is not defrauded of its curls to grace a locket or a
+medallion; and his reward, instead of a supper at Lady Blessington’s,
+is a voyage to Swan River. For my part, I prefer the boy Jones: I like
+his singleness of purpose: I admire his steady perseverance; still,
+however, he had the misfortune to be born in England--his father lived
+near Wapping, and he was ineligible for a lion.
+
+To what other reason than his English growth can be attributed the
+different treatment he has experienced at the hands of the world. The
+similarity between the two characters is most striking. Willis had a
+craving appetite for court gossip, and the tittle-tattle of a palace:
+so had the boy Jones. Willis established himself as a listener in
+society: so did the boy Jones. Willis obtruded himself into places,
+and among people where he had no possible pretension to be seen: so
+did the boy Jones. Willis wrote letters from under a bridge: the boy
+Jones eat mutton chops under a sofa.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR LEGAL FUNCTIONARIES.
+
+
+The pet profession of England is the bar, and I see many reasons why
+this should be the case. Our law of primogeniture necessitates the
+existence of certain provisions for younger children independently of
+the pittance bestowed on them by their families. The army and the
+navy, the church and the bar, form then the only avenues to fortune
+for the highly born; and one or other of these four roads must be
+adopted by him who would carve out his own career. The bar, for
+many reasons, is the favourite--at least among those who place
+reliance in their intellect. Its estimation is high. It is not
+incompatible but actually favourable to the pursuits of parliament.
+Its rewards are manifold and great; and while there is a sufficiency
+of private ease and personal retirement in its practice, there is also
+enough of publicity for the most ambitiously-minded seeker of the
+world’s applause and the world’s admiration. Were we only to look back
+upon our history, we should find perhaps that the profession of the
+law would include almost two-thirds of our very greatest men. Astute
+thinkers, deep politicians, eloquent debaters, profound scholars, men
+of wit, as well as men of wisdom, have abounded in its ranks, and
+there is every reason why it should be, as I have called it, the pet
+profession.
+
+[Illustration: Legal Functionaries.]
+
+Having conceded so much, may I now be permitted to take a nearer view
+of those men so highly distinguished: and for this purpose let me turn
+my reader’s attention to the practice of a criminal trial. The first
+duty of a good citizen, it will not be disputed, is, as far as in him
+lies, to promote obedience to the law, to repress crime, and bring
+outrage to punishment. No walk in life--no professional career--no
+uniform of scarlet or of black--no freemasonry of craft or calling can
+absolve him from this allegiance to his country. Yet, what do we see?
+The wretch stained with crime--polluted with iniquity--for which,
+perhaps, the statute-book contains neither name nor indictment--whose
+trembling lips are eager to avow that guilt which, by confessing, he
+hopes may alleviate the penalty--this man, I say, is checked in his
+intentions--he is warned not, by any chance expression, to hazard a
+conviction of his crime, and told in the language of the law not to
+criminate himself. But the matter stops not here--justice is an
+inveterate gambler--she is not satisfied when her antagonist throws
+his card upon the table confessing that he has not a trump nor a trick
+in his hand--no, like the most accomplished swindler of Baden or
+Boulogne, she assumes a smile of easy and courteous benignity, and
+says, pooh, pooh! nonsense, my dear friend; you don’t know what may
+turn up; your cards are better than you think; don’t be faint-hearted;
+don’t you see you have the knave of trumps, _i. e._, the cleverest
+lawyer for your defender; a thousand things may happen; I may revoke,
+that is, the indictment may break down; there are innumerable chances
+in your favour, so pluck up your courage and play the game out.
+
+He takes the advice, and however faint-hearted before, he now assumes
+a look of stern courage, or dogged indifference, and resolves to play
+for the stake. He remembers, however, that he is no adept in the game,
+and he addresses himself in consequence to some astute and subtle
+gambler, to whom he commits his cards and his chances. The trepidation
+or the indifference that he manifested before, now gradually gives
+way; and however hopeless he had deemed his case at first, he now
+begins to think that all is not lost. The very way his friend, the
+lawyer, shuffles and cuts the cards, imposes on his credulity and
+suggests a hope. He sees at once that he is a practised hand, and
+almost unconsciously he becomes deeply interested in the changes and
+vacillations of the game he believed could have presented but one
+aspect of fortune.
+
+But the prisoner is not my object: I turn rather to the lawyer. Here
+then do we not see the accomplished gentleman--the finished
+scholar--the man of refinement and of learning, of character and
+station--standing forth the very embodiment of the individual in the
+dock? possessed of all his secrets--animated by the same
+hopes--penetrated by the same fears--he endeavours by all the subtle
+ingenuity, with which craft and habit have gifted him, to confound the
+testimony--to disparage the truth--to pervert the inferences of all
+the witnesses. In fact, he employs all the stratagems of his calling,
+all the ingenuity of his mind, all the subtlety of his wit for the one
+end--that the man he believes in his own heart guilty, may, on the
+oaths of twelve honest men, be pronounced innocent.
+
+From the opening of the trial to its close, this mental gladiator is
+an object of wonder and dread. Scarcely a quality of the human mind is
+not exhibited by him in the brilliant panorama of his intellect. At
+first, the patient perusal of a complex and wordy indictment occupies him
+exclusively: he then proceeds to cross-examine the witnesses--flattering
+this one--brow-beating that--suggesting--insinuating--amplifying, or
+retrenching, as the evidence would seem to favour or be adverse to his
+client. He is alternately confident and doubtful, headlong and
+hesitating--now hurried away on the full tide of his eloquence he
+expatiates in beautiful generalities on the glorious institution of
+trial by jury, and apostrophizes justice; or now, with broken
+utterance and plaintive voice, he supplicates the jury to be patient,
+and be careful in the decision they may come to. He implores them to
+remember that when they leave that court, and return to the happy
+comforts of their home, conscience will follow them, and the
+everlasting question crave for answer within them--were they sure of
+this man’s guilt? He teaches them how fallacious are all human tests;
+he magnifies the slightest discrepancy of evidence into a broad and
+sweeping contradiction; and while, with a prophetic menace, he
+pictures forth the undying remorse that pursues him who sheds innocent
+blood, he dismisses them with an affecting picture of mental agony so
+great--of suffering so heart-rending, that, as they retire to the
+jury-room, there is not a man of the twelve that has not more or less
+of a _personal_ interest in the acquittal of the prisoner.
+
+However bad, however depraved the human mind, it still leans to mercy:
+the power to dispose of another man’s life is generally sufficient for
+the most malignant spirit in its thirst for vengeance. What then are
+the feelings of twelve calm, and perhaps, benevolent men, at a moment
+like this? The last words of the advocate have thrown a new element
+into the whole case, for independent of their verdict upon the
+prisoner comes now the direct appeal to their own hearts. How will
+they feel when they reflect on this hereafter? I do not wish to pursue
+this further. It is enough for my present purpose that, by the
+ingenuity of the lawyer, criminals have escaped, do escape, and are
+escaping, the just sentence on their crimes. What then is the result?
+the advocate, who up to this moment has maintained a familiar, even a
+friendly, intimacy with his client in the dock, now shrinks from the
+very contamination of his look. He cannot bear that the blood-stained
+fingers should grasp the hem of his garment, and he turns with a sense
+of shame from the expressions of a gratitude that criminate him in his
+own heart. However, this is but a passing sensation; he divests
+himself of his wig and gown, and overwhelmed with congratulations for
+his brilliant success, he springs into his carriage and goes home to
+dress for dinner--for on that day he is engaged to the Chancellor, the
+Bishop of London, or some other great and revered functionary--the
+guardian of the church, or the custodian of conscience.
+
+Now, there is only one thing in all this I would wish to bring
+strikingly before the mind of my readers, and that is, that the
+lawyer, throughout the entire proceeding, was a free and a willing
+agent. There was neither legal nor moral compulsion to urge him on.
+No; it was no intrepid defence against the tyranny of a government or
+the usurpation of power--it was the assertion of no broad and
+immutable principle of truth or justice--it was simply a matter of
+legal acumen and persuasive eloquence, to the amount of fifty pounds
+sterling.
+
+This being admitted, let me now proceed to consider another
+functionary, and observe how far the rule of right is consulted in the
+treatment _he_ meets with--I mean the hangman. You start, good reader,
+and your gesture of impatience denotes the very proposition I would
+come to. I need scarcely remind you, that in our country this
+individual has a kind of prerogative of detestation. All other ranks
+and conditions of men may find a sympathy, or at least a pity,
+somewhere, but for him there is none. No one is sufficiently debased
+to be his companion,--no one so low as to be his associate! Like a
+being of another sphere, he appears but at some frightful moments of
+life, and then only for a few seconds. For the rest he drags on
+existence unseen and unheard of, his very name a thing to tremble at.
+Yet this man, in the duties of his calling, has neither will nor
+choice. The stern agent of the law, he has but one course to follow;
+his path, a narrow one, has no turning to the right or to the left,
+and, save that his ministry is more proximate, is less accessory to
+the death of the criminal than he who signs the warrant for execution.
+In fact, he but answers the responses of the law, and in the loud amen
+of his calling, he only consummates its recorded assertion. How then
+can you reconcile yourself to the fact, that while you overwhelm the
+advocate who converts right into wrong and wrong into right, who
+shrouds the guilty man, and conceals the murderer, with honour, and
+praise, and rank, and riches, and who does this for a brief marked
+fifty pounds, yet have nothing but abhorrence and detestation for the
+impassive agent whose fee is but one. One can help what he does--the
+other cannot. One is an amateur--the other practices in spite of
+himself. One employs every energy of his mind and every faculty of his
+intellect--the other only devotes the ingenuity of his fingers. One
+strains every nerve to let loose a criminal upon the world--the other
+but closes the grave over guilt and crime!
+
+The king’s counsel is courted. His society sought for. He is held in
+high esteem, and while his present career is a brilliant one in the
+vista before him, his eyes are fixed upon the ermine. Jack Ketch, on
+the other hand, is shunned. His companionship avoided, and the only
+futurity he can look to, is a life of ignominy, and after it an
+unknown grave. Let him be a man of fascinating manners, highly gifted,
+and agreeable; let him be able to recount with the most melting pathos
+the anecdotes and incidents of his professional career, throwing light
+upon the history of his own period--such as none but himself could
+throw;--let him speak of the various characters that have _passed
+through his hands_, and so to say, “dropped off before him”--yet the
+prejudice of the world is an obstacle not to be overcome; his calling
+is in disrepute, and no personal efforts of his own, no individual
+pre-eminence he may arrive at in his walk, will ever redeem it. Other
+men’s estimation increases as they distinguish themselves in life;
+each fresh display of their abilities, each new occasion for the
+exercise of their powers, is hailed with renewed favour and increasing
+flattery; not so he,--every time he appears on his peculiar stage, the
+disgust and detestation is but augmented,--_vires acquirit
+eundo_,--his countenance, as it becomes known, is a signal for the
+yelling execrations of a mob, and the very dexterity with which he
+performs his functions, is made matter of loathing and horror. Were
+his duties such as might be carried on in secret, he might do good by
+stealth and blush to find it fame; but no, his attributes demand the
+noon-day and the multitude--the tragedy he performs in, must be played
+before tens of thousands, by whom his every look is scowled at, his
+every gesture scrutinized. But to conclude,--this man is a necessity
+of our social system. We want him--we require him, and we can’t do
+without him. Much of the machinery of a trial might be dispensed with
+or retrenched. His office, however, has nothing superfluous. He is
+part of the machinery of our civilisation, and on what principle do we
+hunt him down like a wild beast to his lair?
+
+Men of rank and title are daily to be found in association, and even
+intimacy with black legs and bruisers, grooms, jockeys, and swindlers;
+yet we never heard that even the Whigs paid any attention to a
+hangman, nor is his name to be found even in the list of a Radical
+viceroy’s levee. However, we do not despair. Many prejudices of this
+nature have already given way, and many absurd notions have been
+knocked on the head by a wag of great Daniel’s tail. And if our friend
+of Newgate, who is certainly anti-union in his functions, will only
+cry out for Repeal, the justice that is entreated for all Ireland may
+include him in the general distribution of its favours. Poor Theodore
+Hook used to say, that marriage was like hanging, there being only the
+difference of an aspirate between halter and altar.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR “ENDURING AFFECTION.”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+My dear reader, if it does not insult your understanding by the
+self-evidence of the query, will you allow me to ask you a
+question--which of the two is more culpable, the man who, finding
+himself in a path of dereliction, arrests himself in his downward
+career, and, by a wonderful effort of self-restraint, stops dead
+short, and will suffer no inducement, no seduction, to lead him one
+step further; or he, who, floating down the stream of his own vicious
+passions, takes the flood-tide of iniquity, and, indifferent to every
+consequence, deaf to all remonstrance, seeks but the indulgence of his
+own egotistical pleasure with a stern determination to pursue it to
+the last? Of course you will say, that he who repents is better than
+he who persists; there is hope for the one, there is none for the
+other. Yet would you believe it, our common law asserts directly the
+reverse, pronouncing the culpability of the former as meriting heavy
+punishment, while the latter is not assailable even by implication.
+
+That I may make myself more clear, I shall give an instance of my
+meaning. Scarcely a week passes over without a trial for breach of
+promise of marriage. Sometimes the gay Lothario, to use the phrase of
+the newspapers, is nineteen, sometimes ninety. In either case his
+conduct is a frightful tissue of perjured vows and base deception. His
+innumerable letters breathing all the tenderness of affectionate
+solicitude, intended but for the eyes of her he loves, are read in
+open court; attested copies are shown to the judge, or handed up to
+the jury-box. The course of his true love is traced from the bubbling
+fountain of first acquaintance to the broad river of his passionate
+devotion. Its rapids and its whirlpools, its placid lakes, its frothy
+torrents, its windings and its turnings, its ebbs and flows, are
+discussed, detailed, and descanted on with all the hacknied precision
+of the craft, as though his heart was a bill of exchange, or the
+current of his affection a disputed mill-stream. And what, after all,
+is this man’s crime? knowing that love is the great humanizer of our
+race, and feeling probably how much he stands in need of some
+civilizing process, he attaches himself to some lovely and attractive
+girl, who, in the reciprocity of her affection, is herself benefited
+in a degree equal to him. If the soft solicitude of the tender
+passion, if its ennobling self-respect, if its purifying influence on
+the heart, be good for the man, how much more so is it for the woman.
+If _he_ be taught to feel how the refined enjoyments of an attractive
+girl’s mind are superior to the base and degenerate pursuits of
+every-day pleasure, how much more will _she_ learn to prize and
+cultivate those gifts which form the charm of her nature, and breathe
+an incense of fascination around her steps. Here is a compact where
+both parties benefit, but that they may do so to the fullest extent,
+it is necessary that no self-interest, no mean prospect of individual
+advantage, should interfere: all must be pure and confiding.
+Love-making should not be like a game of _écarté_ with a black leg,
+where you must not rise from the table, till you are ruined. No! it
+should rather resemble a party at picquet with your pretty cousin,
+when the moment either party is tired, you may throw down the cards
+and abandon the game.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+This, then, is the case of the man; he either discovers that on
+further acquaintance the qualities he believed in were not so palpable
+as he thought, or, if there, marred in their exercise by opposing and
+antagonist forces, of whose existence he knew not, he thinks he
+detects discrepancies of temperament, disparities of taste; he
+foresees that in the channel where he looked for deep water there are
+so many rocks, and shoals, and quicksands, that he fears the bark of
+conjugal happiness may be shipwrecked upon them; and, like a prudent
+mariner, he resolves to lighten the craft by “throwing over the lady.”
+Had this man married with all these impending suspicions on his mind,
+there is little doubt he would have made a most execrable husband; not
+to mention the danger that his wife should not be all amiable as she
+ought. He stops short--that is, he explains in one, perhaps in a
+series of letters, the reasons of his new course. He expects in return
+the admiration and esteem of her, for whose happiness he is
+legislating, as well as for his own; and oh, base ingratitude! he
+receives a letter from her attorney. The gentlemen of the long
+robe--newspaper again--are in ecstasies. Like devils on the arrival of
+a new soul, they brighten up, rub their hands, and congratulate each
+other on a glorious case. The damages are laid at five thousand
+pounds; and, as the lady is pretty, and can be seen from the jury-box,
+being fathers themselves, they award every sixpence of the money.
+
+I can picture to myself the feeling of the defendant at such a moment
+as this. As he stands alone in conscious honesty, ruminating on his
+fate--alone, I say, for, like Mahomet’s coffin, he has no
+resting-place; laughed at by the men, sneered at by the women, mulcted
+of perhaps half his fortune, merely because for the last three years
+of his life he represented himself in every amiable and attractive
+trait that can grace and adorn human nature. Who would wonder, if,
+like the man in the farce, he would register a vow never to do a
+good-natured thing again as long as he lives; or what respect can he
+have for a government or a country, where the church tells him to love
+his neighbour, and the chief justice makes him pay five thousand for
+his obedience.
+
+I now come to the other case, and I shall be very brief in my
+observations. I mean that of him, who equally fond of flirting as the
+former, has yet a lively fear of an action at law. Love-making with
+him is a necessity of his existence--he is an Irishman, perhaps, and
+it is as indispensable to his temperament as train-oil to a Russian.
+He likes sporting, he likes billiards, he likes his club, and he likes
+the ladies; but he has just as much intention of turning a huntsman at
+the one, or a marker at the other, as he has of matrimony. He knows
+life is a chequered table, and that there could be no game if all the
+squares were of one colour. He alternates, therefore, between love and
+sporting, between cards and courtship, and as the pursuit is a
+pleasant one, he resolves never to give up. He waxes old, therefore,
+with young habits, adapting his tastes to his time of life; he does
+not kneel so often at forty as he did at twenty, but he ogles the
+more, and is twice as good-tempered. Not perhaps as ready to fight for
+the lady, but ten times more disposed to flatter her. She may love
+him, or she may not; she may receive him as of old, or she may marry
+another. What matters it to him? All his care is that _he_ shouldn’t
+change. All his anxiety is, to let the rupture, if there must be one,
+proceed from _her_ side. He knows in his heart the penalty of breach
+of promise, but he also knows that the Chancellor can issue no
+injunction compelling a man to marry, and that in the courts of love
+the bills are payable at convenience.
+
+Here, then, are the two cases, which, in conformity with the world’s
+opinion, I have dignified with every possible term of horror and
+reproach. In the one, the measure of iniquity is but half filled; in
+the other, the cup is overflowing at the brim. For the lesser offence,
+the law awards damages and defamation: for the greater, society
+pronounces an eulogy upon the enduring fidelity of the man thus
+faithful to a first love.
+
+If a person about to buy a horse should, on trying him for an hour or
+two, discover that his temper did not suit him, or that his paces were
+not pleasant, and should in consequence restore him to the owner: and
+if another, on the same errand, should come day after day for weeks,
+or months, or even years, cantering him about over the pavement, and
+scouring over the whole country; his answer being, when asked if he
+intended to purchase, that he liked the horse exceedingly, but that he
+hadn’t got a stable, or a saddle, or a curb-chain, or, in fact, some
+one or other of the little necessaries of horse gear; but that when he
+had, that was exactly the animal to suit him--he never was better
+carried in his life. Which of these two, do you esteem the more honest
+and more honourable?
+
+When you make up your mind, please also to make the application.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE POLICE AND SIR PETER.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+When the Belgians, by their most insane revolution, separated from the
+Dutch, they assumed for their national motto the phrase “_L’union fait
+la force_.” It is difficult to say whether their rebellion towards the
+sovereign, or this happy employment of a bull, it was, that so
+completely captivated our illustrious countryman, Dan, and excited so
+warmly his sympathies for that beer-drinking population. After all,
+why should one quarrel with them? Nations, like individuals, have
+their coats-of-arms, their heraldic insignia, their blazons, and their
+garters, frequently containing the sharpest sarcasm and most poignant
+satire upon those who bear them; and in this respect Belgium is only
+as ridiculous as the attorney who assumed for his motto “_Fiat
+justitia_.” Time was when the chivalrous line of our own garter,
+“_Honi soit qui mal y pense_,” brought with it, its bright
+associations of kingly courtesy and maiden bashfulness: but what
+sympathy can such a sentiment find in these degenerate days of
+railroads and rack-rents, canals, collieries, and chain-bridges? No,
+were we now to select an inscription, much rather would we take it
+from the prevailing passion of the age, and write beneath the arms of
+our land the emphatic phrase, “Push along, keep moving.”
+
+If Englishmen have failed to exhibit in machinery that triumphant El
+Dorado called perpetual motion, in revenge for their failure, they
+resolved to exemplify it in themselves. The whole nation, from John o’
+Groat to Land’s End, from Westport to Dover, are playing
+cross-corners. Every body and every thing is on the move. A
+dwelling-house, like an umbrella, is only a thing used on an
+emergency; and the inhabitants of Great Britain pass their lives amid
+the smoke of steam-boats, or the din and thunder of the
+Grand-Junction. From the highest to the lowest, from the peer to the
+peasant, from the lord of the treasury to the Irish haymaker, it is
+one universal “_chassée croissée_.” Not only is this fashionable--for
+we are told by the newspapers how the Queen walks daily with Prince
+Albert on “the slopes”--but stranger still, locomotion is a law of the
+land, and standing still is a statutable offence. The hackney
+coachman, with wearied horses, blown and broken-winded, dares not
+breathe his jaded beasts by a momentary pull-up, for the implacable
+policeman has his eye upon him, and he must simulate a trot, though
+his pace but resemble a stage procession, where the legs are lifted
+without progressing, and some fifty Roman soldiers, in Wellington
+boots, are seen vainly endeavouring to push forward. The
+foot-passenger is no better off--tired perhaps with walking or
+attracted by the fascinations of a print-shop, he stops for an
+instant: alas, that luxury may cost him dear, and for the momentary
+pleasure he may yet have to perform a quick step on the mill. “Move
+on, sir. Keep moving, if you please,” sayeth the gentleman in blue;
+and there is something in his manner that won’t be denied. It is
+useless to explain that you have nowhere particular to go to, that you
+are an idler and a lounger. The confession is a fatal one; and however
+respectable your appearance, the idea of shoplifting is at once
+associated with your pursuits. Into what inconsistencies do we fall
+while multiplying our laws, for while we insist upon progression, we
+announce a penalty for vagrancy. The first principle of the British
+constitution, however, is “keep moving,” and “I would recommend you to
+go with the tide.”
+
+Thank heaven, I have reached to man’s estate--although with a heavy
+heart I acknowledge it is the only estate I have or ever shall attain
+to; for if I were a child I don’t think I should close my eyes at
+night from the fear of one frightful and terrific image. As it is, I
+am by no means over courageous, and it requires all the energy I can
+summon to combat my terrors. You ask me, in all likelihood, what this
+fearful thing can be? Is it the plague or the cholera? is it the dread
+of poverty and the new poor-law? is it that I may be impressed as a
+seaman, or mistaken for a Yankee? or is it some unknown and visionary
+terror, unseen, unheard of, but foreshadowed by a diseased
+imagination; No; nothing of the kind. It is a palpable, sentient,
+existent thing--neither more nor less than the worshipful Sir Peter
+Laurie.
+
+Every newspaper you take up announces that Sir Peter, with a hearty
+contempt for the brevity of the fifty folio volumes that contain the
+laws of our land, in the plenitude of his power and the fulness of his
+imagination, keeps adding to the number; so that if length of years be
+only accorded to that amiable individual in proportion to his merits,
+we shall find at length that not only will every contingency of our
+lives be provided for by the legislature, but that some standard for
+personal appearance will also be adopted, to which we must conform as
+rigidly as to our oath of allegiance.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A few days ago a miserable creature, a tailor we believe, some decimal
+fraction of humanity, was brought up before Sir Peter on a trifling
+charge of some kind or other. I forget his offence, but whatever it
+was, the penalty annexed to it was but a fine of half-a-crown. The
+prisoner, however, who behaved with propriety and decorum, happened to
+have long black hair, which he wore somewhat “_en jeune France_” upon
+his neck and shoulders; his locks, if not ambrosial, were tastefully
+curled, and bespoke the fostering hand of care and attention. The
+Rhadamanthus of the police-office, however, liked them not: whether it
+was that he wore a Brutus himself, or that his learned cranium had
+resisted all the efficacy of Macassar, I cannot say; but certain it
+is, that the tailor’s ringlets gave him the greatest offence, and he
+apostrophised the wearer in the most solemn manner:
+
+“I have sat,” said he, “for ----,” as I quote from memory I sha’n’t
+say how many, “years upon the bench, and I never yet met an honest man
+with long hair. The worst feature in your case is your ringlets. There
+is something so disgusting to me in the odious and abominable vice you
+have indulged in, that I feel myself warranted in applying to you the
+heaviest penalty of the law.”
+
+The miserable man, we are told, fell upon his knees, confessed his
+delinquency, and, being shorn of his locks in the presence of a
+crowded court, his fine was remitted, and he was liberated.
+
+Now, perhaps, you will suppose that all this is a mere matter of
+invention. On the faith of an honest man I assure you it is not. I
+have retrenched considerably the pathetic eloquence of the magistrate,
+and I have left altogether untouched the poor tailor’s struggle
+between pride and poverty--whether, on the one hand, to suffer the
+loss of his _half_-crown, or, on the other, to submit to the
+desecration of his _entire_ head. We hear a great deal about a law for
+the rich, and another for the poor; and certainly in this case I am
+disposed to think the complaint might not seem without foundation.
+Suppose for a moment that the prisoner in this case had been the
+Honourable Augustus Somebody, who appeared before his worship
+fashionably attired, and with hair, beard, and moustache far
+surpassing in extravagance the poor tailor’s; should we then have
+heard this beautiful apostrophe to “the croppies,” this thundering
+denunciation of ringlets? I half fear not. And yet, under what pretext
+does a magistrate address to one man, the insulting language he would
+not dare apply to another? Or let us suppose the rule of justice to be
+inflexible, and look at the result. What havoc would Sir Peter make
+among the Guards? ay, even in the household of her Majesty how many
+delinquents would he find? what a scene would not the clubs present,
+on the police authorities dropping suddenly down amongst them with
+rule and line to determine the statute length of their whiskers, or
+the legal cut of their eye-brows? Happy King of Hanover, were you
+still amongst us, not even the Alliance would insure your mustachoes.
+As for Lord Ellenborough, it is now clear enough why he accepted the
+government of India, and made such haste to get out of the country.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Now we will suppose that as Sir Peter Laurie’s antipathy is long hair,
+Sir Frederick Roe may also have his dislikes. It is but fair, you will
+allow, that the privileges of the bench should be equal. Well, for
+argument’s sake, I will imagine that Sir Frederick Roe has not the
+same horror of long hair as his learned brother, but has the most
+unconquerable aversion to long noses. What are we to do here? Heaven
+help half our acquaintance if this should strike him! What is to be
+done with Lord Allen if he beat a watchman! In what a position will he
+stand if he fracture a lamp? One’s hair may be cut to any length,--it
+may be even shaved clean off; but your nose.--And then a few weeks,--a
+few months at farthest, and your hair has grown again: but your nose,
+like your reputation, can only stand one assault. This is really a
+serious view of the subject; and it is a somewhat hard thing that the
+face you have shown to your acquaintances for years past, with
+pleasure to yourself and satisfaction to them, should be pronounced
+illegal, or curtailed in its proportions. They have a practice in
+banks if a forged note be presented for payment, to mark it in a
+peculiar manner before restoring it to the owner. This is technically
+called “raddling.” Something similar, I suppose, will be adopted at
+the police-office, and in case of refusal to conform your features to
+the rule of Roe, you will be raddled by an officer appointed for the
+purpose, and sent forth upon the world the mere counterfeit of
+humanity.
+
+What a glorious thing it would be for this great country, if, having
+equalized throughout the kingdom the weights, the measures, the miles,
+and the currency, we should, at length attain to an equalization in
+appearance. The “facial angle” will then have its application in
+reality, and, instead of the tiresome detail of an Old Bailey trial,
+we shall hear a judge sum up on the externals of a prisoner, merely
+directing the attention of the jury to the atrocious irregularity of
+his teeth, or the assassin-like sharpness of his under-jaw. Honour to
+you, Sir Peter, should this great improvement grow out of your
+innovation; and proud may the country well be, that acknowledges you
+among its lawgivers!
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Let men no longer indulge in that absurd fiction which represents
+justice as blind. On the contrary, with an eye like Canova’s, and a
+glance quick, sharp, and penetrating as Flaxman’s, she traces every
+lineament and every feature; and Landseer will confess himself
+vanquished by Laurie. “The pictorial school of judicial investigation”
+will now become fashionable, and if Sir Peter’s practice be but
+transmitted, surgeons will not be the only professional men who will
+commence their education with the barbers.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE BUDGET.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+I remember once coming into Matlock, on the top of the “Peveril of the
+Peak,” when the coachman who drove our four spanking thorough-breds
+contrived, in something less than five minutes, to excite his whole
+team to the very top of their temper, lifting the wheelers almost off
+the ground with his heavy lash, and, thrashing his leaders till they
+smoked with passion, he brought them up to the inn door trembling with
+rage, and snorting with anger. What the devil is all this for, thought
+I. He guessed at once what was passing in my mind, and, with a knowing
+touch of his elbow, whispered:--
+
+“There’s a new coachman a-going to try ’em, and I’ll leave him a
+precious legacy.”
+
+This is precisely what the Whigs did in their surrender of power to
+the Tories. They, indeed, left them a precious legacy:--without an
+ally abroad, with discontent and starvation at home, distant and
+expensive wars, depressed trade, and bankrupt speculation, form some
+portion of the valuable heritage they bequeathed to their heirs in
+power. The most sanguine saw matter of difficulty, and the greater
+number of men were tempted to despair at the prospects of the
+Conservative party; for, however happily all other questions may have
+terminated, they still see, in the corn-law, a point whose subtle
+difficulty would seem inaccessible to legislation. Ah! could the two
+great parties, that divide the state, only lay their heads together
+for a short time, and carry out that beautiful principle that Scribe
+announces in one of his vaudevilles:--
+
+    “Que le blé se vend chèr, et le pain bon marché.”
+
+And why, after all, should not the collective wisdom of England be
+able to equal in ingenuity the conceptions of a farce-writer?
+Meanwhile, it is plain that political dissensions, and the rivalries
+of party, will prevent that mutual good understanding which might
+prove so beneficial to all. Reconciliations are but flimsy things at
+best; and whether the attempt be made to conciliate two rival
+churches, two opposite factions, or two separate interests of any kind
+whatever, it is usually a failure. It, therefore, becomes the duty of
+every good subject, and, _à fortiori_, of every good Conservative, to
+bestir himself at the present moment, and see what can be done to
+retrieve the sinking fortune of the state. Taxation, like flogging in
+the army, never comes on the right part of the back. Sometimes too
+high, sometimes too low. There is no knowing where to lay it on.
+Besides that, we have by this time got such a general raw all over us,
+there isn’t a square inch of sound flesh that presents itself for a
+new infliction. Since the first French Revolution, the ingenuity of
+man has been tortured on the subject of finance; and had Dionysius
+lived in our days, instead of offering a bounty for the discovery of a
+new pleasure, he would have proposed a reward to the man who devised a
+new tax.
+
+Without entering at any length into this subject, the consideration of
+which would lead me into all the details of our every-day habits, I
+pass on at once to the question which has induced this inquiry, while
+I proclaim to the world loudly, fearlessly, and resolutely,
+“Eureka!”--I’ve found it. Yes, my fellow-countrymen, I have found a
+remedy to supply the deficient income of the nation, not only without
+imposing a new tax, or inflicting a new burden upon the suffering
+community, but also without injuring vested rights, or thwarting the
+activity of commercial enterprise. I neither mulct cotton or corn; I
+meddle not with parson or publican, nor do I make any portion of the
+state, by its own privations, support the well-being of the rest. On
+the contrary, the only individual concerned in my plan, will not be
+alone benefited in a pecuniary point of view, but the best feelings of
+the heart will be cultivated and strengthened, and the love of home,
+so characteristically English, fostered in their bosoms. I could
+almost grow eloquent upon the benefits of my discovery; but I fear,
+that were I to give way to this impulse, I should become so fascinated
+with myself, I could scarcely turn to the less seductive path of
+simple explanation. Therefore, ere it be too late, let me open my mind
+and unfold my system:
+
+    “What great effects from little causes spring.”
+
+Any one who ever heard of Sir Isaac Newton and his apple will
+acknowledge this, and something of the same kind led me to the very
+remarkable fact I am about to speak of.
+
+One of the Bonaparte family--as well as I remember, Jerome--was one
+night playing whist at the same table with Talleyrand, and having
+dropped a crown piece upon the floor, he interrupted the game, and
+deranged the whole party to search for his money. Not a little
+provoked by a meanness which he saw excited the ridicule of many
+persons about, Talleyrand deliberately folded up a bank-note which lay
+before him, and, lighting it at the candle, begged, with much
+courtesy, that he might be permitted to assist in the search. This
+story, which is authentic, would seem an admirable parody on a portion
+of our criminal law. A poor man robs the community, or some member of
+it (for that comes to the same thing) to the amount of one penny. He
+is arrested by a policeman, whose salary is perhaps half-a-crown
+a-day, and conveyed to a police-office, that cost at least five
+hundred pounds to build it. Here are found three or four more
+officials, all salaried--all fed, and clothed by the State. In due
+course of time he is brought up before a magistrate, also well paid,
+by whom the affair is investigated, and by him he is afterwards
+transmitted to the sessions, where a new army of stipendiaries all
+await him. But his journey is not ended. Convicted of his offence, he
+is sentenced to seven years’ transportation to one of the most remote
+quarters of the globe. To convey him thither the government have
+provided a ship and a crew, a supercargo and a surgeon; and, to sum up
+in one word, before he has commenced the expiation of his crime, that
+penny has cost the country something about three hundred pounds. Is
+not this, I ask you, very like Talleyrand and the Prince?--the only
+difference being, that we perform in sober earnest, what he merely
+exhibited in sarcasm.
+
+Now, my plan is, and I prefer to develop it in a single word, instead
+of weakening its force by circumlocution. In lieu of letting a poor
+man be reduced to his theft of one penny--give him two pence. _He_
+will be a gainer by double the amount--not to speak of the
+inappreciable value of his honesty--and _you_ the richer by 71,998
+pence, under your present system expended upon policemen, magistrates,
+judges, gaolers, turnkeys, and transports. Examine for a moment the
+benefits of this system. Look at the incalculable advantages it
+presents--the enormous revenue, the pecuniary profit, and the
+patriotism, all preserved to the State, not to mention the additional
+pleasure of disseminating happiness while you transport men’s hearts,
+not their bodies.
+
+Here is a plan based upon the soundest philanthropy, the most rigid
+economy, and the strictest common sense. Instead of training up a race
+of men in some distant quarter of the globe, who may yet turn your
+bitterest enemies, you will preserve to the country so many true-born
+Britons, bound to you by a debt of gratitude. Upon what ground--on
+what pretext--can you oppose the system? Do you openly confess that
+you prefer vice to poverty, and punishment to prevention? Or is it
+your pleasure to manufacture roguery for exportation, as the French do
+politeness, and the Irish linen?
+
+I offer the suggestion generously, freely, and spontaneously. If the
+heads of the government choose to profit by the hint, I only ask in
+return, that when the Chancellor of the Exchequer announces in his
+place the immense reduction of expenditure, that he will also give
+notice of a motion for a bill to reward me by a government
+appointment. I am not particular as to where, or what: I only bargain
+against being Secretary for Ireland, or Chief Justice at Cape Coast
+Castle.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR REPEAL.
+
+
+When the cholera first broke out in France, a worthy prefect in a
+district of the south published an edict to the people, recommending
+them by all means to eat well-cooked and nutritious food, and drink
+nothing but _vin de Bourdeaux_, Anglice, claret. The advice was
+excellent, and I take it upon me to say, would have found very few
+opponents in fact, as it certainly did in principle. When the world,
+however, began to consider that _filets de bœuf à la Marengo_, and
+“_dindes truffées_,” washed down with _Chateau Lafitte_ or _Larose_,
+were not exactly within the reach of every class of the community,
+they deemed the prefect’s counsel more humane than practicable, and as
+they do at every thing in France when the tide of public opinion
+changes, they laughed at him heartily, and wrote pasquinades upon his
+folly. At the same time the ridicule was unjust, the advice was good,
+sound, and based on true principles, the only mistake was, the
+difficulty of its practice. Had he recommended as an antiseptic to
+disease, that the people should play short whist, wear red night-caps,
+or pelt stones at each other, there might have been good ground for
+the disfavour he fell into; such acts, however practicable and easy of
+execution, having manifestly no tendency to avert the cholera. Now
+this is precisely the state of matters in Ireland at this moment:
+distress prevails more or less in every province and in every county.
+The people want employment, and they want food. Had you recommended
+them to eat strawberries and cream in the morning, to drink lemonade
+during the day, take a little chicken salad for dinner, with a light
+bread pudding and a glass of negus afterwards, avoiding all stimulant
+and exciting food--for your Irishman is a feverish subject--you might
+be laughed at perhaps for your dietary, but certes it would bear, and
+bear strongly too, upon the case in question. But what do you do in
+reality? The local papers teem with cases of distress: families are
+starving; the poor, unhoused and unfed, are seen upon the road sides
+exposed to every vicissitude of the season, surrounded by children who
+cry in vain for bread. What, I ask, is the measure of relief you
+propose? not a public subscription; no general outburst of national
+charity--no public work upon a grand scale to give employment to the
+idle, food to the hungry, health to the sick, and hope to all. None of
+these. Your panacea is the Repeal of the Union; you purpose to
+substitute for those amiable jobbers in College-green, who call
+themselves Directors of the Bank of Ireland, another set of jobbers
+infinitely more pernicious and really dishonest, who will call
+themselves Directors of Ireland itself; you talk of the advantage to
+the country, and particularly of the immense benefits that must accrue
+to the capital. Let us examine them a little.
+
+Dublin, you say, will be a flourishing city, inhabited by lords and
+ladies: wealth, rank, and influence will dwell in its houses and
+parade its streets. The glare of lamps, the crash of carriages, all
+the pride, pomp, and circumstances of fashion, will flow back upon the
+long-deserted land, and Paris and London will find a rival to compete
+with them, in this small city of the west. Would that this were so;
+would that it could be! This, however, is the extent of what you
+promise yourselves: you may ring the changes as you please, but the
+“refrain” of your song is, that Dublin shall “have its own again.”
+Well, for argument’s sake, I say, be it so. The now silenced squares
+shall wake to the echoes of thundering equipages, peers and prelates
+shall again inhabit the dwellings long since the residence of
+hotel-keepers, or still worse, those little democracies of social
+life, called boarding-houses. Your theatre shall be crowded, your
+shops frequented, and every advantage of wealth diffused through all
+the channels of society, shall be yours. As far as Dublin is
+concerned, I say--for, mark me, I keep you to this original point, in
+the land of your promise you have strictly limited the diffusion of
+your blessings by the boundary of the Circular road; even the people
+at Ringsend and Ballybough bridge are not to be included, unless a
+special bill be brought in for their benefit. Still the picture is a
+brilliant one: it would be a fine thing to see all the pomp and
+ceremony of proud popery walk the land at noon-day, with its saints in
+gold, and its relics in silver; for of course this is included in the
+plan. Prosperous Ireland must be Catholic Ireland, and even Spain and
+Belgium will hide their diminished heads when compared with the
+gorgeous homage rendered to popery at home. The “gentlemen of
+Liffey-street chapel,” far better-looking fellows than any foreign
+priest you’ll meet with from Trolhatten to Tivoli, will walk about _in
+pontificalibus_; and all the exciting enthusiasm that Romanism so
+artfully diffuses through every feature of life, will introduce itself
+among a people who have all the warm temper and hot blood of the
+south, with the stern determination and headlong impulse of the north
+of Europe. By all of which I mean to say, that in points of strong
+popery, Dublin will beat the world, and that before a year of such
+prosperity be past, she will have the finest altars, the fattest
+priests, and the longest catalogue of miracles in Europe. Lord
+Shrewsbury need not then go to the Tyrol for an “estatica,” he’ll find
+one nearer home worth twice the money. The shin-bone of St. Januarius,
+that jumped out of a wooden box in a hackney coach, because a
+gentleman swore, will be nothing to the scenes we’ll witness; and if
+St. Patrick should sport his tibia at an evening party of Daniel
+O’Connell’s, it would not in the least surprise me. These are great
+blessings, and I am fully sensible of them. Now let me pass on to
+another, which perhaps I have kept last as it is the chief of all, or
+as the late Lord Castlereagh would have said, the “fundamental feature
+upon which my argument hinges.”
+
+A very common topic of Irish eloquence is, to lament over the enormous
+exportation of cattle, fowl, and fish, that continually goes forward
+from Ireland into England. I acknowledge the justness of the
+complaint--I see its force, and appreciate its value. It is exactly as
+though a grocer should exclaim against his misery, in being compelled
+to part with his high-flavoured bohea, his sparkling lump sugar, and
+his Smyrna figs, or our publisher his books, for the base lucre of
+gain. It is humiliating, I confess; and I can well see how a
+warm-hearted and intelligent creature, who feels the hardship of an
+export trade in matters of food, must suffer when the principle is
+extended to a matter of genius; for, not content with our mutton from
+Meath, our salmon from Limerick, and our chickens from Carlow; but the
+Saxon must even be gratified with the soul-stirring eloquence of the
+Great Liberator himself, with only the trouble of going near St.
+Stephen’s to hear him. I say near--for among the other tyrannies of
+the land, he is compelled to shout loud enough to be heard in all the
+adjacent streets. Now this is too bad. Take our prog--take even our
+poteen, if you will; but leave us our Penates; this theft, which
+embodies the antithesis of Shakspeare, is not only “trash,” but
+“naught enriches them, and makes us poor indeed.”
+
+Repeal the union, and you remedy this. You’ll have him at home with
+you--not masquerading about in the disguise of a gentleman--not
+restricted by the habits of cultivated and civilised life--not tamed
+down into the semblance and mockery of good conduct--no longer the
+chained-up animal of the menagerie, but the roaring, rampant lion,
+roaming at large in his native forest--not performing antics before
+some political Van Amburgh--not opening his huge jaws, as though he
+would devour the Whigs, and shutting them again at the command of his
+keeper--but howling in all the freedom of his passion, and lashing his
+brawny sides with his vigorous “tail.” Haydn, the composer, had an
+enormous appetite; to gratify which, when dining at a tavern, he
+ordered a dinner for three. The waiter delayed in serving, as he said
+the company hadn’t yet arrived, but Haydn told him to bring it up at
+once, remarking, as he patted complacently his paunch, “I am de
+compagnie myself.” Such will you have the case in your domestic
+parliament--Dan will be the company himself. No longer fighting in the
+ranks of opposition, or among the supporters of a government--no more
+the mere character of a piece, he will then be the Jack Johnson of the
+political world, taking the money at the door--in which he has had
+some practice already--he will speak the prologue, lead the
+orchestra, prompt the performers, and announce a repetition of the
+farce every night of the week for his own benefit. Only think what he
+is in England with his “forty thieves” at his back, and imagine what
+he will be in Ireland without one honest man to oppose him. He will
+indeed then be well worth seeing, and if Ireland had no other
+attraction, foreigners might visit us for a look at the Liberator.
+
+He is a droll fellow, is Dan, and there is a strong dash of native
+humour in his notion of repeal. What strange scenes, to be sure, it
+would conjure up. Only think for a moment of the absentee lord, an
+exiled peer, coming back to Dublin after an absence of half his
+lifetime, vainly endeavouring to seem pleased with his condition, and
+appear happy with his home. Like an insolvent debtor affecting to joke
+with the jailer, watch him simulating so much as he can of habits he
+has long forgotten, while his ignorance of his country is such, that
+he cannot direct his coachman to a street in the capital. What a
+ludicrous view of life would this open to our view! While all these
+men, who have been satisfied hitherto to send their sympathies from
+Switzerland, and their best wishes for Ireland by an ambassador’s bag,
+should now come back to writhe beneath the scourge of a demagogue, and
+the tyranny of a man who wields irresponsible power.
+
+All Ireland would present the features of a general election--every
+one would be fascinating, courteous, affable, and dishonest. The
+unpopular debater in England might have his windows smashed. With us,
+it would be his neck would be broken. The excitement of the people
+will be felt within the Parliament; and then, fostered by all the
+rancour of party hate, will be returned to them with interest. The
+measure discussed out of doors by the Liberator, will find no one
+hardy enough to oppose it within the House, and the opinions of the
+Corn Exchange will be the programme for a committee. A notice of a
+motion will issue from Merrion-square, and not from a seat in
+Parliament; and wherever he moves through the country, great Daniel,
+like a snail, will carry “his house” on his back. “Rob me the
+Exchequer, Hal!” will be the cry of the priesthood, and no men are
+better deserving of their hire; and thus, wielding every implement of
+power, if Ireland be not happy, he can only have himself to blame for
+it.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR NATIONAL PRIDE.
+
+
+National Pride must be a strong feeling, and one of the very few
+sentiments which are not exhausted by the drain upon them; and it is a
+strange thing, how the very fact upon which one man plumes himself,
+another would regard as a terrible reproach. A thorough John Bull, as
+he would call himself, thinks he has summed up, in those few emphatic
+words, a brief description of all that is excellent in humanity. And
+as he throws out his chest, and sticks his hand with energy in his
+breeches pocket, seems to say, “I am not one of your frog-eating
+fellows, half-monkey, half-tiger, but a true Briton.” The Frenchman,
+as he proclaims his nation, saying, “_Je suis F-r-r-r-rançais_,” would
+indicate that he is a very different order of being, from his blunt
+untutored neighbour, “_outre mer_;” and so on to the end of the
+chapter. Germans, Italians, and Spaniards, and even Americans, think
+there is some magic in the name of their fatherland--some inherent
+nobility in the soil: and it was only lately I read in a French paper
+an eloquent appeal from a general to his soldiers, which concluded by
+his telling them, to remember, that they were “Mexicans.” I devoutly
+trust that they understood the meaning of his phrase, and were able,
+without difficulty, to call to mind the bright prerogative alluded to;
+for upon my conscience, as an honest man, it would puzzle me sorely to
+say what constitutes a Mexican.
+
+But the absurdity goes further still: for, not satisfied with the
+bounties of Providence in making us what we are, we must indulge a
+rancorous disposition towards our neighbours for their less-favoured
+destiny. “He behaved like a Turk,” is an every-day phrase to indicate
+a full measure of moral baseness and turpidity. A Frenchman’s abuse
+can go no further than calling a man a Chinese, and when he says, “_tu
+es un Pekin_,” a duel is generally the consequence. I doubt not that
+the Turks and the Chinese make use of retributive justice, and treat
+us no better than we behave to them.
+
+Civilisation would seem rather to have fostered than opposed this
+prejudice. In the feudal ages, the strength of a brawny right arm, the
+strong hand that could wield a mace, the firm seat in a saddle, were
+the qualities most in request; and were physical strength more
+estimated than the gifts of a higher order, the fine distinctions of
+national character either did not exist, or were not attended to. Now,
+however, the tournament is not held on a cloth of gold, but on a broad
+sheet of paper; the arms are not the lance and the dagger, but the
+printing-press. No longer a herald in all the splendour of his tabard
+proclaims the lists, but a fashionable publisher, through the medium
+of the morning papers, whose cry for largess is to the full as loud.
+The result is, nations are better known to each other, and, by the
+unhappy law of humanity, are consequently less esteemed. What
+signifies the dislike our ancestors bore the French at Cressy or
+Agincourt compared to the feeling we entertain for them after nigh
+thirty years of peace? Then, indeed, it was the strong rivalry between
+two manly natures: now, the accumulated hate of ages is sharpened and
+embittered by a thousand petty jealousies that have their origin in
+politics, military glory, society, or literature; and we detest each
+other like quarterly reviewers. The Frenchman visits England as a Whig
+commissioner would a Tory institution--only anxious to discover abuses
+and defects--with an obliquity of vision that sees everything
+distorted, or a fecundity of imagination that can conjure up the ills
+he seeks for. He finds us rude, inhospitable, and illiterate; our
+habits are vulgar, our tastes depraved; our House of Commons is a
+riotous mob of under-bred debaters; our army an aristocratic _lounge_,
+where merit has no chance against money; and our literature--God
+wot!--a plagiarism from the French. The Englishman is nearly as
+complimentary. The coarseness of French habits is to him a theme of
+eternal reprobation; the insolence of the men, the indelicacy of the
+women, the immorality of all, overwhelm him with shame and disgust:
+the Chamber of Deputies he despises, as a contemptible parody on a
+representative body, and a speech from the tribune a most absurd
+substitute for the freedom of unpremeditated eloquence: the army he
+discovers to be officered by men, to whom the new police are
+accomplished gentlemen; and, in fact, he sums up by thinking that if
+we had no other competitors in the race of civilisation than the
+French, our supremacy on land, is to the full as safe, as our
+sovereignty over the ocean. Here lie two countries, separated by a
+slip of sea not much broader than an American river, who have gone on
+for ages repeating these and similar puerilities, without the most
+remote prospect of mutual explanation and mutual good-will.
+
+“I hate prejudice, I hate the French,” said poor Charles Matthews, in
+one of his inimitable representations, and really the expression was
+no bad summary of an Englishman’s faith. On the other hand, to hate
+and detest the English is the _sine quâ non_ of French nationality,
+and to concede to them any rank in literature, morals, or military
+greatness, is to derogate from the claims of his own country. Now the
+question is, are the reproaches on either side absolutely just? They
+are not. Secondly, if they be unfair, how comes it that two people
+pre-eminently gifted with intelligence and information, should not
+have come to a better understanding, and that many a long year ago?
+Simply from this plain fact, that the opinions of the press have
+weighed against those of individuals, and that the published satires
+on both sides have had a greater currency and a greater credit than
+the calm judgment of the few. The leading journals in Paris and in
+London have pelted each other mercilessly for many a year. One might
+forgive this, were the attacks suggested by such topics as stimulate
+and strengthen national feeling; but no, the controversy extends to
+every thing, and, worse than all, is carried on with more bitterness
+of spirit, than depth of information. The reviewer “par excellence” of
+our own country makes a yearly incursion into French literature, as an
+Indian would do into his hunting-ground. Resolved to carry death and
+carnage on every side, he arms himself for the chase, and whets his
+appetite for slaughter by the last “_bonne bouche_” of the day. We
+then have some half introductory pages of eloquent exordium on the
+evil tendency of French literature, and the contamination of those
+unsettled opinions in politics, religion, and morals, so copiously
+spread through the pages of every French writer. The revolution of
+1797 is adduced for the hundredth time as the origin of these evils;
+and all the crime and bloodshed of that frightful period is denounced
+as but the first step of the iniquity which has reached its pinnacle,
+in the novels of Paul de Kock. To believe the reviewer, French
+literature consists in the productions of this writer, the works of
+George Sand, Balzac, Frédéric Soulié, and a few others of equal note
+and mark. According to him, intrigue, seduction, and adultery, are the
+staple of French romance: the whole interest of every novel turning on
+the undiscovered turpitude of domestic life; and the great rivalry
+between writers, being, to try which can invent a new future of
+depravity and a new fashion of sin. Were this true, it were indeed a
+sad picture of national degradation; was it the fact that such books,
+and such there are in abundance, composed the light literature of the
+day--were to be found in every drawing-room--to be seen in every
+hand--to be read with interest and discussed with eagerness--to have
+that wide-spread circulation which must ever carry with it a strong
+influence upon the habits of those who read. Were all this so, I say
+it would be, indeed, a deplorable evidence of the low standard of
+civilisation among the French. What is the fact, however? Simply that
+these books have but a limited circulation, and that, only among an
+inferior class of readers. The _modiste_ and the _grisette_ are,
+doubtless, well read in the mysteries of Paul de Kock and Madame du
+Deffant; but in the cultivated classes of the capital, such books have
+no more currency than the scandalous memoirs of our own country have
+in the drawing-rooms of Grosvenor-square or St. James’s. Balzac has,
+it is true, a wide-spread reputation; but many of his books are no
+less marked by a powerful interest than a touching appeal to the fine
+feelings of our nature. Alfred de Vigny, Eugéne Sue, Victor Hugo, Leon
+Gozlan, Paul de Muset, Alexandre Dumas, and a host of others, are all
+popular, and, with the exception of a few works, unexceptionable on
+every ground of morality; but these, after all, are but the
+skirmishers before the army. What shall we say of Guizot, Thiers,
+Augustin Thierry, Toqueville, Mignet, and many more, whose
+contributions to history have formed an era in the literature of the
+age?
+
+The strictures of the reviewers are not very unlike the opinions of
+the French prisoner, who maintained that in England every one eat with
+his knife, and the ladies drank gin, which important and veracious
+facts he himself ascertained, while residing in that fashionable
+quarter of the town called St. Martin’s-lane. This sweeping mode of
+argument, _à particulari_, is fatal when applied to nations. Even the
+Americans have suffered in the hands of Mrs. Trollope and others; and
+gin twist, bowie knives, tobacco chewing, and many similarly amiable
+habits, are not universal. Once for all, then, be it known, there is
+no more fallacious way of forming an opinion regarding France and
+Frenchmen, than through the pages of our periodical press, except by a
+_short_ residence in Paris--I say short, for if a little learning be a
+dangerous thing, a little travelling is more so; and it requires long
+experience of the world, and daily habit of observation, to enable any
+man to detect in the ordinary routine of life the finer and more
+distinctive traits that have escaped his neighbour; besides, however
+palpable and self-evident the proposition, it demands both tact and
+time to see that no general standard of taste can be erected for all
+nations, and, that to judge of others by your own prejudices and
+habits, is both unfair and absurd. To give an instance. No English
+traveller has commented on the French Chamber of Deputies, without
+expending much eloquence and a great deal of honest indignation on the
+practice of speaking from a tribune, written orations being in their
+opinion a ludicrous travestie on the freedom of debate. Now what is
+the fact; in the whole French Chamber there are not ten, there are not
+five men who could address the house extempore; not from any
+deficiency of ability--not from any want of information, logical
+force, and fluency--the names of Thiers, Guizot, Lamartine, Dupin,
+Arago, &c. &c. are quite sufficient to demonstrate this--but simply
+from the intricacy and difficulty of the French language. A worthy
+alderman gets up, as the phrase is, and addresses a speech of some
+three quarters of an hour to the collective wisdom of the livery; and
+although he may be frequently interrupted by thunders of applause, he
+is never checked for any solecisms in his grammar: he may drive a
+coach and six through Lindley Murray; he may inflict heaven knows how
+many fractures on poor Priscian’s head, yet to criticise him on so
+mean a score as that of mere diction, would not be thought of for a
+moment. Not so in France: the language is one of equivoque and
+subtlety; the misplacement of a particle, the change of a gender, the
+employment of any phrase but the exact one, might be at any moment
+fatal to the sense of the speaker, and would inevitably be so to his
+success. It was not very long since, that a worthy deputy interrupted
+M. Thiers by alleging the non-sequitur of some assertion, “_Vous n’est
+pas consequent_,” cried the indignant member, using a phrase not only
+a vulgarism in itself, but inapplicable at the time. A roar of
+laughter followed his interruption. In all the journals of the next
+day, he was styled the deputy _consequent_; and when he returned to
+his constituency the ridicule attached to his blunder still traced his
+steps, and finally lost him his election.
+
+“Thank God I am a Briton,” said Nelson; a phrase, doubtless, many more
+of us will re-echo with equal energy; but while we are expressing our
+gratitude let our thankfulness extend to this gratifying fact, that
+the liberty of our laws is even surpassed by the licence of our
+language. No obscure recess of our tongue is so deep that we cannot by
+_habeas corpus_ right bring up a long-forgotten phrase, and provided
+the speaker have a meaning and be able to convey it to the minds of
+his hearers, we are seldom disposed to be critical on the manner, if
+the matter be there. Besides this, there are styles of eloquence so
+imbued with the spirit of certain eras in French history, that the
+discussion of any subject of ancient or modern days, will always have
+its own peculiar character of diction. Thus, there is the rounded
+period and flowing sententiousness of Louis XIV., the more polished
+but less forcible phraseology of the regency itself, succeeded by the
+epigrammatic taste and pointed brevity introduced by Voltaire. The
+empire left its impress on the language, and all the literature of the
+period wore the _esprit soldatesque_; and so on down to the very days
+of the barricades, each changing phase of political life had its
+appropriate expression. To assume these with effect, was not of course
+the gift of every man, and yet to have erred in their adoption, would
+have been palpable to all; here then is one important difference
+between us, and on this subject alone I might cite at least twenty
+more. The excitable Frenchman scarcely uses any action while speaking,
+and that, of the most simple and subdued kind. The phlegmatic
+Englishman stamps and gesticulates with all the energy of a madman. We
+esteem humour; they prefer wit: we like the long consecutive chain of
+proof that leads us step by step to inevitable conviction; they like
+better some brief but happy illustration that, dispensing with the
+tedium of argument, presents a question at one glance before them.
+They have that general knowledge of their country and its changes,
+that an illustration from the past is ever an effective weapon of the
+orator; while with us the force would be entirely lost from the
+necessity of recounting the incident to which reference was made.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR DIPLOMATISTS.
+
+
+Man is the most imitative of all animals: nothing can surpass the
+facility he possesses of simulating his neighbour; and I question much
+if the press, in all the plentitude of its power, has done as much for
+the spread of good or evil, as the spirit of mimicry so inherent in
+mankind. The habits of high life are transmitted through every grade
+of society: and the cheesemonger keeps his hunters, and damns his
+valet, like my lord; while his wife rolls in her equipage, and affects
+the graces of my lady. So long as wealth is present, the assumption of
+the tastes and habitudes of a different class, can merely be looked
+upon as one of those outbreaks of vanity in which rich but vulgar
+people have a right, if they like, to indulge. Why shouldn’t they have
+a villa at Twickenham--why not a box at the opera--a white bait dinner
+at Blackwall--a yacht at Southampton? They have the money to indulge
+their caprice, and it is no one’s affair but their own. They make
+themselves ridiculous, it is true; but the pleasure they experience
+counterbalances the ridicule, and they are the best judges on which
+side lies the profit. Wealth is power: and although the one may be
+squandered, and the other abused, yet in their very profusion, there
+is something that demands a kind of reverence from the world; and we
+have only to look to France to see, that when once you abolish an
+hereditary _noblesse_, your banker is then your great man.
+
+We may smile, if we please, at the absurd pretensions of the wealthy
+alderman and his lady, whose pompous mansion and splendid equipage
+affect a princely grandeur; yet, after all, the knowledge that he is
+worth half a million of money, that his name alone can raise the
+credit of a new colony, or call into existence the dormant energy of a
+new region of the globe, will always prevent our sarcasm degenerating
+into contempt. Not so, however, when poverty unites itself to these
+aspirings, you feel in a moment that the poor man has nothing to do
+with such vanities; his poverty is a scanty garment, that, dispose it
+as he will, he can never make it hang like a toga; and we have no
+compassion for him, who, while hunger gnaws his vitals, affects a sway
+and dominion his state has denied him. Such a line of conduct will
+often be offensive--it will always be absurd--and the only relief
+presented by its display, is in the ludicrous exhibition of trick and
+stratagem by which it is supported. Jeremy Diddler, after all, is an
+amusing person; but the greater part of the pleasure he affords us is
+derived from the fact, that, cunning as he is in all his efforts to
+deceive us, we are still more so, for we have found him out.
+
+Were I to characterise the leading feature of the age, I should
+certainly say it is this pretension. Like the monkeys at Exeter
+’Change, who could never bear to eat out of their own dish, but must
+stretch their paws into that of their neighbour, so every man
+now-a-days wishes to be in that place most unsuitable to him by all
+his tastes, habits, and associations, and where once having attained
+to, his life is one of misery and constraint. The hypocrisy of
+simulating manners he is not used to, is not more subversive of his
+self-respect, than his imitation is poor, vulgar, and unmeaning.
+
+Curran said that a corporation was, a “thing that had neither a body
+to be kicked, nor a soul to be damned.” And, verily, I begin to think
+that masses of men are even more contemptible than individuals. A
+nation is a great household; and if it have not all the _prestige_ of
+rank, wealth, and power, it is a poor and miserable thing. England and
+France, Germany and Russia, are the great of the earth; and we look up
+to them in the political world, as in society we do to those whose
+rank and station are the guarantees of their power. Many other
+countries of Europe have also their claims upon us, but still smaller
+in degree. Italy, with all its association of classical
+elegance--Spain, whose history shines with the solemn splendour of an
+illuminated missal, where gold and purple are seen blending their
+hues, scarce dimmed by time; but what shall we say of those
+newly-created powers, which springing up like mushroom families, give
+themselves all the airs of true nobility, and endeavour by a strange
+mockery of institutions and customs of their greater neighbours, to
+appear of weight and consequence before the world. Look, for instance,
+to Belgium the _bourgeois gentilhomme_ of politics, which, having
+retired from its partnership with Holland, sets up for a gentleman on
+its private means. What can be more ludicrous than its attempts at
+high-life, its senate, its ministry, its diplomacy; for strange enough
+the ridicule of the individual can be traced extending to a nation,
+and when your city lady launched into the world, displays upon her
+mantelpiece the visiting cards of her high neighbours, so the first
+act of a new people is, to open a visiting acquaintance with their
+rich neighbours, and for this purpose the first thing they do is to
+establish a corps of diplomacy.
+
+Now your city knight may have a fat and rosy coachman, he may have a
+tall and portly footman, a grave and a respectable butler; but
+whatever his wealth, whatever his pretension, there is one functionary
+of a great household he can never attain to--he can never have a groom
+of the chambers. This, like the “chasseur” abroad, is the appendage of
+but one class, by constant association with whom its habits are
+acquired, its tastes engendered, and it would be equally absurd to see
+the tall Hungarian in all the glitter of his hussar costume, behind
+the caleche of a pastrycook, as to hear the low-voiced and courteous
+minion of Devonshire House announce the uncouth, unsyllabled names,
+that come east of St. Dunstan’s.
+
+So, in the same way, your new nations may get up a king and a court, a
+senate, an army, and a ministry, but let them not meddle with
+diplomacy--the moment they do this they burn their fingers: your
+diplomate is like your chasseur, and your groom of the chambers; if he
+be not well done, he is a miserable failure. The world has so many
+types to refer to on this head, there can be no mistake. Talleyrand,
+Nesselrode, Metternich, Lord Whitworth, and several more, have too
+long given the tone to this peculiar walk to admit of any error
+concerning it; however, your little folk will not be denied the
+pleasures of their great acquaintance. They will have their diplomacy,
+and they will be laughed at: look at the Yankees. There is not a
+country in Europe, there is not a state however small, there is not a
+Coburgism with three thousand inhabitants and three companies of
+soldiers, where _they_ haven’t a minister resident with
+plenipotentiary powers extending to every relation political and
+commercial, although all the while the Yankees would be sorely
+puzzled to point out on the map the _locale_ of their illustrious
+ally, and the Germans no less so to find out a reason for their
+embassy. Happily on this score, the very bone and marrow of diplomacy
+is consulted, and secrecy is inviolable; for, as your American knows
+no other tongue save that spoken on the Alleghanies, he keeps his own
+counsel and theirs also.
+
+Have you never in the hall of some large country house, cast your eye,
+on leave-taking, at the strange and motley crew of servants awaiting
+their masters--some well fed and handsomely clothed, with that look of
+reflected importance my lord’s gentleman so justly wears; others, in
+graver, but not less respectable raiment, have that quiet and
+observant demeanour so characteristic of a well-managed household.
+While a third class, strikingly unlike the other two, wear their
+livery with an air of awkwardness and constraint, blushing at
+themselves even a deeper colour than the scarlet of their breeches.
+They feel themselves in masquerade--they were at the plough but
+yesterday, though they are in powder now. With the innate
+consciousness of their absurdity, they become fidgetty and uneasy, and
+would give the world for “a row” to conceal the defaults of their
+breeding. Just so, your petty “diplomate” suffers agony in all the
+quiet intercourse of life. The limited opportunities of small states
+have circumscribed his information. He is not a man of the world, nor
+is he a political character, for he represents nothing; nothing,
+therefore, can save him from oblivion or contempt, save some political
+convulsion where any meddler may become prominent; he has thus a bonus
+on disturbance: so long as the company behave discreetly, he must stay
+in his corner, but the moment they smash the lamps and shy the
+decanters, he emerges from his obscurity and becomes as great as his
+neighbour. For my part, I am convinced that the peace and quietness of
+Europe as much depends on the exclusion of such persons from the
+councils of diplomacy, as the happiness of every-day life does upon
+the breeding and good manners of our associates.
+
+And what straits, to be sure, are they reduced to, to maintain this
+absurd intercourse, screwing the last shilling from the budget to pay
+a _Chargé d’affaires_, with an embroidered coat, and a decoration in
+his button-hole.
+
+The most amusing incidents might be culled from such histories, if one
+were but disposed to relate them.
+
+Balzac mentions, in one of his novels, the story of a physician who
+obtained great practice, merely by sending throughout Paris a
+gaudily-dressed footman, who rang at every door, as it were, in search
+of his master; so quick were the fellow’s movements, so rapid his
+transitions, from one part of the city to the other, nobody believed
+that a single individual could ever have sufficed for so many calls;
+and thus, the impression was, not only that the doctor was greatly
+sought after, but that his household was on a splendid footing. The
+Emperor of the Brazils seems to have read the story, and profited by
+the hint, for while other nations are wasting their thousands in
+maintaining a whole corps of diplomacy, he would appear like the
+doctor to have only one footman, whom he keeps moving about Europe
+without ceasing: thus _The Globe_ tells us one day that the Chevalier
+de L----, the Brazilian ambassador, has arrived in London to resume
+his diplomatic functions; _The Handelsbad of the Hague_ mentions his
+departure from the Dutch Court; _The Allgemeine Zeitung_ announces
+the prospect of his arrival at Vienna, and _The Moniteur Parisien_ has
+a beautiful article on the prosperity of their relations with Mexico,
+under the auspices of the indefatigable Chevalier: “_non regio
+terræ_,” exempt from his labours. Unlike Sir Boyle Roche, he has
+managed to be not only in two, but twenty places at once, and I should
+not be in the least surprised to hear of his negotiations for sulphur
+at Naples, at the same moment that he was pelting snowballs in Norway.
+Whether he travels in a balloon or on the back of a pelican, he is a
+wonderful man, and a treasure to his government.
+
+The multiplicity of his duties, and the pressing nature of his
+functions, may impart an appearance of haste to his manner, but it
+looks diplomatic to be peremptory, and he has no time for trifling.
+
+Truly, Chevalier de L----, thou art a great man--the wandering Jew was
+but a type of thee.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A NUT FOR FOREIGN TRAVEL.
+
+
+Of all the popular delusions that we labour under in England, I
+scarcely know of one more widely circulated, and less founded in fact,
+than the advantages of foreign travel. Far be it from me to undervalue
+the benefits men of education receive by intercourse with strangers,
+and the opportunities of correcting by personal observation the
+impressions already received by study. No one sets a higher price on
+this than I do; no one estimates more fully the advantages of
+tempering one’s nationality by the candid comparison of our own
+institutions with those of other countries; no one values more highly
+the unbiassed frame of mind produced by extending the field of our
+observation, and, instead of limiting our experience by the details of
+a book, reading from the wide-spread page of human nature itself. So
+conscious, indeed, am I of the importance of this, that I look upon
+his education as but very partial indeed who has not travelled. It is
+not, therefore, against the benefits of seeing the world I would
+inveigh--it is rather against the general application of the practice
+to the whole class of our countrymen and countrywomen who swarm on the
+continent. Unsuited by their tastes--unprepared by previous
+information--deeming a passport and a letter of credit all-sufficient
+for their purpose--they set out upon their travels. From their
+ignorance of a foreign language, their journey is one of difficulty
+and embarrassment at every step. They understand little of what they
+see, nothing of what they hear. The discomforts of foreign life have
+no palliation, by their being enabled to reason on, and draw
+inferences from them. All the sources of information are hermetically
+sealed against them, and their tour has nothing to compensate for its
+fatigue, and expense, save the absurd detail of adventure to which
+their ignorance has exposed them.
+
+It is not my intention to rail in this place against the injury done
+to the moral feeling of our nation, by intimate association with the
+habits of the Continent. Reserving this for a more fitting time, I
+shall merely remark at present, that, so far as the habits of virtue
+are concerned, more mischief is done among the middle class of our
+countrymen, than those of a more exalted sphere.
+
+Scarcely does the month of May commence, when the whole tide of
+British population sets in upon the coast of France and Flanders. To
+watch the crowded steamers as they arrive in Antwerp, or Boulogne, you
+would say that some great and devastating plague had broken out in
+London, and driven the affrighted inhabitants from their homes. Not
+so, however: they have come abroad for pleasure. With a credit on
+Coutts, and the inestimable John Murray for a guide, they have devoted
+six weeks to France, Belgium, and the Rhine, in which ample time they
+are not only to learn two languages, but visit three nations,
+exploring into cookery, customs, scenery, literature, and the arts,
+with the same certainty of success that they would pay a visit to
+Astley’s. Scarcely are they launched upon their travels when they
+unite into parties for personal protection and assistance. The
+“_morgue Britannique_,” so much spoken of by foreigners, they appear
+to have left behind them; and sudden friendships, and intimacies,
+spring up between persons whose only feeling in common is that of
+their own absurd position. Away they go sight-seeking in clusters.
+They visit cathedrals, monuments, and galleries; they record in their
+journals the vulgar tirades of a hired _commissionaire_; they eat food
+they detest, and they lie down to sleep discontented and unhappy. The
+courteous civility of foreigners, the theme of so much eulogy in
+England, they now find out to be little more than selfishness,
+libertinism, and impertinence. They see the country from the window
+of a diligence, and society from a place at the _table d’hôte_, and
+truly both one and the other are but the vulgar high roads of life.
+Their ignorance of the language alone protects them from feeling
+insulted at the impertinences directed at themselves and their
+country; and the untutored simplicity of their nature saves them the
+mortification of knowing that the ostentatious politeness of some
+moustached acquaintance is an exhibition got up by him for the
+entertainment of his friends.
+
+Poor John Bull, you have made great sacrifices for this tour. You have
+cut the city, and the counting-house, that your wife may become
+enamoured of dress, and your daughter of a dancing-master--that your
+son may learn to play roulette and smoke cigars, and that you yourself
+may ramble some thousand miles over paved roads, without an object to
+amuse, without an incident to attract you. While this is a gloomy
+picture enough, there is another side to the medal still worse. John
+Bull goes home generally sick of what he has seen, and much more
+ignorant of the Continent than when he set out. His tour, however, has
+laid in its stock of foreign affectation, that renders his home
+uncomfortable; his daughters pine after the flattering familiarities
+of their whiskered acquaintances at Ems, or Wiesbaden; and his sons
+lose all zest for the slow pursuit of competence, by reflecting on the
+more decisive changes of fortune, that await on _rouge et noir_. Yet
+even this is not the worst. What I deplore most of all, is the false
+and erroneous notions continental nations procure of our country, and
+its habits, from such specimens as these. The Englishman who, seen at
+home, at the head of his counting-house, or in the management of his
+farm, presents a fine example of those national traits we are so
+justly proud of--honest, frank, straightforward in all his dealings,
+kind and charitable in his affections; yet see him abroad, the sphere
+of his occupations exists no longer--there is no exercise for the
+manly habits of his nature: his honesty but exposes him to be duped;
+his frankness degenerates into credulity; the unsuspecting openness of
+his character makes him the butt of every artful knave he meets with;
+and he is laughed at from Rotterdam to Rome for qualities which,
+exercised in their fitting sphere, have made England the greatest
+country of the universe. Hence we have the tone of disparagement now
+so universally maintained about England, and Englishmen, from one end
+of the Continent to the other. It is not that our country does not
+send forth a number of men well qualified to induce different
+impressions of their nation; but unfortunately, such persons move only
+in that rank of foreign society where these prejudices do not exist;
+and it is among a different class, and unhappily a more numerous one
+also, that these undervaluing opinions find currency and belief.
+
+There is nothing more offensive than the continual appeal made by
+Frenchmen, Germans, and others, to English habits, as seen among this
+class of our countrymen. It is in vain that you explain to them that
+these people are neither among the more educated nor the better ranks
+of our country. They cannot comprehend your distinction. The habits of
+the Continent have produced a kind of table-land of good-breeding,
+upon which all men are equals. Thus, if you rarely meet a foreigner
+ignorant of the every-day _convenances_ of the world, you still more
+rarely meet with one unexceptionably well-bred. The _table d’hôte_,
+like the mess in our army, has the effect of introducing a certain
+amount of decorum that is felt through every relation of life; and,
+although the count abroad is immeasurably beneath the gentleman at
+home, here, I must confess, that the foreign cobbler is a more
+civilized person than his type in England. This is easily understood:
+foreign breeding is not the outward exhibition of an inward
+principle--it is not the manifestation of a sense of mingled kindness,
+good taste, and self-respect--it is merely the rigid observance of a
+certain code of behaviour that has no reference whatever to any thing
+felt within; it is the mere popery of politeness, with its
+saint-worship, its penances, and its privations. An Englishman makes
+way for you to accommodate your passage; a foreigner--a Frenchman I
+should say--does so for an opportunity to flourish his hat or to
+exhibit an attitude. The same spirit pervades every act of both; duty
+in one case, display in the other, are the ruling principles of life;
+and, where persons are so diametrically different, there is little
+likelihood of much mutual understanding or mutual esteem. To come
+back, however, the great evil of this universal passion for travelling
+lies in the opportunity afforded to foreigners, of sneering at our
+country, and ridiculing our habits. It is in vain that our
+institutions are models of imitation for the world--in vain that our
+national character stands pre-eminent for good-faith and fidelity--in
+vain the boast that the sun never sets upon a territory that girths
+the very globe itself, so long as we send annually our tens of
+thousands out upon the Continent, with no other failing than mere
+unfitness for foreign travel, to bring down upon us the sneer, and the
+ridicule, of every ignorant and unlettered Frenchman, or Belgian, they
+meet with.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A NUT FOR DOMESTIC HAPPINESS.
+
+
+Our law code would, were its injunctions only carried out in private
+life, effect most extraordinary reformations in our customs and
+habits. The most singular innovations in our tastes and opinions would
+spring out of the statutes. It was only a few days ago where a man
+sought reparation for the greatest injury one could inflict on
+another, the great argument of the defendant’s counsel was based on
+the circumstance that the plaintiff and his wife had not been proved
+to have lived happily together, except on the testimony of their
+servants. Great stress was laid upon this fact by the advocate; and
+such an impression did it make on the minds of the jury, that the
+damages awarded were a mere trifle. Now, only reflect for a moment on
+the absurdity of such a plea, and think how many persons there are
+whose quiet and unobtrusive lives are unnoticed beyond the precincts
+of their own door--nay, how many estimable and excellent people who
+live less for the world than for themselves, and although, probably
+for this very reason, but little exposed to the casualty in question,
+would yet deem the injustice great that placed them beyond the pale of
+reparation because they had been homely and domestic.
+
+Civilisation and the march of mind are fine things, and doubtless it
+is a great improvement that the criminal is better lodged, and fed, in
+the prison, than the hungry labourer in the workhouse. It is an
+admirable code that makes the debt of honour, the perhaps swindled
+losses of the card-table, an imperative obligation, while the money
+due to toiling, working industry, may be evaded or escaped from.
+Still, it is a bold step to invade the privacy of domestic life, to
+subvert the happiness we deem most national, and to suggest that the
+world has no respect for, nor the law no belief in, that peaceful
+course in life, which, content with its own blessings, seeks neither
+the gaze of the crowd, nor the stare of fashion. Under the present
+system, a man must appear in society like a candidate on the
+hustings--profuse in protestations of his happiness and redolent of
+smiles; he must lead forth his wife like a blooming _debutante_, and,
+while he presents her to his friends, must display, by every endeavour
+in his power, the angelic happiness of their state. The _coram
+publico_ endearments, so much sneered at by certain fastidious people,
+are now imperative; and, however secluded your habits, however
+retiring your tastes, it is absolutely necessary you should appear a
+certain number of times every year before the world, to assure that
+kind-hearted and considerate thing, how much conjugal felicity you are
+possessed of.
+
+It is to no purpose that your man-servant and your maid-servant, and
+even the stranger within your gates, have seen you in the apparent
+enjoyment of domestic happiness: it is the crowd of a ball-room must
+testify in your favour--it is the pit of a theatre--it is the company
+of a steam-boat, or the party on a railroad, you must adduce in
+evidence. They are the best--they are the only judges of what you, in
+the ignorance of your heart, have believed a secret for your own
+bosom.
+
+Your conduct within-doors is of little moment, so that your bearing
+without satisfy the world. What a delightful picture of universal
+happiness will England then present to the foreigner who visits our
+salons! With what ecstasy will he contemplate the angelic felicity of
+conjugal life! Instead of the indignant coldness of a husband,
+offended by some casual levity of his wife, he will now redouble his
+attentions, and take an opportunity of calling the company to witness
+that they live together like turtle-doves. He knows not how soon, if
+he mix much in fashionable life, their testimony may avail him; and
+the loving smile he throws his spouse across the supper-table is
+worth three thousand pounds before any jury in Middlesex.
+
+Romance writers will now lose one stronghold of sentiment. Love in a
+cottage will possess as little respect as it ever did attraction for
+the world. The pier at Brighton, a Gravesend steamer, Hyde Park on a
+Sunday, will be the appropriate spheres for the interchange of
+conjugal vows. No absurd notions of solitude will then hold sway.
+Alas! how little prophetic spirit is there in poetry! But a few years
+ago, and one of our sirens of song said,
+
+    “When should lovers breathe their vows?
+      When should ladies hear them?
+    When the dew is on the boughs--
+      When none else is near them.”
+
+Not a word of it! The appropriate place is amid the glitter of jewels,
+the glare of lamps, the crush of fashion, and the din of conversation.
+The private boxes of the opera are even too secluded, and your
+happiness is no more genuine, until recognised by society, than is an
+exchequer bill with the mere signature of Lord Monteagle.
+
+The benefits of this system will be great. No longer will men be
+reduced to the cultivation of those meeker virtues that grace and
+adorn life; no more will they study those accomplishments that make
+home happy and their hearth cheerful. A winter at Paris and a box at
+the Varietés will be more to the purpose. Scribe’s farces will teach
+them more important lessons, and they will obtain an instructive
+example in the last line of a vaudeville, where an injured husband
+presents himself at the fall of the curtain, and, as he bows to the
+audience, embraces both his wife and her lover, exclaiming,
+“_Maintenant je suis heureux--ma femme--mon meilleur ami!_” He then
+may snap his fingers at Charles Phillips and Adolphus: he has not only
+proved his affection to his wife, but his confidence in his friend.
+Let him lay the damages at ten thousand, and, with a counsel that can
+cry, he’ll get every shilling of the money.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR LADIES BOUNTIFUL.
+
+
+Jean Jacques tells us, that when his wife died every farmer in the
+neighbourhood offered to console him by one of their daughters; but
+that a few weeks afterwards his cow having shared the same fate, no
+one ever thought of replacing his loss by the offer of another;
+thereby proving the different value people set upon their cows and
+children--this seems absurd enough, but is it a bit more so, than what
+is every day taking place in professional life? How many parsons are
+there who would not lend you five pounds, would willingly lend you
+their pulpit, and the commonest courtesy from a hospital surgeon is,
+to present his visitor with a knife and entreat him to carve a
+patient. He has never seen the individual before, he doesn’t know
+whether he be short-sighted, or nervous, or ignorant, or rash, all he
+thinks of, is doing the honours of the institution; and although like
+a hostess, who sees the best dish at her table mangled by an unskilful
+carver, he suffers in secret, yet is she far too well-bred to evince
+her displeasure, but blandly smiles at her friend, and says “No
+matter, pray go on.” This, doubtless, is highly conducive to science;
+and as medicine is declared to be a science of experiment, great
+results occasionally arise from the practice. Now that I am talking of
+doctors--what a strange set they are, and what a singular position do
+they hold in society; admitted to the fullest confidence of the world,
+yet by a strange perversion, while they are the depositaries of
+secrets that hold together the whole fabric of society, their
+influence is neither fully recognised, nor their power acknowledged.
+The doctor is now what the monk once was, with this additional
+advantage, that from the nature of his studies and the research of his
+art, he reads more deeply in the human heart, and penetrates into its
+most inmost recesses. For him, life has little romance; the grosser
+agency of the body re-acting ever on the operations of the mind,
+destroy many a poetic daydream and many a high-wrought illusion. To
+him alone does a man speak “_son dernier mot_:” while to the lawyer
+the leanings of self-respect will make him always impart a favourable
+view of his case. To the physician he will be candid, and even more
+than candid--yes, these are the men who, watching the secret workings
+of human passion, can trace the progress of mankind in virtue and in
+vice; while ministering to the body they are exploring the mind, and
+yet, scarcely is the hour of danger passed, scarcely the shadow of
+fear dissipated, when they fall back to their humble position in life,
+bearing with them but little gratitude, and, strange to say, no fear!
+
+The world expects them to be learned, well-bred, kind, considerate,
+and attentive, patient to their querulousness, and enduring under
+their caprice; and, after all this, the humbug of homœopathy, the
+preposterous absurdity of the water cure, or the more reprehensible
+mischief of Mesmerism, will find more favour in their sight than the
+highest order of ability accompanied by great natural advantages.
+
+Every man--and still more, every woman--imagine themselves to be
+doctors. The taste for physic, like that for politics, is born with
+us, and nothing seems easier than to repair the injuries of the
+constitution, whether of the state or the individual. Who has not
+seen, over and over again, physicians of the first eminence put aside,
+that the nostrum of some ignorant pretender, or the suggestion of some
+twaddling old woman, should be, as it is termed, tried? No one is too
+stupid, no one too old, no one too ignorant, too obstinate, or too
+silly, not to be superior to Brodie and Chambers, Crampton and Marsh;
+and where science, with anxious eye and cautious hand, would scarcely
+venture to interfere, heroic ignorance would dash boldly forward and
+cut the Gordian difficulty by snapping the thread of life. How comes
+it that these old ladies, of either sex, never meddle with the law? Is
+the game beneath them, where the stake is only property, and not life?
+or is there less difficulty in the knowledge of an art whose
+principles rest on so many branches of science, than in a study
+founded on the basis of precedent? Would to heaven the “Ladies
+Bountiful” would take to the quarter-sessions and the assizes, in lieu
+of the infirmaries and dispensaries, and make Blackstone their
+aid-de-camp--_vice_ Buchan retired.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE PRIESTS.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+There would be no going through this world if one had not an
+India-rubber conscience, and one could no more exist in life without
+what watch-makers call accommodation, in the machinery of one’s heart,
+than a blue-bottle fly could grow fat in the shop of an apothecary.
+Every man’s conscience has, like Janus, two faces--one looks most
+plausibly to the world, with a smile of courteous benevolence, the
+other with a droll leer seems to say, I think we are doing them. In
+fact, not only would the world be impossible, and its business
+impracticable, but society itself would be a bear-garden without
+hypocrisy.
+
+Now, the professional classes have a kind of licence on this subject;
+just as a poet is permitted to invent sunsets, and a painter to
+improvise clouds and cataracts, so a lawyer dilates upon the virtues
+or attractions of his client, and a physician will weep you good round
+substantial tears, at a guinea a drop, for the woes of his patient;
+but the church, I certainly thought, was exempt from this practice. A
+paragraph in a morning paper, however, disabused my ignorance in the
+most remarkable manner. The Roman Catholic hierarchy have unanimously
+decided that all persons following the profession of the stage, are
+to be considered without the pale of the church, they are neither to
+be baptized nor confirmed, married nor buried; they may get a name in
+the streets, and a wife there also, but the church will neither bless
+the one, nor confirm the other; in fact, the sock and the buskin are
+proclaimed in opposition to Christianity, and Madame Lafarge is not a
+bit more culpable than Robert Macaire. A few days since, one of the
+most fashionable churches in Paris was crowded to suffocation by the
+attraction of high mass, celebrated with the assistance of the whole
+opera choir, with Duprez at their head. The sum contributed by the
+faithful was enormous, and the music of Mozart was heard to great
+effect through the vaulted aisles of Notre Dame, yet the very morning
+after, not an individual of the choir could receive the benediction of
+the church--the _rationale_ of all which is, that the Dean of Notre
+Dame, like the Director of the Odeon, likes a good house and a heavy
+benefit. He gets the most attractive company he can secure, and
+although he makes no scruple to say they are the most disreputable
+acquaintances, still they fill the benches, and it will be time enough
+to damn them when the performance is over!
+
+Whenever the respectable Whigs are attacked for their alliance with
+O’Connell, they make the same reply the priest would probably do in
+this circumstance--How can we help it? We want a mob; if he sings, we
+have it--we know his character as well as you; so only let us fill our
+pockets, and then ---- I do not blame them in the least, if the popery
+of their politics has palled upon the appetite; if they can work no
+more miracles of reform and revolution, I do not see how they can help
+calling in aid from without.
+
+Dan, however, will not consent, like Duprez, to be damned when he is
+done with; he insists on a share of the profits, and, moreover, to be
+treated with some respect too. He knows he is the star of the company,
+and can make his own terms; and, even now, when the house is broken
+up, and the manager beggared, and the actors dismissed, like Matthews,
+he can get up a representation all to himself, and make a handsome
+thing of it besides.
+
+If one could see it brought about something in the fashion of Sancho’s
+government of Barrataria, I should certainly like to see O’Connell on
+the throne of Ireland for about twenty-four hours, and to salute King
+Dan, _par la grace de diable_, king of Erin, just for the joke’s sake!
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR LEARNED SOCIETIES.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+We laugh at the middle ages for their trials by ordeal, their jousts,
+their tournaments, their fat monasteries, and their meagre people; but
+I am strongly disposed to think, that before a century pass over,
+posterity will give us as broad a grin for our learned societies. Of
+all the features that characterise the age, I know of none so
+pre-eminently ridiculous, as nine-tenths of these associations would
+prove; supported by great names, aided by large sums, with a fine
+house, a library and a librarian, they do the honours of science
+pretty much as the yeomen of the guard do those of a court on a levee
+day, and they bear about the same relation to literature and art, that
+do the excellent functionaries I have mentioned, to the proceedings
+around the throne.
+
+An old gentleman, hipped by celibacy, and too sour for society, has
+contracted a habit of looking out of his window every morning, to
+observe the weather: he sees a cloud very like a whale, or he fancies
+that when the wind blows in a particular direction, and it happens to
+rain at the same time, that the drops fall in a peculiarly slanting
+manner. He notes down the facts for a month or two, and then
+establishes a meteorological society, of which he is the perpetual
+president, with a grant from Parliament to extend its utility. Another
+takes to old volumes on a book-stall; and becoming, as most men are
+who have little knowledge of life, fascinated with his own
+discoveries, thinks he has ascertained some curious details of ancient
+history, and communicating his results to others as stupid and old as
+himself, they dub themselves antiquarians, or archæologists, and
+obtain a grant also.
+
+Now, one half of these societies are neither more nor less than most
+impertinent sarcasms on the land we live in. The man who sets himself
+down deliberately to chronicle the clouds in our atmosphere, and jot
+down the rainy days in our calendar, is, to my thinking, performing
+about as grateful a task, as though he were to count the carbuncles on
+his friend’s nose. We have, it is true, a most abominable climate: the
+sun rarely shows himself, and, when he does, it is through a tattered
+garment of clouds, dim and disagreeable; but why throw it in our
+teeth? and, still more, why pay a body of men to publish the slander?
+Then again, as to history, all the world knows that since the Flood
+the Irish have never done any thing else than make love, illicit
+whiskey, and beat each other. What nonsense, then, to talk about the
+ancient cultivation of the land, of its high rank in literature, and
+its excellence in art. A stone bishop, with a nose like a negro, and a
+crosier like a garden-rake, are the only evidences of our ancestors’
+taste in sculpture; and some doggrel verses in Irish, explaining how
+King Phelim O’Toole cheated a brother monarch out of his
+small-clothes, are about the extent of our historic treasures. But,
+for argument’s sake, suppose it otherwise; imagine for a moment that
+our ancestors were all that Sir William Betham and Mr. Petrie would
+make them--I do not know how other people may feel, but I myself deem
+it no pleasant reflection to think of _their_ times and look at _our
+own_. What! we were poets and painters, architects, historians, and
+musicians! What have we now among us to represent these great and
+mighty gifts? I am afraid, except our Big Beggarman, we have not a
+single living celebrity; and is this a comfortable reflection, is this
+a pleasing thought, that while, fourteen hundred years ago, some Irish
+Raphael and some Galway Grisi were the delight of our illustrious
+ancestors--that while the splendour of King Malachi, with his collar
+of gold, astonished the ladies in the neighbourhood of Trim--we have
+nothing to boast of, save Dan for Lord Mayor, and Burton Bindon’s
+oysters? Once more, I say, if what these people tell us be facts, they
+are the most unpalatable facts could be told to a nation; and I see no
+manner of propriety or good-breeding in replying to a gipsy who begs
+for a penny, by the information, that “his ancestors built the
+Pyramids.”
+
+Again, if our days are dark, our nights are worse; and what, in
+Heaven’s name, have we to do with an observatory and a telescope as
+long as the _Great Western_? The planets are the most expensive
+vagabonds to the Budget, and the fixed stars are a fixed imposition.
+Were I Chancellor of the Exchequer, I’d pension the Moon, and give the
+Great Bear a sum of money as compensation. Do not tell me of the
+distresses of the people, arising from cotton, or corn, China, or
+Chartists--it is our scientific institutions are eating into the
+national resources. There is not an egg-saucepan of antiquity that
+does not cost the country a plum, and every wag of a comet’s tail may
+be set down at half-a-million. I warrant me the people in the Moon
+take us a deuced deal more easily, and give themselves very little
+trouble to make out the size of Ireland’s eye or the height of
+Croaghpatrick. No, no; let the Chancellor of the Exchequer come down
+with a slapping measure of retrenchment, and make a clear stage of all
+of them. Every man with money to buy a cotton umbrella is his own
+meteorologist; and a pocket telescope, price eight-and-fourpence, is
+long enough, in all conscience, for any man in a climate like ours;
+or, if such a course seem too peremptory, call on these people for
+their bill, and let there be a stated sum for each item. At Dolly’s
+chop-house, you know to the exact farthing how much your beefsteak and
+glass of ale will cost you; and if you wish, in addition, a slice of
+Stilton with your XX, you consult your pocket before you speak. Let
+not the nation be treated worse than the individual: let us first look
+about us, and see if a year of prosperity and cheap potatoes will
+permit us the indulgence of obtaining a new luminary or an old
+chronicle; then, when we know the cost, we may calculate with safety.
+Suppose a fixed star, for instance, be set down at ten pounds; a
+planet at five; Saturn has so many belts, I would not give more than
+half-a-crown for a new one; and, as for an eclipse of the sun, I had
+rather propose a reward for the man who could tell us when we could
+see him palpably.
+
+For the present I merely throw out these suggestions in a brief,
+incomplete manner, intending, however, to return to the subject on
+another occasion.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE LAWYERS.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Authors have long got the credit of being the most accomplished
+persons going--thoroughly conversant not only with the features of
+every walk and class in life, but also with their intimate sentiments,
+habits of thought, and modes of expression. Now, I have long been of
+opinion, that in all these respects, lawyers are infinitely their
+superiors. The author chooses his characters as you choose your dish,
+or your wine at dinner--he takes what suits, and leaves what is not
+available to his purpose. He then fashions them to his hand--finishing
+off this portrait, sketching that one--now bringing certain figures
+into strong light, anon throwing them into shadow: they are his
+creatures, who must obey him while living, and even die at his
+command. Now, the lawyer is called on for all the narrative and
+descriptive powers of his art, at a moment’s notice, without time for
+reading or preparation; and worse than all, his business frequently
+lies among the very arts and callings his taste is most repugnant to.
+One day he is to be found creeping, with a tortoise slowness through
+all the wearisome intricacy of an equity case--the next he is borne
+along in a torrent of indignant eloquence, in defence of some Orange
+processionist or some Ribbon associate: now he describes, with the
+gravity of a landscape gardener, the tortuous windings of a
+mill-stream; now expatiating in Lytton Bulwerisms over the desolate
+hearth and broken fortunes of some deserted husband. In one court he
+attempts to prove that the elderly gentleman whose life was insured
+for a thousand at the Phœnix, was instrumental to his own decease, for
+not eating Cayenne with his oysters; in another, he shows, with
+palpable clearness, that being stabbed in the body, and having the
+head fractured, is a venial offence, and merely the result of
+“political excitement” in a high-spirited and warm-hearted people.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+These are all clever efforts, and demand consummate powers, at the
+hand of him who makes them; but what are they to that deep and
+critical research with which he seems, instinctively, to sound the
+depths of every scientific walk in life, and every learned profession.
+Hear him in a lunacy case--listen to the deep and subtle distinctions
+he draws between the symptoms of mere eccentricity and erring
+intellect--remark how insignificant the physician appears in the case,
+who has made these things the study of a life long--hear how the
+barrister confounds him with a hail-storm of technicals--talking of
+the pineal gland as if it was an officer of the court, and of atrophy
+of the cerebral lobes, as if he was speaking of an attorney’s clerk.
+Listen to him in a trial of supposed death by poison; what a triumph
+he has there, particularly if he be a junior barrister--how he walks
+undismayed among all the tests for arsenic--how little he cares for
+Marsh’s apparatus and Scheele’s discoveries--hydro-sulphates,
+peroxydes, iodurates, and proto-chlorides are familiar to him as
+household words. You would swear that he was nursed at a glass
+retort, and sipped his first milk through a blow-pipe. Like a child
+who thumps the keys of a pianoforte, and imagines himself a Liszt or
+Moschelles, so does your barrister revel amid the phraseology of a
+difficult science--pelting the witnesses with his insane blunders, and
+assuring the jury that their astonishment means ignorance. Nothing in
+anatomy is too deep--nothing in chemistry too subtle--no fact in
+botany too obscure--no point in metaphysics too difficult. Like
+Dogberry, these things are to him but the gift of God; and he knows
+them at his birth. Truly, the chancellor is a powerful magician; and
+the mystic words by which he calls a gentleman to the bar, must have
+some potent spell within them. The youth you remember as if it were
+yesterday, the lounger at evening parties, or the chaperon of riding
+damsels to the Phœnix, comes forth now a man of deep and consummate
+acquirement--he whose chemistry went no further than the composition
+of a “tumbler of punch,” can now perform the most difficult
+experiments of Orfila or Davy, or explain the causes of failure in a
+test that has puzzled the scientific world for half a century. He
+knows the precise monetary value of a deserted maiden’s affections--he
+can tell you the exact sum, in bank notes, that a widow will be
+knocked down for, when her heart has been subject to but a feint
+attack of Cupid. With what consummate skill, too, he can show that an
+indictment is invalid, when stabbing is inserted for cutting; and when
+the crown prosecutor has been deficient in his descriptive anatomy,
+what a glorious field for display is opened to him. Then, to be sure,
+what droll fellows they are!--how they do quiz the witness as he sits
+trembling on the table--what funny allusions to his habits of
+life--his age--his station--turning the whole battery of their powers
+of ridicule against him--ready, if he venture to retort, to throw
+themselves on the protection of the court. And truly, if a little
+Latin suffice for a priest, a little wit goes very far in a law court.
+A joke is a universal blessing: the judge, who, after all, is only “an
+old lawyer,” loves it from habit: the jury, generally speaking, are
+seldom in such good company, and they laugh from complaisance; and the
+bar joins in the mirth, on that great reciprocity principle, which
+enables them to bear each other’s dulness, and dine together
+afterwards. People are insane enough to talk of absenteeism as one of
+the evils of Ireland, and regret that we have no resident aristocracy
+among us--rather let us rejoice that we have them not, so long as the
+lawyers prove their legitimate successors.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+How delightful in a land where civilization has still some little
+progress before it, and where the state of crime is not quite
+satisfactory--to know that we have those amongst us who know all
+things, feel all things, explain all things, and reconcile all
+things--who can throw such a Claude Lorraine light over right and
+wrong, that they are both mellowed into a sweet and hallowed softness,
+delightful to gaze on. How the secret of this universal acquirement is
+accomplished I know not--perhaps it is the wig.
+
+What set me first on this train of thought, was a trial I lately read,
+where a cross action was sustained for damage at sea--the owners of
+the brig Durham against the Aurora, a foreign vessel, and _vice
+versâ_, for the result of a collision at noon, on the 14th of October.
+It appeared that both vessels had taken shelter in the Humber from
+stress of weather, nearly at the same time--that the Durham, which
+preceded the Prussian vessel, “clewed up her top-sails, and dropped
+her anchor _rather_ suddenly; and the Aurora being in the rear, the
+vessels came in collision.” The question, therefore, was, whether the
+Durham came to anchor too precipitately, and in an unseamanlike
+manner; or, in other words, whether, when the “Durham clewed up
+top-sails and let go her anchor, the Aurora should not have luffed up,
+or got sternway on her,” &c. Nothing could possibly be more
+instructive, nor anything scarcely more amusing, than the lucid
+arguments employed by the counsel on both sides. The learned Thebans,
+that would have been sick in a ferry-boat, spoke as if they had
+circumnavigated the globe. Stay-sails, braces, top-gallants, clews,
+and capstans they hurled at each other like _bon bons_ at a carnival;
+and this naval engagement lasted from daylight to dark. Once only,
+when the judge “made it noon,” for a little refection, did they cease
+conflict, to renew the strife afterwards with more deadly daring, till
+at last so confused were the witnesses--the plaintiff, defendant, and
+all, that they half wished, they had gone to the bottom, before they
+thought of settling the differences in the Admiralty Court. This was
+no common occasion for the display of these powers so peculiarly the
+instinctive gift of the bar, and certainly they used it with all the
+enthusiasm of a _bonne bouche_.
+
+How I trembled for the Aurora, when an elderly gentleman, with a wart
+on his nose, assured the court that the Durham had her top-sail backed
+ten minutes before the anchor fell; and then, how I feared again for
+the Durham, as a thin man in spectacles worked the Prussian about in a
+double-reefed mainsail, and stood round in stays so beautifully. I
+thought myself at sea, so graphic was the whole description--the waves
+splashed and foamed around the bulwarks, and broke in spray upon the
+deck--the wind rattled amid the rigging--the bulkheads creaked, and
+the good ship heaved heavily in the trough of the sea, like a mighty
+monster in his agony. But my heart quailed not--I knew that Dr.
+Lushington was at the helm, and Dr. Haggard had the look-out a-head--I
+felt that Dr. Robinson stood by the lee braces, and Dr. Addison
+waited, hatchet in hand, to cut away the mainmast. These were
+comforting reflections, till I was once more enabled to believe myself
+in her Majesty’s High Court of Admiralty.
+
+Alas! ye Coopers--ye Marryats--ye Chamiers--ye historians of storm and
+sea-fight, how inferior are your triumphs compared with the
+descriptive eloquence of a law court. Who can pourtray the broken
+heart of blighted affection, like Charles Phillips in a breach of
+promise? What was Scott compared to Scarlett?--how inferior is Dickens
+to Counsellor O’Driscoll?--here are the men, who, without the trickery
+of trade, ungilt, unlettered, and unillustrated, can move the world to
+laughter and to tears. They ask no aid from Colburn, nor from
+Cruikshank--they need not “Brown” nor Longman. Heaven-born warriors,
+doctors, chemists, and anatomists--deep in every art, learned in every
+science--mankind is to them an open book, which they read at will, and
+con over at leisure--happy country, where we have you in abundance,
+and where your talents are so available, that they can be had for
+asking.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE IRISH.
+
+AN IRISH ENCORE.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+We certainly are a very original people, and contrive to do everything
+after a way of our own! Not content with cementing our friendships by
+fighting, and making the death of a relative the occasion of a merry
+evening, we even convert the habits we borrow from other lands into
+something essentially different from their original intention, and
+infuse into them a spirit quite national.
+
+The echo which, when asked “How d’ye do, Paddy Blake?” replied,
+“Mighty well, thank you,” could only have been an Irish echo. Any
+other country would have sulkily responded, “Blake--ake--ake--ake,” in
+_diminuendo_ to the end of the chapter. But there is a courtesy, an
+attention, a native politeness on our side of the channel, it is in
+vain to seek elsewhere. A very strong instance in point occurs in a
+morning paper before me, and one so delightfully characteristic of our
+habits and customs, it would be unpardonable to pass it without
+commemoration. At an evening concert at the Rotundo, we are informed
+that Mr. Knight--I believe his name is--enchanted his audience by the
+charming manner he sung “Molly Astore.” Three distinct rounds of
+applause followed, and an encore that actually shook the building, and
+may--though we are not informed of the circumstance--have produced
+very remarkable effects in the adjacent institution; upon which Mr.
+Knight, with his habitual courtesy, came forward and sang--what, think
+ye, good reader? Of course you will say, “Molly Astore,” the song he
+was encored for. Alas! for your ignorance;--that might do very well in
+Liverpool or Manchester, at Bath, Bristol, or Birmingham--the poor
+benighted Saxons there might like to get what they asked so eagerly
+for; but we are men of very different mould, and not accustomed to the
+jog-trot subserviency of such common-sense notions; and accordingly,
+Mr. Knight sang “The Soldier Tired”--a piece of politeness on his part
+that actually convulsed the house with acclamations; and so on to the
+end of the entertainment, “the gentleman, when encored, invariably
+sang a new song”--I quote the paper _verbatim_--“which testimony of
+his anxiety to meet the wishes of the audience afforded universal
+satisfaction.”
+
+Now, I ask--and I ask it in all the tranquillity of triumph--show me
+the country on a map where such a studied piece of courteous civility
+could have been practised, or which, if attempted, could have been so
+thoroughly, so instantaneously appreciated. And what an insight does
+it give us into some of the most difficult features of our national
+character. May not this Irish encore explain the success with which
+Mr. O’Connell consoles our “poverty” by attacks on the clergy, and
+relieves our years of scarcity by creating forty-shilling freeholders.
+We ask for bread; and he tells us we are a great people--we beg for
+work, and he replies, that we must have repeal of the union--we
+complain of our poverty, and his remedy is--subscribe to the rent.
+Your heavy-headed Englishman--your clod-hopper from Yorkshire--or
+your boor from Northumberland, would never understand this, if you
+gave him a life-long to con over it. Norfolk pudding to his gross and
+sensual nature would seem better than the new registration bill; and
+he’d rather hear the simmering music of the boiled beef for his
+dinner, than all the rabid ruffianism of a repeal meeting.
+
+But to come back to ourselves. What bold and ample views of life do
+our free-and-easy habits disclose to us, not to speak of the very
+servant at table, who will often help you to soup, when you ask for
+sherry, and give you preserves, when you beg for pepper. What amiable
+cross-purposes are we always playing at--not bigotedly adhering to our
+own narrow notions, and following out our own petty views of life, but
+eagerly doing what we have no concern in, and meritoriously performing
+for our friends, what they had been well pleased, we’d have let alone.
+
+This amiable waywardness--this pleasing uncertainty of
+purpose--characterises our very climate; and the day that breaks in
+sunshine becomes stormy at noon, calm towards evening, and blows a
+hurricane all night. So the Irishman that quits his home brimful of
+philanthropy is not unlikely to rob a church before his return. But so
+it is, there is nobody like us in any respect. We commemorate the
+advent of a sovereign by erecting a testimonial to the last spot he
+stood on at his departure; and we are enthusiastic in our gratitude
+when, having asked for one favour, we receive something as unlike it
+as possible.
+
+Our friends at the other side are beginning to legislate for us in the
+true spirit of our prejudices; and when we have complained of “a
+beggared proprietary and a ruined gentry,” they have bolstered up our
+weakness with the new poor law. So much for an Irish encore.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR VICEREGAL PRIVILEGES.
+
+     “The sixth of Anne, chap. seventeen, makes it unlawful to
+     keep gaming-houses in any part of the city except the
+     ‘Castle,’ and prohibits any game being played even there
+     except during the residence of the Lord Lieutenant. This act
+     is still on the statute book.”--_Dublin Paper._
+
+
+One might puzzle himself for a very long time for an explanation of
+this strange _morceau_ of legislation, without any hope of arriving at
+a shadow of a reason for it.
+
+That gaming should be suppressed by a government is in no wise
+unnatural; nor should we feel any surprise at our legislature having
+been a century in advance of France, in the due restriction of this
+demoralizing practice. But that the exercise of a vice should be
+limited to the highest offices of the state is, indeed, singular, and
+demands no little reflection on our part to investigate the cause.
+
+Had the functions of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland been of that drowsy,
+tiresome, uninteresting nature, that it was only deemed fair by the
+legislature to afford him some amusing pastime to distract his
+“_ennui_” and dispel his melancholy, there might seem to have been
+then some reason for this extraordinary enactment. On the contrary,
+however, every one knows that from the remotest times to the present,
+every viceroy of Ireland has had quite enough on his hands. Some have
+been saving money to pay off old mortgages, others were farming the
+Phœnix; some took to the King Cambyses’ vein, like poor dear Lord
+Normanby--raked up all the old properties and faded finery of the
+Castle, and with such material as they could collect, made a kind of
+Drury-lane representation of a court. And very lately, and with an
+originality so truly characteristic of true genius, Lord Ebrington
+struck out a line of his own, and slept away his time with such a
+persevering intensity of purpose, that “the least wide-awake” persons
+of his government became actually ashamed of themselves. But to go
+back. What, I would ask, was the intention of this act? I know you
+give it up. Well, now, I have made the matter the subject of long and
+serious thought, and I think I have discovered it.
+
+Have you ever read, in the laws of the smaller German states, the
+singular rules and regulations regarding the gaming-table? If so, you
+will have found how the entire property of the “_rouge et noir_” and
+“_roulette_” is vested in certain individuals in return for very
+considerable sums of money, paid by them to the government, for the
+privilege of robbing the public. These honourable and estimable people
+farm out iniquity as you would do your demesne, selling the cheatable
+features of mankind, like the new corn law, on the principle of “a
+general average.” The government of these states, finding--no uncommon
+thing in Germany--a deficiency in their exchequer, have hit upon this
+ready method of supplying the gap, by a system which has all the
+regularity of a tax, with the advantage of a voluntary contribution.
+These little kingdoms, therefore, of some half-dozen miles in
+circumference, are nothing more than _rouge et noir_ tables, where the
+grand duke performs the part of croupier, and gathers in the gold.
+Now, I am convinced that something of this kind was intended by our
+lawgivers in the act of parliament to which I have alluded, and that
+its programme might run thus--that “as the office of Lord Lieutenant
+in Ireland is one of great responsibility, high trust, and necessarily
+demanding profuse expenditure; and that, as it may so happen that the
+same should, in the course of events, be filled by some Whig-Radical
+viceroy of great pretension and little property; and that as the
+ordinary sum for maintaining his dignity may be deemed insufficient,
+we hereby give him the exclusive liberty and privilege of all games of
+chance, skill, or address, in the kingdom of Ireland, whether the same
+may be chicken-hazard, blind hookey, head and tail, &c.--thimble-rigging
+was only known later--to be enjoyed by himself only, or by persons
+deputed by him; such privilege in nowise to extend to the lords
+justices, but only to exist during the actual residence and presence
+of the Lord Lieutenant himself.”--_See the Act._
+
+I cannot but admire the admirable tact that dictated this portion of
+legislation; at the same time, it does seem a little hard that the
+chancellor, the archbishop, and the other high functionaries, who
+administer the law in the absence of the viceroy, should not have been
+permitted the small privilege of a little unlimited loo, or even
+beggar-my-neighbour, particularly as the latter game is the popular
+one in Ireland.
+
+There would seem, too, something like an appreciation of our national
+character in the spirit of this law, which, unhappily for England, and
+Ireland, too, has not always dictated her enactments concerning us.
+It is well known that we hate and abhor anything in the shape of a
+legal debt. Few Irishmen will refuse you the loan of five pounds;
+still fewer can persuade themselves to pay five shillings. The kingdom
+of Galway has long been celebrated for its enlightened notions on this
+subject, showing how much more conducive it is to personal
+independence and domestic economy, to spend five hundred pounds in
+resisting a claim, than to satisfy it by the payment of twenty.
+Accordingly, had any direct taxation of considerable amount been
+proposed for the support of viceregal dignity, the chances are--much
+as we like show and glitter, ardently as we admire all that gives us
+the semblance of a state--we should have buttoned up our pockets, and
+upon the principle of those economical little tracts, that teach us to
+do so much for ourselves, every man would have resolved to be “his own
+Lord Lieutenant;” coming, however, in the shape of an indirect
+taxation, a voluntary contribution to be withheld at pleasure, the
+thing was unobjectionable.
+
+You might not like cards, still less the company--a very possible
+circumstance, the latter, in some times we wot of not long
+since--Well, then, you saved your cash and your character by staying
+at home; on the other hand, it was a comfort to know that you could
+have your rubber of “shorts” or your game at _écarté_, while at the
+same time you were contributing to the maintenance of the crown, and
+discharging the _devoirs_ of a loyal subject. It is useless, however,
+to speculate upon an obsolete institution; the law has fallen into
+disuse, and the more is the pity. How one would like to have seen Lord
+Normanby, with that one curl of infantine simplicity that played upon
+his forehead, with that eternal leer of self-satisfied loveliness that
+rested on his features, playing banker at _rouge et noir_, or calling
+the throws at hazard. I am not quite so sure that the concern would
+have been so profitable as picturesque. The principal frequenters of
+his court were “York too;” Lord Plunket was a “downy cove;” and if
+Anthony Blaek took the box, most assuredly “I’d back the caster.” Now
+and then, to be sure, a stray, misguided country gentleman--a kind of
+“wet Tory”--used to be found at that court; just as one sees some
+respectable matronly woman at Ems or Baden, seated in a happy
+unconsciousness that all the company about her are rogues and
+swindlers, so _he_ might afford some good sport, and assist to
+replenish the famished exchequer. Generally speaking, however, the
+play would not have kept the tables; and his lordship would have been
+_in_ for the wax-lights, without the slightest chance of return.
+
+As for his successor, “patience” would have been his only game; and
+indeed it was one he had to practise whilst he remained amongst us.
+Better days have now come: let us, therefore, inquire if a slight
+modification of the act might not be effected with benefit, and an
+amendment, somewhat thus, be introduced into the bill:--“That the
+words ‘Lord Mayor’ be substituted for the words ‘Lord Lieutenant;’ and
+that all the privileges, rights, immunities, &c., aforesaid, be
+enjoyed by him to his sole use and benefit; and also that, in place of
+the word ‘Castle,’ the word ‘Mansion-house’ stand part of this
+bill”--thus reserving to his lordship all monopoly in games of chance
+and address, without in anywise interfering with such practices of the
+like nature exercised by him elsewhere, and always permitted and
+conceded by whatever government in power.
+
+Here, my dear countrymen, is no common suggestion. I am no prophet,
+like Sir Harcourt Lees; but still I venture to predict, that this
+system once legalised at the Mayoralty, the tribute is totally
+unnecessary. The little town of Spa, with scarce 10,000 inhabitants,
+pays the Belgian government 200,000 francs per annum for the liberty:
+what would Dublin--a city so populous and so idle? only think of the
+tail!--how admirably they could employ their little talent as
+“bonnets,” and the various other functionaries so essential to the
+well-being of a gambling-house; and, lastly, think of great Dan
+himself, with his burly look, seated in civic dignity at the green
+cloth, with a rake instead of a mace before him, calling out, “Make
+your game, gentlemen, make your game”--“Never venture, never
+win”--“Faint heart,” &c., &c.
+
+How suitable would the eloquence that has now grown tiresome, even at
+the Corn Exchange, be at the head of a gaming-table; and how well
+would the Liberator conduct a business whose motto is so admirably
+expressed by the phrase, “Heads, _I_ win; tails, _you_ lose.” Besides,
+after all, nothing could form so efficient a bond of union between the
+two contending parties in the country as some little mutual territory
+of wickedness, where both might forget their virtues and their
+grievances together. Here you’d soon have the violent party-man of
+either side, oblivious of everything but his chance of gain; and what
+an energy would it give to the great Daniel to think that, while
+filling his pockets, he was also spoiling the Egyptians! Instead,
+therefore, of making the poor man contribute his penny, and the
+ragged man two-pence, you’d have the Rent supplied without the trouble
+of collection; and all from the affluent and the easy, or at least the
+idle, portion of the community.
+
+This is the second time I have thrown out a suggestion--and all for
+nothing, remember--on the subject of afinance; and little reflection
+will show that both my schemes are undeniable in their benefits. Here
+you have one of the most expensive pleasures a poor country has ever
+ventured to afford itself--a hired agitator, pensioned, without any
+burden on the productive industry of the land; and he himself, so far
+from having anything to complain of, will find that his revenue is
+more than quadrupled.
+
+Look at the question, besides, in another point of view, and see what
+possible advantages may arise from it. Nothing is so admirable an
+antidote to all political excitement as gambling: where it flourishes,
+men become so inextricably involved in its fascinations and
+attractions that they forget everything else. Now, was ever a country
+so urgently in want of a little repose as ours? and would it not be
+well to purchase it, and pension off our great disturbers, at any
+price whatever? Cards are better than carding any day; short whist is
+an admirable substitute for insurrection; and the rattle of a dice-box
+is surely as pleasant music as the ruffian shout for repeal.
+
+
+
+
+RICH AND POOR--POUR ET CONTRE.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+If I was a king upon a throne this minute, an’ I wanted to have a
+smoke for myself by the fireside--why, if I was to do my best, what
+could I smoke but one pen’orth of tobacco, in the night, after
+all?--but can’t I have that just as asy?
+
+“If I was to have a bed with down feathers, what could I do but sleep
+there?--and sure I can do that in the settle-bed above.”
+
+Such is the very just and philosophical reflection of one of Griffin’s
+most amusing characters, in his inimitable story of “The
+Collegians”--a reflection that naturally sets us a thinking, that if
+riches and wealth cannot really increase a man’s capacity for
+enjoyment with the enjoyments themselves, their pursuit is, after all,
+but a poor and barren object of even worldly happiness.
+
+As it is perfectly evident that, so far as mere sensual gratifications
+are concerned, the peer and the peasant stand pretty much on a level,
+let us inquire for a moment in what the great superiority consists
+which exalts and elevates one above the other? Now, without entering
+upon that wild field for speculation that power (and what power equals
+that conferred by wealth?) confers, and the train of ennobling
+sentiment suggested by extended views of philanthropy and
+benevolence--for, in this respect, it is perfectly possible the poor
+man has as amiable a thrill at his heart in sharing his potato with a
+wandering beggar, as the rich one has in contributing his thousand
+pounds’ donation to some great national charity--let us turn rather to
+the consideration of those more tangible differences that leave their
+impress upon character, and mould men’s minds into a fashion so
+perfectly and thoroughly distinct.
+
+To our thinking, then, the great superiority wealth confers lies in
+the seclusion the rich man lives in from all the grosser agency of
+every-day life--its make-shifts, its contrivances, its continued
+warfare of petty provision and continual care, its unceasing effort to
+seem what it is not, and to appear to the world in a garb, and after a
+manner, to which it has no just pretension. The rich man knows nothing
+of all this: life, to him, rolls on in measured tread; and the world,
+albeit the changes of season and politics may affect him, has nothing
+to call forth any unusual effort of his temper or his intellect; his
+life, like his drawing-room, is arranged for him; he never sees it
+otherwise than in trim order; with an internal consciousness that
+people must be engaged in providing for his comforts at seasons when
+he is in bed or asleep, or otherwise occupied, he gives himself no
+farther trouble about them; and, in the monotony of his pleasures,
+attains to a tranquillity of mind the most enviable and most happy.
+
+Hence that perfect composure so conspicuous in the higher ranks, among
+whom wealth is so generally diffused--hence that delightful simplicity
+of manner, so captivating from its total absence of pretension and
+affectation--hence that unbroken serenity that no chances or
+disappointments would seem to interfere with; the knowledge that he is
+of far too much consequence to be neglected or forgotten, supports him
+on every occasion, and teaches that, when anything happens to his
+inconvenience or discomfort, that it could not but be unavoidable.
+
+Not so the poor man: his poverty is a shoe that pinches every hour of
+the twenty-four; he may bear up from habit, from philosophy, against
+his restricted means of enjoyment; he may accustom himself to limited
+and narrow bounds of pleasure; he may teach himself that, when wetting
+his lips with the cup of happiness, that he is not to drink to his
+liking of it: but what he cannot acquire is that total absence of all
+forethought for the minor cares of life, its provisions for the
+future, its changes and contingencies--hence he does not possess that
+easy and tranquil temperament so captivating to all within its
+influence; he has none of the careless _abandon_ of happiness, because
+even when happy he feels how short-lived must be his pleasure, and
+what a price he must pay for it. The thought of the future poisons the
+present, just as the dark cloud that gathers round the mountain-top
+makes the sunlight upon the plain seem cold and sickly.
+
+All the poor man’s pleasures have taken such time and care in their
+preparation that they have lost their freshness ere they are tasted.
+The cook has sipped so frequently at the pottage, he will not eat of
+it when at table. The poor man sees life “_en papillotes_” before he
+sees it “dressed.” The rich man sees it only in the resplendent blaze
+of its beauty, glowing with all the attraction that art can lend it,
+and wearing smiles put on for his own enjoyment. But if such be the
+case, and if the rich man, from the very circumstance of his position,
+imbibe habits and acquire a temperament possessing such charm and
+fascination, does he surrender nothing for all this? Alas! and alas!
+how many of the charities of life lie buried in the still waters of
+his apathetic nature! How many of the warm feelings of his heart are
+chilled for ever, for want of ground for their exercise! How can he
+sympathise who has never suffered? how can he console who has never
+grieved? There is nothing healthy in the placid mirror of that glassy
+lake; uncurled by a breeze, unruffled by a breath of passion, it wants
+the wholesome agitation of the breaking wave--the health-giving,
+bracing power of the conflicting element that stirs the heart within,
+and nerves it for a noble effort.
+
+All that he has of good within him is cramped by _convenance_ and
+fashion; for he who never feared the chance of fortune, trembles, with
+a coward’s dread, before the sneer of the world. The poor man,
+however, only appeals to this test on a very different score. The
+“world” may prescribe to him the fashion of his hat, or the colour of
+his coat--it may dictate the _locale_ of his residence, and the style
+of his household, and he may, so far as in him lies, comply with a
+tyranny so absurd; but with the free sentiments of his nature--his
+honest pride, his feeling sympathy--with the open current of his warm
+affection he suffers no interference: of this no man shall be the
+arbiter. If, then, the shoals and quicksands of the world deprive him
+of that tranquil guise and placid look--the enviable gift of richer
+men--he has, in requital, the unrestricted use of those greater gifts
+that God has given him, untrammelled by man’s opinion, uncurbed by
+the control of “the world.”
+
+Each supports a tyranny after his own kind:--
+
+The rich man--above the dictates of fashion--subjects the thoughts of
+his mind and the meditations of his heart to the world’s rule.
+
+The poor man--below it--keeps these for his prerogative, and has no
+slavery save in form.
+
+Happy the man who, amid all the seductions of wealth, and all the
+blandishments of fortune, can keep his heart and mind in the healthy
+exercise of its warm affections and its generous impulses. But still
+happier he, whose wealth, the native purity of his heart--can limit
+his desires to his means, and untrammelled by ambition, undeterred by
+fear of failure, treads the lowly but peaceful path in life, neither
+aspiring to be great, nor fearing to be humble.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR ST. PATRICK’S NIGHT.
+
+
+There is no cant offends me more than the oft-repeated criticisms on
+the changed condition of Ireland. How very much worse or how very much
+better we have become since this ministry, or that measure--what a
+deplorable falling off!--what a gratifying prospect! how poor! how
+prosperous! &c. &c. Now, we are exactly what and where we used to be:
+not a whit wiser nor better, poorer nor prouder. The union, the relief
+bill, the reform and corporation acts, have passed over us, like the
+summer breeze upon the calm water of a lake, ruffling the surface for
+a moment, but leaving all still and stagnant as before. Making new
+laws for the use of a people who would not obey the old ones, is much
+like the policy of altering the collar or the cuffs of a coat for a
+savage, who insists all the while on going naked. However, it amuses
+the gentlemen of St. Stephen’s; and, I’m sure I’m not the man to
+quarrel with innocent pleasures.
+
+To me, looking back, as my Lord Brougham would say, from the period of
+a long life, I cannot perceive even the slightest difference in the
+appearance of the land, or the looks of its inhabitants. Dublin is the
+same dirty, ill-cared-for, broken-windowed, tumble-down concern it
+used to be--the country the same untilled, weed-grown, unfenced thing
+I remember it fifty years ago--the society pretty much the same
+mixture of shrewd lawyers, suave doctors, raw subalterns, and fat,
+old, greasy country gentlemen, waiting in town for remittances to
+carry them on to Cheltenham--that paradise of Paddies, and elysium of
+Galway _belles_. Our table-talk the old story, of who was killed last
+in Tipperary or Limerick, with the accustomed seasoning of the
+oft-repeated alibi that figures at every assizes, and is successful
+with every jury. These pleasant topics, tinted with the party colour
+of the speaker’s politics, form the staple of conversation; and,
+“barring the wit,” we are pretty much what our fathers were some half
+century earlier. Father Mathew, to be sure, has innovated somewhat on
+our ancient prejudices; but I find that what are called “the upper
+classes” are far too cultivated and too well-informed to follow a
+priest. A few weeks ago, I had a striking illustration of this fact
+brought before me, which I am disposed to quote the more willingly as
+it also serves to display the admirable constancy with which we adhere
+to our old and time-honoured habits. The morning of St. Patrick’s day
+was celebrated in Dublin by an immense procession of teetotallers,
+who, with white banners, and whiter cheeks, paraded the city,
+evidencing in their cleanly but care-worn countenances, the benefits
+of temperance. On the same evening a gentleman--so speak the morning
+papers--got immoderately drunk at the ball in the Castle, and was
+carried out in a state of insensibility. Now, it is not for the sake
+of contrast I have mentioned this fact--my present speculation has
+another and very different object, and is simply this:--How comes it,
+that since time out of mind the same event has recurred on the
+anniversary of St. Patrick at the Irish court? When I was a boy I
+remember well “the gentleman who became so awfully drunk,” &c. Every
+administration, from the Duke of Rutland downwards, has had its
+drunken gentleman on “St. Patrick’s night.” Where do they keep him all
+the year long?--what do they do with him?--are questions I continually
+am asking myself. Under what name and designation does he figure in
+the pension list? for of course I am not silly enough to suppose that
+a well-ordered government would depend on chance for functionaries
+like these. One might as well suppose they would calculate on some one
+improvising Sir William Betham, or extemporaneously performing “God
+save the Queen,” on the state trumpet, in lieu of that amiable
+individual who distends his loyal cheeks on our great anniversaries.
+No, no. I am well aware he is a member of the household, or at least
+in the pay of the government. When the pope converts his Jew on Holy
+Thursday, the Catholic church have had ample time for preparation: the
+cardinals are on the look-out for weeks before, to catch one for his
+holiness--a good respectable hirsute Israelite, with a strong Judas
+expression to magnify the miracle. But then the Jew is passive in the
+affair, and has only to be converted patiently--whereas “the
+gentleman” has an active duty to discharge; he must imbibe sherry,
+iced punch, and champagne, at such a rate that he can be able to shock
+the company, before the rooms thin, with his intemperate excess.
+Besides, to give the devil--the pope, I mean--his Jew, they snare a
+fresh one every Easter. Now, I am fully persuaded that, at our Irish
+court, the same gentleman has performed the part for upwards of fifty
+years.
+
+At the ancient banquets it was always looked upon as a triumph of
+Amphitryonism when a guest or two died the day after of indigestion,
+from over eating. Now, is it not possible that our classic origin may
+have imparted to us the trait I am speaking of, and that “the
+gentleman” is retained as typical of our exceeding hilarity and
+consummate conviviality--an evidence to the “great unasked” that the
+festivities within doors are conducted on a scale of boundless
+profusion and extravagance--that the fountains from which honour
+flows, run also with champagne, and that punch and the peerage are to
+be seen bubbling from the same source.
+
+It is a sad thing to think that the gifted man, who has served his
+country so faithfully in this capacity for so long a period, must now
+be stricken in years. Time and rum must be telling upon him; and yet,
+what should we do were we to lose him?
+
+In the chapel of Maria Zell, in Styria, there is a portly figure of
+St. Somebody, with more consonants than I find it prudent to venture
+on from mere memory; the priest is rolling his eyes very benignly on
+the frequenters of the chapel, as they pass by the shrine he resides
+in. The story goes, that when the saint ceases winking, some great
+calamity will occur to the commune and its inhabitants. Now, the last
+time I saw him, he was in great vigour, ogled away with his accustomed
+energy, and even, I thought--perhaps it was a suspicion on my
+part--had actually strained his eyeballs into something like a squint,
+from actual eagerness to oblige his votaries--a circumstance happily
+of the less moment in our days, as a gifted countryman of ours could
+have remedied the defect in no time. But to return; my theory is, that
+when we lose our tipsy friend it’s all up with us; “Birnam wood will
+then have come to Dunsinane;” and what misfortunes may befal us, Sir
+Harcourt Lees may foresee, but I confess myself totally unable to
+predicate.
+
+Were I the viceroy, I’d not sleep another night in the island. I’d
+pack up the regalia, send for Anthony Blake to take charge of the
+country, and start for Liverpool in the mail-packet.
+
+Happily, however, such an event may be still distant; and although the
+Austrians have but one Metternich, we may find a successor to our
+“Knight of St. Patrick.”
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR “GENTLEMAN JOCKS.”
+
+
+“The Honourable Fitzroy Shuffleton,” I quote _The Morning Post_, “who
+rode Bees-wing, came in a winner amid deafening cheers. Never was a
+race better contested; and although, when passing the distance-post,
+the Langar colt seemed to have the best of it, yet such was Mr.
+Shuffleton’s tact and jockeyship, that he shot a-head in advance of
+his adversary, and came in first.” I omit the passages descriptive of
+the peculiar cleverness displayed by this gifted gentleman. I omit
+also that glorious outbreak of newspaper eloquence, in which the
+delight of his friends is expressed--the tears of joy from his
+sisters--the cambric handkerchiefs that floated in the air--the
+innumerable and reiterated cries of “Well done!--he’s a trump!--the
+right sort!” &c. &c., so profusely employed by the crowd, because I am
+fully satisfied with what general approbation such proofs of ability
+are witnessed.
+
+[Illustration: Gentlemen Jocks.]
+
+We are a great nation, and nowhere is our greatness more conspicuous
+than in the education of our youth. The young Frenchman seems to
+fulfil his destiny, when, having drawn on a pair of the most
+tight-fitting kid gloves, of that precise shade of colour so approved
+of by Madame Laffarge, he saunters forth on the Boulevard de Gand, or
+lounges in the _coulisse_ of the opera.
+
+The German, whose contempt not only extends to glove-leather, but
+clean hands, betakes himself early in life to the way he should go,
+and from which, to do him justice, he never shows any inclination to
+depart. A meerschaum some three feet long, and a tobacco bag like a
+school-boy’s satchel, supply his wants in life. The dreamy visions of
+the unreal woes, and the still more unreal greatness of his country,
+form the pabulum for his thoughts; and he has no other ambition, for
+some half dozen years of his life, than to boast his utter
+indifference to kings and clean water.
+
+Now, we manage matters somewhat better. Our young men, from the very
+outset of their career, are admirable jockeys; and if by any fatality,
+like the dreadful revolution of France, our nobles should be compelled
+to emigrate from their native land, instead of teaching mathematics
+and music, the small sword and quadrilles, we shall have the
+satisfaction of knowing that we supply stable-boys to the whole of
+Europe.
+
+Whatever other people may say or think, I put a great value on this
+equestrian taste. I speak not here of the manly nature of horse
+exercise--of the noble and vigorous pursuits of the hunting field. No;
+I direct my observations solely to the heroes of Ascot and Epsom--of
+Doncaster and Goodwood. I only speak of those whose pleasure it is to
+read no book save the Racing Calendar, and frequent no lounge but
+Tattersall’s; who esteem the stripes of a racing-jacket more
+honourable than the ribbon of the Bath, and look to a well-timed
+“hustle” or “a shake” as the climax of human ability. These are fine
+fellows, and I prize them. But if it be not only praiseworthy, but
+pleasant, to ride for the Duke’s cup at Goodwood, or the Corinthian’s
+at the Curragh, why not extend the sphere of the utility, and become
+as amiable in private as they are conspicuous in public life?
+
+We have seen them in silk jackets of various hues, with leathers and
+tops of most accurate fitting, turn out amid the pelting of a most
+pitiless storm, to ride some three miles of spongy turf, at the hazard
+of their necks, and the almost certainty of a rheumatic fever; and
+why, donning the same or some similar costume, will they not perform
+the office of postillion, when their fathers, or mayhap, some
+venerated aunt, is returning by the north road to an antiquated
+mansion in Yorkshire? The pace, to be sure, is not so fast--but it
+compensates in safety what it loses in speed--the assemblage around is
+not so numerous, or the excitement so great; but filial tenderness is
+a nobler motive than the acclamations of a mob. In fact, the parallel
+presents all the advantages on one side: and the jockey is as inferior
+to the postillion as the fitful glare of an _ignis-fatuus_ is to the
+steady brilliancy of a gas-lamp.
+
+An Englishman has a natural pride in the navy of his country--our
+wooden walls are a glorious boast; but, perhaps, after all, there is
+nothing more captivating in the whole detail of the service, than the
+fact that even the highest and the noblest in the land has no royal
+road to its promotion, but, beginning at the very humblest step, he
+must work his way through every grade and every rank, like his
+comrades around him. Many there are now living who remember Prince
+William, as he was called--late William the Fourth, of glorious
+memory--sitting in the stern seats of a gig, his worn jacket and
+weather-beaten hat attesting that even the son of a king had no
+immunity from the hardships of the sea. This is a proud thought for
+Englishmen, and well suited to gratify their inherent loyalty and
+their sturdy independence. Now, might we not advantageously extend the
+influence of such examples, by the suggestion I have thrown out above?
+If a foreigner be now struck by hearing, as he walks through the
+dockyard at Plymouth, that the little middy who touches his hat with
+such obsequious politeness, is the Marquis of ----, or the Earl of
+----, with some fifty thousand per annum, how much more astonished
+will he be on learning that he owes the rapidity with which he
+traversed the last stage to his having been driven by Lord Wilton--or
+that the lengthy proportions, so dexterously gathered up in the
+saddle, belong to an ex-ambassador from St. Petersburgh. How surprised
+would he feel, too, that instead of the low habits and coarse tastes
+he would look for in that condition in life, he would now see elegant
+and accomplished gentlemen, sipping a glass of curaçoa at the end of a
+stage; or, mayhap, offering a pinch of snuff from a box worth five
+hundred guineas. What a fascinating conception would he form of our
+country from such examples as this! and how insensibly would not only
+the polished taste and the high-bred depravity of the better classes
+be disseminated through the country; but, by an admirable reciprocity,
+the coarsest vices of the lowest would be introduced among the highest
+in the land. The race-course has done much for this, but the road
+would do far more. Slang is now but the language of the _élite_--it
+would then become the vulgar tongue; and, in fact, there is no
+predicting the amount of national benefit likely to arise from an
+amalgamation of all ranks in society, where the bond of union is so
+honourable in its nature. Cultivate, then, ye youth of England--ye
+scions of the Tudors and the Plantagenets--with all the blood of all
+the Howards in your veins--cultivate the race-course--study the
+stable--read the Racing Calendar. What are the precepts of Bacon or
+the learning of Boyle compared to the pedigree of Grey Momus, or the
+reason that Tramp “is wrong?” “A dark horse” is a far more interesting
+subject of inquiry than an eclipse of the moon, and a judge of pace a
+much more exalted individual than a judge of assize.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR YOUNGER SONS.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Douglas Jerrold, in his amusing book, “Cakes and Ale,” quotes an
+exquisite essay written to prove the sufficiency of thirty pounds
+a-year for all a man’s daily wants and comforts--allowing at least
+five shillings a quarter for the conversion of the Jews--and in which
+every outlay is so nicely calculated, that it must be wilful
+eccentricity if the pauper gentleman, at the end of the year, either
+owes a shilling or has one. To say the least of it, this is close
+shaving; and, as I detest experimental philosophy, I’d rather not try
+it. At the same time, in this age of general glut, when all
+professions are overstocked--when you might pave the Strand with
+parsons’ skulls, and thatch your barn with the surplus of the college
+of physicians; when there are neither waste lands to till and give us
+ague and typhus, nor war to thin us--what are we to do? The
+subdivision of labour in every walk in life has been carried to its
+utmost limits: if it takes nine tailors to make a man, it takes nine
+men to make a needle. Even in the learned professions, as they are
+called, this system is carried out; and as you have a lawyer for
+equity, another for the Common Pleas, a third for the Old Bailey, &c.,
+so your doctor, now-a-days, has split up his art, and one man takes
+charge of your teeth, another has the eye department, another the ear,
+a fourth looks after your corns; so that, in fact, the complex
+machinery of your structure strikes you as admirably adapted to give
+employment to an ingenious and anxious population, who, until our
+present civilization, never dreamed of morselling out mankind for
+their benefit.
+
+As to commerce, our late experiences have chiefly pointed to the
+pleasure of trading with nations who will not pay their debts,--like
+the Yankees. There is, then, little encouragement in that quarter.
+What then remains I scarcely know. The United Services are pleasant,
+but poor things by way of a provision for life. Coach-driving, that
+admirable refuge for the destitute, has been smashed by the railroads;
+and there is a kind of prejudice against a man of family sweeping the
+crossings. For my own part, I lean to something dignified and
+respectable--something that does not compromise “the cloth,” and
+which, without being absolutely a sinecure, never exacts any undue or
+extraordinary exertion,--driving a hearse, for instance: even this,
+however, is greatly run upon; and the cholera, at its departure, threw
+very many out of employment. However, the question is, what can a man
+of small means do with his son? Short whist is a very snug thing--if a
+man have natural gifts,--that happy conformation of the fingers, that
+ample range of vision, that takes in everything around. But I must
+not suppose these by any means general--and I legislate for the mass.
+The turf has also the same difficulties,--so has toad-eating; indeed
+these three walks might be included among the learned professions.
+
+As to railroads, I’m sick of hearing of them for the last three years.
+Every family in the empire has at least one civil engineer within its
+precincts; and I’m confident, if their sides were as hard as their
+skulls, you could make sleepers for the whole Grand Junction by merely
+decimating the unemployed.
+
+Tax-collecting does, to be sure, offer some little prospect; but that
+won’t last. Indeed, the very working of the process will limit the
+advantages of this opening,--gradually converting all the payers into
+paupers. Now I have meditated long and anxiously on the subject,
+conversing with others whose opportunities of knowing the world were
+considerable, but never could I find that ingenuity opened any new
+path, without its being so instantaneously overstocked that
+competition alone denied every chance of success.
+
+One man of original genius I did, indeed, come upon, and his career
+had been eminently successful. He was a Belgian physician, who, having
+in vain attempted all the ordinary modes of obtaining practice,
+collected together the little residue of his fortune, and sailed for
+Barbadoes, where he struck out for himself the following singularly
+new and original plan:--He purchased all the disabled, sick, and
+ailing negroes that he could find; every poor fellow whose case seemed
+past hope, but yet to his critical eye was still curable, these he
+bought up; they were, of course, dead bargains. The masters were
+delighted to get rid of them--they were actually “eating their heads
+off;” but the doctor knew, that though they looked somewhat “groggy,”
+still there was a “go” in them yet.
+
+By care, skill, and good management, they recovered under his hands,
+and frequently were re-sold to the original proprietor, who was
+totally unconscious that the sleek and shining nigger before him had
+been the poor, decrepid, sickly creature of some weeks before.
+
+The humanity of this proceeding is self-evident: a word need not be
+said more on that subject. But it was no less profitable than
+merciful. The originator of the plan retired from business with a
+large fortune, amassed, too, in an inconceivably short space of time.
+The shrewdest proprietor of a fast coach never could throw a more
+critical eye over a new wheeler or a broken-down leader, than did he
+on the object of his professional skill; detecting at a glance the
+extent of his ailments, and calculating, with a Babbage-like accuracy,
+the cost of keep, physic, and attendance, and setting them off, in his
+mind, against the probable price of the sound man. What consummate
+skill was here! Not merely, like Brodie or Crampton, anticipating the
+possible recovery of the patient, but estimating the extent of the
+restoration--the time it would take--ay, the very number of basins of
+chicken-broth and barley-gruel that he would devour, _ad interim_.
+This was the cleverest physician I ever knew. The present altered
+condition of West Indian property has, however, closed this opening to
+fortune, in which, after all, nothing short of first-rate ability
+could have ensured success.
+
+I have just read over the preceding “nut” to my old friend, Mr.
+Synnet, of Mulloglass, whose deep knowledge of the world makes him no
+mean critic on such a subject. His words are these:--
+
+“There is some truth in what you remark--the world is too full of us.
+There is, however, a very nice walk in life much neglected.”
+
+“And what may that be?” said I, eagerly.
+
+“The mortgagee,” replied he, sententiously.
+
+“I don’t perfectly comprehend.”
+
+“Well, well! what I mean is this: suppose, now, you have only a couple
+of thousand pounds to leave your son--maybe, you have not more than a
+single thousand--now, my advice is, not to squander your fortune in
+any such absurdity as a learned profession, a commission in the Line,
+or any other miserable existence, but just look about you, in the west
+of Ireland, for the fellow that has the best house, the best cellar,
+the best cook, and the best stable. He is sure to want money, and will
+be delighted to get a loan. Lend it to him: make hard terms, of
+course. For this--as you are never to be paid--the obligation of your
+forbearance will be the greater. Now, mark me, from the day the deed
+is signed, you have snug quarters in Galway, not only in your friend’s
+house, but among all his relations--Blakes, Burkes, Bodkins, Kirwans,
+&c., to no end; you have the run of the whole concern--the best of
+living, great drink, and hunting in abundance. You must talk of the
+loan now and then, just to jog their memory; but be always ‘too much
+the gentleman’ to ask for your money; and it will even go hard, but
+from sheer popularity, they will make you member for the county. This
+is the only new thing, in the way of a career, I know of, and I have
+great pleasure in throwing out the suggestion for the benefit of
+younger sons.”
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE PENAL CODE.
+
+
+It has often struck me that the monotony of occupation is a heavier
+infliction than the monotony of reflection. The same dull round of
+duty, which while it demands a certain amount of labour, excludes all
+opportunity of thought, making man no better than the piston of a
+steam-engine, is a very frightful and debasing process. Whereas,
+however much there may be of suffering in solitude, our minds are not
+imprisoned; our thoughts, unchained and unfettered, stroll far away to
+pleasant pasturages; we cross the broad blue sea, and tread the ferny
+mountain-side, and live once more the sunny hours of boyhood; or we
+build up in imagination a peaceful and happy future.
+
+That the power of fancy and the play of genius are not interrupted by
+the still solitude of the prison, I need only quote Cervantes, whose
+immortal work was accomplished during the tedious hours of a
+captivity, unrelieved by one office of friendship, uncheered by one
+solitary ray of hope.
+
+Taking this view of the matter, it will be at once perceived how much
+more severe a penalty solitary confinement must be, to the man of
+narrow mind and limited resources of thought, than to him of
+cultivated understanding and wider range of mental exercise. In the
+one case, it is a punishment of the most terrific kind--and nothing
+can equal that awful lethargy of the soul, that wraps a man as in a
+garment, shrouding him from the bright world without, and leaving him
+nought save the darkness of his gloomy nature to brood over. In the
+other, there is something soothing amid all the melancholy of the
+state, in the unbroken soaring of thought, that, lifting man above the
+cares and collisions of daily life, bear him far away to the rich
+paradise of his mind-made treasures--peopling space with images of
+beauty--and leave him to dream away existence amid the scenes and
+features he loved to gaze on.
+
+Now, to turn for the moment from this picture, let us consider whether
+our government is wise in this universal application of a punishment,
+which, while it operates so severely in one case, may really be
+regarded as a boon in the other.
+
+The healthy peasant, who rises with the sun, and breathes the free air
+of his native hills, may and will feel all the infliction of
+confinement, which, while it chains his limbs, stagnates his
+faculties. Not so the sedentary and solitary man of letters. Your cell
+becomes _his_ study: the window may be somewhat narrower--the lattice,
+that was wont to open to the climbing honeysuckle, may now be barred
+with its iron stanchions; but he soon forgets this. “His mind to him a
+palace is,” wherein he dwells at peace. Now, to put them on something
+of a par, I have a suggestion to make to the legislature, which I
+shall condense as briefly as possible. Never sentence your man of
+education, whatever his offence, to solitary confinement; but condemn
+him to dine out, in Dublin, for seven or fourteen years--or, in murder
+cases, for the term of his natural life. For slight offences, a week’s
+dinners, and a few evening parties might be sufficient--while old
+offenders and bad cases, might be sent to the north side of the city.
+
+It may be objected to this--that insanity, which so often occurs in
+the one case, would supervene in the other; but I rather think not. My
+own experience could show many elderly people of both sexes, long
+inured to this state, who have only fallen into a sullen and apathetic
+fatuity; but who, bating deafness and a look of dogged stupidity, are
+still reasoning beings--what they once were, it is hard to say.
+
+But I take the man who, for some infraction of the law, is suddenly
+carried away from his home and friends--the man of mind, of reading,
+and reflection. Imagine him, day after day, beholding the everlasting
+saddle of mutton--the eternal three chickens, with the tongue in the
+midst of them; the same travesty of French cookery that pervades the
+side-dishes--the hot sherry, the sour Moselle: think of him, eating
+out his days through these, unchanged, unchangeable--with the same
+_cortège_ of lawyers and lawyers’ wives--doctors, male and
+female--surgeons, subalterns, and, mayhap, attorneys: think of the old
+jokes he has been hearing from childhood still ringing in his ears,
+accompanied by the same laugh which he has tracked from its burst in
+boyhood to its last cackle in dotage: behold him, as he sits amid the
+same young ladies, in pink and blue, and the same elderly ones, in
+scarlet and purple; see him, as he watches every sign and pass-word
+that have marked these dinners for the long term of his sentence, and
+say if his punishment be not indeed severe.
+
+Then think how edifying the very example of his suffering, as, with
+pale cheek and lustreless eye--silent, sad, and lonely--he sits there!
+How powerfully such a warning must speak to others, who, from accident
+or misfortune, may be momentarily thrown in his society.
+
+The suggestion, I own, will demand a much more ample detail, and
+considerable modification. Among other precautions, for instance, more
+than one convict should not be admitted to any table, lest they might
+fraternize together, and become independent of the company in mutual
+intercourse, &c.
+
+These may all, however, be carefully considered hereafter: the
+principle is the only thing I would insist on for the present, and now
+leave the matter in the hands of our rulers.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE OLD.
+
+
+Of all the virtues which grace and adorn the inhabitants of these
+islands, I know of none which can in anywise be compared with the deep
+and profound veneration we show to old age. Not content with paying it
+that deference and respect so essentially its due, we go even further,
+and by a courteous adulation would impose upon it the notion, that
+years have not detracted from the gifts which were so conspicuous in
+youth, and that the winter of life is as full of promise and
+performance, as the most budding hours of spring-time.
+
+Walk through the halls of Greenwich and Chelsea--or, if the excursion
+be too far for you, as a Dubliner, stroll down to the Old Man’s
+Hospital, and cast your eyes on those venerable “fogies,” as they are
+sometimes irreverently called, and look with what a critical and
+studious politeness the state has invested every detail of their daily
+life. Not fed, housed, or clothed like the “debris” of humanity, to
+whom the mere necessaries of existence were meted out, but actually a
+species of flattering illusion is woven around them. They are dressed
+in a uniform; wear a strange, quaint military costume; are officered
+and inspected like soldiers; mount guard; answer roll-call, and mess
+as of yore.
+
+They are permitted, from time to time, to clean and burnish pieces of
+ordnance, old, time-worn, and useless as themselves, and are marched
+certain short and suitable distances to and from their dining-hall,
+with all the “pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war.” I like
+all this. There is something of good and kindly feeling in
+perpetuating the delusion that has lasted for so many years of life,
+and making the very resting-place of their meritorious services recall
+to them the details of those duties, for the performance of which they
+have reaped their country’s gratitude.
+
+The same amiable feeling, the same grateful spirit of respect, would
+seem, from time to time, to actuate the different governments that
+wield our destinies, in their promotions to the upper house.
+
+Some old, feeble, partizan of the ministry, who has worn himself to a
+skeleton by late sittings; dried, like a potted herring, by committee
+labour; hoarse with fifty years’ cheering of his party, and deaf from
+the cries of “divide” and “adjourn” that have been ringing in his ears
+for the last cycle of his existence, is selected for promotion to the
+peerage. He was eloquent in his day, too, perhaps; but that day is
+gone by. His speech upon a great question was once a momentous event,
+but now his vote is mumbled in tones scarce audible.--Gratefully
+mindful of his “has been,” his party provide him with an asylum,
+where the residue of his days may be passed in peace and pleasantness.
+
+Careful not to break the spell that has bound him to life, they
+surround him with some semblance of his former state, suited in all
+respects to his age, his decrepitude, and his debility; they pour
+water upon the leaves of his politics, and give him a weak and
+pleasant beverage, that can never irritate his nerves, nor destroy his
+slumbers. Some insignificant bills--some unimportant appeals--some
+stray fragments that fall from the tables of sturdier politicians, are
+his daily diet; and he dozes away the remainder of life, happy and
+contented in the simple and beautiful delusion that he is legislating
+and ruling--just as warrantable the while, as his compeer of Chelsea,
+in deeming his mock parades the forced marches of the Peninsula, and
+his Sunday guards the dispositions for a Toulouse or a Waterloo.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE ART UNION.
+
+
+The battle between the “big and little-endians” in Gulliver, was
+nothing to the fight between the Destructives and Conservatives of the
+Irish Art Union. A few months since the former party deciding that the
+engraved plate of Mr. Burton’s picture should be broken up; the latter
+protesting against the Vandalism of destroying a first-rate work of
+art, and preventing the full triumph of the artist’s genius, in the
+circulation of a print so creditable to himself and to his country.
+
+The great argument of the Destructives was this:--We are the devoted
+friends of art--we love it--we glory in it--we cherish it: yea, we
+even give a guinea a-year a-piece for the encouragement of a society
+established for its protection and promotion;--this society pledging
+themselves that we shall have in return--what think ye?--the immortal
+honour of raising a school of painting in our native country?--the
+conscientious sense of a high-souled patriotism?--the prospect of
+future estimation at the hands of a posterity who are to benefit by
+our labours? Not at all: nothing of all this. We are far too great
+materialists for such shadowy pleasures; we are to receive a plate,
+whose value is in the direct ratio of its rarity, “which shall
+certainly be of more than the amount of our subscription,” and, maybe,
+of five times that sum. The fewer the copies issued, the rarer (_i.
+e._, the dearer) each impression. We are the friends of
+art--therefore, we say, smash the copper-plate, destroy every vestige
+of the graver’s art, we are supplied, and heaven knows to what price
+these engravings may not subsequently rise!
+
+[Illustration: “This is a Rembrandt.”]
+
+Now, I like these people. There is something bold, something masterly,
+something decided, in their coming forward and fighting the battle on
+its true grounds. There is no absurd affectation about the circulation
+of a clever picture disseminating in remote and scarce-visited
+districts the knowledge of a great man and a great work; there is no
+prosy nonsense about encouraging the genius of our own country, and
+showing with pride to her prouder sister, that we are not unworthy to
+contend in the race with her. Nothing of this.--They resolve
+themselves, by an open and candid admission, into a committee of
+printsellers, and they cry with one voice--“No free trade in ‘The
+Blind Girl’--no sliding scale--no fixed duty--nothing save absolute,
+actual prohibition!” It is with pride I confess myself of this party:
+perish art! down with painting! to the ground with every effort of
+native genius! but keep up the price of our engraving, which, with the
+rapid development of Mr. Burton’s talent, may yet reach ten, nay,
+twenty guineas for an impression. But in the midst of my enthusiasm, a
+still small voice of fear is whispering ever:--Mayhap this gifted man
+may live to eclipse the triumphs of his youthful genius: it may be,
+that, as he advances in life, his talents, matured by study and
+cultivation, may ascend to still higher flights, and this, his early
+work, be merely the beacon-light that attracted men in the outset of
+his career, and only be esteemed as the first throes of his intellect.
+What is to be done in this case? It is true we have suppressed “The
+Blind Girl;” we have smashed _that_ plate; but how shall we prevent
+him from prosecuting those studies that already are leading him to the
+first rank of his profession? Disgust at our treatment may do much;
+but yet, his mission may suggest higher thoughts than are assailable
+by us and our measures. I fear, now, that but one course is open; and
+it is with sorrow I confess, that, however indisposed to the shedding
+of blood, however unsuited by my nature and habits to murderous deeds,
+I see nothing for us but--to smash Mr. Burton.
+
+By accepting this suggestion, not only will the engravings, but the
+picture itself, attain an increased value. If dead men are not
+novelists, neither are they painters; and Mr. Burton, it is expected,
+will prove no exception to the rule. Get rid of him, then, at once,
+and by all means. Let this resolution be brought forward at the next
+general meeting, by any leader of the Destructive party, and I pledge
+myself to second and defend it, by every argument, used with such
+force and eloquence for the destruction of the copper-plate. I am sure
+the talented gentleman himself will, when he is put in possession of
+our motives, offer no opposition to so natural a desire on our part,
+but will afford every facility in his power for being, as the war-cry
+of the party has it, “broken up and destroyed.”
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A NUT FOR THE KINGSTOWN RAILWAY.
+
+
+If the wise Calif who studied mankind by sitting on the bridge at
+Bagdad, had lived in our country, and in our times, he doubtless would
+have become a subscriber to the Kingstown railway. There, for the
+moderate sum of some ten or twelve pounds per annum, he might have
+indulged his peculiar vein, while wafted pleasantly through the air,
+and obtained a greater insight into character and individuality,
+inasmuch as the objects of his investigation would be all sitting
+shots, at least for half an hour. Segur’s “Quâtre Ages de la Vie”
+never marked out mankind like the half-hour trains. To the uninitiated
+and careless observer, the company would appear a mixed and
+heterogeneous mass of old and young, of both sexes--some sickly, some
+sulky, some solemn, and some shy. Classification of them would be
+deemed impossible. Not so, however; for, as to the ignorant the
+section of a mountain would only present some confused heap of stone
+and gravel, clay and marl; to the geologist, strata of divers kinds,
+layers of various ages, would appear, all indicative of features, and
+teeming with interests, of which the other knew nothing: so, to the
+studious observer, this seeming commixture of men, this tangled web of
+humanity, unravels itself before him, and he reads them with pleasure
+and with profit.
+
+So thoroughly distinctive are the classes, as marked out by the hour
+of the day, that very little experience would enable the student to
+pronounce upon the travellers--while so striking are the features of
+each class, that “given one second-class traveller, to find out the
+contents of a train,” would be the simplest problem in algebra. As for
+myself, I never work the equation: the same instinct that enabled
+Cuvier, when looking at a broken molar tooth, to pronounce upon the
+habits, the size, the mode of life and private opinions of some
+antediluvian mammoth, enables me at a glance to say--“This is the
+apothecaries’ train--here we are with the Sandycoves.”
+
+You are an early riser--some pleasant proverb about getting a worm for
+breakfast, instilled into you in childhood, doubtless inciting you:
+and you hasten down to the station, just in time to be too late for
+the eight o’clock train to Dublin. This is provoking; inasmuch as no
+scrutiny has ever enabled any traveller to pry into the habits and
+peculiarities of the early voyager. Well, you lounge about till the
+half-after, and then the _conveniency_ snorts by, whisks round at the
+end, takes a breathing canter alone for a few hundred yards, and comes
+back with a grunt, to resume its old drudgery. A general scramble for
+places ensues--doors bang--windows are shut and opened--a bell
+rings--and, snort! snort! ugh, ugh, away you go. Now--would you
+believe it?--every man about you, whatever be his age, his size, his
+features, or complexion, has a little dirty blue bag upon his knees,
+filled with something. They all know each other--grin, smile, smirk,
+but don’t shake hands--a polite reciprocity--as they are none of the
+cleanest: cut little dry jokes about places and people unknown, and
+mix strange phrases here and there through the dialogue, about
+“_demurrers_ and _declarations_, traversing _in prox_ and _quo
+warranto_.” You perceive it at once--it is very dreadful; but they are
+all attorneys. The ways of Providence are, however, inscrutable; and
+you arrive in safety in Dublin.
+
+Now, I am not about to take you back; for at this hour of the morning
+you have nothing to reward your curiosity. But, with your leave, we’ll
+start from Kingstown again at nine. Here comes a fresh, jovial-looking
+set of fellows. They have bushy whiskers, and geraniums in the
+button-hole of their coats. They are traders of various sorts--men of
+sugar, soap, and sassafras--Macintoshes, molasses, mouse-traps--train-oil
+and tabinets. They have, however, half an acre of agricultural
+absurdity, divided into meadow and tillage, near the harbour, and they
+talk bucolic all the way. Blindfold them all, and set them loose, and
+you will catch them groping their way down Dame-street in half an
+hour.
+
+9½.--The housekeepers’ train. Fat, middle-aged women, with cotton
+umbrellas--black stockings with blue _fuz_ on them; meek-looking men,
+officiating as husbands, and an occasional small child, in plaid and
+the small-pox.
+
+10.--The lawyers’ train. Fierce-looking, dictatorial, categorical
+faces look out of the window at the weather, with the stern glance
+they are accustomed to bestow on the jury, and stare at the sun in the
+face, as though to say--“None of your prevarication with _me_; answer
+me, on your oath, is it to rain or not?”
+
+10½.--The return of the doctors. They have been out on a morning beat,
+and are going home merry or mournful, as the case may be. Generally
+the former, as the sad ones take to the third class. These are jocose,
+droll dogs; the restraint of physic over, they unbend, and chat
+pleasantly, unless there happen to be a sickly gentleman present, when
+the instinct of the craft is too strong for them; and they talk of
+their wonderful cures of Mr. Popkins’s knee, or Mr. Murphy’s elbow, in
+a manner very edifying.
+
+11.--The men of wit and pleasure. These are, I confess, difficult of
+detection; but the external signs are very flash waistcoats, and
+guard-chains, black canes, black whiskers, and strong Dublin accents.
+A stray governess or two will be found in this train. They travel in
+pairs, and speak a singular tongue, which a native of Paris might
+suppose to be Irish.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE DOCTORS.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Should you ask, Who is the greatest tyrant of modern days? Mr.
+O’Connell will tell you--Nicholas, or Espartero. An Irish Whig member
+will reply, Dan himself. An _attaché_ at an embassy would say, Lord
+Palmerston,--“’Tis Cupid ever makes us slaves!” A French _deputé_ of
+the Thiers party will swear it is Louis Philippe. Count D’Orsay will
+say, his tailor. But I will tell you it is none of these: the most
+pitiless autocrat of the nineteenth century is--the President of the
+College of Physicians.
+
+Of all the unlimited powers possessed by irresponsible man, I know of
+nothing at all equal to his, who, _mero motu_, of his own free will
+and caprice, can at any moment call a meeting of the dread body at
+whose head he stands, assemble the highest dignitaries of the
+land--archbishops and bishops, chancellors, chief barons, and chief
+remembrancers--to listen to the minute anatomy of a periwinkle’s
+mustachios, or some singular provision in the physiology of a crab’s
+breeches-pocket: all of whom, _luto non obstante_, must leave their
+peaceful homes and warm hearths to “assist” at a meeting in which,
+nine cases out of ten, they take as much interest as a Laplander does
+in the health of the Grand Lama; or Mehemet Ali in the proceedings of
+Father Mathew.
+
+By nine o’clock the curtain rises, displaying a goodly mob of medical
+celebrities: the old ones characterised by the astute look and
+searching glance, long and shrewd practice in the world’s little
+failings ever confers; the young ones, anxious, wide awake, and
+fidgetty, not quite satisfied with what services they may be called on
+to render in candle-snuffing and crucible work; while between both is
+your transition M.D.--your medical tadpole, with some practice and
+more pretension, his game being to separate from the great unfeed, and
+rub his shoulders among the “dons” of the art, from whose rich board
+certain crumbs are ever falling, in the shape of country jaunts, small
+operations, and smaller consultings. Through these promiscuously walk
+the “_gros bonnets_” of the church and the bar, with now and then--if
+the scene be Ireland--a humane Viceroy, and a sleepy commander of the
+forces. Round the room are glass cases filled with what at first blush
+you might be tempted to believe were the _ci-devant_ professors of the
+college, embalmed, or in spirits; but on nearer inspection you detect
+to be a legion of apes, monkeys, and ourangoutangs, standing or
+sitting in grotesque attitudes. Among them, pleasingly diversified,
+you discover murderers’ heads, parricides’ busts in plaster,
+bicephalous babies, and shapeless monsters with two rows of teeth.
+Here you are regaled with refreshments “with what appetite you may,”
+and chat away the time, until the tinkle of a small bell announces the
+approach of the lecture.
+
+For the most part, this is a good, drowsy, sleep-disposing affair of
+an hour long, written to show, that from some peculiarity lately
+discovered in the cerebral vessels, man’s natural attitude was to
+stand on his head; or that, from chemical analysis just invented, it
+was clear, if we live to the age of four hundred years and upwards,
+part of our duodenum will be coated with a delicate aponeurosis of
+sheet iron.
+
+Now, with propositions of this kind I never find fault. I am satisfied
+to play my part as a biped in this breathing world, and to go out of
+it too, without any rivalry with Methuselah. But I’ll tell you with
+what I am by no means satisfied,--nor shall I ever feel satisfied--nor
+do I entertain any sentiment within a thousand miles of gratitude to
+the man who tells me, that food--beef and mutton, veal, lamb, &c.--are
+nothing but gas and glue. The wretch who found out the animalculæ in
+clean water was bad enough. There are simple-minded people who
+actually take this as a beverage: what must be their feelings now, if
+they reflect on the myriads of small things like lobsters; with claws
+and tails, all fighting and swallowing each other, that are disporting
+in their stomachs? But only think of him who converts your cutlet into
+charcoal, and your steak into starch! It may stick to your ribs after
+that, to be sure; but will it not stick harder to your conscience?
+With what pleasure do you help yourself to your haunch, when the
+conviction is staring you in the face, that what seems venison is but
+adipose matter and azote? That you are only making a great Nassau
+balloon of yourself when you are dreaming of hard condition, and
+preparing yourself for the fossil state when blowing the froth off
+your porter.
+
+Of latter years the great object of science would appear to be an
+earnest desire to disenchant us from all the agreeable and pleasant
+dreams we have formed of life, and to make man insignificant without
+making him humble. Thus, one class of philosophers labour hard to
+prove that manhood is but monkeyhood--that a slight adaptation of the
+tail to the customs of civilized life has enabled us to be seated;
+while the invention of looking-glasses, bear’s grease, cold cream, and
+macassar, have cultivated our looks into the present fashion.
+
+Another, having felt over our skulls, gravely asserts, “There is a
+_vis à tergo_ of wickedness implanted in us, that must find vent in
+murder and bloodshed.” While the magnetic folk would make us believe
+that we are merely a kind of ambulating electric-machine, to be
+charged at will by the first M. Lafontaine we meet with, and mayhap
+explode from over-pressure.
+
+While such liberties are taken with us without, the case is worse
+within. Our circulation is a hydraulic problem; our stomach is a
+mill--a brewing vat--a tanner’s yard--a crucible, or a retort. You
+yourself, in all the resplendent glory of your braided frock, and your
+decoration of the Guelph, are nothing but an aggregate of mechanical
+and chemical inventions, as often going wrong as right; and your wife,
+in the pride of her Parisian bonnet, and robe _à la Victorine_, is
+only gelatine and adipose substance, phosphate of lime, and a little
+arsenic.
+
+Now, let me ask, what remains to us of life, if we are to be robbed of
+every fascination and charm of existence in this fashion? And
+again--has medical science so exhausted all the details of practical
+benefit to mankind, that it is justified in these far-west
+explorations into the realms of soaring fancy, or the gloomy depths of
+chemical analysis? Hydrophobia, consumption, and tetanus are not so
+curable that we can afford to waste our sympathies on chimpanzees:
+nor is this world so pleasant that we must deny ourselves the
+advantage of all its illusions, and throw away the garment in which
+Nature has clothed her nakedness. No, no. There was sound philosophy
+in Peter, in the “Tale of a Tub,” who assured his guests that whatever
+their frail senses might think to the contrary, the hard crusts were
+excellent and tender mutton; but I see neither rhyme nor reason in
+convincing us, that amid all the triumphs of turtle and white bait,
+Ardennes ham and _pâté de Strasbourg_, our food is merely coke and
+glue, roach, lime, starch, and magnesia.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE ARCHITECTS.
+
+
+“God made the country,” said the poet: but in my heart I believe he
+might have added--“The devil made architects.” Few cities--I scarcely
+know of one--can boast of such environs as Dublin. The scenery,
+diversified in its character, possesses attraction for almost every
+taste: the woody glade--the romantic river--the wild and barren
+mountain--the cultivated valley--the waving upland--the bold and
+rocky coast, broken with promontory and island--are all to be found,
+even within a few miles of the capital; while, in addition, the nature
+of our climate confers a verdure and a freshness unequalled, imparting
+a depth and colour to the landscape equal to the beauty of its
+outline.
+
+Whether you travel inland or coastwise, the country presents a
+succession of sites for building, there being no style of house for
+which a suitable spot cannot readily be found; and yet, with all this,
+the perverse taste of man has contrived, by incongruous and
+ill-conceived architecture, to mar almost every point of view, and
+destroy every picturesque feature of the landscape.
+
+The liberty of the subject is a bright and glorious prerogative; and
+nowhere should its exercise be more freely conceded than in those
+arrangements an individual makes for his own domestic comfort, and the
+happiness of his home.
+
+That one man likes a room in which three people form a crowd, and that
+another prefers an apartment spacious as Exeter Hall, is a matter of
+individual taste, with which the world has nothing whatever to do.
+Your neighbour in the valley may like a cottage not larger than a
+sugar-hogshead, with rats for company and beetles for bed-fellows;
+your friend on the hill-side may build himself an imaginary castle,
+with armour for furniture, and antique weapons for ornaments;--with
+all this you have no concern--no more than with his banker’s book, or
+the thoughts of his bosom: but should the one or the other, either by
+a thing like a piggery, or an incongruous mass like a jail, destroy
+all the beauty and mar all the effect of the scenery for miles round,
+far beyond the precincts of his own small tenure--should he outrage
+all the principles of taste, and violate every sentiment of landscape
+beauty, by some poor and contemptible, or some pretentious and vulgar
+edifice--then, do I say, you are really aggrieved; and against such a
+man you have a just and equitable complaint, as one interfering with
+the natural pleasures and just enjoyments to which, as a free citizen
+of a free state, you have an indubitable, undeniable right.
+
+That waving, undulating meadow, hemmed in with its dark woods, and
+mirrored in the fair stream that flows peacefully beneath it, was
+never, surely, intended to be disfigured with a square house like a
+salt-box, and a verandah like a register-grate: the far-stretching
+line of yellow coast that you see yonder, where the calm sea is
+sleeping, land-locked by those jutting headlands, was never meant to
+be pock-marked with those vile bathing lodges, with green baize
+draperies drying before them.
+
+Was that bold and granite-sided mountain made thus to be hewed out
+into parterres for polyanthuses, and stable-lanes for Cockneys’
+carmen?--or is the margin of our glorious bay, the deep frame-work of
+the bright picture, to be carved into little terraces, with some
+half-dozen slated cabins, or a row of stiff-looking, Leeson-street-like
+houses, with brass knockers and a balcony? Forbid it, heaven! We have
+a board of wide and inconvenient streets, who watch over all the
+irregularities of municipal architecture, and a man is no more
+permitted to violate the laws of good taste, than he is suffered to
+transgress those of good morals. Why not have a similar body to
+protect the fairer part of the created globe? Is Pill-lane more sacred
+than Bray-head? Has Copper-alley stronger claims than the
+Glen-of-the-Downs? Is the Cross-poddle more classic ground than
+Poolaphuca?
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR A NEW COLONY.
+
+
+If you happen to pass by Dodd’s auction-room, on any Wednesday,
+towards the hour of three in the afternoon, the chances are about
+seven to one that you hear a sharp, smart voice articulating, somewhat
+in this fashion:--“A very handsome tea-service, ladies. What shall I
+say for this remarkably neat pattern? One tea-pot, one sugar-bowl, one
+slop-basin, and twelve cups and saucers.--Show them round, Tim,” &c.
+
+Now it is with no intention of directing the public eye to the “willow
+pattern,” that I have alluded to this circumstance. It is simply,
+because that thereby hangs an association, and I have never heard the
+eloquent expatiator on china, without thinking of the Belgian navy,
+which consists of--“One gun-boat, one pinnace, one pilot, one
+commodore, and twelve little sailors.” Unquestionably, there never was
+a cheaper piece of national extravagance than this, nor do I believe
+that any public functionary enjoys a more tranquil and undisturbed
+existence than the worthy “_ministre de la marine_,” whose duty it is
+to preside over the fleet I have mentioned. Once, and once only do I
+remember that his quiet life was shaken by the rude assault of
+political events: it was when the imposing force under his sway
+undertook a voyage of discovery some miles down the Scheldt, which
+they did alike to the surprise and admiration of the whole land.
+
+After a day’s peaceful drifting with the river’s current, they reached
+the fort of Lillo, where, _more majorum_, as night was falling, they
+prudently dropped anchor, having a due sense of the danger that might
+accrue “from running down a continent in the dark.” There was,
+besides, a feeling of high-souled pride in anchoring within sight,
+under the guns, as it were, of the Dutch fort--the insolent Dutch,
+whom they, with some aid from France--as the Irishman said of his
+marriage, for love, and a trifle of money--had driven from their
+country; and, although the fog rendered everything invisible, and the
+guns were spiked, still the act of courage was not disparaged; and
+they fell to, and sang the Brabançon, and drank Flemish beer till
+bed-time.
+
+Happy and patriotic souls! little did you know, that amid your dreams
+of national greatness, some half-dozen imps of Dutch middies were
+painting out the magnificent tricolor streaks that adorned your good
+craft, and making the whole one mass of dirty black.
+
+Such was the case, however; and when day broke, those brilliant
+emblems of Belgian independence had vanished, and in their place a
+murky line of pitch now stood.
+
+Homeward they bent their course, sadder and wiser men; and, to their
+credit be it spoken, having told their sorrows to their sage minister,
+they have lived a life of happy retirement, and never strayed beyond
+the peaceful limits of the Antwerp basin.
+
+Far be from me the unworthy object of drawing before the public gaze
+the blissful and unpretending service, that shuns the noontide glitter
+of the world’s applause, and better loves the quiet solitude of their
+own unobtrusive waters; and had they thus remained, nothing would have
+tempted me to draw them from their obscurity. But alas! national
+ambition has visited even the seclusion of this service. Not content
+with coasting voyages, some twelve miles down their muddy river--not
+satisfied with lording it over fishing smacks and herring wherries,
+this great people have resolved on becoming a maritime power in blue
+water, and running a race of rivalry with England, France, and Russia;
+and to it they have set in right earnest.
+
+They began by purchasing a steam-vessel, which happens to turn out on
+such a scale of size, as to be inadmissible into any harbour they
+possess. By dint of labour, time, cost, and great outlay, they
+succeeded, after four months, in getting her into dock. But alas! if
+it took that time to admit her, it takes six months to let her out
+again; and, when out, what are they to do with her?
+
+When Admiral Dalrymple turned farmer, he mentions in one of his
+letters, the sufferings his unhappy ignorance of all agricultural
+pursuits involved him in, and feelingly tells us: “I have given ten
+pounds for a dunghill, and would now willingly give any man twenty, to
+tell me what to do with it.” This was exactly the case with the
+Belgians. They had bought a steam-ship, they put coals in her, and a
+crew; and then, for the life and soul of them, they did not know what
+to do with them.
+
+They desired an export trade--a _débouché_ for their Namur cutlery and
+Verviers’ frieze. But where could they go? They had no colonies.
+Holland had, to be sure: but then, they had quarrelled with Holland,
+and there was no use repining. “What can’t be cured,” &c. Besides, if
+they had lost a colony, they had gained a cardinal; and if they had no
+merchantmen, they had at least high-mass; and if they were excluded
+from Batavia, why they had free access to the “Abbé Boon.”
+
+There were, however, some impracticable people engaged in traffic,
+who would not listen to these great advantages, and who were obstinate
+enough to suppose that the country was as prosperous when it had a
+market for its productions, as it was when it had none. And although
+the priests, who have multiplied some hundredfold since the
+revolution, were willing “to consume” to any extent, yet, unhappily,
+they were not as profitable customers as their _ci-devant_ friends
+beyond sea.
+
+Nothing then remained but to have a colony, and after much
+consideration, long thought, and anxious deliberation, it was
+announced to the chamber that the Belgians had a colony, and that the
+colony was called “Guatemala.”
+
+When Sancho Panza appealed to Don Quixote, to realise his promised
+dream of greatness, you may remember, he always asked for an island:
+“Make me governor of an island!” There was something defined,
+accurate, and tangible, as it were, in the sea-girt possession, that
+suggested to the honest squire’s mind the idea of perfect, independent
+rule. And in the same way, the Belgians desired to have an island.
+
+Some few, less imaginative, suspected, however, that an island must
+always have its limit to importation quicker attained than a
+continent, and they preferred some vast, unexplored tract, like India,
+or Central America, where the consumption of corduroy and cast-iron
+might have an unexhausted traffic for centuries.
+
+Now, it is a difficult condition to find out that spot on a map which
+should realise both expectations. Happily, however, M. Van de Weyer
+had to deal with a kind and confiding people, whose knowledge of
+geography is about equal to a blind man’s appreciation of scarlet or
+sky-blue. Not only, therefore, did he represent to one party, the
+newly-acquired possession as an island, and to the other as a vast
+continent, but he actually shifted its _locale_ about the globe, from
+the tropics to the north-pole, with such admirable dexterity, that not
+only is all cavil silenced about its commercial advantages, but its
+very climate has an advocate in every taste, and an admirer in every
+household. Steam-engines, therefore, are fabricated; cannon are cast;
+railroads are in preparation; broadcloth is weaving; flax is growing;
+lace is in progress, all through the kingdom, for the new colony of
+Guatemala,--whose only inhabitants are little grateful for the
+profound solicitude they are exciting, inasmuch as, being but rats and
+sea-gulls, their modes of living and thinking give them a happy
+indifference about steam-travelling, and the use of fine linen.
+
+No matter;--the country is prospering--shares are rising--speculations
+are rife--loans are effected every day in the week, and M. Van de
+Weyer sleeps in the peaceful composure of a man who knows in his
+heart, that even if they get their unwieldy craft to sea, there is not
+a man in the kingdom who could, by any ingenuity, discover the
+whereabout of the far-famed Guatemala.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A “SWEET” NUT FOR THE YANKEES.
+
+
+Lord Chesterfield once remarked that a thoroughly vulgar man could not
+speak the most common-place word, nor perform the most ordinary act,
+without imparting to the one and the other a portion of his own inborn
+vulgarity. And exactly so is it with the Yankees; not a question can
+arise, no matter how great its importance, nor how trivial its
+bearings, upon which, the moment they express an opinion, they do not
+completely invest with their own native coarseness, insolence, and
+vulgarity. The boundary question was made a matter of violent
+invective and ruffian abuse; the right of search was treated with the
+same powers of ribaldry towards England; and now we have these amiable
+and enlightened citizens defending the wholesale piracy of British
+authors, not on the plausible but unjust pretext of the benefit to be
+derived from an extended acquaintance with English literature; but,
+only conceive! because, if “English authors were invested with any
+control over the republication of their own books, it would be no
+longer possible for American editors to alter and adapt them as they
+do now to the American taste.” However incredible this may seem, the
+passage formed part of a document actually submitted to congress, and
+favourably received by that body. This is not the place for me to
+dwell on the unprincipled usurpation by which men who have contributed
+nothing to the production of a work, assume the power of reaping its
+benefits, and profiting by its success. The wholesale robbery of
+English authors has been of late well and ably exposed. The gifted
+and accomplished author of “Darnley” and “The Gipsy” has devoted his
+time and his talents to the subject; and although the world at large
+have few sympathies with the wrongs of those who live to please them,
+yet the day is not distant when the rights of a large and influential
+body, who stamp the age with the image of their own minds, can be no
+longer neglected, and the security of literary property must become at
+least as great as of mining scrip, or the shares in a railroad.
+
+My present business is with the Yankee declaration, that English
+authors to be readable in America must be passed through the ordeal of
+re-writing. I scarcely think that the annals of impertinence and
+ignorance could equal this. What! is it seriously meant that Scott and
+Byron, Wordsworth, Southey, Rogers, Bulwer, James, Dickens, and a host
+of others, must be converted into the garbage of St. Giles, or the
+fœtid slang of Wapping, before they can pass muster before an American
+public? Must the book reek of “gin twist,” “cock tail,” and fifty
+other abominations, ere it reach an American drawing-room? Must the
+“bowie-knife and the whittling-stick” mark its pages; and the coarse
+jest of some tobacco-chewing, wild-cat-whipping penny-a-liner
+disfigure and sully the passages impressed with the glowing brilliancy
+of Scott, or the impetuous torrent of Byron’s genius? Is this a true
+picture of America? Is her reading public indeed degraded to this
+pass? I certainly have few sympathies with brother Jonathan. I like
+not his spirit of boastful insolence, his rude speech, or his
+uncultivated habits; but I confess I am unwilling to credit this. I
+hesitate to believe in such an amount of intellectual depravity as can
+turn from the cultivated writings of Scott and Bulwer to revel in the
+coarseness and vulgarity of a Yankee editor, vamping up his stolen
+wares with oaths from the far west, or vapid jests from life in the
+Prairies. Again, what shall I say of those who follow this traffic? Is
+it not enough to steal that which is not theirs, to possess themselves
+of what they have no right or claim to? Must they mangle the corpse
+when they have extinguished life? Must they, while they cheat the
+author of his gain, rob him also of his fair fame? “He who steals my
+purse steals trash,” but how shall I characterise that extent of
+baseness that dares to step in between an author and his
+reputation--inserting between him and posterity their own illiterate
+degeneracy and insufferable stupidity?
+
+Would not the ghost of Sir Walter shudder in his grave at the thought
+of the fair creations of his mind--Jeanie Deans and Rebecca--Yankeefied
+into women of Long Island, or damsels from Connecticut? Is Childe
+Harold to be a Kentucky-man? and are the vivid pictures of life
+Bulwer’s novels abound in, to be converted into the prison-discipline
+school of manners, that prevail in New York and Boston, where, as
+Hamilton remarks, “the men are about as like gentlemen, as are our new
+police?” What should we say of the person who having stolen a
+Rembrandt or a Vandyke from its owner, would seek to legalise his
+theft by daubing over the picture with his own colours--obliterating
+every trace of the great master, and exulting that every stroke of his
+brush defaced some touch of genius, and that beneath the savage
+vandalism of his act, every lineament of the artist was obliterated? I
+ask you, would not mere robbery be a virtue beside such a deed as
+this? Who could compare the sinful promptings to which want and
+starvation give birth to, to the ruffian profligacy of such
+barbarity? And now, when I tell you, that not content with this, not
+satisfied to desecrate the work, the wretch goes a step farther and
+stabs its author--what shall I say of him now, who, when he had
+defaced the picture, marred every effect, distorted all drawing, and
+rendered the whole a chaotic mass of indistinguishable nonsense, goes
+forth to the world, and announces, “This is a Rembrandt, this is a
+Vandyke: ay, look at it and wonder: but with all its faults, and all
+its demerits, it is cried up above our native artists; it has got the
+seal of the old world’s approval upon it, and in vain we of younger
+origin shall dare to dissent from its judgments.” Now, once more, I
+say, can you show the equal of this moral turpitude? and such I pledge
+myself is the conduct of your transatlantic pirates with respect to
+British literature. Mr. Dickens, no mean authority, asserts that in
+the same sheet in which they boast the sale of many thousand copies of
+an English reprint, they coarsely attack the author of that very book,
+and heap scurrility and slander on his head.
+
+Yes, such is the fact; not satisfied with robbery, they murder
+reputation also. And then we find them expatiating in most moving
+terms over the superiority of their own neglected genius!
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE SEASON--JULLIEN’S QUADRILLES.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+A very curious paper might be made by any one who, after an absence of
+some years from Ireland, should chronicle his new impressions of the
+country, and compare them with his old ones. The changes time works
+everywhere, even in a brief space, are remarkable, but particularly so
+in a land where everything is in a state of transition--where the
+violence with which all subjects are treated, the excited tone people
+are wont to assume on every topic, are continually producing their
+effects on society--dismembering old alliances--begetting new
+combinations. Such is the case with us here; and every year evidences
+by the strange anomalies it presents in politics, parties, public
+feeling, and private habits, how little chance there is for a prophet
+to make a character by his predictions regarding Ireland. He would,
+indeed, be a skilful chemist who would attempt the analysis of our
+complex nature; but far greater and more gifted must he be, who, from
+any consideration of the elements, would venture to pronounce on the
+probable results of their action and re-action, and declare what we
+shall be some twenty years hence.
+
+Oh, for a good Irish “Rip van Winkle,” who would at least let us look
+on the two pictures--what we were, and what we are. He should be a
+Clare man--none others have the same shrewd insight into character,
+the same intuitive knowledge of life; none others detect, like them,
+the flaws and fractures in human nature. There may be more
+mathematical genius in Cork, and more classic lore in Kerry; there may
+be, I know there is, a more astute and patient pains-taking spirit of
+calculation in the northern counties; but for the man who is only to
+have one rapid glance at the game, and say how it fares--to throw a
+quick _coup-d’œil_ on the board, and declare the winner, Clare for
+ever!
+
+Were I a lawgiver, I would admit any attorney to practise who should
+produce sufficient evidence of his having served half the usual time
+of apprenticeship in Ennis. The Pontine marshes are not so prolific of
+fever, as the air of that country of ready-witted intelligence and
+smartness; and now, ere I return from my digression, let me solemnly
+declare, that, for the opinion here expressed, I have not received any
+money or moneys, nor do I expect to receive such, or any place,
+pension, or other reward, from Tom Steele or any one else concerned.
+
+Well, we have not got this same western “Rip van Winkle,” nor do I
+think we are likely to do so, for this simple reason, that if he were
+a Clare man, he’d never have been caught “napping;” so, now, let us
+look about us and see if, on the very surface of events, we shall not
+find something to our purpose. But where to begin, that’s the
+question: no clue is left to the absentee of a few years by which to
+guide his path. He may look in vain even for the old landmarks which
+he remembered in boyhood; for somehow he finds them all in
+masquerade. The goodly King William he had left in all the effulgence
+of his Orange livery, is now a cross between a river-god and one of
+Dan’s footmen. Let him turn to the Mansion-house to revive his memory
+of the glorious hip, hip, hurra’s he has shouted in the exuberance of
+his loyalty, and straightway he comes plump against Lord Mayor
+O’Connell, proceeding in state to Marlborough-street chapel. He asks
+who are these plump gentlemen with light blue silk collars, and
+well-rounded calves, whose haughty bearing seems to awe the beholders,
+and he is told that he knew them of old, as wearing dusky black coats
+and leather shorts; pleasant fellows in those days, and well versed in
+punch and polemics. The hackney-coaches have been cut down into
+covered cars, and the “bulky” watchmen reduced to new police. Let him
+turn which way he will--let it be his pleasure to hear the popular
+preacher, the eloquent lawyer, or the scientific lecturer, and if his
+memory be only as accurate as his hearing, he will confess “time’s
+changes;” and when he learns who are deemed the fashionable
+entertainers of the day--at whose boards sit lords and baronets most
+frequently, he will exclaim with the poet--
+
+    “Pritchard’s genteel, and Garrick’s six feet high.”
+
+Well, well, it’s bad philosophy, and bad temper, too, to quarrel with
+what is; nowhere is the wisdom of Providence more seen than in the
+universal law, by which everything has its place somewhere; the
+gnarled and bent sapling that would be rejected by the builder, is
+exactly the piece adapted for the knee timber of a frigate; the
+jagged, ill-formed rock that would ill suit the polished portico, is
+invaluable in a rustic arch; and, perhaps, on the same principle,
+dull lawyers make excellent judges, and the people who cannot speak
+within the limits of Lindley Murray, are admirable public writers and
+excellent critics; and as Doctor Pangloss was a good man “because he
+knew what wickedness was,” so nothing contributes to the detection of
+faults in others, like the daily practice of their commission by
+ourselves; and never can any man predict failure to another with such
+eloquence and impressiveness, as when he himself has experienced what
+it is to “be damned.”
+
+Here I am in another digression, and sorry am I not to follow it out
+further; but for the present I must not--so now, to try back: I will
+suppose my absentee friend to have passed his “day in town,” amazed
+and surprised at the various changes about him; I will not bewilder
+him with any glance at our politics, nor puzzle him with that game of
+cross corners by which every one seems to have changed his place; nor
+attempt any explanation of the mysterious doctrine by which the party
+which affects the strongest attachment to the sovereign should exult
+in any defeat to her armies; nor how the supporters of the government
+contribute to its stability, by rabid attacks on its members, and
+absurd comparisons of their own fitness for affairs, with the heads of
+our best and wisest. These things he must have remembered long ago,
+and with respect to them, we are pretty much as we were; but I will
+introduce him to an evening party--a society where the _élite_ of
+Dublin are assembled; where, amid the glare of wax lights, and the
+more brilliant blaze of beauty, our fairest women and most gifted and
+exalted men are met together for enjoyment. At first blush there will
+appear to him to have been no alteration nor change here. Even the
+very faces he will remember are the same he saw a dozen years ago:
+some pursy gentlemen with bald foreheads or grey whiskers who danced
+before, are now grown whisters; a few of the ladies, who then figured
+in the quadrille, have assumed the turban, and occupy an ottoman; the
+gay, laughing, light-hearted youth he formerly hobnobbed with at
+supper, is become a rising barrister, and has got up a look of learned
+pre-occupation, much more imposing to his sister than to Sir Edward
+Sugden; the wild, reckless collegeman, whose name was a talisman in
+the “Shades,” is now a soft-voiced young physician, vibrating in his
+imitation of the two great leaders in his art, and alternately
+assuming the “Epic or the Lake” school of physic. All this may amuse,
+but cannot amaze him: such is the natural current of events, and he
+ought to be prepared for it. The evening wears on, however; the frigid
+politeness and ceremonious distance which we have for some years back
+been borrowing from our neighbours, and which seem to suit our warmer
+natures pretty much as a suit of plate armour would a _danseuse_ in a
+ballet--this begins to wear off, and melt away before the genial heat
+of Irish temperament; “the mirth and fun grow fast and furious;” and a
+new dance is called for. What, then, is the amazement, shall I say the
+horror, of our friend to hear the band strike up a tune which he only
+remembered as associated with everything base, low, and disgraceful;
+which, in the days of his “libertine youth,” he only heard at riotous
+carousals and roistering festivals; whose every bar is associated with
+words--ay, there’s the rub--which, in his maturer years, he blushes to
+have listened to! he stares about him in wonderment; for a moment he
+forgets that the young lady who dances with such evident enjoyment of
+the air, is ignorant of its history; he watches her sparkling eye and
+animated gesture, without remembering that _she_ knows nothing of the
+associations at which her partner is, perhaps, smirking; he sees her
+_vis-à-vis_ exchanging looks with his friend, that denote _their_
+estimation of the music; and in very truth, so puzzled is he, he
+begins to distrust his senses. The air ceases, and is succeeded by
+another no less known, no less steeped in the same class of
+associations, and so to the conclusion. These remembrances of past
+wickedness go on “crescendo,” till the _finale_ caps the whole with a
+melody, to which even the restraints of society are scarcely able to
+prevent a humming accompaniment of concurring voices, and--these are
+the Irish Quadrilles! What can account for this? What special pleading
+will find an argument in its favour? When Wesley objected to all the
+good music being given to the devil, he only excused his adoption of
+certain airs which, in their popular form, had never been connected
+with religious words and feelings; and in his selection of them, was
+rigidly mindful to take such only as in their character became easily
+convertible to his purpose: he never enlisted those to which, by an
+unhappy destiny, vulgarising and indelicate associations have been so
+connected as to become inseparably identified; and although the object
+is widely different, I cannot see how, for the purposes of social
+enjoyment, we should have diverged from his example. If we wished a
+set of Irish quadrilles, how many good and suitable airs had we not
+ready at our hands? Is not our national music proverbially rich, and
+in the very character of music that would suit us? Are there not airs
+in hundreds, whose very names are linked with pleasing and poetic
+memories, admirably adapted to the purpose? Why commit the choice, as
+in this case, to a foreigner who knew nothing of them, nor of us? And
+why permit him to introduce into our drawing-rooms, through the means
+of a quadrille band, a class of reminiscences which suggest levity in
+young men, and shame in old ones? No, no; if the Irish quadrilles are
+to be fashionable, let it be in those classic precincts where their
+merits are best appreciated, and let Monsieur Jullien’s popularity be
+great in Barrack-street!
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR “ALL IRELAND.”
+
+
+From Carrickfergus to Cape Clear, the whole island is on the “_qui
+vive_” as to whether her gracious majesty the queen will vouchsafe to
+visit us in the ensuing summer. The hospitable and magnificent
+reception which awaited her in Scotland has given a more than ordinary
+impulse to every plan by which we might evince our loyalty, and
+exhibit ourselves to our sovereign in a point of view not less
+favourable than our worthy neighbours across the sea.
+
+At first blush, nothing would seem more easy to accomplish than this.
+A very cursory glance at Mr. O’Connell’s speeches will convince any
+one that a land more favourably endowed by nature, or blessed with a
+finer peasantry, never existed: with features of picturesque beauty
+dividing the attention of the traveller, with the fertility of the
+soil; and, in fact, presenting such a panorama of loveliness, peace,
+plenty, and tranquillity, that a very natural doubt might occur to Sir
+Robert Peel’s mind in recommending this excursion to her majesty,
+lest the charms of such an Arcadia should supersede the more homely
+attractions of England, and “our ladye the queene” preferring the
+lodge in the Phœnix to the ancient towers of Windsor, fix her
+residence amongst us, and thus at once repeal the Union.
+
+It were difficult to say if some vision of this kind did not float
+across the exalted imagination of the illustrious Daniel, amid that
+shower of fortune’s favours such a visit would inevitably bring
+down--baronetcies, knighthood, deputy-lieutenancies would rain upon
+the land, and a general epidemic of feasting and festivity raise every
+heart in the island, and nearly break Father Mathew’s.
+
+If the Scotch be warm in their attachment, our affections stand at a
+white heat; if they be enthusiastic, we can go clean mad; and for that
+one bepraised individual who boasted he would never wash the hand
+which had the honour to touch that of the queen, we could produce a
+round ten thousand whose loyalty, looking both ways, would enable
+them, under such circumstances, to claim superiority, as they had
+never washed theirs since the hour of their birth.
+
+Notwithstanding all these elements of hospitality, a more mature
+consideration of the question would show how very difficult it would
+be to compete successfully with the visit to Scotland. Clanship, the
+remains of feudalism, and historical associations, whose dark colours
+have been brought out into glowing brightness under the magic pencil
+of Scott--national costume and national customs--the wild sports of
+the wilder regions--all conspired to give a peculiar interest to this
+royal progress; and from the lordly Baron of Breadalbane to the kilted
+Highlander upon the hills, there was something of ancient splendour
+and by-gone homeliness mixed up together that may well have evoked the
+exclamation of our queen, who, standing on the terrace at Drummond,
+and gazing on the scene below her, uttered--“HOW GRAND!”
+
+Now, unfortunately in many, if not in all these advantages, we have no
+participation. Clanship is unknown amongst us,--only one Irishman has
+a tail, and even that is as ragged an appendage as need be. Our
+national costume is nakedness; and of our national customs, we may
+answer as the sailor did, who, being asked what he had to say in his
+defence against a charge of stealing a quadrant, sagely replied--“Your
+worship, it’s a damn’d ugly business, and the less that’s said about
+it the better.”
+
+Two doubts press upon us--who is to receive her Majesty; and how are
+they to do it? They who have large houses generally happen to have
+small fortunes, and among the few who have adequate means, there is
+scarcely one who could accommodate one half of the royal suite. In
+Scotland, everything worthy of being seen lies in a ring-fence. The
+Highlands comprise all that is remarkable in the country; and thus the
+tour of them presents a quick succession of picturesque beauty without
+the interval of even half a day’s journey devoid of interest. Now, how
+many weary miles must her Majesty travel in Ireland from one
+remarkable spot to another--what scenes of misery and want must she
+wade through from the south to the west. Would any charms of
+scenery--would any warmth of hospitality--repay her for the anguish
+such misery must inflict upon her, as her eye would range over the
+wild tract of country where want and disease seem to have fixed their
+dwelling, and where the only edifice that rises above the mud-cabin
+of the way-side presents the red brick front of a union poor-house?
+These, however, are sad topics--what are we to do with the Prince? His
+Royal Highness loves sporting: we have scarcely a pheasant--we have
+not one capercailzie in the island; but then we have our national
+pastimes. If we cannot turn out a stag to amuse him, why we can
+enlarge a tithe-proctor; and, instead of coming home proud that he has
+bagged a roe, he shall exult in having brought down a rector. How poor
+and insignificant would any _battue_ be in comparison with a good
+midnight burning--how contemptible the pursuit of rabbits and hares,
+when compared with a “tithe affray,” or the last collision with the
+military in Tipperary. I have said that the Scotch have a national
+costume; but if _semi_-nakedness be a charm in them, what shall be
+said of us, who go the “whole hog?” The details of their ancient
+dress--their tartan, their kilt, their philabeg, that offered so much
+interest to the royal suite--how shall they vie with the
+million-coloured patches of an Irishman’s garment? or what bonnet that
+ever flaunted in the breeze is fit to compare with the easy jauntiness
+of Paddy’s _caubeen_, through which, in lieu of a feather, a lock of
+his hair is floating?
+
+    “Nor clasp nor nodding plume was there;
+    But for feather he wore one lock of hair.”
+
+                                        _Marmion._
+
+
+Then, again, how will the watch-fires that blazed upon the mountains
+pale before the glare of a burning haggard; and what cheer that ever
+rose from Highland throats will vie with the wild yell of ten thousand
+Black-feet on the march of a midnight marauding? No, no; it is quite
+clear the Scotch have no chance with us. Her Majesty may not have all
+her expectations fulfilled by a visit to Ireland; but most assuredly a
+“touch of our quality” will show her many things no near country could
+present, and the probability is, she will neither have time nor
+leisure for a trip to New Zealand.
+
+Everything that indicates nationality will then have its reward. Grave
+dignitaries of the Church will practise the bagpipes, and
+prothonotaries will refresh their jig-dancing; whatever is Irish, will
+be _la vogue_; and, instead of reading that her Majesty wore a shawl
+of the Gordon tartan, manufactured at Paisley, we shall find that the
+Queen appeared in a novel pattern of rags, devised at Mud Island;
+while his Royal Highness will compliment the mildness of our climate
+by adopting our national dress. What a day for Ireland that will
+be!--we shall indeed be “great, glorious, and free;” and if the
+evening only concludes with the Irish Quadrilles, I have little doubt
+that her Majesty will repeat her exclamation of “How grand!” as she
+beholds the members of the royal suite moving gracefully to the air of
+“Stonybatter.”
+
+Let us, then, begin in time. Let there be an order of council to
+preserve all the parsons, agents, tithe-proctors, and landlords till
+June; let there be no more shooting in Tipperary for the rest of the
+season; let us “burke” Father Mathew, and endeavour to make our heads
+for the approaching festivities; and what between the new poor-law and
+the tariff, I think we shall be by that time in as picturesque a state
+of poverty as the most critical stickler for nationality would
+desire.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR “A NEW COMPANY.”
+
+
+By no one circumstance in our social condition is a foreigner more
+struck than by the fact that there is not a want, an ailing, an
+incapacity for which British philanthropy has not supplied its remedy
+of some sort or other. A very cursory glance at the advertising
+columns of the _Times_ will be all-sufficient to establish this
+assertion. Mental and bodily infirmities, pecuniary difficulties,
+family afflictions, natural defects, have all their separate _corps_
+of comforters; and there is no suffering condition in life that has
+not a benevolent paragraph specially addressed to its consolation. To
+the “afflicted with gout;” to “all with corns and bunions;” to “the
+friends of a nervous invalid”--who is, by the bye, invariably a
+vicious madman; to “the childless;” to “those about to marry.” Such
+are the headings of various little crumbs of comfort by which the
+active philanthropy of England sustains its reputation, and fills its
+pocket. From tooth-powder to tea-trays--from spring-mattrasses to
+fictitious mineral waters--from French blacking to the Widow Welch’s
+Pills--all have their separate votaries; and it would be difficult to
+conceive any real or imaginary want unsupplied in this prolific age of
+contrivance.
+
+A gentleman might descend from the moon, like our clever friend, “The
+Commissioner,” and, by a little attention to these plausible
+paragraphs, become as thoroughly John Bull in all his habits and
+observances as though he were born within St. Pancras. “A widow lady
+with two daughters would take a gentleman to board, where all the
+advantages and comforts of a private family might be found, within ten
+minutes’ walk from Greenwich. Unexceptionable references will be given
+and expected on either side.” Here, without a moment’s delay, he might
+be domiciled in an English family; here he might retire from all the
+cares and troubles of life, enjoying the tranquil pleasures of the
+widow’s society, with no other risk or danger, save that of falling in
+love with one or both of the fair daughters, who have “a taste for
+music,” and “speak French.”
+
+It is said that few countries offer less resources to the stranger
+than England; which I stoutly deny, and assert that no land has set up
+so many sign-posts by which to guide the traveller--so many directions
+by which to advise his course. With us there is no risk of doing
+anything inappropriate, or incompatible with your station, if you will
+only suffer yourself to be borne along on the current. Your tailor
+knows not only the precise shade of colour which suits your
+complexion, but, as if by intuition, he divines the exact cut that
+suits your condition in life. Your coachmaker, in the same way, augurs
+from the tone of your voice, and the _contour_ of your features, the
+shade of colour for your carriage; and should you, by any misfortune,
+happen to be knighted, the Herald’s-office deduce, from the very
+consonants of your name, the _quantum_ of emblazonry they can bestow
+on you, and from how far back among the burglars and highwaymen of
+antiquity they can venture to trace you. Should you, however, still
+more unfortunately, through any ignorance of etiquette, or any
+inattention to those minor forms of breeding with which every native
+is conversant, offer umbrage, however slight and unintentional, to
+those dread functionaries, the “new police;” were you by chance to
+gaze longer into a jeweller’s window than is deemed decorous; were you
+to fall into any reverie which should induce you to slacken your pace,
+perchance to hum a tune, and thus be brought before the awful “Sir
+Peter,” charged by “G 743” with having impeded the passengers--collected
+a crowd--being of suspicious appearance, and having refused “to tell
+who your friends were”--the odds are strongly against you that you
+perform a hornpipe upon the treadmill, or be employed in that very
+elegant chemical analysis, which consists in the extraction of
+magnesia from oyster-shells.
+
+Now, let any man consider for a moment what a large, interesting, and
+annually-increasing portion of our population there is, who, from
+certain peculiarities attending their early condition, have never been
+blessed with relatives or kindred--who, having no available father and
+mother, have consequently no uncles, aunts, or cousins, nor any good
+friends. Here the law presses with a fearful severity upon the
+suffering and the afflicted, not upon the guilty and offending. The
+state has provided no possible contingencies by which such persons are
+to escape. A man can no more create a paternity than he can make a new
+planet. I have already said that with wealth at his disposal, ancestry
+and forefathers are easily procured. He can have them of any age, of
+any country, of any condition in life--churchmen or laymen--dignitaries
+of the law or violators of it;--’tis all one, they are made to order.
+But let him be in ever such urgent want of a near relative; let it be
+a kind and affectionate father, an attached and doting mother, that he
+stands in need of--he may study _The Times_ and _The Herald_--he may
+read _The Chronicle_ and _The Globe_, in vain! No benevolent society
+has directed its philanthropy in this channel; and not even a
+cross-grained uncle or a penurious aunt can be had for love or money.
+
+Now this subject presents itself in two distinct views--one as regards
+its humanity, the other its expediency. As the latter, in the year of
+our Lord, 1844, would seem to offer a stronger claim on our attention,
+let us examine it first. Consider them how you will, these people form
+the most dangerous class of our population--these are the “waifs and
+strays” of mankind. Like snags and sawyers in the Mississippi, having
+no voyage to perform in life, their whole aim and destiny seems to be
+the shipwreck of others. With one end embedded in the mud of uncertain
+parentage, with the other they keep bobbing above the waves of life;
+but let them rise ever so high, they feel they cannot be extricated.
+
+If rich, their happiness is crossed by their sense of isolation; for
+them there are no plum-pudding festivals at Christmas, no family
+goose-devourings at Michaelmas. They have none of those hundred little
+ties and torments which weary and diversify life. They have acres, but
+they have no uncles--they have gardens and graperies, but they cannot
+raise a grandfather--they may have a future, but they have scarcely a
+present; and they have no past.
+
+Should they be poor, their solitary state suggests recklessness and
+vice. It is the restraint of early years that begets submission to the
+law later on, and he who has not learned the lesson of obedience when
+a child, is not an apt scholar when he becomes a man. This, however,
+is a part of the moral and humane consideration of the question, and
+like most other humane considerations, involves expense. With that we
+have nothing to do; our present business is with the rich; for their
+comfort and convenience our hint is intended, and our object to
+supply, on the shortest notice, and the most reasonable terms, such
+relatives of either sex as the applicant shall stand in need of.
+
+Let there be, therefore, established a new joint stock company to be
+called the “GRAND UNITED ANCESTRAL, KINDRED, AND BLOOD RELATION
+SOCIETY”--capital any number of pounds sterling. Actuaries--Messrs.
+Oliver Twist and Jacob Faithful.
+
+Only think of the benefits of such a company! Reflect upon the numbers
+who leave their homes every morning without parentage, and who might
+now possess any amount of relatives they desire before night. Every
+one knows that a respectable livelihood is made by a set of persons
+whose occupation it is to become bails at the different police
+offices, for any class of offence, and to any amount. They exercise
+their calling somewhat like bill-brokers, taking special pains always
+to secure themselves against loss, and make a trifle of money, while
+displaying an unbounded philanthropy. Here then is a class of persons
+most appropriate for our purpose: fathers, uncles, first cousins, even
+grandfathers, might be made out of these at a moment’s notice. What
+affecting scenes, too, might be got up at Bow-street, under such
+circumstances, of penitent sons, and pardoning parents, of unforgiving
+uncles and imploring nephews. How would the eloquence of the
+worshipful bench revel, on such occasions, for its display. What
+admonitions would it not pour forth, what warnings, what
+commiseration, and what condolings. Then what a satisfaction to the
+culprit to know that all these things were managed by a respectable
+company, who were “responsible in every case for the good conduct of
+its servants.” No extortion permitted--no bribery allowed; a regular
+rate of charges being printed, which every individual was bound, like
+a cab-man, to show if required.
+
+So much for a father, if respectable; so much more, if professional;
+or in private life, increased premium. An angry parent, we’ll say two
+and sixpence; sorrowful, three shillings; “deeply afflicted and bound
+to weep,” five shillings.
+
+A widowed mother, in good weeds, one and sixpence; do, do, in a cab,
+half a crown; and so on.
+
+How many are there besides who, not actually in the condition we speak
+of, would be delighted to avail themselves of the benefits of this
+institution. How many moving in the society of the west end, with a
+father a tobacconist or a cheesemonger in the city, would gladly pay
+well for a fashionable parent supposed to live upon his estate in
+Yorkshire, or entertaining, as the _Morning Post_ has it, a
+“distinguished party at his shooting lodge in the Highlands.” What a
+luxury, when dining his friends at the Clarendon, to be able to talk
+of his “Old Governor” hunting his hounds twice a week, while, at the
+same moment, the real individual was engaged in the manufacture of
+soap and short sixes. What happiness to recommend the game-pie, when
+the grouse was sent by his Uncle, while he felt that the only
+individual who stood in that capacity respecting him, had three gilt
+balls over his door, and was more conversant with duplicates than
+double barrels.
+
+But why pursue a theme whose benefits are self-evident, and come home
+to every bosom in the vast community. It is one of “the wants of our
+age,” and we hope ere long to see the “fathers” as much respected in
+Clerkenwell or College-street, as ever they were in Clongowes or
+Maynooth.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A NUT FOR “POLITICAL ECONOMISTS.”
+
+
+This is the age of political economists and their nostrums. Every
+newspaper teems with projects for the amelioration of our working
+classes, and the land is full of farming societies, temperance unions,
+and a hundred other Peter Purcellisms, to improve its social
+condition; the charge to make us
+
+    “Great, glorious, and free,”
+
+remaining with that estimable and irreproachable individual who
+tumbles in Lower Abbey-street.
+
+The Frenchman’s horse would, it is said, have inevitably finished his
+education, and accomplished the faculty of existing without food, had
+he only survived another twenty-four hours. Now, the condition of
+Ireland is not very dissimilar, and I only hope that we may have
+sufficient tenacity of life to outlive the numerous schemes for our
+prosperity and advancement.
+
+Nothing, indeed, can be more singular than the manner of every
+endeavour to benefit his country. We are poor--every man of us is only
+struggling; therefore, we are recommended to build expensive
+poorhouses, and fill them with some of ourselves. We have scarcely
+wherewithal to meet the ordinary demands of life, and straightway are
+told to subscribe to various new societies--repeal funds--agricultural
+clubs--O’Connell tributes--and Mathew testimonials. This, to any
+short-sighted person, might appear a very novel mode of filling our
+own pockets. There are one-idea’d people in the world, who can only
+take up the impression which, at first blush, any subject suggests;
+they, I say, might fancy that a continued system of donation,
+unattended by anything like receipt, is not exactly the surest element
+of individual prosperity. I hope to be able to controvert this
+plausible, but shallow theory, and to show--and what a happy thing it
+is for us--to show that, not only is our poverty the source of our
+greatest prosperity, but that if by any accident we should become
+rich, we must inevitably be ruined; and to begin--
+
+Absenteeism is agreed on all hands to be the bane of Ireland. No one,
+whatever be his party prejudices, will venture to deny this. The
+high-principled and well-informed country gentleman professes this
+opinion in common with the illiterate and rabid follower of
+O’Connell; I need not, therefore, insist further on a proposition so
+universally acknowledged. To proceed--of all people, none are so
+naturally absentees as the Irish; in fact, it would seem that one
+great feature of our patriotism consists in the desire to display, in
+other lands, the ardent attachment we bear our own. How can we tell
+Frenchmen, Italians, Germans, Russians, Swedes, and Swiss, how devoted
+we are to the country of our birth, if we do not go abroad to do so?
+How can we shed tears as exiles, unless we become so? How can we rail
+about the wrongs of Ireland and English tyranny, if we do not go among
+people, who, being perfectly ignorant of both, may chance to believe
+us? These are the patriotic arguments for absenteeism; then come
+others, which may be classed under the head of “expediency reasons,”
+such as debts, duns, outlawries, &c. Thirdly, the temptations of the
+Continent, which, to a certain class of our countrymen, are of the
+very strongest description--Corn Exchange politics, vulgar associates,
+an air of bully, and a voice of brogue, will not form such obstacles
+to success in Paris, as in Dublin. A man can scarcely introduce an
+Irish provincialism into his French, and he would be a clever fellow
+who could accomplish a bull under a twelvemonth. These, then, form the
+social reasons; and from a short revision of all three, it will be
+seen that they include a very large proportion of the land--Mr.
+O’Connell talks of them as seven millions.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+It being now proved, I hope, to my reader’s satisfaction, that the
+bent of an Irishman is to go abroad, let us briefly inquire, what is
+it that ever prevents him so doing? The answer is an easy one. When
+Paddy was told by his priest that whenever he went into a
+public-house to drink, his guardian angel stood weeping at the door,
+his ready reply was, “that if he had a tester he’d have been in too;”
+so it is exactly with absenteeism; it is only poverty that checks it.
+The man with five pounds in his pocket starts to spend it in England;
+make it _ten_, and he goes to Paris; _fifteen_, and he’s up the Rhine;
+_twenty_, and Constantinople is not far enough for him! Whereas, if
+the sum of his wealth had been a matter of shillings, he’d have been
+satisfied with a trip to Kingstown, a chop at Jude’s, a place in the
+pit, and a penny to the repeal fund; all of which would redound to his
+patriotism, and the “prosperity of Ireland.”
+
+The same line of argument applies to every feature of expense. If we
+patronise “Irish manufacture,” it is because we cannot afford English.
+If we like Dublin society, it is upon the same principle; and, in
+fact, the cheap pleasures of home, form the sheet-anchor of our
+patriotism, and we are only “guardian angels,” because “we haven’t a
+tester.”
+
+Away then with any flimsy endeavours to introduce English capital or
+Scotch industry. Let us persevere in our present habits of mutual
+dislike, attack, and recrimination; let us interfere with the projects
+of English civilisation, and forward, by every means in our power, the
+enlightened doctrines of popery, and the patriotic pastime of
+parson-shooting, for even in sporting we dispense with a “game
+license;” let no influx of wealth offer to us the seduction of
+quitting home, and never let us feel with our national poet that
+“Ireland is a beautiful country to live out of.”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR “GRAND DUKES.”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+God help me but I have always looked upon a “grand duke” pretty much
+in the same light that I have regarded the “Great Lama,” that is to
+say, a very singular and curious object of worship in its native
+country. How any thing totally destitute of sovereign attributes could
+ever be an idol, either for religious or political adoration, is
+somewhat singular, and after much pains and reflections on the
+subject, I came to the opinion, that German princes were valued by
+their subjects pretty much on the principle the Indians select their
+idols, and knowing men admire thorough-bred Scotch terriers--viz., not
+their beauty.
+
+Of all the cant this most canting age abounds in, nothing is more
+repulsive and disgusting than the absurd laudation which travellers
+pour forth concerning these people, by the very ludicrous blunder of
+comparing a foreign aristocracy with our own. Now, what is a German
+grand duke? Picture to yourself a very corpulent, moustached, and
+befrogged individual, who has a territory about the size of the Phœnix
+Park, and a city as big and as flourishing as the Blackrock; the
+expenses of his civil list are defrayed by a chalybeate spring, and
+the budget of his army by the license of a gambling-house, and then
+read the following passage from “Howitt’s Life in Germany,” which,
+with that admirable appreciation of excellence so eminently their
+characteristic, the newspapers have been copying this week past--
+
+“You may sometimes see a grand duke come into a country inn, call for
+his glass of ale, drink it, pay for it, and go away as unceremoniously
+as yourself. The consequence of this easy familiarity is, that princes
+are everywhere popular, and the daily occurrence of their presence
+amongst the people, prevents that absurd crush and stare at them,
+which prevails in more luxurious and exclusive countries.”
+
+That princes do go into country inns, call for ale, and drink it, I
+firmly believe; a circumstance, however, which I put the less value
+upon, inasmuch as the inn is pretty much like the prince’s own house,
+the ale very like what he has at home, and the innkeeper as near as
+possible, in breeding, manner, and appearance, his equal. That he
+_pays_ for the drink, which our author takes pains to mention, excites
+all my admiration; but I confess I have no words to express my
+pleasure on reading that “he goes away again,” and, as Mr. Howitt has
+it, “as unceremoniously as yourself,” neither stopping to crack the
+landlord’s crown, smash the pewter, break the till, nor even put a
+star in the looking-glass over the fire-place, a condescension on his
+part which leads to the fact, that “princes are everywhere popular.”
+
+Now, considering that Mr. Howitt is a Quaker, it is somewhat
+remarkable the high estimate he entertains of this “grand ducal”
+forbearance. What he expected his highness to have done when he had
+finished his drink, I am as much at a loss to conjecture, as what
+trait we are called upon to admire in the entire circumstance; when
+the German prince went into the inn, and knocking three times with a
+copper kreutzer on the counter, called for his choppin of beer, he was
+exactly acting up to the ordinary habits of his station, as when the
+Duke of Northumberland, on his arriving with four carriages at the
+“Clarendon,” occupied a complete suite of apartments, and partook of a
+most sumptuous dinner. Neither more nor less. His Grace of Alnwick
+might as well be lauded for his ducal urbanity as the German prince
+for his, each was fulfilling his destiny in his own way, and there was
+not anything a whit more worthy of admiration in the one case, than in
+the other.
+
+But three hundred pounds per annum, even in a cheap country, afford
+few luxuries; and if the Germans are indifferent to cholic, there
+might be, after all, something praiseworthy in the beer-drinking, and
+here I leave it.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE EAST INDIA DIRECTORS.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+When the East India Directors recalled Lord Ellenborough, and replaced
+him by Sir Henry Harding, the impression upon the public mind was, as
+was natural it should be, that the course of policy adopted by the
+former, was such as met not their approval, and should not be
+persisted in by his successor.
+
+To supersede one man by another, that he might perform the very same
+acts in the same way, would be something too ludicrous and absurd.
+When John Bull chassées the Tories, and takes to the Whigs, it is
+because he has had enough of Peel, and wants to try a stage with Lord
+John, who handles the ribbons differently, and drives another sort of
+a team; a piebald set of screws they are, to be sure, but they can go
+the pace when they are at it; and, as the road generally lies
+downhill, they get along right merrily. But John would never think of
+a change, if the pace were to be always the same. No; he’d just put up
+with the set he had, and take his chance. Not so your India Directors.
+They are quite satisfied with everything; all is right, orderly, and
+proper; but still they would rather that another man were at the head
+of affairs, to do exactly what had been done before. “What are you
+doing, Peter?”--“Nothing, sir.” “And you, Jem, what are you
+about?”--“Helping Peter, sir.” That is precisely the case, and Sir
+Henry is gone out to help Lord Ellenborough.
+
+Such a line of proceeding is doubtless singular enough, and many
+sensible people there are, who cannot comprehend the object and
+intention of the wise Directors; while, by the press, severe
+imputations have been thrown upon their consistency and intelligence,
+and some have gone so far as to call their conduct unparalleled.
+
+This, however, is unjust. The Old Almanack, as Lord Brougham would
+call it, has registered a not inapplicable precedent; and, in the
+anxious hope of being remembered by the “Old Lady,” I hasten to
+mention it:--
+
+When Louis XIV. grew tired of Madame la Vallière, and desired to
+replace her by another in his favour, he committed the difficult task
+of explanation on the subject, to his faithful friend and confessor,
+Bossuet. The worthy Bishop undertook his delicate mission with
+diffidence; but he executed it with tact. The gentle La Vallière wept
+bitterly; she knew nothing of the misfortune that menaced her. She
+believed that her star still stood in the ascendant, and fancied (like
+Lord Ellenborough) that her blandishments were never more
+acknowledged. “Whence, then, this change?” cried she, in the agony of
+her grief. “How have I offended him?”
+
+“You mistake me, my daughter,” said Mons. de Méaux. “His Majesty is
+most tenderly attached to you; but religious scruples--qualms of
+conscience--have come upon him. ‘C’est par la peur du diable,’ that he
+consents to this separation.”
+
+[Illustration: Honorable Members.]
+
+Poor Louise dried her tears; the case was bad enough, but there was
+one consolation--it was religion, and not a rival, had cost her a
+lover; and so she began her preparations for departure with a heart
+somewhat less heavy. On the day, however, of her leave-taking, a
+carriage, splashed and travel-stained, arrived at the “petite porte”
+of the Palace; and as instantaneously ran the rumour through the
+household that his Majesty’s new mistress had arrived: and true it
+was, Madame de Maintenon had taken her place beside the fauteuil of
+the King.
+
+“So, Mons. de Bossuet,” said La Vallière, as he handed her to her
+carriage--“so, then, his Majesty has exiled me, ‘par la peur du
+diable.’”
+
+The Bishop bowed in tacit submission and acquiescence.
+
+“In that case,” resumed she, “c’est par complaisance au diable, that
+he accepts Madame de Maintenon.”
+
+
+
+
+A FILBERT FOR SIR ROBERT PEEL.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Sir Robert Peel was never more triumphant than when, in the last
+session of Parliament, he rebuked his followers for a casual defection
+in the support of Government, by asking them what they had to complain
+of. Are _we_ not on the Treasury benches? said the Right Honourable
+Baronet. Do not my friend Graham and myself guide and direct you?--do
+we not distribute the patronage and the honours of the government,--take
+the pay--and rule the kingdom--what more would you have? Ungrateful
+bucolics, you know not what you want! The apostrophe was bold, but not
+original. I remember hearing of a West country farmer having ridden a
+long day’s journey on a poor, ill-fed hack, which, as evening drew
+near, showed many symptoms of a fatal knock-up. The rider himself was
+well tired, too, and stopped at an ale-house for a moment’s
+refreshment, while he left the jaded beast standing at the door. As he
+remounted his saddle, a few minutes after, he seized his reins
+briskly, flourished his whip (both like Sir Robert), and
+exclaimed:--“I’ve had two glasses of spirits.--Let us see if you won’t
+go after that.”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+“THE INCOME TAX.”
+
+
+Among the many singular objections which have been made to the new
+property tax, I find Mr. C. Buller stating in the House, that his
+greatest dislike to the project lay in the exceedingly small amount of
+the impost.
+
+    “My wound is great because it is so small,”
+
+might have been the text of the honourable and learned gentleman’s
+oration. After setting forth most eloquently the varied distresses of
+the country--its accumulating debt and heavy taxation--he turns the
+whole weight of his honest indignation against the new imposition,
+because, forsooth, it is so “little burdensome, and will inflict so
+slight an additional load upon the tax-payer.” There is an attempt at
+argument, however, on the subject, which is somewhat amusing; for he
+continues not only to lament the smallness of the new tax, but the
+“slight necessity that exists” even for that. Had we some great
+national loss to make up, the deficiency of which rendered a call on
+the united people necessary, then, quoth he, how happily we should
+stand forward in support of the Constitution. In fact, he deplores, in
+the most moving terms, that ill off as the country is, yet it is not
+one-half so bad as it might be, or as he should like to see it. Ah!
+had we only some disastrous Continental war, devastating our
+commerce--ruining our Colonies, and eating into the very heart of our
+national resources--how gladly I should pay this Income Tax; but to
+remedy a curable evil--to restore, by prompt and energetic measures,
+the growing disease of the State--is a poor, pettifogging practice,
+that has neither heroism nor fame to recommend it. I remember hearing
+that at one of those excellent institutions, so appropriately
+denominated Magdalen Asylums, a poor, but innocent girl, presented
+herself for admission, pleading her lonely and deserted condition, as
+a plea for her reception. The patroness, an amiable and excellent
+person--but somewhat of the complexion of the honourable and learned
+Member for Liskeard--asked at once, whether she had resolved on a
+total reformation of her mode of life. The other replied, that her
+habits had been always chaste and virtuous, and that her character had
+been invariably above reproach. “Ah, in that case,” rejoined the lady,
+“we can’t admit you; this institution is expressly for the reception
+of penitents. If you could only qualify for a week or so, there is no
+objection to your admission.”
+
+Is not this exactly Mr. Buller’s proposition? “Let us have the Whigs
+back for a few years longer; let us return to our admirable foreign
+policy; and when we have successfully embroiled ourselves with
+America, lost Canada, been beaten in China, driven out of our Eastern
+possessions, and provoked a war with France, then I’m your man for an
+Income Tax; lay it on only heavily; let the nation, already bowed down
+under the heavy burden of its calamities, receive in addition the
+gracious boon of enormous taxation.” Homœopathy teaches us that
+nothing is so curative in its agency, as the very cause of our present
+suffering, or something as analogous to it as possible; and, like
+Hahnemann, Mr. Buller administers what the vulgar call “a hair of the
+dog that bit us,” as the most sovereign remedy for all our evils.
+
+The country is like a sick man with a whitlow, for the cure of which
+his physician prescribes a slight, but clearly necessary, operation.
+Another medical Dr. Buller is, however, standing by. He at once
+insinuates his veto; remarks upon the trivial nature of the
+disease--the unpainful character of the remedy; “but wait,” adds
+he--“wait till the inflammation extends higher; have patience till the
+hand becomes swollen and the arm affected; and then, when your agony
+is beyond endurance, and your life endangered, then we’ll amputate the
+limb high up, and mayhap you may recover, after all.”
+
+As for me, it is the only occasion I’m aware of, where a successful
+comparison can be instituted between honour and the Whigs; for
+assuredly neither have “any skill in surgery.”
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE “BELGES.”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Every one knows that men in masses, whether the same be called boards,
+committees, aggregate, or repeal meetings, will be capable of
+atrocities and iniquities, to which, as individuals, their natures
+would be firmly repugnant. The irresponsibility of a number is felt by
+every member, and Curran was not far wrong when he said, a
+“corporation was a thing that had neither a body to be kicked, nor a
+soul to be damned.”
+
+It is, indeed, a melancholy fact, that nations partake much more
+frequently of the bad than the good features of the individuals
+composing them, and it requires no small amount of virtue to flavour
+the great caldron of a people, and make its incense rise gratefully to
+heaven. For this reason, we are ever ready to accept with enthusiasm
+anything like a national tribute to high principle and honour. Such
+glorious bursts are a source of pride to human nature itself, and we
+hail with acclamation these evidences of exalted feeling, which make
+men “come nearer to the gods.” The greater the sacrifice to selfish
+interests and prejudices, the more do we prize the effort. Think for a
+moment what a sensation of surprise and admiration, wonderment, awe,
+and approbation it would excite throughout Europe, if, by the next
+arrival from Boston, came the news that “the Americans had determined
+to pay their debts!” That at some great congress of the States,
+resolutions were carried to the effect, “that roguery and cheating
+will occasionally lower a people in the estimation of others, and that
+the indulgences of such national practices may be, in the end,
+prejudicial to national honour;” “that honesty, if not the best, may
+be good policy, even in a go-a-head state of society;” “that smart
+men, however a source of well-founded pride to a people, are now and
+then inconvenient from the very excess of their smartness;” “that
+seeing these things, and feeling all the unhappy results which
+mistrust and suspicion by foreign countries must bring upon their
+commerce, they have determined to pay something in the pound, and go
+a-head once more.” I am sure that such an announcement would be hailed
+with illuminations from Hamburg to Leghorn. American citizens would be
+cheered wherever they were found; pumpkin pie would figure at royal
+tables, and twist and cocktail be handed round with the coffee; our
+exquisites would take to chewing and its consequences; and our belles,
+banishing Rossini and Donizetti, would make the air vocal with the
+sweet sounds of Yankee Doodle. One cannot at a moment contemplate what
+excesses our enthusiasm might not carry us to; and I should not wonder
+in the least if some great publisher of respectable standing might not
+start a pirated reprint of the _New York Herald_.
+
+Let me now go back and explain, if my excitement will permit me, how
+I have been led into such extravagant imaginings. I have already
+remarked, that nations seldom gave evidence of noble bursts of
+feeling; still more rarely, I regret to say, do they evince any sorrow
+for past misconduct--any penitence for by-gone evil.
+
+This would be, indeed, the severest ordeal of a people’s greatness;
+this, the brightest evidence of national purity. Happy am I to say
+such an instance is before us; proud am I to be the man to direct
+public attention to the fact. The following paragraph I copy verbatim
+from the _Times_.
+
+     “On the 18th of June, the anniversary of the battle of
+     Waterloo, a black flag was hoisted by the Belgians at the
+     top of the monument erected on the field where the battle
+     was fought.”
+
+A black flag, the emblem of mourning, the device of sorrow and regret,
+waves over the field of Waterloo! Not placed there by vanquished
+France, whose legions fought with all their chivalry; not hoisted by
+the proud Gaul, on the plain where, in defeat, he bit the dust; but in
+penitence of heart, in deep sorrow and contrition, by the Belgians who
+ran--by the people who fled--by the soldiers who broke their ranks and
+escaped in terror.
+
+What a noble self-abasement is this; how beautifully touching such an
+instance of a people’s sorrow, and how affecting to think, that while
+in the halls of Apsley House the heroes were met together to
+commemorate the glorious day when they so nobly sustained their
+country’s honour, another nation should be in sackcloth and ashes, in
+all the trappings of woe, mourning over the era of their shame, and
+sorrowing over their degradation. Oh, if a great people in all the
+majesty of their power, in all their might of intellect, strength, and
+riches, be an object of solemn awe and wonder, what shall we say of
+one whose virtues partake of the humble features of every-day life,
+whose sacrifice is the tearful offering of their own regrets?
+
+Mr. O’Connell may declaim, and pronounce his eight millions the finest
+peasantry in the world--he may extol their virtues from Cork to
+Carrickfergus--he may ring the changes over their loyalty, their
+bravery, and their patriotism; but when eulogising the men who assure
+him “they are ready to die for their country,” let him blush to think
+of the people who can “cry” for theirs.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR WORKHOUSE CHAPLAINS.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The bane and antidote of England is her immense manufacturing
+power--the faculty that enables her to inundate the whole habitable
+globe with the products of her industry, is at once the source of her
+prosperity and poverty--her millionnaire mill-owners and her
+impoverished thousands. Never was the skill of machinery pushed to the
+same wonderful extent--never the results of mechanical invention so
+astoundingly developed. Men are but the presiding genii over the
+wonder-working slaves of their creative powers, and the child, is the
+volition that gives impulse to the giant force of a mighty engine.
+Subdivision of labour, carried to an extent almost incredible, has
+facilitated despatch, and induced a higher degree of excellence in
+every branch of mechanism--human ingenuity is racked, chemical
+analysis investigated, mathematical research explored--and all, that
+Mr. Binns, of Birmingham, may make thirteen minikin pins--while Mr.
+Sims, of Stockport, has been making but twelve. Let him but succeed in
+this, and straightway his income is quadrupled--his eldest son is
+member for a manufacturing borough, his second is a cornet in the Life
+Guards--his daughter, with a fortune of one hundred thousand pounds,
+is married to the heir of a marquisate--and his wife, soaring above
+the murky atmosphere of the factory, breathes the purer air of western
+London, and advertises her _soirées_ in the _Morning Post_. The
+pursuit of wealth is now the grand characteristic of our age and
+country; and the headlong race of money-getting seems the great
+feature of the day. To this end the thundering steamer ploughs the
+white-crested wave of the broad Atlantic--to this end the clattering
+locomotive darts through the air at sixty miles the hour--for this,
+the thousand hammers of the foundry, the ten thousand wheels of the
+factory are at work--and man, toiling like a galley-slave, scarce
+takes time to breathe in his mad career, as with straining eyeballs
+and outstretched hands, he follows in the pursuit of lucre.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Now, men are imitative creatures; and strange enough, too, they are
+oftentimes disposed from the indulgence of the faculty to copy things,
+and adapt them to purposes very foreign to their original destination.
+This manufacturing speed, this steeple-chase of printed calico and
+Paisley wear, is all very well while it is limited to the districts
+where it began. That two hundred and seventy thousand white cotton
+night-caps, with a blue tassel on every one of them, can be made in
+twenty-four hours at Messrs. Twist and Tredlem’s factory, is a very
+gratifying fact, particularly to all who indulge in ornamental
+head-gear--but we see no reason for carrying this dispatch into the
+Court of Chancery, and insisting that every nod of the woolsack is to
+decide a suit at law. Yet have the lawyer and the physician both
+adopted the impetuous practices of the manufacturing world, and
+Haste, red haste! is now the cry.
+
+Lord Brougham’s Chancery practice was only to be equalled by one of
+Lord Waterford’s steeple-chases. He took all before him in a fly--he
+rode straight, plenty of neck, baulked nothing--up leap or down leap,
+sunk fence or double ditch, post and rail, or quickset, stone wall, or
+clay bank, all one to him--go it he would. Others might deny his
+judgment; he wanted to get over the ground, and _that_ he did do.
+
+The West-end physician, in the same way, visits his fifty patients
+daily, walks his hospital, delivers a lecture to old ladies about some
+“curious provision” of nature in the palm of the human hand (for
+fee-taking); and devoting something like three minutes and twelve
+seconds to each sick man’s case, pockets some twenty thousand per
+annum by his dispatch.
+
+Speed is now the _El Dorado_. Jelly is advertised to be made in a
+minute, butter in five, soup seasoned and salted in three seconds of
+time. Even the Quakers--bless their quiet hearts!--couldn’t escape the
+contagion, and actually began to walk and talk with some faint
+resemblance to ordinary mortals. The church alone maintained the even
+tenor of its way, and moved not in the wild career of the whirlwind
+world about it. Such was my gratulation, when my eye fell upon the
+following passage of the _Times_. Need I say with what a heavy heart I
+read it? It is Mr. Rushton who speaks:--
+
+     “In the month of December, 1841, he heard that a man had
+     been found dead in the streets of Liverpool; that all the
+     property he possessed had been taken from his person, and
+     that an attempt to trace his identity had been made in
+     vain. He was taken to the usual repository for the dead,
+     where an inquest had been held upon him, and from the ‘dead
+     house,’ as it was called, he was removed to the workhouse
+     burial-ground. The man who drove the hearse on the occasion
+     was very old, and not very capable of giving evidence. His
+     attendant was an idiot. It had been represented to Mr.
+     Hodgson and himself that the dead man had been taken in the
+     clothes in which he died and put into a coffin which was too
+     small for him; that a shroud was put over him; that the lid
+     of the coffin would not go down; and that he was taken from
+     the dead-house and buried in the parochial ground, no
+     funeral rites having been performed on the occasion. It had
+     also been communicated to Mr. Hodgson and himself that,
+     after two days, the clergyman who was instructed to perform
+     those rites over the paupers, came and performed one service
+     for the dead over all the paupers who had been buried in the
+     intermediate time.”
+
+Now, without stopping to criticise the workhouse equipage, which
+appears to be driven by a man too old to speak, with an idiot for his
+companion; nor even to advert to the scant ceremony of burying a man
+in his daily dress, and in a coffin that would not close on him--what
+shall we say of the “patent parson power” that buries paupers in
+detachments, and reads the service over platoons of dead? The reverend
+chaplain feeling the uncertainty of human life, and knowing how frail
+is our tie to existence, waits in the perfect conviction of a large
+party before he condescends to appear. Knowing that dead men tell no
+tales, he surmises also that they don’t run away, and so he says to
+himself--these people are not pressed for time, they’ll be here when I
+come again--it is a sickly season, and we’ll have a field-day on
+Saturday. Cheap soup for the poor, says Mrs. Fry. Cheap justice, says
+O’Connell. Cheap clothing, says a tailor who makes new clothes from
+old, with a machine called a devil--but cheap burial is the boast of
+the Liverpool chaplain, and he is the most original among them.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE “HOUSE.”
+
+
+I have long been of opinion that a man may attain to a very
+respectable knowledge of Chinese ceremonies and etiquette before he
+can learn one half the usages of the honourable house. Seldom does a
+debate go forward without some absurd interruption taking place in a
+mere matter of form. Now it is a cry of “Order, order,” to some
+gentleman who is subsequently discovered not to have been in the least
+disorderly, but whom the attack has so completely dumfounded, that he
+loses his speech and his self-possession, and sits down in confusion,
+to be sneered at in the morning papers, and hooted by his constituents
+when he goes home.
+
+Now some gifted scion of aristocracy makes an essay in braying and
+cock-crowing, both permitted by privilege, and overwhelms the speaker
+with the uproar. Now it is that intolerable nuisance, old Hume,
+shouting out “divide,” or “adjourn;” or it is Colonel Sibthorpe who
+counts the house. These ridiculous privileges of members to interfere
+with the current of public business because they may be sleepy or
+stupid themselves, are really intolerable, besides being so numerous
+that the first dozen years of a parliamentary life will scarcely teach
+a man a tithe of them. But of all these “rules of the house,” the
+most unjust and tyrannical is that which compels a man to put up with
+any impertinence because he has already spoken. It would seem as if
+each honourable member “went down” with a single ball cartridge in his
+pouch, which, when fired, the best thing he could do was to go home
+and wait for another distribution of ammunition; for by remaining he
+only ran the risk of being riddled without any power to return the
+fire.
+
+A case of this kind happened a few evenings since:--A Mr. Blewitt--I
+suppose the composer--made a very absurd motion, the object of which
+was to inquire “What office the Duke of Wellington held in the present
+government, and whether he was or was not a member of the cabinet.”
+Without referring the learned gentleman to a certain erudite volume
+called the Yearly Almanack and Directory, Sir Robert Peel proceeded to
+explain the duke’s position. He eulogised, as who would not? his
+grace’s sagacity and his wisdom; the importance of his public
+services, and the great value the ministers, his _confrères_, set upon
+a judgment which, in a long life, had so seldom been found mistaken;
+and then he concluded by quoting from one of the duke’s recent replies
+to some secretary or other who addressed him on a matter foreign to
+his department--“That he was one of the few men in the present day who
+did not meddle in affairs over which they have no control.” “A piece
+of counsel,” quoth Sir Robert, “I would strenuously advise the
+honourable member to apply to his own case.”
+
+Now we have already said that we think Blewitt--though an admirable
+musician--seems to be a very silly man. Still, if he really did not
+know what the duke represented in her Majesty’s government--if he
+really were ignorant of what functions he exercised, the information
+might have been bestowed upon him without a retort like this. In the
+first place, his query, if a foolish, was at least a civil one; and in
+the second, it was his duty to understand a matter of this nature: it
+therefore came under his control, and Sir Robert’s application of the
+quotation was perfectly uncalled-for. Well; what followed? Mr. Blewitt
+rose in wrath to reply, when the house called out, “Spoke, spoke!” and
+Blewitt was muzzled; the moral of which is simply this--you ask a
+question in the house, and the individual addressed has a right to
+insult you, you having no power of rejoinder, under the etiquette of
+“spoke.” Any flippancy may overturn a man at this rate; and the words
+“loud laughter,” printed in italics in the _Chronicle_, is sure to
+renew the emotion at every breakfast table the morning after.
+
+Now I am sorry for Blewitt, and think he was badly treated.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR “LAW REFORM.”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Of all the institutions of England there is scarcely one more lauded,
+and more misunderstood, than trial by jury. At first blush, nothing
+can seem fairer and less objectionable than the unbiassed decision of
+twelve honest men, sworn to do justice. They hear patiently the
+evidence on both sides; and in addition to the light derivable from
+their own intelligence, they have the directing charge of the judge,
+who tells them wherein the question for their decision lies, what are
+the circumstances of which they are to take cognizance, and by what
+features of the case their verdict is to be guided. Yet look at the
+working of this much-boasted privilege. One jury brings in a verdict
+so contrary to all reason and justice, that they are sent back to
+reconsider it by the judge; another, more refractory still, won’t come
+to any decision at all, and get carted to the verge of the county for
+their pains; and a third, improving on all former modes of proceeding,
+has adopted a newer and certainly most impartial manner of deciding a
+legal question. “Court of Common Pleas, London, July 6.--The Chief
+Justice (Tindal) asked the ground of objection, and ten of the jurymen
+answered that in the last case one of their colleagues had suggested
+that the verdict should be decided by tossing up!” Here is certainly a
+very important suggestion, and one which, recognising justice as a
+blind goddess, is strictly in conformity with the impersonation.
+Nothing could possibly be farther removed from the dangers of undue
+influence than decisions obtained in this manner. Not only are all the
+prejudices and party bearings of individual jurors avoided, but an
+honest and manly oblivion of all the evidence which might bias men if
+left to the guidance of their poor and erring faculties, is thus
+secured. It is human to err, says the poet moralist; and so the
+jurymen in question discovered, and would therefore rather refer a
+knotty question to another deity than Justice, whom men call Fortune.
+How much would it simplify our complex and gnarled code, the
+introduction of this system? In the next place, juries need not be any
+longer empannelled, the judge could “sky the copper” himself. The only
+question would be, to have a fair halfpenny. See with what rapidity
+the much-cavilled court would dispatch public business! I think I see
+our handsome Chief of the Common Pleas at home here, with his knowing
+eye watching the vibrations of the coin, and calling out in his
+sonorous tone, “Head--the plaintiff has it. Call another case.” I peep
+into the Court of Chancery, and behold Sir Edward twirling the penny
+with more cautious fingers, and then with his sharp look and sharper
+voice, say, “Tail! Take a rule for the defendant.”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+No longer shall we hear objections as to the sufficiency of legal
+knowledge possessed by those in the judgment-seat. There will be no
+petty likings for this, and dislikings for that court; no changes of
+venue; no challenges of the jury; even Lord Brougham himself, of whom
+Sir Edward remarked, “What a pity it was he did not know a little law,
+for then he would have known a little of everything”--even he might be
+a chancellor once more. What a power of patronage it would give each
+succeeding ministry to know that capacity was of no consequence; and
+that the barrister of six years’ standing could turn his penny as well
+as the leader in Chancery. Public business need never be delayed a
+moment; and if the Chief Baron were occupied in chamber, the crier of
+the court could perform his functions till he came back again.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR “CLIMBING BOYS.”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+One man may lead a horse to the water, but ten cannot make him drink,
+sayeth the adage; and so it might be said, any one might devise an act
+of parliament--but who can explain all its intentions and
+provisions--define its powers--and illustrate its meanings? One clause
+will occasionally vitiate another; one section completely contradict
+the preceding one; the very objects of the legislature are often so
+pared away in committee, that a mere shadowy outline remains of what
+the original framer intended; and were it not for the bold hand of
+executive justice, the whole might be inoperative. The judge, happily,
+supplies the deficiency of the lawmaker--and the thing were perfect,
+if judges were not, like doctors, given to differ--and thus,
+occasionally, disseminate somewhat opposite notions of the statutes of
+the land.
+
+Such being the case, it will not be deemed impertinent of one, who
+desires to conform in all respects to the law, to ask, from time to
+time, of our rulers and governors, certain questions, the answers to
+which, should he happily receive them, will be regarded by him as
+though written on tables of brass.
+
+Now, in a late session of parliament, some humane member brought in a
+bill to interdict the sweeping of chimneys by all persons small enough
+for the purpose, and ingeniously suggested supplying their place by
+others, whose size would have inevitably condemned them to perish in a
+flue. Never had philanthropist a greater share of popularity. Little
+sweeps sang his praises along the streets--penny periodicals had
+verses in his honour--the “song of the soot” was set to music--and
+people, in the frenzy of their enthusiasm, so far forgot their
+chimneys, that scarcely a street in town had not, at least, one fire
+every night in the week. Meanwhile, the tender sweeplings had lost
+their occupation, they had pronounced their farewell to the
+brush--what was to become of them? Alas, the legislature had not
+thought of that point; for, they were not influential enough to claim
+compensation. I grieve to think, but there is too much reason to fear,
+that many of them betook themselves to the ancient vocation of
+pickpockets. Yes, as Dr. Watts has it--
+
+    “Satan finds some mischief still
+    For idle hands to do.”
+
+The divisional police-offices were filled each morning with small
+“suttees”--whose researches after handkerchiefs and snuff-boxes were
+of the most active kind; while their full-grown brethren, first
+impacted in a funnel of ten inches by eight, were cursing the Commons,
+and consigning to all manner of misfortune the benevolent framer of
+the bill.
+
+Now, I cannot help asking myself, was this the intention of the
+legislature--did they really mean that big people should try to
+penetrate where little ones were not small enough to pass?--or was it
+some piece of conciliation to the climbing boys, that they should see
+their masters grilled and wasted, in revenge for “the disabilities
+they had so long laboured under?” This point of great difficulty--and
+after much thought and deliberation, I have come to one solution of
+the whole question, and I only hope it may prove the right one. It is
+this. The bill is a parable--the climbing boy, and the full-grown
+sweep--and the chimney, and the householder, and the machine, are mere
+types which I would interpret thus:--the householder is John Bull, a
+good-natured, easy fellow, liking his ease, and studying his
+comfort--caring for his dinner, and detesting smoke above all things;
+he wishes to have his house neat and orderly, neither confusion nor
+disturbance--but his great dread is fire; the very thought of it sets
+him a-trembling all over. Now, for years past, he has remarked that
+the small sweeps, who mount so glibly to the top of the flue, rarely
+do anything but make a noise--they scream and shout for ten minutes,
+or so, and then come down, with their eyes red, and their noses
+bloody, and cry themselves sick, till they get bread-and-butter. John
+is worried and fretted at all this; he remembers the time a good-sized
+sweep used to go up and rake down all the soot in no time. These were
+the old Tory ministers, who took such wise and safe precautions
+against fire, that an insurance-office was never needed. “Not so now,”
+quoth John; “’od! rabbit it, they’ve got their climbing boys, who are
+always bleating and bawling, for the neighbourhood to look at
+them--and yet, devil a bit of good they do the whole time.”
+
+And now, who are these? you would ask. I’ll tell you--the “Climbing
+Boys” are the Howicks, and the Clements--the Smith O’Briens and the
+D’Israelis, and a host of others, scraping their way upwards, through
+soot and smoke, that they may put out their heads in high places, and
+cry “’weep! ’weep!” and well may they--they’ve had a dirty
+journey--and black enough their hands are, I warrant you, before they
+got there.
+
+To get rid of these, without offending them, John brings in his
+philanthropic bill, making it penal to employ them, or to have any
+other than the old legitimate sweeps, that know every turn of the
+flue, and have gone up and down any time these twenty years. No new
+machine for him--no Whig contrivance, to scrape the bricks and burn
+the house--but the responsible full-grown sweeps--who, if the passage
+be narrow, have strength to force their way, and take good care not to
+get dust in their eyes in the process.
+
+Such is my interpretation of the bill, and I only trust a discerning
+public may agree with me.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR “THE SUBDIVISION OF LABOUR.”
+
+
+I forget the place, and the occasion also, but I have a kind of misty
+recollection of having once, in these nutting excursions of mine, been
+excessively eloquent on the subject of the advantages derivable from
+division of labour.
+
+Not a walk or condition in life is there to which it has not
+penetrated; and while natural talents have become cultivated from
+finding their most congenial sphere of operation, immense results have
+accrued in every art and science where a higher degree of perfection
+has been thus attained. Your doctor and your lawyer now-a-days select
+the precise portion of your person or property they intend to operate
+on. The oculist and the aurist, and the odontalgist and the
+pedicurist, all are suggestive of various local sufferings, by which
+they bound their skill; and so, the equity lawyer and the common-law
+lawyer, the special pleader and the bar orator, have subdivided
+knavery, without diminishing its amount. Even in literature, there are
+the heavy men who “do” the politics, and the quiet men who do the
+statistics, and the rough-and-ready men, who are a kind of
+servants-of-all-work, and so on. In universities, there is the science
+man and the classical man, the man of simple equations and the man of
+spondees. Painting has its bright colourists and its more
+sombre-loving artists, and so on--the great camps of party would seem
+to have given the impulse to every condition of life, and “speciality”
+is the order of the day.
+
+No sooner is a new discovery made, no matter whether in the skies
+above, or the dark bowels of the earth, than an opportunity of
+disagreement is sure to arise. Two, mayhap three, gentlemen, profess
+diversity of opinion; followers are never lacking, let any one be fool
+enough to turn leader--and straightway there comes out a new sect,
+with a Greek name for a title.
+
+It is only the other day, men began to find out that primitive rocks,
+and basalt, ochre, and sandstone, had lived a long time, and must
+surely know something of antiquity--if they only could tell it. The
+stones, from that hour, had an unhappy time of it--men went about in
+gangs with hammers and crowbars, shivering this and shattering
+that--picking holes in respectable old rocks, that never had a word
+said against them, and peeping into “quarts,”[1] like a policeman.
+
+    [1] Query “quartz.”--_Devil._
+
+Men must be quarrelsome, you’d say, if they could fight about
+paving-stones--but so they did. One set would have it that the world
+was all cinders, and another set insisted it was only slack--and so,
+they called themselves Plutonians and Neptunians, and made great
+converts to their respective opinions.
+
+Gulliver tells us of “Big-endians” and “Little-endians,” who hated
+each other like poison; and thus it is, our social condition is like a
+row in an Irish fair, where one strikes somebody, and nobody thinks
+the other right.
+
+Oh! for the happy days of heretofore, when the two kings of Brentford
+smelled at one nosegay. It couldn’t happen now, I promise you.
+
+One of their majesties would have insisted on the petals, and the
+other been equally imperative regarding the stamina: they’d have
+pushed their claims with all the weight of their influence, and there
+would have been soon little vestige of a nosegay between them.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+But to come back, for all this is digression. The subdivision of
+labour, with all its advantages, has its reverse to the medal. You are
+ill, for instance. You have been dining with the Lord Mayor, and
+hip-hipping to the health of her Majesty’s ministers; or drinking,
+mayhap, nine times nine to the independence of Poland, or civil and
+religious liberty all over the globe--or any other fiction of large
+dinners. You go home, with your head aching from bad wine, bad
+speeches, and bad music; your wife sees you look excessively flushed;
+your eyes have got an odd kind of expression, far too much of the
+white being visible; a half shut-up look, like a pastry-cook’s shop on
+Sunday; there are evident signs, from blackness of the lips, that in
+your English ardour for the navy you have made a “port-hole” of your
+mouth; in fact, you have a species of semi-apoplectic threatening,
+that bodes ill for the insurance company.
+
+A doctor is sent for--he lives near, and comes at once--with a glance
+he recognises your state, and suggests the immediate remedy--the
+lancet.
+
+“Fetch a basin,” says somebody, with more presence of mind than the
+rest.
+
+“Not so fast,” quoth the medico. “I am a pure physician--I don’t
+bleed: that’s the surgeon’s affair. I should be delighted to save the
+gentleman’s life--but we have a bye-law against it in the college.
+Nothing could give me more pleasure than to cure you, if it wasn’t for
+the charter. What a pity it is! I’m sure I wish, with all my heart,
+the cook would take courage to open a vein, or even give you a bloody
+nose with the cleaver.”
+
+Do you think I exaggerate here? Try the experiment--I only ask that.
+
+Sending for the surgeon does not solve the difficulty; he may be a man
+who cuts corns and cataracts--who only operates for strabismus, or
+makes new noses for Peninsular heroes. In fact, if you don’t hit the
+right number--and it’s a large lottery--you may go out of the world
+without even the benefit of physic.
+
+This great system, however, does not end with human life. The
+coroners--resolved not to be behind their age--have made a great
+movement, and shown themselves men worthy of the enlightened era they
+live in. Read this:--
+
+     “On Friday morning last, a man named Patrick Knowlan, a
+     private in the 3rd Buffs, was discovered lying dead close
+     beneath the platform of a wharf at the bottom of
+     Holborn-lane, Chatham. It would appear that deceased had
+     mistaken his way, and fallen from the wharf, which is used
+     for landing coals from the river, a depth of about eight
+     feet, upon the muddy beach below, which was then strewn with
+     refuse coal. There was a large and severe wound upon the
+     left temple, and a piece of coal was sticking in the left
+     cheek, close below the eye. The whole left side of the face
+     was much contracted. He had evidently, from the state of his
+     clothes, been covered with water, which overflows this spot
+     at the period of spring tides. Although nothing certain is
+     known, it is generally supposed that he mistook Holborn-lane
+     for the West-lane, which leads to the barracks, and that
+     walking forward in the darkness he fell from the wharf. Mr.
+     Lewis, the coroner for the city of Rochester, claims
+     jurisdiction over all bodies found in the water at this
+     spot; and as the unfortunate man had evidently been
+     immersed, he thought this a proper case for the exercise of
+     his office, and accordingly summoned a jury to sit upon the
+     body at ten o’clock on Friday morning--but on his going to
+     view the deceased, he found that it was at the King’s Arms,
+     Chatham, in the hands of Bines, the Chatham constable, as
+     the representative of Mr. Hinde, one of the coroners for the
+     eastern division of the county of Kent, who refused to give
+     up the key of the room, but allowed Mr. Lewis and his jury
+     to view the body. They then returned to the Nag’s Head,
+     Rochester, and having heard the evidence of John Shepherd, a
+     fisherman, who deposed that a carter, going on to the beach
+     for coals, at half-past seven o’clock on Friday morning,
+     found the body as already described, the jury returned a
+     verdict of ‘Found dead.’ Mr. Hinde, the county coroner, held
+     another inquest upon the deceased, at the King’s Arms; and
+     after taking the evidence of William Whittingham, the
+     carter who found the body, and Frederick Collins, a corporal
+     of the 3rd Buffs, who stated that he saw the deceased on the
+     evening preceding his death, and he was then sober, the jury
+     returned a verdict of ‘Accidental death;’ each of the
+     coroners issued a warrant for the interment of the body. The
+     disputed jurisdiction, it is believed, will now be submitted
+     to the decision of a higher court, in order to settle what
+     is here considered a _vexata quæstio_.”--_Maidstone
+     Journal._
+
+Is not this perfect? Only think of land coroners and water
+coroners--imagine the law defining the jurisdiction of the Tellurian
+as far forth into the sea as he could sit on a corpse without danger,
+and the Neptunian ruling the waves beyond in absolute sway--conceive
+the “solidist” revelling in all the accidents that befall life upon
+the world’s highways, and the “fluidist” seeking his prey like a pearl
+diver, five fathoms low, beneath “the deep, deep sea.” What a rivalry
+theirs, who divide the elements between them, and have nature’s
+everlasting boundaries to define the limits of their empire.
+
+I hope to see the time when these great functionaries of law shall be
+provided with a suitable costume. I should glory to think of Mr. Hinde
+accoutred in emblems suggestive of earth and its habits--a wreath of
+oak leaves round his brows; and to behold Mr. Lewis in a garment of
+marine plants and sea shells sit upon his corpse, with a trident in
+his right hand. What a comfort for the man about to take French leave
+of life, that he could know precisely the individual he should
+benefit, and be able to go “by land” or “water,” as his taste inclined
+him.
+
+I have no time here to dwell upon the admirable distinctions of the
+two verdicts given in the case I allude to. When the great change I
+suggest is fully carried out, the difficulty of a verdict will at
+once be avoided, for the jury, like boys at play, will only have to
+cry out at each case--“wet or dry.”
+
+There would be probably too much expense incurred in poor localities
+by maintaining two officials; and I should suggest, in such cases, an
+amphibious coroner--a kind of merman, who should enjoy a double
+jurisdiction, and, as they say of half-bred pointers, be able “to take
+the water when required.”
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR A “NEW VERDICT.”
+
+
+Money-getting and cotton-spinning have left us little time for fun of
+any kind in England--no one has a moment to spare, let him be ever so
+droll, and a joke seems now to be esteemed a _bonâ fide_ expenditure;
+and as “a pin a day” is said to be “a groat a year,” there is no
+calculating what an inroad any manner of pleasantry might not make
+into a man’s income. Book-writers have ceased to be laughter-moving--the
+stage has given it up altogether, except now and then in a new
+tragedy--society prefers gravity to gaiety--and, in fact, the spirit
+of comic fun and drollery would seem to have died out in the land--if
+it were not for that inimitable institution called trial by jury.
+Bless their honest hearts! jurymen do indeed relieve the drab-coloured
+look of every-day life--they come out in strong colour from the sombre
+tints of common-place events and people. Queer dogs! nothing can damp
+the warm ardour of their comic vein--all the solemnity of a court of
+justice--the look of the bar and the bench--the voice of the crier--the
+blue bags of briefs--the “terrible show,” has no effect on their
+minds--“ruat cœlum,” they will have their joke.
+
+It is in vain for the judge, let him be ever so rigid in his charge,
+to tell them that their province is simply with certain facts, on
+which they have to pronounce an opinion of yea or nay. They must be
+jurymen, and “something more.” It’s not every day Mr. Sniggins, of
+Pimlico, is called upon to keep company with a chief-justice and
+sergeant learned in the law--Popkins don’t leave his shop once a week
+to discuss Coke upon Littleton with an attorney-general. No: the event
+to them is a great one--there they sit, fawned on, and flattered by
+counsel on both sides--called impartial and intelligent, and all
+that--and while every impertinence the law encourages has been bandied
+about the body of the court, _they_ remain to be lauded and praised by
+all parties, for they have a verdict in their power, and when it
+comes--what a thing it is!
+
+There is a well-known story of an English nobleman, desiring to remain
+_incog._ in Calais, telling his negro servant--“If any one ask who I
+am, Sambo, mind you say, ‘a Frenchman.’” Sambo carried out the
+instruction by saying--“My massa a Frenchman, and so am I.” This
+anecdote exactly exemplifies a verdict of a jury--it cannot stop short
+at sense, but must, by one fatal plunge, involve its decision in
+absurdity.
+
+Hear what lately happened in the north of Ireland. A man was tried and
+found guilty of murder--the case admitted no doubt--the act was a
+cold-blooded, deliberate assassination, committed by a soldier on his
+sergeant, in the presence of many witnesses. The trial proceeded; the
+facts were proved; and--I quote the local newspaper--
+
+     “The jury retired, and were shut up when the judge left the
+     court, at half-past seven. At nine, his lordship returned to
+     court, when the foreman of the jury intimated that they had
+     agreed. They were then called into court, and having
+     answered to their names, returned a verdict of guilty, but
+     recommended the prisoner to mercy upon account of the close
+     intimacy that existed between the parties at the time of the
+     occurrence.”
+
+Now, what ever equalled this? When the jury who tried Madame Laffarge
+for the murder of her husband, returned a verdict of guilty, with that
+recommendation to mercy which is implied by the words “des
+circonstances attenuantes,” Alphonse Karr pronounced the “extenuating
+circumstances,” to be the fact, that she always mixed gum with the
+arsenic, and never gave him his poison “neat.”
+
+But even _they_ never thought of carrying out their humanity farther
+by employing the Belfast plea, that she had been “intimate with him”
+before she killed him. No, it was reserved for our canny northerns to
+find out this new secret of criminal jurisprudence, and to show the
+world that there is a deep philosophy in the vulgar expression, a
+blood relation--meaning thereby that degree of allianceship which
+admits of butchery, and makes killing no murder; for if intimacy be a
+ground of mercy, what must be friendship, what brotherhood, or
+paternity?
+
+Were this plea to become general, how cautious would men become about
+their acquaintances--what a dread they would entertain of becoming
+intimate with gentlemen from Tipperary!
+
+I scarcely think the Whigs would throw out such lures for Dan and his
+followers, if they could consider these consequences; and I doubt
+much--taking everything into consideration, that the “Duke” would see
+so much of Lord Brougham as he has latterly.
+
+“Whom can a man make free with, if not with his friends?” saith
+Figaro; and the Belfast men have studied Beaumarchais, and only
+“carried out his principle,” as the Whigs say, when they speak of
+establishing popery in Ireland, to complete the intention of
+emancipation.
+
+Lawyers must have been prodigiously sick of all the usual arguments in
+defence of prisoners in criminal cases many a year ago. One of the
+cleverest lawyers and the cleverest men I ever knew, says he would
+hang any man who was defended on an _alibi_, and backed by a good
+character. Insanity is worn out; but here comes Belfast to the rescue,
+with its plea of intimacy. Show that your client was no common
+acquaintance--prove clearly habits of meeting and dining
+together--display a degree of friendship between the parties that
+bordered on brotherhood, and all is safe. Let your witness satisfy the
+jury that they never had an altercation or angry word in their lives,
+and depend upon it, killing will seem merely a little freak of
+eccentricity, that may be indulged with Norfolk Island, but not
+punished with the gallows.
+
+“Guilty, my lord, but very intimate with the deceased,” is a new
+discovery in law, and will hereafter be known as “the Belfast
+verdict.”
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE REAL “LIBERATOR.”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+When Solomon said there was nothing new under the sun, he never knew
+Lord Normanby. That’s a fact, and now to show cause.
+
+No attribute of regal, and consequently it may be inferred of
+viceregal personages, have met such universal praise from the world,
+as the wondrous tact they would seem to possess, regarding the most
+suitable modes of flattering the pride and gratifying the passions of
+those they govern.
+
+It happens not unfrequently, that they leave this blessed privilege
+unused, and give themselves slight pains in its exercise; but should
+the time come when its exhibition may be deemed fit or necessary,
+their instinctive appreciation is said never to fail them, and they
+invariably hit off the great trait of a people at once.
+
+Perhaps it may be the elevated standard on which they are placed,
+gives them this wondrous _coup-d’œil_, and enables them to take wider
+views than mortals less eminently situated; perhaps it is some old
+leaven of privileges derivable from right divine. But no matter, the
+thing is so.
+
+Napoleon well knew the temper of Frenchmen in his day, and how certain
+short words, emblematic of their country’s greatness and glory, could
+fascinate their minds and bend them to his purpose. In Russia, the
+czar is the head of the church, as of the state, and a mere word from
+him to one of his people is a treasure above all price. In Holland, a
+popular monarch taps some forty puncheons of schnapps, and makes the
+people drunk. In Belgium, he gets up a high mass, and a procession of
+virgins. In the States, a rabid diatribe against England, and a spice
+of Lynch Law, are clap-trap. But every land has its own peculiar
+leaning--to be gratified by some one concession or compliment in
+preference to every other.
+
+Now, when Lord Normanby came to Ireland, he must have been somewhat
+puzzled by the very multiplicity of these expectations. It was a
+regular “embarras de richesses.” There was so much to give, and he so
+willing to give it!
+
+First, there was discouragement to be dealt out against
+Protestants--an easy and a pleasant path; then the priests were to be
+brought into fashion--a somewhat harder task; country gentlemen were
+to be snubbed and affronted; petty attorneys were to be petted and
+promoted; all claimants with an “O” to their names were to have
+something--it looked national; men of position and true influence were
+to be pulled down and degraded, and so on. In fact, there was a good
+two years of smart practice in the rupture of all the ties of society,
+and in the overthrow of whatever was respectable in the land, before
+he need cry halt.
+
+Away he went then, cheered by the sweet voices of the mob he loved,
+and quick work he made of it. I need not stop to say, how pleasant
+Dublin became when deserted of all who could afford to quit it; nor
+how peaceful were the streets which no one traversed--_ubi solitudinem
+faciunt pacem appellant_. The people, like Oliver, “asked for more;”
+ungrateful people! not content with Father Glynn at the viceroy’s
+table, and the Bishop of “Mesopotamia” in the council, they cried,
+like the horseleech’s daughters, “Give! give!”
+
+“What would they have, the spalpeens?” said Pierce Mahony; “sure ain’t
+we destroying the place entirely, and nobody will be able to live here
+after us.”
+
+“What do they want?” quoth Anthony Blake; “can’t they have patience?
+Isn’t the church trembling, and property not worth two years’
+purchase?”
+
+“Upon my life!” whispered Lord Morpeth, “I can’t comprehend them. I
+fear we have been only but too good-natured!--don’t you think so?”
+
+And so they pondered over their difficulties, but never a man among
+them could suggest a remedy for their new demand, nor make out a
+concession which had not been already made.
+
+“Did you butter Dan?” said Anthony.
+
+“Ay, and offered him the ‘rolls’ too,” said Sheil.
+
+“It’s no use,” interposed Pierce; “he’s not to be caught.”
+
+“Couldn’t ye make Tom Steele Bishop of Cashel?”
+
+“He wouldn’t take it,” groaned the viceroy.
+
+“Is Mr. Arkins a privy councillor?”
+
+“No; but he might if he liked. There’s no use in these trifles.”
+
+“_Eureka_, gents, I have it!” cried my lord; “order post-horses for me
+this instant--I have it!”
+
+And so he had, and by that act alone he stamped himself as the first
+man of his party.
+
+Swift philosophised on the satiric touch of building a madhouse, as
+the most appropriate charity to Ireland; but what would he have said
+had he heard that the greatest favour its rulers could bestow--the
+most flattering compliment to national feeling--was to open the gaols,
+to let loose robbers and housebreakers, highwaymen and cutthroats--to
+return burglars to their afflicted homes, and bring back felons to
+their weeping families. Some sneering critic will object to it, as
+scarcely complimentary to a country to say--“these gentlemen are only
+thieves--murderers; they cannot hurt _your_ morals. They were
+sentenced to transportation, but why should we spread vice among
+innocent bushmen, and disseminate wickedness through Norfolk Island?
+Let them loose where they are, they know the ways of the place,
+they’ll not murder the ‘wrong man;’ depend upon it, too, the rent
+won’t suffer by their remaining.” And so my lord took off the
+hand-cuffs, and filed the fetters; and the bondsmen, albeit not all
+“hereditary,” went free. Who should be called the Liberator, I ask,
+after this? Is it your Daniel, who promises year after year, and never
+performs; or you, my lord, who strikes off real chains, not
+metaphorical ones, and liberates real captives, not figurative slaves?
+
+It was, indeed, a “great day for Ireland” when the villains got loose;
+and must have been a strong lesson on the score of domestic duty to
+many a roving blade, who preferred spending that evening at home, to
+venturing out after dark. My lord covered himself with laurels, and
+albeit they were gathered, as Lord Wellesley said, in the “Groves of
+Blarney,” they well became the brow they ornamented.
+
+I should scarcely have thought necessary to ring a pæan of praise on
+this great governor, if it were not for a most unaccountable attack
+his magnanimous and stupendous mercy, as Tom Steele would call it,
+has called forth from some organ of the press.
+
+This print, calling itself _The Cork Constitution_, thus
+discourseth:--
+
+     “Why, of 16 whom he pardoned, and of 41 whose sentences he
+     commuted in the gaol of our own city, 13 were re-committed,
+     and of these no fewer than 10 were in due time transported.
+     One of the latter, Mary Lynch, was subsequently five times
+     committed, and at last transported; Jeremiah Twomey, _alias_
+     Old Lock, was subsequently six times committed, and finally
+     transported, while two others were twice committed. These
+     are a specimen of the persons whom his lordship delighted to
+     honour. Of the whole 57 (who were liberated between January,
+     1835, and April, 1839), there were, at the time of their
+     sentences being commuted, or themselves discharged, 34 under
+     sentence of transportation, and two under sentence of death.
+     In the county gaol, 47 prisoners experienced the benefit of
+     viceregal liberality. Of these 18 had been under sentence of
+     transportation, 11 of them for life; but how many of them it
+     became the duty of the government to introduce a second or
+     third time to the notice of the judge, or what was their
+     ultimate destiny, we are, unfortunately, not informed. The
+     recorder, we observe, passed sentence of transportation
+     yesterday on a fellow named Corkery, who had some years ago
+     been similarly sentenced by one of the judges, but for whose
+     release his worship was unable to account. The explanation,
+     however, is easy. Corkery was one of the scoundrels
+     liberated by Lord Normanby, and he has since been living on
+     the plunder of the citizens, on whom that vain and visionary
+     viceroy so inconsiderately let him loose.”
+
+Now I detest figures, and, therefore, I won’t venture to dispute the
+man’s arithmetic about the “ten in due time transported,” nor Corkery,
+nor Mary Lynch, nor any of them.
+
+I take the facts on his own showing, and I ground upon them the most
+triumphant defence of the calumniated viceroy. What was it, I ask, but
+the very prescience of the lord lieutenant we praise in the act? He
+liberated a gaol full of ruffians, not to inundate the world with a
+host of felons and vagabonds, but, simply, to give them a kind of
+day-rule.
+
+“Let them loose,” cried my lord; “take the irons off--devil a long
+they’ll be free. Mark my words, that fellow will murder some one else
+before long. Thank you, Mary Lynch, it is a real pleasure to me to
+restore you to liberty;” and then, _sotto_, “you’ll have a voyage out,
+nevertheless, I see that. Open the gates--pass out, gentlemen
+highwaymen. Don’t be afraid, good people of Cork, these are infernal
+ruffians, they’ll all be back again before six months. It’s no
+consequence to me to see you at large, for I have the heartfelt
+conviction that most of you must be hanged yet.”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Here is the true defence of the viceroy, here the real and
+well-grounded explanation of his conduct; and I hope when Lord
+Brougham attacks his noble friend--which of course he will--that the
+marquis will hurl back on him, with proud triumph, this irresistible
+mark of his united foresight and benevolence.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR “HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS.”
+
+
+If a fair estimate were at any moment to be taken of the time employed
+in the real business of the country, and that consumed by public
+characters in vindicating their conduct, recapitulating their good
+intentions, and glossing over their bad acts, it would be found that
+the former was to the latter as the ratio of Falstaff’s bread to the
+“sack.”
+
+A British House of Commons is in fact nineteen out of every twenty
+hours employed in the pleasant personalities of attack and defence. It
+is something that the “noble baron” said last session, or the “right
+hon. baronet” didn’t say in the present one, engrosses all their
+attention; and the most animated debates are about certain expressions
+of some “honourable and learned gentleman,” who always uses his words
+in a sense different from the rest of the nation.
+
+If this satisfies the public and stuffs the newspapers, perhaps I
+should not repine at it; but certainly it is very fatiguing and
+tiresome to any man with a moderately good memory to preserve the
+excellent traditions each ministry retains of their own virtues, and
+how eloquently the opposition can hold forth upon the various good
+things they would have done, had they been left quietly on the
+treasury benches. Now how much better and more business-like would it
+be if, instead of leaving these gentlemen to dilate and expatiate on
+their own excellent qualities, some public standards were to be
+established, by which at a glance the world at large could decide on
+their merits and examine into their fitness for office at a future
+period. Your butler and your coachman, when leaving your service, do
+not present themselves to a new master with characters of their own
+inditing, or if they did they would unquestionably require a very
+rigid scrutiny. What would you say if a cook who professes herself a
+perfect treasure of economy and excellence, warrants herself sober,
+amiable, and cleanly--who, without other vouchers for her fitness than
+her own, would dilate on her many virtues and accomplishments, and
+demand to be taken into your service because she has higher taste for
+self-panegyric than her rival. Such a thing would be preposterous in
+the kitchen, but it is exactly what takes place in parliament, and
+there is but one remedy for it. Let her majesty’s servants, when they
+leave their places, receive written characters, like those of less
+exalted persons. These documents would then be on record when the
+applicants sought other situations, and could be referred to with more
+confidence by the nation than if given by the individuals themselves.
+
+How easily would the high-flown sentiments of any of the “outs” be
+tested by a simple comparison with his last character--how clearly
+would pretension be measured by what he had done in his last place. No
+long speeches, no four-hour addresses would be required at the
+hustings then. Show us your character, would be the cry--why did he
+leave his mistress? the question.
+
+The petty subterfuges of party would not stand such a test as this;
+all the little miserable explanations--that it was a quarrel in the
+kitchen, that the cook said this and the footman said that, would go
+for nothing. You were turned out, and why?--that’s the bone and sinew
+of the matter.
+
+To little purpose would my Lord John remind his party that he was
+going to do every thing for every body--to plunder the parsons and
+pay the priests--to swamp the constitution and upset the
+church--respectable people would take time to look at his papers; they
+would see that he was an active little busy man, accustomed to do the
+whole work of a family single-handed; that he was in many respects
+attentive and industrious, but had a following of low Irish
+acquaintances whom he let into the house on every occasion, and that
+then nothing escaped them--they smashed the furniture, broke the
+looking-glasses, and kicked up a regular row: for this he was
+discharged, receiving all wages due.
+
+And then, instead of suffering long-winded panegyrics from the member
+for Tiverton, how easily would the matter be comprehended in one
+line--“a good servant, lively, and intelligent, but self-sufficient,
+and apt to take airs. Turned off for quarrelling with the French valet
+next door, and causing a difference between the families.”
+
+Then again, how decisively the merits of a certain ex-chancellor might
+be measured in reading--“hired as butler, but insisted on cleaning the
+carriage, and scratched the panels; would dress the dinner, and
+spoiled the soup and burned the sauce; never attended to his own
+duties, but spent his time fighting with the other servants, and is in
+fact a most troublesome member of a household. He is, however, both
+smart and intelligent, and is allowed a small pension to wait on
+company days.”
+
+Trust me, this plan, if acted on--and I feel it cannot be long
+neglected--will do more to put pretension on a par with desert, than
+all the adjourned debates that waste the sessions; it would save a
+world of unblushing self-praise and laudation, and protect the country
+from the pushing impertinence of a set of turned-off servants.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE LANDLORD AND TENANT COMMISSION.
+
+
+Every one knows the story of the man who, at the penalty of losing his
+head in the event of failure, promised the caliph of Bagdad that he
+would teach his ass to read in the space of ten years, trusting that,
+ere the time elapsed, either the caliph, or the ass, or he himself,
+would die, and the compact be at an end. Now, it occurs to me that the
+wise policy of this shrewd charlatan is the very essence of all
+parliamentary commissions. First, there is a grievance--then comes a
+debate--a very warm one occasionally, with plenty of invective and
+accusation on both sides--and then they agree to make a drawn game of
+it, and appoint “a Commission.”
+
+Nothing can be more plausible in appearance than such a measure; nor
+could any man, short of Hume himself, object to so reasonable a
+proceeding as a patient and searching inquiry into the circumstances
+and bearings of any disputed question. The Commission goes to work: if
+a Tory one, consisting usually of some dumb country gentlemen, who
+like committee work;--if Whig, the suckling “barristers of six years’
+standing:” and at it they go. The newspapers announce that they are
+“sitting to examine witnesses”--a brief correspondence appears at
+intervals, to show that they have a secretary and a correspondent, a
+cloud then wraps the whole concern in its dark embrace, and not the
+most prying curiosity is ever able afterwards to detect any one fact
+concerning the commission or its labours, nor could you hear in any
+society the slightest allusion ever made to their whereabouts.
+
+It is, in fact, the polite mode of interment applied to the question
+at issue--the Commissioners performing the solemn duties of
+undertakers, and not even the most reckless resurrectionist being
+found to disturb the remains. Before the report should issue, the
+Commissioners die off, or the question has taken a new form; new
+interests have changed all its bearings; a new ministry is in power,
+or some more interesting matter has occupied the place it should fill
+in public attention; and if the Report was even a volume of “Punch,”
+it might pass undetected.
+
+Now and then, however, a Commission will issue for the real object of
+gleaning facts and conveying information; and then the duties are most
+uncomfortable, and but one course is open, which is, to protract the
+inquiry, like the man with the ass, and leave the result to time.
+
+In a country like ours, conflicting interests and opposing currents
+are ever changing the landmarks of party; and the commissioners feel
+that with years something will happen to make their labours of little
+consequence, and that they have only to prolong the period, and all is
+safe.
+
+At this moment, we have what is called a “Landlord and Tenant
+Commission” sitting, or sleeping, as it may be. They have to
+investigate diverse, knotty, and puzzling points, about people who
+want too much for their land, and others who prefer paying nothing for
+it. They are to report, in some fashion, respecting the prospects of
+estated gentlemen burdened with rent-charges and mortgages, and who
+won’t improve properties they can scarcely live on--and a peasantry,
+who must nominally pay an exaggerated rent, depending upon the chance
+of shooting the agent before the gale-day, and thus obtaining easier
+terms for the future.
+
+They are to investigate the capabilities of waste lands, while
+cultivated lands lie waste beside them; they must find out why
+land-owners like money, and tenants hate paying it; and why a people
+hold life very cheap when they possess little means to sustain it.
+
+Now these, take them how you will, are not so easy of solution as you
+may think. The landlord, for his own sake, would like a thriving,
+well-to-do, contented tenantry; the tenants, for their sakes, would
+like a fair-dealing, reasonable landlord, not over griping and
+grabbing, but satisfied with a suitable value for his property. They
+both have no common share of intelligence and acuteness--they have a
+soil unquestionably fruitful, a climate propitious, little taxation,
+good roads, abundant markets; and yet the one is half ruined in his
+house and the other wholly beggared in his hovel--each averring that
+the cause lies in the tithes, the tariff, the poor-rate, or popery,
+the agent or the agitation: in fact, it is something or other which
+one favours and the other opposes--some system or sect, some party or
+measure, which one advocates and the other denounces; and no matter
+though its influence should not, in the remotest way, enter into the
+main question, there is a grievance--that’s something; and as Sir
+Lucius says, “it’s a mighty pretty quarrel as it stands”--not the
+less, that certain partizans on either side assist in the _mêlée_, and
+the House of Commons or the Association Hall interfere with their
+influence.
+
+If, then, the Commissioners can see their way here, they are smart
+fellows, and no small praise is due to them. There are difficulties
+enough to puzzle long heads; and I only hope they may be equal to the
+task. Meanwhile, depopulation goes on briskly--landlords are shot
+every week in Tipperary; and if the report be but delayed for some few
+months longer, a new element will appear in the question--for however
+there may remain some pretenders to perpetuity of tenure, the
+landlords will not be there to grant the leases. Let the
+Commissioners, then, keep a look-out a-head--much of the embarrassment
+of the inquiry will be obviated by only biding their time; and if they
+but delay their report till next November, there will be but one party
+to legislate for in the island.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE HUMANE SOCIETY.
+
+
+If my reader will permit me to refer to my own labours, I would wish
+to remind him of an old “Nut” of mine, in which I endeavoured to
+demonstrate the defective morality and economy of our penal code--a
+system, by which the smallest delinquent is made to cost the state
+several hundreds of pounds, for an offence frequently of some few
+pennies in value; and a theft of a loaf is, by the geometrical scale
+of progressive aggrandisement, gradually swelled into a most expensive
+process, in which policemen, station-houses, inspectors, magistrates,
+sessions, assizes, judges, crown prosecutors, gaols, turnkeys, and
+transports, all figure; and the nation is left to pay the cost of this
+terrible array, for the punishment of a crime the prevention of which
+might, perhaps, have been effected for two-pence.
+
+I do not now intend to go over the beaten track of this argument; my
+intention is simply to refer to it, and adduce another instance of
+this strange and short-sighted policy, which prefers waiting to
+acting, and despises cheap, though timely interference with evil, and
+indulges in the somewhat late, but more expensive process of
+reparation.
+
+And to begin. Imagine--unhappily you need exercise no great stretch of
+the faculty, the papers teem with too many instances--imagine a poor,
+woe-begone, miserable creature, destitute and friendless, without a
+home, without a meal; his tattered clothing displaying through every
+rent the shrunken form and wasted limbs to which hunger and want have
+reduced him. See him as night falls, plodding onwards through the
+crowded thoroughfares of the great city; his lack-lustre eye glazed
+and filmy; his pale face and blue lip actually corpse-like in their
+ghastliness. He gazes at the passers-by with the vacant stare of
+idiotcy. Starvation has sapped the very intellect, and he is like one
+in some frightful vision; a vague desire for rest--a dreamy belief
+that death will release him--lives in the place of hope; and as he
+leans over the battlements of the tall bridge, the plash of the dark
+river murmurs softly to his ear. His despair has conjured up a
+thousand strange and flitting fancies, and voices seem to call to him
+from the dull stream, and invite him to lie down and be at peace.
+Meanwhile the crowd passes on. Men in all the worldliness of their
+hopes and fears, their wishes, their expectations, and their dreads,
+pour by. None regard _him_, who at that moment stands on the very
+brink of an eternity, whither his thoughts have gone before him. As he
+gazes, his eye is attracted by the star-like spangle of lights in the
+water. It is the reflection of those in the house of the Humane
+Society; and he suddenly remembers that there is such an institution;
+and he bethinks him, as well as his poor brain will let him, that some
+benevolent people have called this association by this pleasing title,
+and the very word is a balm to his broken heart.
+
+“Humane Society!” Muttering the words, he staggers onwards; a feeling
+too faint for hope still survives; and he bends his wearied steps
+towards the building. It is indeed a goodly edifice; Portland stone
+and granite, massive columns and a portico, are all there; and
+Humanity herself is emblematised in the figures which decorate the
+pedestal. The man of misery stands without and looks up at this
+stately pile; the dying embers emit one spark, and for a second, hope
+brightens into a brief flicker. He enters the spacious hall, on one
+side of which a marble group is seen representing the “good
+Samaritan;” the appeal comes home to his heart, and he could cry, but
+hunger has dried up his tears.
+
+I will not follow him in his weary pilgrimage among the liveried
+menials of the institution, nor shall I harass my reader by the cold
+sarcasm of those who tell him that he has mistaken the object of the
+association: that their care is not with life, but death; that the
+breathing man, alive, but on the verge of dissolution, has no interest
+for _them_; for _their_ humanity waits patiently for his corpse. It
+is true, one pennyworth of bread--a meal your dog would turn
+from--would rescue this man from death and self-murder. But what of
+that--how could such humble, unobtrusive charity inhabit a palace? How
+could it pretend to porters and waiting-men, to scores of officials,
+visiting doctors, and physicians in ordinary? By what trickery could a
+royal patron be brought to head the list of benefactors to a scheme so
+unassuming? Where would be the stomach-pumps and the galvanic
+batteries for science?--where the newspaper reports of a miraculous
+recovery?--where the magazine records of suspended animation?--or
+where that pride and pomp and circumstance of enlightened humanity
+which calls in chemistry to aid charity, and makes electricity the
+test of benevolence? No, no; the hungry man might be fed, and go his
+way unseen, untrumpeted--there would be no need of this specious
+plausibility of humanity which proclaims aloud--Go and drown yourself;
+stand self-accused and condemned before your Creator; and if there be
+but a spark of vitality yet remaining, we’ll call you back to life
+again--a starving suicide! No effort shall be spared--messengers shall
+fly in every direction for assistance--the most distinguished
+physician--processes the most costly--experiments the most
+difficult--care unremitting--zeal untiring, are all yours. Cordials,
+the cost of which had sustained you in life for weeks long, are now
+poured down your unconscious throat--the limbs that knew no other bed
+than straw, are wrapped in heated blankets--the hand stretched out in
+vain for alms, is now rubbed by the jewelled fingers of a west-end
+physician.
+
+Men, men, is this charity?--is the fellow-creature nought?--is the
+corpse everything?--is a penny too much to sustain life?--is a hundred
+pounds too little to restore it? Away with your stuccoed walls and
+pillared corridors--support the starving, and you will need but little
+science to reanimate the suicide.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Nuts and Nutcrackers, by Charles James Lever
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NUTS AND NUTCRACKERS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 31685-0.txt or 31685-0.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/6/8/31685/
+
+Produced by Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/31685-0.zip b/31685-0.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c19dea7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-0.zip
diff --git a/31685-8.txt b/31685-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c9651b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,6806 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Nuts and Nutcrackers, by Charles James Lever
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Nuts and Nutcrackers
+
+Author: Charles James Lever
+
+Illustrator: Phiz.
+
+Release Date: March 18, 2010 [EBook #31685]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NUTS AND NUTCRACKERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+                            [Illustration]
+
+                         NUTS AND NUTCRACKERS.
+
+
+    "The world's my filbert which with my crackers I will open."
+
+                                      SHAKSPEARE.
+
+
+    "The priest calls the lawyer a cheat,
+      And the lawyer beknaves the divine;
+    And the statesman, because he's so great,
+      Thinks his trade's as honest as mine."
+
+                                      BEGGAR'S OPERA.
+
+
+    "Hard texts are _nuts_ (I will not call them cheaters,)
+    Whose shells do keep their kernels from the eaters;
+    Open the shells, and you shall have the meat:
+    They here are brought for you to crack and eat."
+
+                                      JOHN BUNYAN.
+
+
+                        ILLUSTRATED BY "PHIZ."
+
+                            Second Edition.
+
+                                LONDON:
+                 WM. S. ORR AND CO., PATERNOSTER ROW;
+                 WILLIAM CURRY, JUN., AND CO., DUBLIN.
+
+                               MDCCCXLV.
+
+
+                                LONDON:
+              BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                       PAGE
+
+AN OPENING NUT                                          vii
+
+A NUT FOR MEN OF GENIUS                                   1
+
+A NUT FOR CORONERS                                       15
+
+A NUT FOR "TOURISTS"                                     19
+
+A NUT FOR LEGAL FUNCTIONARIES                            22
+
+A NUT FOR "ENDURING AFFECTION"                           31
+
+A NUT FOR THE POLICE AND SIR PETER                       37
+
+A NUT FOR THE BUDGET                                     44
+
+A NUT FOR REPEAL                                         49
+
+A NUT FOR NATIONAL PRIDE                                 55
+
+A NUT FOR DIPLOMATISTS                                   64
+
+A NUT FOR FOREIGN TRAVEL                                 71
+
+A NUT FOR DOMESTIC HAPPINESS                             77
+
+A NUT FOR LADIES BOUNTIFUL                               82
+
+A NUT FOR THE PRIESTS                                    85
+
+A NUT FOR LEARNED SOCIETIES                              87
+
+A NUT FOR THE LAWYERS                                    92
+
+A NUT FOR THE IRISH                                      99
+
+A NUT FOR VICEREGAL PRIVILEGES                          102
+
+RICH AND POOR--POUR ET CONTRE                           109
+
+A NUT FOR ST. PATRICK'S NIGHT                           114
+
+A NUT FOR "GENTLEMAN JOCKS"                             119
+
+A NUT FOR YOUNGER SONS                                  123
+
+A NUT FOR THE PENAL CODE                                128
+
+A NUT FOR THE OLD                                       131
+
+A NUT FOR THE ART UNION                                 133
+
+A NUT FOR THE KINGSTOWN RAILWAY                         137
+
+A NUT FOR THE DOCTORS                                   141
+
+A NUT FOR THE ARCHITECTS                                145
+
+A NUT FOR A NEW COLONY                                  148
+
+A "SWEET" NUT FOR THE YANKEES                           153
+
+A NUT FOR THE SEASON--JULLIEN'S QUADRILLES              157
+
+A NUT FOR "ALL IRELAND"                                 163
+
+A NUT FOR "A NEW COMPANY"                               168
+
+A NUT FOR "THE POLITICAL ECONOMISTS"                    175
+
+A NUT FOR "GRAND DUKES"                                 180
+
+A NUT FOR THE EAST INDIA DIRECTORS                      183
+
+A FILBERT FOR SIR ROBERT PEEL                           185
+
+"THE INCOME TAX"                                        186
+
+A NUT FOR THE "BELGES"                                  189
+
+A NUT FOR WORKHOUSE CHAPLAINS                           192
+
+A NUT FOR THE "HOUSE"                                   197
+
+A NUT FOR "LAW REFORM"                                  200
+
+A NUT FOR "CLIMBING BOYS"                               203
+
+A NUT FOR "THE SUBDIVISION OF LABOUR"                   206
+
+A NUT FOR A "NEW VERDICT"                               212
+
+A NUT FOR THE REAL "LIBERATOR"                          216
+
+A NUT FOR "HER MAJESTY'S SERVANTS"                      221
+
+A NUT FOR THE LANDLORD AND TENANT COMMISSION            225
+
+A NUT FOR THE HUMANE SOCIETY                            228
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR MEN OF GENIUS.
+
+
+If Providence, instead of a vagabond, had made me a justice of the
+peace, there is no species of penalty I would not have enforced
+against a class of offenders, upon whom it is the perverted taste of
+the day to bestow wealth, praise, honour, and reputation; in a word,
+upon that portion of the writers for our periodical literature whose
+pastime it is by high-flown and exaggerated pictures of society,
+places, and amusements, to mislead the too credulous and believing
+world; who, in the search for information and instruction, are but
+reaping a barren harvest of deceit and illusion.
+
+Every one is loud and energetic in his condemnation of a bubble
+speculation; every one is severe upon the dishonest features of
+bankruptcy, and the demerits of un-trusty guardianship; but while the
+law visits these with its pains and penalties, and while heavy
+inflictions follow on those breaches of trust, which affect our
+pocket, yet can he "walk scatheless," with port erect and visage high
+who, for mere amusement--for the passing pleasure of the moment--or,
+baser still, for certain pounds per sheet, can, present us with the
+air-drawn daggers of a dyspeptic imagination for the real woes of
+life, or paint the most common-place and tiresome subjects with
+colours so vivid and so glowing as to persuade the unwary reader that
+a paradise of pleasure and enjoyment, hitherto unknown, is open before
+him. The treadmill and the ducking-stool, "_me judice_," would no
+longer be tenanted by rambling gipsies or convivial rioters, but would
+display to the admiring gaze of an assembled multitude the
+aristocratic features of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, the dark whiskers
+of D'Israeli, the long and graceful proportions of Hamilton Maxwell,
+or the portly paunch and melo-dramatic frown of that right pleasant
+fellow, Henry Addison himself.
+
+You cannot open a newspaper without meeting some narrative of what, in
+the phrase of the day, is denominated an "attempted imposition." Count
+Skryznyzk, with black moustachoes and a beard to match, after being
+the lion of Lord Dudley Stuart's parties, and the delight of a certain
+set of people in the West-end--who, when they give a tea-party, call
+it a _soir�e_, and deem it necessary to have either a Hindoo or a
+Hottentot, a Pole, or a Piano-player, to interest their guests--was
+lately brought up before Sir Peter Laurie, charged by 964 with
+obtaining money under false pretences, and sentenced to three months'
+imprisonment and hard labour at the treadmill.
+
+The charge looks a grave one, good reader, and perhaps already some
+notion is trotting through your head about forgery or embezzlement;
+you think of widows rendered desolate, or orphans defrauded; you
+lament over the hard-earned pittance of persevering industry lost to
+its possessor; and, in your heart, you acknowledge that there may have
+been some cause for the partition of Poland, and that the Emperor of
+the Russias, like another monarch, may not be half so black as he is
+painted. But spare your honest indignation; our unpronounceable friend
+did none of these. No; the head and front of his offending was simply
+exciting the sympathies of a feeling world for his own deep wrongs;
+for the fate of his father, beheaded in the Grand Place at Warsaw; for
+his four brothers, doomed never to see the sun in the dark mines of
+Tobolsk; for his beautiful sister, reared in the lap of luxury and
+wealth, wandering houseless and an outcast around the palaces of St.
+Petersburg, wearying heaven itself with cries for mercy on her
+banished brethren; and last of all, for himself--he, who at the battle
+of Pultowa led heaven-knows how many and how terrific charges of
+cavalry,--whose breast was a galaxy of orders only outnumbered by his
+wounds--that he should be an exile, without friends, and without home!
+In a word, by a beautiful and highly-wrought narrative, that drew
+tears from the lady and ten shillings from the gentleman of the house,
+he became amenable to our law as a swindler and an impostor, simply
+because his narrative was a fiction.
+
+In the name of all justice, in the name of truth, of honesty, and fair
+dealing, I ask you, is this right? or, if the treadmill be the fit
+reward for such powers as his, what shall we say, what shall we do,
+with all the popular writers of the day? How many of Bulwer's stories
+are facts? What truth is there in James? Is that beautiful creation of
+Dickens, "Poor Nell," a real or a fictitious character? And is the
+offence, after all, merely in the manner, and not the matter, of the
+transgression? Is it that, instead of coming before the world printed,
+puffed, and hot-pressed by the gentlemen of the Row, he ventured to
+edite himself, and, instead of the trade, make his tongue the medium
+of publication? And yet, if speech be the crime, what say you to
+Macready, and with what punishment are you prepared to visit him who
+makes your heart-strings vibrate to the sorrows of _Virginius_, or
+thrills your very blood with the malignant vengeance of _Iago_? Is
+what is permissible in Covent Garden, criminal in the city? or,
+stranger still, is there a punishment at the one place, and praise at
+the other? Or is it the costume, the foot-lights, the orange-peel, and
+the sawdust--are they the terms of the immunity? Alas, and alas! I
+believe they are.
+
+Burke said, "The age of chivalry is o'er;" and I believe the age of
+poetry has gone with it; and if Homer himself were to chant an Iliad
+down Fleet Street, I'd wager a crown that 964 would take him up for a
+ballad-singer.
+
+But a late case occurs to me. A countryman of mine, one Bernard
+Cavanagh, doubtless, a gentleman of very good connections, announced
+some time ago that he had adopted a new system of diet, which was
+neither more nor less than going without any food. Now, Mr. Cavanagh
+was a stout gentleman, comely and plump to look at, who conversed
+pleasantly on the common topics of the day, and seemed, on the whole,
+to enjoy life pretty much like other people. He was to be seen for a
+shilling--children half-price; and although Englishmen have read of
+our starving countrymen for the last century and a-half, yet their
+curiosity to see one, to look at him, to prod him with their
+umbrellas, punch him with their knuckles, and otherwise test his
+vitality, was such, that they seemed just as much alive as though the
+phenomenon was new to them. The consequence was, Mr. Cavanagh, whose
+cook was on board wages, and whose establishment was of the least
+expensive character, began to wax rich. Several large towns and
+cities, in different parts of the empire, requested him to visit them;
+and Joe Hume suggested that the corporation of London should offer him
+ten thousand pounds for his secret, merely for the use of the livery.
+In fact, Cavanagh was now the cry, and as Barney appeared to grow fat
+on fasting, his popularity knew no bounds. Unfortunately, however,
+ambition, the bane of so many other great men, numbered him also among
+its victims. Had he been content with London as the sphere of his
+triumphs and teetotalism, there is no saying how long he might have
+gone on starving with satisfaction. Whether it is that the people are
+less observant there, or more accustomed to see similar exhibitions,
+I cannot tell; but true it is they paid their shillings, felt his
+ribs, walked home, and pronounced Barney a most exemplary Irishman.
+But not content with the capital, he must make a tour in the
+provinces, and accordingly went starring it about through Leeds,
+Birmingham, Manchester, and all the other manufacturing towns, as if
+in mockery of the poor people who did not know the secret how to live
+without food.
+
+Mr. Cavanagh was now living--if life it can be called--in one of the
+best hotels, when, actuated by that spirit of inquiry that
+characterises the age, a respectable lady, who kept a boarding-house,
+paid him a visit, to ascertain, if possible, how far his system might
+be made applicable to her guests, who, whatever their afflictions,
+laboured under no such symptoms as his.
+
+She was pleased with Barney,--she patted him with her hand; he was
+round, and plump, and fat, much more so, indeed, than many of her
+daily dinner-party; and had, withal, that kind of joyous, rollicking,
+devil-may-care look, that seems to bespeak good condition;--but this
+the poor lady, of course, did not know to be an inherent property in
+Pat, however poor his situation.
+
+After an interview of an hour long she took her leave, not exhibiting
+the usual satisfaction of other visitors, but with a dubious look and
+meditative expression, that betokened a mind not made up, and a heart
+not at ease; she was clearly not content, perhaps the abortive effort
+to extract a confession from Mr. Cavanagh might be the cause, or
+perhaps she felt like many respectable people whose curiosity is only
+the advanced guard to their repentance, and who never think that in
+any exhibition they get the worth of their money. This might be the
+case, for as fasting is a negative process, there is really little to
+see in the performer. Had it been the man that eats a sheep; "_� la
+bonne heure!_" you have something for your money there: and I can even
+sympathize with the French gentleman who follows Van Amburgh to this
+day, in the agreeable hope, to use his own words, of "assisting at the
+_soir�e_, when the lions shall eat Mr. Van Amburgh." This, if not
+laudable is at least intelligible. But to return, the lady went her
+way, not indeed on hospitable thoughts intent, but turning over in her
+mind various theories about abstinence, and only wishing she had the
+whole of the Cavanagh family for boarders at a guinea a-week.
+
+Late in the evening of the same day this estimable lady, whose
+inquiries into the properties of gastric juice, if not as scientific,
+were to the full as enthusiastic as those of Bostock or Tiedeman
+himself, was returning from an early tea, through an unfrequented
+suburb of Manchester, when suddenly her eye fell upon Bernard
+Cavanagh, seated in a little shop--a dish of sausages and a plate of
+ham before him, while a frothing cup of porter ornamented his right
+hand. It was true, he wore a patch above his eye, a large beard, and
+various other disguises, but they served him not: she knew him at
+once. The result is soon told: the police were informed; Mr. Cavanagh
+was captured; the lady gave her testimony in a crowded court, and he
+who lately was rolling on the wheel of fortune, was now condemned to
+foot it on a very different wheel, and all for no other cause than
+that he could not live without food.
+
+The magistrate, who was eloquent on the occasion, called him an
+impostor; designating by this odious epithet, a highly-wrought and
+well-conceived work of imagination. Unhappy Defoe, your Robinson
+Crusoe might have cost you a voyage across the seas; your man Friday
+might have been a black Monday to you had you lived in our days. 964
+is a severer critic than _The Quarterly_, and his judgment more
+irrevocable.
+
+[Illustration: The Man of Genius.]
+
+We have never heard of any one who, discovering the fictitious
+character of a novel he had believed as a fact, waited on the
+publisher with a modest request that his money might be returned to
+him, being obtained under false pretences; much less of his applying
+to his worship for a warrant against G. P. R. James, Esq., or Harrison
+Ainsworth, for certain imaginary woes and unreal sorrows depicted in
+their writings: yet the conduct of the lady towards Mr. Cavanagh was
+exactly of this nature. How did his appetite do her any possible
+disservice? what sins against her soul were contained in his sausages?
+and yet she must appeal to the justice as an injured woman: Cavanagh
+had imposed upon her--she was wronged because he was hungry. All his
+narrative, beautifully constructed and artfully put together, went for
+nothing; his look, his manner, his entertaining anecdotes, his
+fascinating conversation, his time--from ten in the morning till eight
+in the evening--went all for nothing: this really is too bad. Do we
+ask of every author to be the hero he describes? Is Bulwer, Pelham,
+and Paul Clifford, Eugene Aram, and the Lady of Lyons? Is James, Mary
+of Burgundy, Darnley, the Gipsy, and Corse de Leon? Is Dickens, Sam
+Weller, Quilp, and Barnaby Rudge?--to what absurdities will this lead
+us! and yet Bernard Cavanagh was no more guilty than any of these
+gentlemen. He was, if I may so express it, a pictorial--an ideal
+representation of a man that fasted: he narrated all the sensations
+want of food suggests; its dreamy debility, its languid stupor, its
+painful suffering, its stage of struggle and suspense, ending in a
+victory, where the mind, the conqueror over the baser nature, asserts
+its proud and glorious supremacy in the triumph of volition; and for
+this beautiful creation of his brain he is sent to the treadmill, as
+though, instead of a poet, he had been a pickpocket.
+
+If Bulwer be a baronet; if Dickens' bed-room be papered with
+bank-debentures; then do I proclaim it loudly before the world,
+Bernard Cavanagh is an injured man: you are either absurd in one case,
+or unjust in the other; take your choice. Ship off Sir Edward to the
+colonies; send James to Swan River; let Lady Blessington card wool, or
+Mrs. Norton pound oyster-shells; or else we call upon you, give Mr.
+Cavanagh freedom of the guild; call him the author of "The Hungry
+One;" let him be courted and _f�ted_--you may ask him to dinner with
+an easy conscience, and invite him to tea without remorse. Let a
+Whig-radical borough solicit him to represent it; place him at the
+right hand of Lord John; let his picture be exhibited in the
+print-shops, and let the cut of his coat and the tie of his cravat be
+so much in vogue, that bang-ups _� la_ Barney shall be the only things
+seen in Bond-street: one course or the other you must take. If the
+mountain will not go to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain: or
+in other words, if Bulwer descend not to Barney, Barney must mount up
+to Bulwer. It is absurd, it is worse than absurd, to pretend that he
+who so thoroughly sympathises with his hero, as to embody him in his
+own thoughts and acts, his look, his dress, and his demeanour, that
+he, I say, who so penetrated with the impersonation of a part, finds
+the pen too weak, and the press too slow, to picture forth his vivid
+creations, should be less an object of praise, of honour, and
+distinction, than the indolent denizen of some drawing-room, who, in
+slippered ease, dictates his shadowy and imperfect conceptions--visions
+of what he never felt, dreamy representations of unreality.
+
+"The poet," as the word implies, is the maker or the creator; and
+however little of the higher attributes of what the world esteems as
+poetry the character would seem to possess, he who invents a
+personage, the conformity of whose traits to the rule of life is
+acknowledged for its truth, he, I say, is a poet. Thus, there is
+poetry in Sancho Panza, Falstaff, Dugald Dalgetty, and a hundred other
+similar impersonations; and why not in Bernard Cavanagh?
+
+Look for a moment at the effects of your system. The Caraccis, we are
+told, spent their boyish years drawing rude figures with chalk on the
+doors and even the walls of the palaces of Rome: here the first germs
+of their early talent displayed themselves; and in those bold
+conceptions of youthful genius were seen the first dawnings of a power
+that gave glory to the age they lived in. Had Sir Peter Laurie been
+their cotemporary, had 964 been loose in those days, they would have
+been treated with a trip to the mill, and their taste for design
+cultivated by the low diet of a penitentiary. You know not what
+budding genius you have nipped with this abominable system: you think
+not of the early indications of mind and intellect you may be
+consigning to prison: or is it after all, that the matter-of-fact
+spirit of the age has sapped the very vitals of our law-code, and that
+in your utilitarian zeal you have doomed to death all that bears the
+stamp of imagination? if this be indeed your object, have a good
+heart, encourage 964, and you'll not leave a novelist in the land.
+
+Good reader, I ask your pardon for all this honest indignation; I know
+it is in vain: I cannot reform our jurisprudence; and our laws, like
+the Belgian revolution, must be regarded "_comme un fait accompli_;"
+in other words, what can't be cured must be endured. Let us leave then
+our friend the Pole to perform his penance; let us say adieu to
+Barney, who is at this moment occupying a suite of apartments in the
+Penitentiary, and let us turn to the reverse of the medal, I mean to
+those who would wile us away by false promises and flattering speeches
+to entertain such views of life as are not only impossible but
+inconsistent, thus rendering our path here devoid of interest and of
+pleasure, while compared with the extravagant creations of their own
+erring fancies. Yes, princes may be trusted, but put not your faith in
+periodicals. Let no pictorial representations of Alpine scenery, under
+the auspices of Colburn or Bentley, seduce you from the comforts of
+your hearth and home: let no enthusiastic accounts of military
+greatness, no peninsular pleasures, no charms of campaigning life,
+induce you to change your garb of country gentleman for the livery of
+the Horse-Guards,--"making the green one red."
+
+Be not mystified by Maxwell, nor lured by Lorrequer; let no panegyrics
+of pipe-clay and the brevet seduce you from the peaceful path in life;
+let not Marryat mar your happiness by the glories of those who dwell
+in the deep waters; let not Wilson persuade you that the "Lights and
+Shadows of Scottish Life" have any reference to that romantic people,
+who betake themselves to their native mountains with a little oatmeal
+for food and a little sulphur for friction; do not believe one
+syllable about the girls of the west; trust not in the representations
+of their blue eyes, nor of their trim ankles peering beneath a jupe of
+scarlet--we can vouch it is true, for the red petticoat, but the rest
+is apocryphal. Fly, we warn you, from Summers in Germany, Evenings in
+Brittany, Weeks on the Rhine; away with tours, guide-books, and all
+the John Murrayisms of travels. A plague upon Egypt! travellers have a
+proverbial liberty of conscience, and the farther they go, the more
+does it seem to stretch; not that near home matters are much better,
+for our "Wild Sports" in Achill are as romantic as those in Africa,
+and the Complete Angler is a complete humbug.
+
+There is no faith--no principle in any of these men. The grave writer,
+the stern moralist, the uncompromising advocate of the inflexible rule
+of right, is a dandy with essenced locks, loose trousers, and looser
+morals, who breakfasts at four in the afternoon, and spends his
+evenings among the side scenes of the opera; the merry writer of whims
+and oddities, who shakes his puns about like pepper from a
+pepper-castor, is a misanthropic, melancholy gentleman, of mournful
+look and unhappy aspect: the advocate of field-sports, of all the
+joyous excitement of the hunting-field, and the bold dangers of the
+chase, is an asthmatic sexagenarian, with care in his heart and gout
+in his ankles; and lastly, he who lives but in the horrors of a
+charnel-house, whose gloomy mind finds no pleasure save in the dark
+and dismal pictures of crime and suffering, of lingering agony, or
+cruel death, is a fat, round, portly, comely gentleman, with a laugh
+like Falstaff, and a face whose every lineament and feature seems to
+exhale the merriment of a jocose and happy temperament. I speak not of
+the softer sex, many of whose productions would seem to have but
+little sympathy with themselves; but once for all, I would ask you
+what reliance, what faith can you place in any of them? Is it to the
+denizen of a coal mine you apply for information about the Nassau
+balloon? Do you refer a disputed point in dress to an Englishman, in
+climate to a Laplander, in politeness to a Frenchman, or in
+hospitality to a Belgian? or do you not rather feel that these are not
+exactly their attributes, and that you are moving the equity for a
+case at common law? exactly in the same way, and for the same reason,
+we repeat it, put not your faith in periodicals, nor in the writers
+thereof.
+
+How ridiculous would it appear if the surgeon-general were to open a
+pleading, or charge a jury in the Queen's Bench, while the
+solicitor-general was engaged in taking up the femoral artery! What
+would you say if the Archbishop of Canterbury were to preside over the
+artillery-practice at Woolwich, while the Commander of the Forces
+delivered a charge to the clergy of the diocese? How would you look if
+Justice Pennefather were to speak at a repeal meeting, and Daniel
+O'Connell to conduct himself like a loyal and discreet citizen? Would
+you not at once say the whole world is in masquerade? and would you
+not be justified in the remark? And yet this it is which is exactly
+taking place before your eyes in the wide world of letters. The
+illiterate and unreflecting man of under-bred habits and degenerate
+tastes will write nothing but a philosophic novel; the denizen of the
+Fleet, or the Queen's Bench, publishes an ascent of Mont Blanc, with
+a glowing description of the delights of liberty; the nobleman writes
+slang; the starving author, with broken boots and patched
+continuations, will not indite a name undignified by a title; and
+after all this, will you venture to tell me that these men are not
+indictable by the statute for obtaining money under false pretences?
+
+I have run myself out of breath; and now, if you will allow me a few
+moments, I will tell you what, perhaps, I ought to have done earlier
+in this article, namely, its object.
+
+It is a remarkable feature in the complex and difficult machinery of
+our society, that while crime and the law code keep steadily on the
+increase, moving in parallel lines one beside the other, certain
+prejudices, popular fallacies--nuts, as we have called them at the
+head of this paper--should still disgrace our social system; and that,
+however justice may be administered in our courts of law, in the
+private judicature of our own dwellings we observe an especial system
+of jurisprudence, marked by injustice and by wrong. To endeavour to
+depict some instances of this, I have set about my present
+undertaking. To disabuse the public mind as to the error, that what is
+punishable in one can be praiseworthy in another; and what is
+excellent in the court can be execrable in the city. Such is my
+object, such my hope. Under this title I shall endeavour to touch upon
+the undue estimation in which we hold certain people and places--the
+unfair depreciation of certain sects and callings. Not confining
+myself to home, I shall take the habits of my countrymen on the
+Continent, whether in their search for climate, economy, education, or
+enjoyment; and, as far as my ability lies, hold the mirror up to
+nature, while I extend the war-cry of my distinguished countrymen,
+not asking "justice for Ireland" alone, but "justice for the whole
+human race." For the gaoler as for the guardsman, for the steward of
+the Holyhead as for him of the household; from the Munster
+king-at-arms to the monarch of the Cannibal Island--"_nihil � me
+alienum puto_;" from the priest to the plenipotentiary; from Mr.
+Arkins to Abd-el-Kader: my sympathy extends to all.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR CORONERS.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+I had nearly attained to man's estate before I understood the nature
+of a coroner. I remember, when a child, to have seen a coloured print
+from a well-known picture of the day, representing the night-mare. It
+was a horrible representation of a goblin shape of hideous aspect,
+that sat cowering upon the bosom of a sleeping figure, on whose white
+features a look of painful suffering was depicted, while the clenched
+hands and drawn-up feet seemed to struggle with convulsive agony.
+Heaven knows how or when the thought occurred to me, but I clearly
+recollect my impression that this goblin was a coroner. Some confused
+notion about sitting on a corpse as one of his attributes had,
+doubtless, suggested the idea; and certainly nothing contributed to
+increase the horror of suicide in my eyes so much as the reflection,
+that the grim demon already mentioned had some function to discharge
+on the occasion.
+
+When, after the lapse of years, I heard that the eloquent and gifted
+member for Finsbury was a being of this order, although I knew by that
+time the injustice of my original prejudices, yet, I confess I could
+not look at him in the house, without a thought of my childish
+fancies, and an endeavour to trace in his comely features some faint
+resemblance to the figure of the night-mare.
+
+This strange impression of my infancy recurred strongly to my mind a
+few days since, on reading a newspaper account of a sudden death.--The
+case was simply that of a gentleman who, in the bosom of his family,
+became suddenly seized with illness, and after a few hours expired.
+What was their surprise! what their horror! to find, that no sooner
+was the circumstance known, than the house was surrounded by a mob,
+policemen were stationed at the doors, and twelve of the great
+unwashed, with a coroner at their head, forced their entry into the
+house of mourning, to deliberate on the cause of death. I can
+perfectly understand the value of this practice in cases where either
+suspicion has attached, or where the circumstances of the decease, as
+to time and place, would indicate a violent death; but where a person,
+surrounded by his children, living in all the quiet enjoyment of an
+easy and undisturbed existence, drops off by some one of the ills that
+flesh is heir to, only a little more rapidly than his neighbour at
+next door, why this should be a case for a coroner and his gang, I
+cannot, for the life of me, conceive. In the instance I allude to, the
+family offered the fullest information: they explained that the
+deceased had been liable for years to an infirmity likely to terminate
+in this way. The physician who attended him corroborated the
+statement; and, in fact, it was clear the case was one of those almost
+every-day occurrences where the thread of life is snapped, not
+unravelled. This, however, did not satisfy the coroner, who had, as he
+expressed it, a "duty to perform," and, who, certainly had five
+guineas for his fee: he was a "medical coroner," too, and therefore he
+would examine for himself. Thus, in the midst of the affliction and
+bereavement of a desolate family, the frightful detail of an inquest,
+with all its attendant train of harrowing and heart-rending inquiries,
+is carried on, simply because it is permissible by the law, and the
+coroner may enter where the king cannot.
+
+We are taught in the litany to pray against sudden death; but up to
+this moment I never knew it was illegal. Dreadful afflictions as
+apoplexy and aneurism are, it remained for our present civilisation to
+make them punishable by a statute. The march of intellect, not
+satisfied with directing us in life, must go a step farther and teach
+us how to die. Fashionable diseases the world has been long acquainted
+with, but an "illegal inflammation," and a "criminal hemorrhage" have
+been reserved for the enlightened age we live in.
+
+Newspapers will no longer inform us, in the habitual phrase, that Mr.
+Simpkins died suddenly at his house at Hampstead; but, under the head
+of "Shocking outrage," we shall read, "that after a long life of great
+respectability and the exhibition of many virtues, this unfortunate
+gentleman, it is hoped in a moment of mental alienation, went off with
+a disease of the heart. The affliction of his surviving relatives at
+this frightful act may be conceived, but cannot be described. His
+effects, according to the statute, have been confiscated to the crown,
+and a deodand of fifty shillings awarded on the apothecary who
+attended him. It is hoped, that the universal execration which attends
+cases of this nature may deter others from the same course; and, we
+confess, our observations are directed with a painful, but we trust, a
+powerful interest to certain elderly gentlemen in the neighbourhood of
+Islington." _Verb. sat._
+
+Under these sad circumstances it behoves us to look a little about,
+and provide against such a contingency. It is then earnestly
+recommended to heads of families, that when registering the birth of a
+child, they should also include some probable or possible malady of
+which he may, could, would, should, or ought to die, in the course of
+time. This will show, by incontestable evidence, that the event was at
+least anticipated, and being done at the earliest period of life, no
+reproach can possibly lie for want of premeditation. The register
+might run thus:--
+
+Giles Tims, son of Thomas and Mary Tims, born on the 9th of June, Kent
+street, Southwark--dropsy, typhus, or gout in the stomach.
+
+It by no means follows, that he must wait for one or other of these
+maladies to carry him off. Not at all; he may range at will through
+the whole practice of physic, and adopt his choice. The registry only
+goes to show, that he does not mean to sneak out of the world in any
+under-bred way, nor bolt out of life with the abrupt precipitation of
+a Frenchman after a dinner party. I have merely thrown out this hint
+here as a warning to my many friends, and shall now proceed to other
+and more pleasing topics.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR "TOURISTS."
+
+
+Among the many incongruities of that composite piece of architecture,
+called John Bull, there is nothing more striking than the contrast
+between his thorough nationality and his unbounded admiration for
+foreigners. Now, although we may not entirely sympathize with, we can
+understand and appreciate this feature of his character, and see how
+he gratifies his very pride itself, in the attentions and civilities
+he bestows upon strangers. The feeling is intelligible too, because
+Frenchmen, Germans, and even Italians, notwithstanding the many points
+of disparity between us, have always certain qualities well worthy of
+respect, if not of imitation. France has a great literature, a name
+glorious in history, a people abounding in intelligence, skill, and
+invention; in fact, all the attributes that make up a great nation.
+Germany has many of these, and though she lack the brilliant fancy,
+the sparkling wit of her neighbour, has still a compensating fund in
+the rich resources of her judgment, and the profound depths of her
+scholarship. Indeed, every continental country has its lesson for our
+benefit, and we would do well to cultivate the acquaintance of
+strangers, not only to disseminate more just views of ourselves and
+our institutions, but also for the adoption of such customs as seem
+worthy of imitation, and such habits as may suit our condition in
+life; while such is the case as regards those countries high in the
+scale of civilisation, we would, by no means, extend the rule to
+others less happily constituted, less benignly gifted. The Carinthian
+boor with his garment of sheep-wool, or the Laplander with his snow
+shoes and his hood of deerskin, may be both very natural objects of
+curiosity, but by no means subjects of imitation. This point will
+doubtless be conceded at once; and now, will any one tell me for what
+cause, under what pretence, and with what pretext are we civil to the
+Yankees?--not for their politeness, not for their literature, not for
+any fascination of their manner, nor any charm of their address, not
+for any historic association, not for any halo that the glorious past
+has thrown around the common-place monotony of the present, still less
+for any romantic curiosity as to their lives and habits--for in this
+respect all other savage nations far surpass them. What then is, or
+what can be the cause?
+
+Of all the lions that caprice and the whimsical absurdity of a
+second-rate set in fashion ever courted and entertained, never had any
+one less pretensions to the civility he received than the author of
+'Pencillings by the Way'--poor in thought, still poorer in expression,
+without a spark of wit, without a gleam of imagination--a fourth-rate
+looking man, and a fifth-rate talker, he continued to receive the
+homage we were wont to bestow upon a Scott, and even charily extended
+to a Dickens. His writings the very slip-slop of "commerage," the
+tittle-tattle of a Sunday paper, dressed up in the cant of Kentucky;
+the very titles, the contemptible affectation of unredeemed twaddle,
+'Pencillings by the Way!' 'Letters from under a Bridge!' Good lack!
+how the latter name is suggestive of eaves-dropping and listening; and
+how involuntarily we call to mind those chance expressions of his
+partners in the dance, or his companions at the table, faithfully
+recorded for the edification of the free-born Americans, who, while
+they ridicule our institutions, endeavour to pantomime our manners.
+
+For many years past a number of persons have driven a thriving trade
+in a singular branch of commerce, no less than buying up cast court
+dresses and second-hand uniforms for exportation to the colonies. The
+negroes, it is said, are far prouder of figuring in the tattered and
+tarnished fragments of former greatness, than of wearing the less
+gaudy, but more useful garb, befitting their condition. So it would
+seem our trans-Atlantic friends prefer importing through their agents,
+for that purpose, the abandoned finery of courtly gossip, to the more
+useful but less pretentious apparel, of common-place information. Mr.
+Willis was invaluable for this purpose; he told his friends every
+thing that he heard, and he heard every thing that he could; and, like
+mercy, he enjoyed a duplicate of blessings--for while he was delighted
+in by his own countrymen, he was dined by ours. He scattered his
+autographs, as Feargus O'Connor did franks; he smiled; he ogled; he
+read his own poetry, and went the whole lion with all his might; and
+yet, in the midst of this, a rival starts up equally desirous of court
+secrets, and fifty times as enterprising in their search; he risks his
+liberty, perhaps his life, in the pursuit, and what is his reward? I
+need only tell you his name, and you are answered--I mean the boy
+Jones; not under a bridge, but under a sofa; not in Almacks, obtaining
+it at second-hand, but in Buckingham Palace--into the very apartment
+of the Queen--the adventurous youth has dared to insinuate himself. No
+lady however sends her album to him for some memento of his genius.
+His temple is not defrauded of its curls to grace a locket or a
+medallion; and his reward, instead of a supper at Lady Blessington's,
+is a voyage to Swan River. For my part, I prefer the boy Jones: I like
+his singleness of purpose: I admire his steady perseverance; still,
+however, he had the misfortune to be born in England--his father lived
+near Wapping, and he was ineligible for a lion.
+
+To what other reason than his English growth can be attributed the
+different treatment he has experienced at the hands of the world. The
+similarity between the two characters is most striking. Willis had a
+craving appetite for court gossip, and the tittle-tattle of a palace:
+so had the boy Jones. Willis established himself as a listener in
+society: so did the boy Jones. Willis obtruded himself into places,
+and among people where he had no possible pretension to be seen: so
+did the boy Jones. Willis wrote letters from under a bridge: the boy
+Jones eat mutton chops under a sofa.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR LEGAL FUNCTIONARIES.
+
+
+The pet profession of England is the bar, and I see many reasons why
+this should be the case. Our law of primogeniture necessitates the
+existence of certain provisions for younger children independently of
+the pittance bestowed on them by their families. The army and the
+navy, the church and the bar, form then the only avenues to fortune
+for the highly born; and one or other of these four roads must be
+adopted by him who would carve out his own career. The bar, for
+many reasons, is the favourite--at least among those who place
+reliance in their intellect. Its estimation is high. It is not
+incompatible but actually favourable to the pursuits of parliament.
+Its rewards are manifold and great; and while there is a sufficiency
+of private ease and personal retirement in its practice, there is also
+enough of publicity for the most ambitiously-minded seeker of the
+world's applause and the world's admiration. Were we only to look back
+upon our history, we should find perhaps that the profession of the
+law would include almost two-thirds of our very greatest men. Astute
+thinkers, deep politicians, eloquent debaters, profound scholars, men
+of wit, as well as men of wisdom, have abounded in its ranks, and
+there is every reason why it should be, as I have called it, the pet
+profession.
+
+[Illustration: Legal Functionaries.]
+
+Having conceded so much, may I now be permitted to take a nearer view
+of those men so highly distinguished: and for this purpose let me turn
+my reader's attention to the practice of a criminal trial. The first
+duty of a good citizen, it will not be disputed, is, as far as in him
+lies, to promote obedience to the law, to repress crime, and bring
+outrage to punishment. No walk in life--no professional career--no
+uniform of scarlet or of black--no freemasonry of craft or calling can
+absolve him from this allegiance to his country. Yet, what do we see?
+The wretch stained with crime--polluted with iniquity--for which,
+perhaps, the statute-book contains neither name nor indictment--whose
+trembling lips are eager to avow that guilt which, by confessing, he
+hopes may alleviate the penalty--this man, I say, is checked in his
+intentions--he is warned not, by any chance expression, to hazard a
+conviction of his crime, and told in the language of the law not to
+criminate himself. But the matter stops not here--justice is an
+inveterate gambler--she is not satisfied when her antagonist throws
+his card upon the table confessing that he has not a trump nor a trick
+in his hand--no, like the most accomplished swindler of Baden or
+Boulogne, she assumes a smile of easy and courteous benignity, and
+says, pooh, pooh! nonsense, my dear friend; you don't know what may
+turn up; your cards are better than you think; don't be faint-hearted;
+don't you see you have the knave of trumps, _i. e._, the cleverest
+lawyer for your defender; a thousand things may happen; I may revoke,
+that is, the indictment may break down; there are innumerable chances
+in your favour, so pluck up your courage and play the game out.
+
+He takes the advice, and however faint-hearted before, he now assumes
+a look of stern courage, or dogged indifference, and resolves to play
+for the stake. He remembers, however, that he is no adept in the game,
+and he addresses himself in consequence to some astute and subtle
+gambler, to whom he commits his cards and his chances. The trepidation
+or the indifference that he manifested before, now gradually gives
+way; and however hopeless he had deemed his case at first, he now
+begins to think that all is not lost. The very way his friend, the
+lawyer, shuffles and cuts the cards, imposes on his credulity and
+suggests a hope. He sees at once that he is a practised hand, and
+almost unconsciously he becomes deeply interested in the changes and
+vacillations of the game he believed could have presented but one
+aspect of fortune.
+
+But the prisoner is not my object: I turn rather to the lawyer. Here
+then do we not see the accomplished gentleman--the finished
+scholar--the man of refinement and of learning, of character and
+station--standing forth the very embodiment of the individual in the
+dock? possessed of all his secrets--animated by the same
+hopes--penetrated by the same fears--he endeavours by all the subtle
+ingenuity, with which craft and habit have gifted him, to confound the
+testimony--to disparage the truth--to pervert the inferences of all
+the witnesses. In fact, he employs all the stratagems of his calling,
+all the ingenuity of his mind, all the subtlety of his wit for the one
+end--that the man he believes in his own heart guilty, may, on the
+oaths of twelve honest men, be pronounced innocent.
+
+From the opening of the trial to its close, this mental gladiator is
+an object of wonder and dread. Scarcely a quality of the human mind is
+not exhibited by him in the brilliant panorama of his intellect. At
+first, the patient perusal of a complex and wordy indictment occupies him
+exclusively: he then proceeds to cross-examine the witnesses--flattering
+this one--brow-beating that--suggesting--insinuating--amplifying, or
+retrenching, as the evidence would seem to favour or be adverse to his
+client. He is alternately confident and doubtful, headlong and
+hesitating--now hurried away on the full tide of his eloquence he
+expatiates in beautiful generalities on the glorious institution of
+trial by jury, and apostrophizes justice; or now, with broken
+utterance and plaintive voice, he supplicates the jury to be patient,
+and be careful in the decision they may come to. He implores them to
+remember that when they leave that court, and return to the happy
+comforts of their home, conscience will follow them, and the
+everlasting question crave for answer within them--were they sure of
+this man's guilt? He teaches them how fallacious are all human tests;
+he magnifies the slightest discrepancy of evidence into a broad and
+sweeping contradiction; and while, with a prophetic menace, he
+pictures forth the undying remorse that pursues him who sheds innocent
+blood, he dismisses them with an affecting picture of mental agony so
+great--of suffering so heart-rending, that, as they retire to the
+jury-room, there is not a man of the twelve that has not more or less
+of a _personal_ interest in the acquittal of the prisoner.
+
+However bad, however depraved the human mind, it still leans to mercy:
+the power to dispose of another man's life is generally sufficient for
+the most malignant spirit in its thirst for vengeance. What then are
+the feelings of twelve calm, and perhaps, benevolent men, at a moment
+like this? The last words of the advocate have thrown a new element
+into the whole case, for independent of their verdict upon the
+prisoner comes now the direct appeal to their own hearts. How will
+they feel when they reflect on this hereafter? I do not wish to pursue
+this further. It is enough for my present purpose that, by the
+ingenuity of the lawyer, criminals have escaped, do escape, and are
+escaping, the just sentence on their crimes. What then is the result?
+the advocate, who up to this moment has maintained a familiar, even a
+friendly, intimacy with his client in the dock, now shrinks from the
+very contamination of his look. He cannot bear that the blood-stained
+fingers should grasp the hem of his garment, and he turns with a sense
+of shame from the expressions of a gratitude that criminate him in his
+own heart. However, this is but a passing sensation; he divests
+himself of his wig and gown, and overwhelmed with congratulations for
+his brilliant success, he springs into his carriage and goes home to
+dress for dinner--for on that day he is engaged to the Chancellor, the
+Bishop of London, or some other great and revered functionary--the
+guardian of the church, or the custodian of conscience.
+
+Now, there is only one thing in all this I would wish to bring
+strikingly before the mind of my readers, and that is, that the
+lawyer, throughout the entire proceeding, was a free and a willing
+agent. There was neither legal nor moral compulsion to urge him on.
+No; it was no intrepid defence against the tyranny of a government or
+the usurpation of power--it was the assertion of no broad and
+immutable principle of truth or justice--it was simply a matter of
+legal acumen and persuasive eloquence, to the amount of fifty pounds
+sterling.
+
+This being admitted, let me now proceed to consider another
+functionary, and observe how far the rule of right is consulted in the
+treatment _he_ meets with--I mean the hangman. You start, good reader,
+and your gesture of impatience denotes the very proposition I would
+come to. I need scarcely remind you, that in our country this
+individual has a kind of prerogative of detestation. All other ranks
+and conditions of men may find a sympathy, or at least a pity,
+somewhere, but for him there is none. No one is sufficiently debased
+to be his companion,--no one so low as to be his associate! Like a
+being of another sphere, he appears but at some frightful moments of
+life, and then only for a few seconds. For the rest he drags on
+existence unseen and unheard of, his very name a thing to tremble at.
+Yet this man, in the duties of his calling, has neither will nor
+choice. The stern agent of the law, he has but one course to follow;
+his path, a narrow one, has no turning to the right or to the left,
+and, save that his ministry is more proximate, is less accessory to
+the death of the criminal than he who signs the warrant for execution.
+In fact, he but answers the responses of the law, and in the loud amen
+of his calling, he only consummates its recorded assertion. How then
+can you reconcile yourself to the fact, that while you overwhelm the
+advocate who converts right into wrong and wrong into right, who
+shrouds the guilty man, and conceals the murderer, with honour, and
+praise, and rank, and riches, and who does this for a brief marked
+fifty pounds, yet have nothing but abhorrence and detestation for the
+impassive agent whose fee is but one. One can help what he does--the
+other cannot. One is an amateur--the other practices in spite of
+himself. One employs every energy of his mind and every faculty of his
+intellect--the other only devotes the ingenuity of his fingers. One
+strains every nerve to let loose a criminal upon the world--the other
+but closes the grave over guilt and crime!
+
+The king's counsel is courted. His society sought for. He is held in
+high esteem, and while his present career is a brilliant one in the
+vista before him, his eyes are fixed upon the ermine. Jack Ketch, on
+the other hand, is shunned. His companionship avoided, and the only
+futurity he can look to, is a life of ignominy, and after it an
+unknown grave. Let him be a man of fascinating manners, highly gifted,
+and agreeable; let him be able to recount with the most melting pathos
+the anecdotes and incidents of his professional career, throwing light
+upon the history of his own period--such as none but himself could
+throw;--let him speak of the various characters that have _passed
+through his hands_, and so to say, "dropped off before him"--yet the
+prejudice of the world is an obstacle not to be overcome; his calling
+is in disrepute, and no personal efforts of his own, no individual
+pre-eminence he may arrive at in his walk, will ever redeem it. Other
+men's estimation increases as they distinguish themselves in life;
+each fresh display of their abilities, each new occasion for the
+exercise of their powers, is hailed with renewed favour and increasing
+flattery; not so he,--every time he appears on his peculiar stage, the
+disgust and detestation is but augmented,--_vires acquirit
+eundo_,--his countenance, as it becomes known, is a signal for the
+yelling execrations of a mob, and the very dexterity with which he
+performs his functions, is made matter of loathing and horror. Were
+his duties such as might be carried on in secret, he might do good by
+stealth and blush to find it fame; but no, his attributes demand the
+noon-day and the multitude--the tragedy he performs in, must be played
+before tens of thousands, by whom his every look is scowled at, his
+every gesture scrutinized. But to conclude,--this man is a necessity
+of our social system. We want him--we require him, and we can't do
+without him. Much of the machinery of a trial might be dispensed with
+or retrenched. His office, however, has nothing superfluous. He is
+part of the machinery of our civilisation, and on what principle do we
+hunt him down like a wild beast to his lair?
+
+Men of rank and title are daily to be found in association, and even
+intimacy with black legs and bruisers, grooms, jockeys, and swindlers;
+yet we never heard that even the Whigs paid any attention to a
+hangman, nor is his name to be found even in the list of a Radical
+viceroy's levee. However, we do not despair. Many prejudices of this
+nature have already given way, and many absurd notions have been
+knocked on the head by a wag of great Daniel's tail. And if our friend
+of Newgate, who is certainly anti-union in his functions, will only
+cry out for Repeal, the justice that is entreated for all Ireland may
+include him in the general distribution of its favours. Poor Theodore
+Hook used to say, that marriage was like hanging, there being only the
+difference of an aspirate between halter and altar.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR "ENDURING AFFECTION."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+My dear reader, if it does not insult your understanding by the
+self-evidence of the query, will you allow me to ask you a
+question--which of the two is more culpable, the man who, finding
+himself in a path of dereliction, arrests himself in his downward
+career, and, by a wonderful effort of self-restraint, stops dead
+short, and will suffer no inducement, no seduction, to lead him one
+step further; or he, who, floating down the stream of his own vicious
+passions, takes the flood-tide of iniquity, and, indifferent to every
+consequence, deaf to all remonstrance, seeks but the indulgence of his
+own egotistical pleasure with a stern determination to pursue it to
+the last? Of course you will say, that he who repents is better than
+he who persists; there is hope for the one, there is none for the
+other. Yet would you believe it, our common law asserts directly the
+reverse, pronouncing the culpability of the former as meriting heavy
+punishment, while the latter is not assailable even by implication.
+
+That I may make myself more clear, I shall give an instance of my
+meaning. Scarcely a week passes over without a trial for breach of
+promise of marriage. Sometimes the gay Lothario, to use the phrase of
+the newspapers, is nineteen, sometimes ninety. In either case his
+conduct is a frightful tissue of perjured vows and base deception. His
+innumerable letters breathing all the tenderness of affectionate
+solicitude, intended but for the eyes of her he loves, are read in
+open court; attested copies are shown to the judge, or handed up to
+the jury-box. The course of his true love is traced from the bubbling
+fountain of first acquaintance to the broad river of his passionate
+devotion. Its rapids and its whirlpools, its placid lakes, its frothy
+torrents, its windings and its turnings, its ebbs and flows, are
+discussed, detailed, and descanted on with all the hacknied precision
+of the craft, as though his heart was a bill of exchange, or the
+current of his affection a disputed mill-stream. And what, after all,
+is this man's crime? knowing that love is the great humanizer of our
+race, and feeling probably how much he stands in need of some
+civilizing process, he attaches himself to some lovely and attractive
+girl, who, in the reciprocity of her affection, is herself benefited
+in a degree equal to him. If the soft solicitude of the tender
+passion, if its ennobling self-respect, if its purifying influence on
+the heart, be good for the man, how much more so is it for the woman.
+If _he_ be taught to feel how the refined enjoyments of an attractive
+girl's mind are superior to the base and degenerate pursuits of
+every-day pleasure, how much more will _she_ learn to prize and
+cultivate those gifts which form the charm of her nature, and breathe
+an incense of fascination around her steps. Here is a compact where
+both parties benefit, but that they may do so to the fullest extent,
+it is necessary that no self-interest, no mean prospect of individual
+advantage, should interfere: all must be pure and confiding.
+Love-making should not be like a game of _�cart�_ with a black leg,
+where you must not rise from the table, till you are ruined. No! it
+should rather resemble a party at picquet with your pretty cousin,
+when the moment either party is tired, you may throw down the cards
+and abandon the game.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+This, then, is the case of the man; he either discovers that on
+further acquaintance the qualities he believed in were not so palpable
+as he thought, or, if there, marred in their exercise by opposing and
+antagonist forces, of whose existence he knew not, he thinks he
+detects discrepancies of temperament, disparities of taste; he
+foresees that in the channel where he looked for deep water there are
+so many rocks, and shoals, and quicksands, that he fears the bark of
+conjugal happiness may be shipwrecked upon them; and, like a prudent
+mariner, he resolves to lighten the craft by "throwing over the lady."
+Had this man married with all these impending suspicions on his mind,
+there is little doubt he would have made a most execrable husband; not
+to mention the danger that his wife should not be all amiable as she
+ought. He stops short--that is, he explains in one, perhaps in a
+series of letters, the reasons of his new course. He expects in return
+the admiration and esteem of her, for whose happiness he is
+legislating, as well as for his own; and oh, base ingratitude! he
+receives a letter from her attorney. The gentlemen of the long
+robe--newspaper again--are in ecstasies. Like devils on the arrival of
+a new soul, they brighten up, rub their hands, and congratulate each
+other on a glorious case. The damages are laid at five thousand
+pounds; and, as the lady is pretty, and can be seen from the jury-box,
+being fathers themselves, they award every sixpence of the money.
+
+I can picture to myself the feeling of the defendant at such a moment
+as this. As he stands alone in conscious honesty, ruminating on his
+fate--alone, I say, for, like Mahomet's coffin, he has no
+resting-place; laughed at by the men, sneered at by the women, mulcted
+of perhaps half his fortune, merely because for the last three years
+of his life he represented himself in every amiable and attractive
+trait that can grace and adorn human nature. Who would wonder, if,
+like the man in the farce, he would register a vow never to do a
+good-natured thing again as long as he lives; or what respect can he
+have for a government or a country, where the church tells him to love
+his neighbour, and the chief justice makes him pay five thousand for
+his obedience.
+
+I now come to the other case, and I shall be very brief in my
+observations. I mean that of him, who equally fond of flirting as the
+former, has yet a lively fear of an action at law. Love-making with
+him is a necessity of his existence--he is an Irishman, perhaps, and
+it is as indispensable to his temperament as train-oil to a Russian.
+He likes sporting, he likes billiards, he likes his club, and he likes
+the ladies; but he has just as much intention of turning a huntsman at
+the one, or a marker at the other, as he has of matrimony. He knows
+life is a chequered table, and that there could be no game if all the
+squares were of one colour. He alternates, therefore, between love and
+sporting, between cards and courtship, and as the pursuit is a
+pleasant one, he resolves never to give up. He waxes old, therefore,
+with young habits, adapting his tastes to his time of life; he does
+not kneel so often at forty as he did at twenty, but he ogles the
+more, and is twice as good-tempered. Not perhaps as ready to fight for
+the lady, but ten times more disposed to flatter her. She may love
+him, or she may not; she may receive him as of old, or she may marry
+another. What matters it to him? All his care is that _he_ shouldn't
+change. All his anxiety is, to let the rupture, if there must be one,
+proceed from _her_ side. He knows in his heart the penalty of breach
+of promise, but he also knows that the Chancellor can issue no
+injunction compelling a man to marry, and that in the courts of love
+the bills are payable at convenience.
+
+Here, then, are the two cases, which, in conformity with the world's
+opinion, I have dignified with every possible term of horror and
+reproach. In the one, the measure of iniquity is but half filled; in
+the other, the cup is overflowing at the brim. For the lesser offence,
+the law awards damages and defamation: for the greater, society
+pronounces an eulogy upon the enduring fidelity of the man thus
+faithful to a first love.
+
+If a person about to buy a horse should, on trying him for an hour or
+two, discover that his temper did not suit him, or that his paces were
+not pleasant, and should in consequence restore him to the owner: and
+if another, on the same errand, should come day after day for weeks,
+or months, or even years, cantering him about over the pavement, and
+scouring over the whole country; his answer being, when asked if he
+intended to purchase, that he liked the horse exceedingly, but that he
+hadn't got a stable, or a saddle, or a curb-chain, or, in fact, some
+one or other of the little necessaries of horse gear; but that when he
+had, that was exactly the animal to suit him--he never was better
+carried in his life. Which of these two, do you esteem the more honest
+and more honourable?
+
+When you make up your mind, please also to make the application.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE POLICE AND SIR PETER.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+When the Belgians, by their most insane revolution, separated from the
+Dutch, they assumed for their national motto the phrase "_L'union fait
+la force_." It is difficult to say whether their rebellion towards the
+sovereign, or this happy employment of a bull, it was, that so
+completely captivated our illustrious countryman, Dan, and excited so
+warmly his sympathies for that beer-drinking population. After all,
+why should one quarrel with them? Nations, like individuals, have
+their coats-of-arms, their heraldic insignia, their blazons, and their
+garters, frequently containing the sharpest sarcasm and most poignant
+satire upon those who bear them; and in this respect Belgium is only
+as ridiculous as the attorney who assumed for his motto "_Fiat
+justitia_." Time was when the chivalrous line of our own garter,
+"_Honi soit qui mal y pense_," brought with it, its bright
+associations of kingly courtesy and maiden bashfulness: but what
+sympathy can such a sentiment find in these degenerate days of
+railroads and rack-rents, canals, collieries, and chain-bridges? No,
+were we now to select an inscription, much rather would we take it
+from the prevailing passion of the age, and write beneath the arms of
+our land the emphatic phrase, "Push along, keep moving."
+
+If Englishmen have failed to exhibit in machinery that triumphant El
+Dorado called perpetual motion, in revenge for their failure, they
+resolved to exemplify it in themselves. The whole nation, from John o'
+Groat to Land's End, from Westport to Dover, are playing
+cross-corners. Every body and every thing is on the move. A
+dwelling-house, like an umbrella, is only a thing used on an
+emergency; and the inhabitants of Great Britain pass their lives amid
+the smoke of steam-boats, or the din and thunder of the
+Grand-Junction. From the highest to the lowest, from the peer to the
+peasant, from the lord of the treasury to the Irish haymaker, it is
+one universal "_chass�e croiss�e_." Not only is this fashionable--for
+we are told by the newspapers how the Queen walks daily with Prince
+Albert on "the slopes"--but stranger still, locomotion is a law of the
+land, and standing still is a statutable offence. The hackney
+coachman, with wearied horses, blown and broken-winded, dares not
+breathe his jaded beasts by a momentary pull-up, for the implacable
+policeman has his eye upon him, and he must simulate a trot, though
+his pace but resemble a stage procession, where the legs are lifted
+without progressing, and some fifty Roman soldiers, in Wellington
+boots, are seen vainly endeavouring to push forward. The
+foot-passenger is no better off--tired perhaps with walking or
+attracted by the fascinations of a print-shop, he stops for an
+instant: alas, that luxury may cost him dear, and for the momentary
+pleasure he may yet have to perform a quick step on the mill. "Move
+on, sir. Keep moving, if you please," sayeth the gentleman in blue;
+and there is something in his manner that won't be denied. It is
+useless to explain that you have nowhere particular to go to, that you
+are an idler and a lounger. The confession is a fatal one; and however
+respectable your appearance, the idea of shoplifting is at once
+associated with your pursuits. Into what inconsistencies do we fall
+while multiplying our laws, for while we insist upon progression, we
+announce a penalty for vagrancy. The first principle of the British
+constitution, however, is "keep moving," and "I would recommend you to
+go with the tide."
+
+Thank heaven, I have reached to man's estate--although with a heavy
+heart I acknowledge it is the only estate I have or ever shall attain
+to; for if I were a child I don't think I should close my eyes at
+night from the fear of one frightful and terrific image. As it is, I
+am by no means over courageous, and it requires all the energy I can
+summon to combat my terrors. You ask me, in all likelihood, what this
+fearful thing can be? Is it the plague or the cholera? is it the dread
+of poverty and the new poor-law? is it that I may be impressed as a
+seaman, or mistaken for a Yankee? or is it some unknown and visionary
+terror, unseen, unheard of, but foreshadowed by a diseased
+imagination; No; nothing of the kind. It is a palpable, sentient,
+existent thing--neither more nor less than the worshipful Sir Peter
+Laurie.
+
+Every newspaper you take up announces that Sir Peter, with a hearty
+contempt for the brevity of the fifty folio volumes that contain the
+laws of our land, in the plenitude of his power and the fulness of his
+imagination, keeps adding to the number; so that if length of years be
+only accorded to that amiable individual in proportion to his merits,
+we shall find at length that not only will every contingency of our
+lives be provided for by the legislature, but that some standard for
+personal appearance will also be adopted, to which we must conform as
+rigidly as to our oath of allegiance.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A few days ago a miserable creature, a tailor we believe, some decimal
+fraction of humanity, was brought up before Sir Peter on a trifling
+charge of some kind or other. I forget his offence, but whatever it
+was, the penalty annexed to it was but a fine of half-a-crown. The
+prisoner, however, who behaved with propriety and decorum, happened to
+have long black hair, which he wore somewhat "_en jeune France_" upon
+his neck and shoulders; his locks, if not ambrosial, were tastefully
+curled, and bespoke the fostering hand of care and attention. The
+Rhadamanthus of the police-office, however, liked them not: whether it
+was that he wore a Brutus himself, or that his learned cranium had
+resisted all the efficacy of Macassar, I cannot say; but certain it
+is, that the tailor's ringlets gave him the greatest offence, and he
+apostrophised the wearer in the most solemn manner:
+
+"I have sat," said he, "for ----," as I quote from memory I sha'n't
+say how many, "years upon the bench, and I never yet met an honest man
+with long hair. The worst feature in your case is your ringlets. There
+is something so disgusting to me in the odious and abominable vice you
+have indulged in, that I feel myself warranted in applying to you the
+heaviest penalty of the law."
+
+The miserable man, we are told, fell upon his knees, confessed his
+delinquency, and, being shorn of his locks in the presence of a
+crowded court, his fine was remitted, and he was liberated.
+
+Now, perhaps, you will suppose that all this is a mere matter of
+invention. On the faith of an honest man I assure you it is not. I
+have retrenched considerably the pathetic eloquence of the magistrate,
+and I have left altogether untouched the poor tailor's struggle
+between pride and poverty--whether, on the one hand, to suffer the
+loss of his _half_-crown, or, on the other, to submit to the
+desecration of his _entire_ head. We hear a great deal about a law for
+the rich, and another for the poor; and certainly in this case I am
+disposed to think the complaint might not seem without foundation.
+Suppose for a moment that the prisoner in this case had been the
+Honourable Augustus Somebody, who appeared before his worship
+fashionably attired, and with hair, beard, and moustache far
+surpassing in extravagance the poor tailor's; should we then have
+heard this beautiful apostrophe to "the croppies," this thundering
+denunciation of ringlets? I half fear not. And yet, under what pretext
+does a magistrate address to one man, the insulting language he would
+not dare apply to another? Or let us suppose the rule of justice to be
+inflexible, and look at the result. What havoc would Sir Peter make
+among the Guards? ay, even in the household of her Majesty how many
+delinquents would he find? what a scene would not the clubs present,
+on the police authorities dropping suddenly down amongst them with
+rule and line to determine the statute length of their whiskers, or
+the legal cut of their eye-brows? Happy King of Hanover, were you
+still amongst us, not even the Alliance would insure your mustachoes.
+As for Lord Ellenborough, it is now clear enough why he accepted the
+government of India, and made such haste to get out of the country.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Now we will suppose that as Sir Peter Laurie's antipathy is long hair,
+Sir Frederick Roe may also have his dislikes. It is but fair, you will
+allow, that the privileges of the bench should be equal. Well, for
+argument's sake, I will imagine that Sir Frederick Roe has not the
+same horror of long hair as his learned brother, but has the most
+unconquerable aversion to long noses. What are we to do here? Heaven
+help half our acquaintance if this should strike him! What is to be
+done with Lord Allen if he beat a watchman! In what a position will he
+stand if he fracture a lamp? One's hair may be cut to any length,--it
+may be even shaved clean off; but your nose.--And then a few weeks,--a
+few months at farthest, and your hair has grown again: but your nose,
+like your reputation, can only stand one assault. This is really a
+serious view of the subject; and it is a somewhat hard thing that the
+face you have shown to your acquaintances for years past, with
+pleasure to yourself and satisfaction to them, should be pronounced
+illegal, or curtailed in its proportions. They have a practice in
+banks if a forged note be presented for payment, to mark it in a
+peculiar manner before restoring it to the owner. This is technically
+called "raddling." Something similar, I suppose, will be adopted at
+the police-office, and in case of refusal to conform your features to
+the rule of Roe, you will be raddled by an officer appointed for the
+purpose, and sent forth upon the world the mere counterfeit of
+humanity.
+
+What a glorious thing it would be for this great country, if, having
+equalized throughout the kingdom the weights, the measures, the miles,
+and the currency, we should, at length attain to an equalization in
+appearance. The "facial angle" will then have its application in
+reality, and, instead of the tiresome detail of an Old Bailey trial,
+we shall hear a judge sum up on the externals of a prisoner, merely
+directing the attention of the jury to the atrocious irregularity of
+his teeth, or the assassin-like sharpness of his under-jaw. Honour to
+you, Sir Peter, should this great improvement grow out of your
+innovation; and proud may the country well be, that acknowledges you
+among its lawgivers!
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Let men no longer indulge in that absurd fiction which represents
+justice as blind. On the contrary, with an eye like Canova's, and a
+glance quick, sharp, and penetrating as Flaxman's, she traces every
+lineament and every feature; and Landseer will confess himself
+vanquished by Laurie. "The pictorial school of judicial investigation"
+will now become fashionable, and if Sir Peter's practice be but
+transmitted, surgeons will not be the only professional men who will
+commence their education with the barbers.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE BUDGET.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+I remember once coming into Matlock, on the top of the "Peveril of the
+Peak," when the coachman who drove our four spanking thorough-breds
+contrived, in something less than five minutes, to excite his whole
+team to the very top of their temper, lifting the wheelers almost off
+the ground with his heavy lash, and, thrashing his leaders till they
+smoked with passion, he brought them up to the inn door trembling with
+rage, and snorting with anger. What the devil is all this for, thought
+I. He guessed at once what was passing in my mind, and, with a knowing
+touch of his elbow, whispered:--
+
+"There's a new coachman a-going to try 'em, and I'll leave him a
+precious legacy."
+
+This is precisely what the Whigs did in their surrender of power to
+the Tories. They, indeed, left them a precious legacy:--without an
+ally abroad, with discontent and starvation at home, distant and
+expensive wars, depressed trade, and bankrupt speculation, form some
+portion of the valuable heritage they bequeathed to their heirs in
+power. The most sanguine saw matter of difficulty, and the greater
+number of men were tempted to despair at the prospects of the
+Conservative party; for, however happily all other questions may have
+terminated, they still see, in the corn-law, a point whose subtle
+difficulty would seem inaccessible to legislation. Ah! could the two
+great parties, that divide the state, only lay their heads together
+for a short time, and carry out that beautiful principle that Scribe
+announces in one of his vaudevilles:--
+
+    "Que le bl� se vend ch�r, et le pain bon march�."
+
+And why, after all, should not the collective wisdom of England be
+able to equal in ingenuity the conceptions of a farce-writer?
+Meanwhile, it is plain that political dissensions, and the rivalries
+of party, will prevent that mutual good understanding which might
+prove so beneficial to all. Reconciliations are but flimsy things at
+best; and whether the attempt be made to conciliate two rival
+churches, two opposite factions, or two separate interests of any kind
+whatever, it is usually a failure. It, therefore, becomes the duty of
+every good subject, and, _� fortiori_, of every good Conservative, to
+bestir himself at the present moment, and see what can be done to
+retrieve the sinking fortune of the state. Taxation, like flogging in
+the army, never comes on the right part of the back. Sometimes too
+high, sometimes too low. There is no knowing where to lay it on.
+Besides that, we have by this time got such a general raw all over us,
+there isn't a square inch of sound flesh that presents itself for a
+new infliction. Since the first French Revolution, the ingenuity of
+man has been tortured on the subject of finance; and had Dionysius
+lived in our days, instead of offering a bounty for the discovery of a
+new pleasure, he would have proposed a reward to the man who devised a
+new tax.
+
+Without entering at any length into this subject, the consideration of
+which would lead me into all the details of our every-day habits, I
+pass on at once to the question which has induced this inquiry, while
+I proclaim to the world loudly, fearlessly, and resolutely,
+"Eureka!"--I've found it. Yes, my fellow-countrymen, I have found a
+remedy to supply the deficient income of the nation, not only without
+imposing a new tax, or inflicting a new burden upon the suffering
+community, but also without injuring vested rights, or thwarting the
+activity of commercial enterprise. I neither mulct cotton or corn; I
+meddle not with parson or publican, nor do I make any portion of the
+state, by its own privations, support the well-being of the rest. On
+the contrary, the only individual concerned in my plan, will not be
+alone benefited in a pecuniary point of view, but the best feelings of
+the heart will be cultivated and strengthened, and the love of home,
+so characteristically English, fostered in their bosoms. I could
+almost grow eloquent upon the benefits of my discovery; but I fear,
+that were I to give way to this impulse, I should become so fascinated
+with myself, I could scarcely turn to the less seductive path of
+simple explanation. Therefore, ere it be too late, let me open my mind
+and unfold my system:
+
+    "What great effects from little causes spring."
+
+Any one who ever heard of Sir Isaac Newton and his apple will
+acknowledge this, and something of the same kind led me to the very
+remarkable fact I am about to speak of.
+
+One of the Bonaparte family--as well as I remember, Jerome--was one
+night playing whist at the same table with Talleyrand, and having
+dropped a crown piece upon the floor, he interrupted the game, and
+deranged the whole party to search for his money. Not a little
+provoked by a meanness which he saw excited the ridicule of many
+persons about, Talleyrand deliberately folded up a bank-note which lay
+before him, and, lighting it at the candle, begged, with much
+courtesy, that he might be permitted to assist in the search. This
+story, which is authentic, would seem an admirable parody on a portion
+of our criminal law. A poor man robs the community, or some member of
+it (for that comes to the same thing) to the amount of one penny. He
+is arrested by a policeman, whose salary is perhaps half-a-crown
+a-day, and conveyed to a police-office, that cost at least five
+hundred pounds to build it. Here are found three or four more
+officials, all salaried--all fed, and clothed by the State. In due
+course of time he is brought up before a magistrate, also well paid,
+by whom the affair is investigated, and by him he is afterwards
+transmitted to the sessions, where a new army of stipendiaries all
+await him. But his journey is not ended. Convicted of his offence, he
+is sentenced to seven years' transportation to one of the most remote
+quarters of the globe. To convey him thither the government have
+provided a ship and a crew, a supercargo and a surgeon; and, to sum up
+in one word, before he has commenced the expiation of his crime, that
+penny has cost the country something about three hundred pounds. Is
+not this, I ask you, very like Talleyrand and the Prince?--the only
+difference being, that we perform in sober earnest, what he merely
+exhibited in sarcasm.
+
+Now, my plan is, and I prefer to develop it in a single word, instead
+of weakening its force by circumlocution. In lieu of letting a poor
+man be reduced to his theft of one penny--give him two pence. _He_
+will be a gainer by double the amount--not to speak of the
+inappreciable value of his honesty--and _you_ the richer by 71,998
+pence, under your present system expended upon policemen, magistrates,
+judges, gaolers, turnkeys, and transports. Examine for a moment the
+benefits of this system. Look at the incalculable advantages it
+presents--the enormous revenue, the pecuniary profit, and the
+patriotism, all preserved to the State, not to mention the additional
+pleasure of disseminating happiness while you transport men's hearts,
+not their bodies.
+
+Here is a plan based upon the soundest philanthropy, the most rigid
+economy, and the strictest common sense. Instead of training up a race
+of men in some distant quarter of the globe, who may yet turn your
+bitterest enemies, you will preserve to the country so many true-born
+Britons, bound to you by a debt of gratitude. Upon what ground--on
+what pretext--can you oppose the system? Do you openly confess that
+you prefer vice to poverty, and punishment to prevention? Or is it
+your pleasure to manufacture roguery for exportation, as the French do
+politeness, and the Irish linen?
+
+I offer the suggestion generously, freely, and spontaneously. If the
+heads of the government choose to profit by the hint, I only ask in
+return, that when the Chancellor of the Exchequer announces in his
+place the immense reduction of expenditure, that he will also give
+notice of a motion for a bill to reward me by a government
+appointment. I am not particular as to where, or what: I only bargain
+against being Secretary for Ireland, or Chief Justice at Cape Coast
+Castle.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR REPEAL.
+
+
+When the cholera first broke out in France, a worthy prefect in a
+district of the south published an edict to the people, recommending
+them by all means to eat well-cooked and nutritious food, and drink
+nothing but _vin de Bourdeaux_, Anglice, claret. The advice was
+excellent, and I take it upon me to say, would have found very few
+opponents in fact, as it certainly did in principle. When the world,
+however, began to consider that _filets de boeuf � la Marengo_, and
+"_dindes truff�es_," washed down with _Chateau Lafitte_ or _Larose_,
+were not exactly within the reach of every class of the community,
+they deemed the prefect's counsel more humane than practicable, and as
+they do at every thing in France when the tide of public opinion
+changes, they laughed at him heartily, and wrote pasquinades upon his
+folly. At the same time the ridicule was unjust, the advice was good,
+sound, and based on true principles, the only mistake was, the
+difficulty of its practice. Had he recommended as an antiseptic to
+disease, that the people should play short whist, wear red night-caps,
+or pelt stones at each other, there might have been good ground for
+the disfavour he fell into; such acts, however practicable and easy of
+execution, having manifestly no tendency to avert the cholera. Now
+this is precisely the state of matters in Ireland at this moment:
+distress prevails more or less in every province and in every county.
+The people want employment, and they want food. Had you recommended
+them to eat strawberries and cream in the morning, to drink lemonade
+during the day, take a little chicken salad for dinner, with a light
+bread pudding and a glass of negus afterwards, avoiding all stimulant
+and exciting food--for your Irishman is a feverish subject--you might
+be laughed at perhaps for your dietary, but certes it would bear, and
+bear strongly too, upon the case in question. But what do you do in
+reality? The local papers teem with cases of distress: families are
+starving; the poor, unhoused and unfed, are seen upon the road sides
+exposed to every vicissitude of the season, surrounded by children who
+cry in vain for bread. What, I ask, is the measure of relief you
+propose? not a public subscription; no general outburst of national
+charity--no public work upon a grand scale to give employment to the
+idle, food to the hungry, health to the sick, and hope to all. None of
+these. Your panacea is the Repeal of the Union; you purpose to
+substitute for those amiable jobbers in College-green, who call
+themselves Directors of the Bank of Ireland, another set of jobbers
+infinitely more pernicious and really dishonest, who will call
+themselves Directors of Ireland itself; you talk of the advantage to
+the country, and particularly of the immense benefits that must accrue
+to the capital. Let us examine them a little.
+
+Dublin, you say, will be a flourishing city, inhabited by lords and
+ladies: wealth, rank, and influence will dwell in its houses and
+parade its streets. The glare of lamps, the crash of carriages, all
+the pride, pomp, and circumstances of fashion, will flow back upon the
+long-deserted land, and Paris and London will find a rival to compete
+with them, in this small city of the west. Would that this were so;
+would that it could be! This, however, is the extent of what you
+promise yourselves: you may ring the changes as you please, but the
+"refrain" of your song is, that Dublin shall "have its own again."
+Well, for argument's sake, I say, be it so. The now silenced squares
+shall wake to the echoes of thundering equipages, peers and prelates
+shall again inhabit the dwellings long since the residence of
+hotel-keepers, or still worse, those little democracies of social
+life, called boarding-houses. Your theatre shall be crowded, your
+shops frequented, and every advantage of wealth diffused through all
+the channels of society, shall be yours. As far as Dublin is
+concerned, I say--for, mark me, I keep you to this original point, in
+the land of your promise you have strictly limited the diffusion of
+your blessings by the boundary of the Circular road; even the people
+at Ringsend and Ballybough bridge are not to be included, unless a
+special bill be brought in for their benefit. Still the picture is a
+brilliant one: it would be a fine thing to see all the pomp and
+ceremony of proud popery walk the land at noon-day, with its saints in
+gold, and its relics in silver; for of course this is included in the
+plan. Prosperous Ireland must be Catholic Ireland, and even Spain and
+Belgium will hide their diminished heads when compared with the
+gorgeous homage rendered to popery at home. The "gentlemen of
+Liffey-street chapel," far better-looking fellows than any foreign
+priest you'll meet with from Trolhatten to Tivoli, will walk about _in
+pontificalibus_; and all the exciting enthusiasm that Romanism so
+artfully diffuses through every feature of life, will introduce itself
+among a people who have all the warm temper and hot blood of the
+south, with the stern determination and headlong impulse of the north
+of Europe. By all of which I mean to say, that in points of strong
+popery, Dublin will beat the world, and that before a year of such
+prosperity be past, she will have the finest altars, the fattest
+priests, and the longest catalogue of miracles in Europe. Lord
+Shrewsbury need not then go to the Tyrol for an "estatica," he'll find
+one nearer home worth twice the money. The shin-bone of St. Januarius,
+that jumped out of a wooden box in a hackney coach, because a
+gentleman swore, will be nothing to the scenes we'll witness; and if
+St. Patrick should sport his tibia at an evening party of Daniel
+O'Connell's, it would not in the least surprise me. These are great
+blessings, and I am fully sensible of them. Now let me pass on to
+another, which perhaps I have kept last as it is the chief of all, or
+as the late Lord Castlereagh would have said, the "fundamental feature
+upon which my argument hinges."
+
+A very common topic of Irish eloquence is, to lament over the enormous
+exportation of cattle, fowl, and fish, that continually goes forward
+from Ireland into England. I acknowledge the justness of the
+complaint--I see its force, and appreciate its value. It is exactly as
+though a grocer should exclaim against his misery, in being compelled
+to part with his high-flavoured bohea, his sparkling lump sugar, and
+his Smyrna figs, or our publisher his books, for the base lucre of
+gain. It is humiliating, I confess; and I can well see how a
+warm-hearted and intelligent creature, who feels the hardship of an
+export trade in matters of food, must suffer when the principle is
+extended to a matter of genius; for, not content with our mutton from
+Meath, our salmon from Limerick, and our chickens from Carlow; but the
+Saxon must even be gratified with the soul-stirring eloquence of the
+Great Liberator himself, with only the trouble of going near St.
+Stephen's to hear him. I say near--for among the other tyrannies of
+the land, he is compelled to shout loud enough to be heard in all the
+adjacent streets. Now this is too bad. Take our prog--take even our
+poteen, if you will; but leave us our Penates; this theft, which
+embodies the antithesis of Shakspeare, is not only "trash," but
+"naught enriches them, and makes us poor indeed."
+
+Repeal the union, and you remedy this. You'll have him at home with
+you--not masquerading about in the disguise of a gentleman--not
+restricted by the habits of cultivated and civilised life--not tamed
+down into the semblance and mockery of good conduct--no longer the
+chained-up animal of the menagerie, but the roaring, rampant lion,
+roaming at large in his native forest--not performing antics before
+some political Van Amburgh--not opening his huge jaws, as though he
+would devour the Whigs, and shutting them again at the command of his
+keeper--but howling in all the freedom of his passion, and lashing his
+brawny sides with his vigorous "tail." Haydn, the composer, had an
+enormous appetite; to gratify which, when dining at a tavern, he
+ordered a dinner for three. The waiter delayed in serving, as he said
+the company hadn't yet arrived, but Haydn told him to bring it up at
+once, remarking, as he patted complacently his paunch, "I am de
+compagnie myself." Such will you have the case in your domestic
+parliament--Dan will be the company himself. No longer fighting in the
+ranks of opposition, or among the supporters of a government--no more
+the mere character of a piece, he will then be the Jack Johnson of the
+political world, taking the money at the door--in which he has had
+some practice already--he will speak the prologue, lead the
+orchestra, prompt the performers, and announce a repetition of the
+farce every night of the week for his own benefit. Only think what he
+is in England with his "forty thieves" at his back, and imagine what
+he will be in Ireland without one honest man to oppose him. He will
+indeed then be well worth seeing, and if Ireland had no other
+attraction, foreigners might visit us for a look at the Liberator.
+
+He is a droll fellow, is Dan, and there is a strong dash of native
+humour in his notion of repeal. What strange scenes, to be sure, it
+would conjure up. Only think for a moment of the absentee lord, an
+exiled peer, coming back to Dublin after an absence of half his
+lifetime, vainly endeavouring to seem pleased with his condition, and
+appear happy with his home. Like an insolvent debtor affecting to joke
+with the jailer, watch him simulating so much as he can of habits he
+has long forgotten, while his ignorance of his country is such, that
+he cannot direct his coachman to a street in the capital. What a
+ludicrous view of life would this open to our view! While all these
+men, who have been satisfied hitherto to send their sympathies from
+Switzerland, and their best wishes for Ireland by an ambassador's bag,
+should now come back to writhe beneath the scourge of a demagogue, and
+the tyranny of a man who wields irresponsible power.
+
+All Ireland would present the features of a general election--every
+one would be fascinating, courteous, affable, and dishonest. The
+unpopular debater in England might have his windows smashed. With us,
+it would be his neck would be broken. The excitement of the people
+will be felt within the Parliament; and then, fostered by all the
+rancour of party hate, will be returned to them with interest. The
+measure discussed out of doors by the Liberator, will find no one
+hardy enough to oppose it within the House, and the opinions of the
+Corn Exchange will be the programme for a committee. A notice of a
+motion will issue from Merrion-square, and not from a seat in
+Parliament; and wherever he moves through the country, great Daniel,
+like a snail, will carry "his house" on his back. "Rob me the
+Exchequer, Hal!" will be the cry of the priesthood, and no men are
+better deserving of their hire; and thus, wielding every implement of
+power, if Ireland be not happy, he can only have himself to blame for
+it.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR NATIONAL PRIDE.
+
+
+National Pride must be a strong feeling, and one of the very few
+sentiments which are not exhausted by the drain upon them; and it is a
+strange thing, how the very fact upon which one man plumes himself,
+another would regard as a terrible reproach. A thorough John Bull, as
+he would call himself, thinks he has summed up, in those few emphatic
+words, a brief description of all that is excellent in humanity. And
+as he throws out his chest, and sticks his hand with energy in his
+breeches pocket, seems to say, "I am not one of your frog-eating
+fellows, half-monkey, half-tiger, but a true Briton." The Frenchman,
+as he proclaims his nation, saying, "_Je suis F-r-r-r-ran�ais_," would
+indicate that he is a very different order of being, from his blunt
+untutored neighbour, "_outre mer_;" and so on to the end of the
+chapter. Germans, Italians, and Spaniards, and even Americans, think
+there is some magic in the name of their fatherland--some inherent
+nobility in the soil: and it was only lately I read in a French paper
+an eloquent appeal from a general to his soldiers, which concluded by
+his telling them, to remember, that they were "Mexicans." I devoutly
+trust that they understood the meaning of his phrase, and were able,
+without difficulty, to call to mind the bright prerogative alluded to;
+for upon my conscience, as an honest man, it would puzzle me sorely to
+say what constitutes a Mexican.
+
+But the absurdity goes further still: for, not satisfied with the
+bounties of Providence in making us what we are, we must indulge a
+rancorous disposition towards our neighbours for their less-favoured
+destiny. "He behaved like a Turk," is an every-day phrase to indicate
+a full measure of moral baseness and turpidity. A Frenchman's abuse
+can go no further than calling a man a Chinese, and when he says, "_tu
+es un Pekin_," a duel is generally the consequence. I doubt not that
+the Turks and the Chinese make use of retributive justice, and treat
+us no better than we behave to them.
+
+Civilisation would seem rather to have fostered than opposed this
+prejudice. In the feudal ages, the strength of a brawny right arm, the
+strong hand that could wield a mace, the firm seat in a saddle, were
+the qualities most in request; and were physical strength more
+estimated than the gifts of a higher order, the fine distinctions of
+national character either did not exist, or were not attended to. Now,
+however, the tournament is not held on a cloth of gold, but on a broad
+sheet of paper; the arms are not the lance and the dagger, but the
+printing-press. No longer a herald in all the splendour of his tabard
+proclaims the lists, but a fashionable publisher, through the medium
+of the morning papers, whose cry for largess is to the full as loud.
+The result is, nations are better known to each other, and, by the
+unhappy law of humanity, are consequently less esteemed. What
+signifies the dislike our ancestors bore the French at Cressy or
+Agincourt compared to the feeling we entertain for them after nigh
+thirty years of peace? Then, indeed, it was the strong rivalry between
+two manly natures: now, the accumulated hate of ages is sharpened and
+embittered by a thousand petty jealousies that have their origin in
+politics, military glory, society, or literature; and we detest each
+other like quarterly reviewers. The Frenchman visits England as a Whig
+commissioner would a Tory institution--only anxious to discover abuses
+and defects--with an obliquity of vision that sees everything
+distorted, or a fecundity of imagination that can conjure up the ills
+he seeks for. He finds us rude, inhospitable, and illiterate; our
+habits are vulgar, our tastes depraved; our House of Commons is a
+riotous mob of under-bred debaters; our army an aristocratic _lounge_,
+where merit has no chance against money; and our literature--God
+wot!--a plagiarism from the French. The Englishman is nearly as
+complimentary. The coarseness of French habits is to him a theme of
+eternal reprobation; the insolence of the men, the indelicacy of the
+women, the immorality of all, overwhelm him with shame and disgust:
+the Chamber of Deputies he despises, as a contemptible parody on a
+representative body, and a speech from the tribune a most absurd
+substitute for the freedom of unpremeditated eloquence: the army he
+discovers to be officered by men, to whom the new police are
+accomplished gentlemen; and, in fact, he sums up by thinking that if
+we had no other competitors in the race of civilisation than the
+French, our supremacy on land, is to the full as safe, as our
+sovereignty over the ocean. Here lie two countries, separated by a
+slip of sea not much broader than an American river, who have gone on
+for ages repeating these and similar puerilities, without the most
+remote prospect of mutual explanation and mutual good-will.
+
+"I hate prejudice, I hate the French," said poor Charles Matthews, in
+one of his inimitable representations, and really the expression was
+no bad summary of an Englishman's faith. On the other hand, to hate
+and detest the English is the _sine qu� non_ of French nationality,
+and to concede to them any rank in literature, morals, or military
+greatness, is to derogate from the claims of his own country. Now the
+question is, are the reproaches on either side absolutely just? They
+are not. Secondly, if they be unfair, how comes it that two people
+pre-eminently gifted with intelligence and information, should not
+have come to a better understanding, and that many a long year ago?
+Simply from this plain fact, that the opinions of the press have
+weighed against those of individuals, and that the published satires
+on both sides have had a greater currency and a greater credit than
+the calm judgment of the few. The leading journals in Paris and in
+London have pelted each other mercilessly for many a year. One might
+forgive this, were the attacks suggested by such topics as stimulate
+and strengthen national feeling; but no, the controversy extends to
+every thing, and, worse than all, is carried on with more bitterness
+of spirit, than depth of information. The reviewer "par excellence" of
+our own country makes a yearly incursion into French literature, as an
+Indian would do into his hunting-ground. Resolved to carry death and
+carnage on every side, he arms himself for the chase, and whets his
+appetite for slaughter by the last "_bonne bouche_" of the day. We
+then have some half introductory pages of eloquent exordium on the
+evil tendency of French literature, and the contamination of those
+unsettled opinions in politics, religion, and morals, so copiously
+spread through the pages of every French writer. The revolution of
+1797 is adduced for the hundredth time as the origin of these evils;
+and all the crime and bloodshed of that frightful period is denounced
+as but the first step of the iniquity which has reached its pinnacle,
+in the novels of Paul de Kock. To believe the reviewer, French
+literature consists in the productions of this writer, the works of
+George Sand, Balzac, Fr�d�ric Souli�, and a few others of equal note
+and mark. According to him, intrigue, seduction, and adultery, are the
+staple of French romance: the whole interest of every novel turning on
+the undiscovered turpitude of domestic life; and the great rivalry
+between writers, being, to try which can invent a new future of
+depravity and a new fashion of sin. Were this true, it were indeed a
+sad picture of national degradation; was it the fact that such books,
+and such there are in abundance, composed the light literature of the
+day--were to be found in every drawing-room--to be seen in every
+hand--to be read with interest and discussed with eagerness--to have
+that wide-spread circulation which must ever carry with it a strong
+influence upon the habits of those who read. Were all this so, I say
+it would be, indeed, a deplorable evidence of the low standard of
+civilisation among the French. What is the fact, however? Simply that
+these books have but a limited circulation, and that, only among an
+inferior class of readers. The _modiste_ and the _grisette_ are,
+doubtless, well read in the mysteries of Paul de Kock and Madame du
+Deffant; but in the cultivated classes of the capital, such books have
+no more currency than the scandalous memoirs of our own country have
+in the drawing-rooms of Grosvenor-square or St. James's. Balzac has,
+it is true, a wide-spread reputation; but many of his books are no
+less marked by a powerful interest than a touching appeal to the fine
+feelings of our nature. Alfred de Vigny, Eug�ne Sue, Victor Hugo, Leon
+Gozlan, Paul de Muset, Alexandre Dumas, and a host of others, are all
+popular, and, with the exception of a few works, unexceptionable on
+every ground of morality; but these, after all, are but the
+skirmishers before the army. What shall we say of Guizot, Thiers,
+Augustin Thierry, Toqueville, Mignet, and many more, whose
+contributions to history have formed an era in the literature of the
+age?
+
+The strictures of the reviewers are not very unlike the opinions of
+the French prisoner, who maintained that in England every one eat with
+his knife, and the ladies drank gin, which important and veracious
+facts he himself ascertained, while residing in that fashionable
+quarter of the town called St. Martin's-lane. This sweeping mode of
+argument, _� particulari_, is fatal when applied to nations. Even the
+Americans have suffered in the hands of Mrs. Trollope and others; and
+gin twist, bowie knives, tobacco chewing, and many similarly amiable
+habits, are not universal. Once for all, then, be it known, there is
+no more fallacious way of forming an opinion regarding France and
+Frenchmen, than through the pages of our periodical press, except by a
+_short_ residence in Paris--I say short, for if a little learning be a
+dangerous thing, a little travelling is more so; and it requires long
+experience of the world, and daily habit of observation, to enable any
+man to detect in the ordinary routine of life the finer and more
+distinctive traits that have escaped his neighbour; besides, however
+palpable and self-evident the proposition, it demands both tact and
+time to see that no general standard of taste can be erected for all
+nations, and, that to judge of others by your own prejudices and
+habits, is both unfair and absurd. To give an instance. No English
+traveller has commented on the French Chamber of Deputies, without
+expending much eloquence and a great deal of honest indignation on the
+practice of speaking from a tribune, written orations being in their
+opinion a ludicrous travestie on the freedom of debate. Now what is
+the fact; in the whole French Chamber there are not ten, there are not
+five men who could address the house extempore; not from any
+deficiency of ability--not from any want of information, logical
+force, and fluency--the names of Thiers, Guizot, Lamartine, Dupin,
+Arago, &c. &c. are quite sufficient to demonstrate this--but simply
+from the intricacy and difficulty of the French language. A worthy
+alderman gets up, as the phrase is, and addresses a speech of some
+three quarters of an hour to the collective wisdom of the livery; and
+although he may be frequently interrupted by thunders of applause, he
+is never checked for any solecisms in his grammar: he may drive a
+coach and six through Lindley Murray; he may inflict heaven knows how
+many fractures on poor Priscian's head, yet to criticise him on so
+mean a score as that of mere diction, would not be thought of for a
+moment. Not so in France: the language is one of equivoque and
+subtlety; the misplacement of a particle, the change of a gender, the
+employment of any phrase but the exact one, might be at any moment
+fatal to the sense of the speaker, and would inevitably be so to his
+success. It was not very long since, that a worthy deputy interrupted
+M. Thiers by alleging the non-sequitur of some assertion, "_Vous n'est
+pas consequent_," cried the indignant member, using a phrase not only
+a vulgarism in itself, but inapplicable at the time. A roar of
+laughter followed his interruption. In all the journals of the next
+day, he was styled the deputy _consequent_; and when he returned to
+his constituency the ridicule attached to his blunder still traced his
+steps, and finally lost him his election.
+
+"Thank God I am a Briton," said Nelson; a phrase, doubtless, many more
+of us will re-echo with equal energy; but while we are expressing our
+gratitude let our thankfulness extend to this gratifying fact, that
+the liberty of our laws is even surpassed by the licence of our
+language. No obscure recess of our tongue is so deep that we cannot by
+_habeas corpus_ right bring up a long-forgotten phrase, and provided
+the speaker have a meaning and be able to convey it to the minds of
+his hearers, we are seldom disposed to be critical on the manner, if
+the matter be there. Besides this, there are styles of eloquence so
+imbued with the spirit of certain eras in French history, that the
+discussion of any subject of ancient or modern days, will always have
+its own peculiar character of diction. Thus, there is the rounded
+period and flowing sententiousness of Louis XIV., the more polished
+but less forcible phraseology of the regency itself, succeeded by the
+epigrammatic taste and pointed brevity introduced by Voltaire. The
+empire left its impress on the language, and all the literature of the
+period wore the _esprit soldatesque_; and so on down to the very days
+of the barricades, each changing phase of political life had its
+appropriate expression. To assume these with effect, was not of course
+the gift of every man, and yet to have erred in their adoption, would
+have been palpable to all; here then is one important difference
+between us, and on this subject alone I might cite at least twenty
+more. The excitable Frenchman scarcely uses any action while speaking,
+and that, of the most simple and subdued kind. The phlegmatic
+Englishman stamps and gesticulates with all the energy of a madman. We
+esteem humour; they prefer wit: we like the long consecutive chain of
+proof that leads us step by step to inevitable conviction; they like
+better some brief but happy illustration that, dispensing with the
+tedium of argument, presents a question at one glance before them.
+They have that general knowledge of their country and its changes,
+that an illustration from the past is ever an effective weapon of the
+orator; while with us the force would be entirely lost from the
+necessity of recounting the incident to which reference was made.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR DIPLOMATISTS.
+
+
+Man is the most imitative of all animals: nothing can surpass the
+facility he possesses of simulating his neighbour; and I question much
+if the press, in all the plentitude of its power, has done as much for
+the spread of good or evil, as the spirit of mimicry so inherent in
+mankind. The habits of high life are transmitted through every grade
+of society: and the cheesemonger keeps his hunters, and damns his
+valet, like my lord; while his wife rolls in her equipage, and affects
+the graces of my lady. So long as wealth is present, the assumption of
+the tastes and habitudes of a different class, can merely be looked
+upon as one of those outbreaks of vanity in which rich but vulgar
+people have a right, if they like, to indulge. Why shouldn't they have
+a villa at Twickenham--why not a box at the opera--a white bait dinner
+at Blackwall--a yacht at Southampton? They have the money to indulge
+their caprice, and it is no one's affair but their own. They make
+themselves ridiculous, it is true; but the pleasure they experience
+counterbalances the ridicule, and they are the best judges on which
+side lies the profit. Wealth is power: and although the one may be
+squandered, and the other abused, yet in their very profusion, there
+is something that demands a kind of reverence from the world; and we
+have only to look to France to see, that when once you abolish an
+hereditary _noblesse_, your banker is then your great man.
+
+We may smile, if we please, at the absurd pretensions of the wealthy
+alderman and his lady, whose pompous mansion and splendid equipage
+affect a princely grandeur; yet, after all, the knowledge that he is
+worth half a million of money, that his name alone can raise the
+credit of a new colony, or call into existence the dormant energy of a
+new region of the globe, will always prevent our sarcasm degenerating
+into contempt. Not so, however, when poverty unites itself to these
+aspirings, you feel in a moment that the poor man has nothing to do
+with such vanities; his poverty is a scanty garment, that, dispose it
+as he will, he can never make it hang like a toga; and we have no
+compassion for him, who, while hunger gnaws his vitals, affects a sway
+and dominion his state has denied him. Such a line of conduct will
+often be offensive--it will always be absurd--and the only relief
+presented by its display, is in the ludicrous exhibition of trick and
+stratagem by which it is supported. Jeremy Diddler, after all, is an
+amusing person; but the greater part of the pleasure he affords us is
+derived from the fact, that, cunning as he is in all his efforts to
+deceive us, we are still more so, for we have found him out.
+
+Were I to characterise the leading feature of the age, I should
+certainly say it is this pretension. Like the monkeys at Exeter
+'Change, who could never bear to eat out of their own dish, but must
+stretch their paws into that of their neighbour, so every man
+now-a-days wishes to be in that place most unsuitable to him by all
+his tastes, habits, and associations, and where once having attained
+to, his life is one of misery and constraint. The hypocrisy of
+simulating manners he is not used to, is not more subversive of his
+self-respect, than his imitation is poor, vulgar, and unmeaning.
+
+Curran said that a corporation was, a "thing that had neither a body
+to be kicked, nor a soul to be damned." And, verily, I begin to think
+that masses of men are even more contemptible than individuals. A
+nation is a great household; and if it have not all the _prestige_ of
+rank, wealth, and power, it is a poor and miserable thing. England and
+France, Germany and Russia, are the great of the earth; and we look up
+to them in the political world, as in society we do to those whose
+rank and station are the guarantees of their power. Many other
+countries of Europe have also their claims upon us, but still smaller
+in degree. Italy, with all its association of classical
+elegance--Spain, whose history shines with the solemn splendour of an
+illuminated missal, where gold and purple are seen blending their
+hues, scarce dimmed by time; but what shall we say of those
+newly-created powers, which springing up like mushroom families, give
+themselves all the airs of true nobility, and endeavour by a strange
+mockery of institutions and customs of their greater neighbours, to
+appear of weight and consequence before the world. Look, for instance,
+to Belgium the _bourgeois gentilhomme_ of politics, which, having
+retired from its partnership with Holland, sets up for a gentleman on
+its private means. What can be more ludicrous than its attempts at
+high-life, its senate, its ministry, its diplomacy; for strange enough
+the ridicule of the individual can be traced extending to a nation,
+and when your city lady launched into the world, displays upon her
+mantelpiece the visiting cards of her high neighbours, so the first
+act of a new people is, to open a visiting acquaintance with their
+rich neighbours, and for this purpose the first thing they do is to
+establish a corps of diplomacy.
+
+Now your city knight may have a fat and rosy coachman, he may have a
+tall and portly footman, a grave and a respectable butler; but
+whatever his wealth, whatever his pretension, there is one functionary
+of a great household he can never attain to--he can never have a groom
+of the chambers. This, like the "chasseur" abroad, is the appendage of
+but one class, by constant association with whom its habits are
+acquired, its tastes engendered, and it would be equally absurd to see
+the tall Hungarian in all the glitter of his hussar costume, behind
+the caleche of a pastrycook, as to hear the low-voiced and courteous
+minion of Devonshire House announce the uncouth, unsyllabled names,
+that come east of St. Dunstan's.
+
+So, in the same way, your new nations may get up a king and a court, a
+senate, an army, and a ministry, but let them not meddle with
+diplomacy--the moment they do this they burn their fingers: your
+diplomate is like your chasseur, and your groom of the chambers; if he
+be not well done, he is a miserable failure. The world has so many
+types to refer to on this head, there can be no mistake. Talleyrand,
+Nesselrode, Metternich, Lord Whitworth, and several more, have too
+long given the tone to this peculiar walk to admit of any error
+concerning it; however, your little folk will not be denied the
+pleasures of their great acquaintance. They will have their diplomacy,
+and they will be laughed at: look at the Yankees. There is not a
+country in Europe, there is not a state however small, there is not a
+Coburgism with three thousand inhabitants and three companies of
+soldiers, where _they_ haven't a minister resident with
+plenipotentiary powers extending to every relation political and
+commercial, although all the while the Yankees would be sorely
+puzzled to point out on the map the _locale_ of their illustrious
+ally, and the Germans no less so to find out a reason for their
+embassy. Happily on this score, the very bone and marrow of diplomacy
+is consulted, and secrecy is inviolable; for, as your American knows
+no other tongue save that spoken on the Alleghanies, he keeps his own
+counsel and theirs also.
+
+Have you never in the hall of some large country house, cast your eye,
+on leave-taking, at the strange and motley crew of servants awaiting
+their masters--some well fed and handsomely clothed, with that look of
+reflected importance my lord's gentleman so justly wears; others, in
+graver, but not less respectable raiment, have that quiet and
+observant demeanour so characteristic of a well-managed household.
+While a third class, strikingly unlike the other two, wear their
+livery with an air of awkwardness and constraint, blushing at
+themselves even a deeper colour than the scarlet of their breeches.
+They feel themselves in masquerade--they were at the plough but
+yesterday, though they are in powder now. With the innate
+consciousness of their absurdity, they become fidgetty and uneasy, and
+would give the world for "a row" to conceal the defaults of their
+breeding. Just so, your petty "diplomate" suffers agony in all the
+quiet intercourse of life. The limited opportunities of small states
+have circumscribed his information. He is not a man of the world, nor
+is he a political character, for he represents nothing; nothing,
+therefore, can save him from oblivion or contempt, save some political
+convulsion where any meddler may become prominent; he has thus a bonus
+on disturbance: so long as the company behave discreetly, he must stay
+in his corner, but the moment they smash the lamps and shy the
+decanters, he emerges from his obscurity and becomes as great as his
+neighbour. For my part, I am convinced that the peace and quietness of
+Europe as much depends on the exclusion of such persons from the
+councils of diplomacy, as the happiness of every-day life does upon
+the breeding and good manners of our associates.
+
+And what straits, to be sure, are they reduced to, to maintain this
+absurd intercourse, screwing the last shilling from the budget to pay
+a _Charg� d'affaires_, with an embroidered coat, and a decoration in
+his button-hole.
+
+The most amusing incidents might be culled from such histories, if one
+were but disposed to relate them.
+
+Balzac mentions, in one of his novels, the story of a physician who
+obtained great practice, merely by sending throughout Paris a
+gaudily-dressed footman, who rang at every door, as it were, in search
+of his master; so quick were the fellow's movements, so rapid his
+transitions, from one part of the city to the other, nobody believed
+that a single individual could ever have sufficed for so many calls;
+and thus, the impression was, not only that the doctor was greatly
+sought after, but that his household was on a splendid footing. The
+Emperor of the Brazils seems to have read the story, and profited by
+the hint, for while other nations are wasting their thousands in
+maintaining a whole corps of diplomacy, he would appear like the
+doctor to have only one footman, whom he keeps moving about Europe
+without ceasing: thus _The Globe_ tells us one day that the Chevalier
+de L----, the Brazilian ambassador, has arrived in London to resume
+his diplomatic functions; _The Handelsbad of the Hague_ mentions his
+departure from the Dutch Court; _The Allgemeine Zeitung_ announces
+the prospect of his arrival at Vienna, and _The Moniteur Parisien_ has
+a beautiful article on the prosperity of their relations with Mexico,
+under the auspices of the indefatigable Chevalier: "_non regio
+terr�_," exempt from his labours. Unlike Sir Boyle Roche, he has
+managed to be not only in two, but twenty places at once, and I should
+not be in the least surprised to hear of his negotiations for sulphur
+at Naples, at the same moment that he was pelting snowballs in Norway.
+Whether he travels in a balloon or on the back of a pelican, he is a
+wonderful man, and a treasure to his government.
+
+The multiplicity of his duties, and the pressing nature of his
+functions, may impart an appearance of haste to his manner, but it
+looks diplomatic to be peremptory, and he has no time for trifling.
+
+Truly, Chevalier de L----, thou art a great man--the wandering Jew was
+but a type of thee.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A NUT FOR FOREIGN TRAVEL.
+
+
+Of all the popular delusions that we labour under in England, I
+scarcely know of one more widely circulated, and less founded in fact,
+than the advantages of foreign travel. Far be it from me to undervalue
+the benefits men of education receive by intercourse with strangers,
+and the opportunities of correcting by personal observation the
+impressions already received by study. No one sets a higher price on
+this than I do; no one estimates more fully the advantages of
+tempering one's nationality by the candid comparison of our own
+institutions with those of other countries; no one values more highly
+the unbiassed frame of mind produced by extending the field of our
+observation, and, instead of limiting our experience by the details of
+a book, reading from the wide-spread page of human nature itself. So
+conscious, indeed, am I of the importance of this, that I look upon
+his education as but very partial indeed who has not travelled. It is
+not, therefore, against the benefits of seeing the world I would
+inveigh--it is rather against the general application of the practice
+to the whole class of our countrymen and countrywomen who swarm on the
+continent. Unsuited by their tastes--unprepared by previous
+information--deeming a passport and a letter of credit all-sufficient
+for their purpose--they set out upon their travels. From their
+ignorance of a foreign language, their journey is one of difficulty
+and embarrassment at every step. They understand little of what they
+see, nothing of what they hear. The discomforts of foreign life have
+no palliation, by their being enabled to reason on, and draw
+inferences from them. All the sources of information are hermetically
+sealed against them, and their tour has nothing to compensate for its
+fatigue, and expense, save the absurd detail of adventure to which
+their ignorance has exposed them.
+
+It is not my intention to rail in this place against the injury done
+to the moral feeling of our nation, by intimate association with the
+habits of the Continent. Reserving this for a more fitting time, I
+shall merely remark at present, that, so far as the habits of virtue
+are concerned, more mischief is done among the middle class of our
+countrymen, than those of a more exalted sphere.
+
+Scarcely does the month of May commence, when the whole tide of
+British population sets in upon the coast of France and Flanders. To
+watch the crowded steamers as they arrive in Antwerp, or Boulogne, you
+would say that some great and devastating plague had broken out in
+London, and driven the affrighted inhabitants from their homes. Not
+so, however: they have come abroad for pleasure. With a credit on
+Coutts, and the inestimable John Murray for a guide, they have devoted
+six weeks to France, Belgium, and the Rhine, in which ample time they
+are not only to learn two languages, but visit three nations,
+exploring into cookery, customs, scenery, literature, and the arts,
+with the same certainty of success that they would pay a visit to
+Astley's. Scarcely are they launched upon their travels when they
+unite into parties for personal protection and assistance. The
+"_morgue Britannique_," so much spoken of by foreigners, they appear
+to have left behind them; and sudden friendships, and intimacies,
+spring up between persons whose only feeling in common is that of
+their own absurd position. Away they go sight-seeking in clusters.
+They visit cathedrals, monuments, and galleries; they record in their
+journals the vulgar tirades of a hired _commissionaire_; they eat food
+they detest, and they lie down to sleep discontented and unhappy. The
+courteous civility of foreigners, the theme of so much eulogy in
+England, they now find out to be little more than selfishness,
+libertinism, and impertinence. They see the country from the window
+of a diligence, and society from a place at the _table d'h�te_, and
+truly both one and the other are but the vulgar high roads of life.
+Their ignorance of the language alone protects them from feeling
+insulted at the impertinences directed at themselves and their
+country; and the untutored simplicity of their nature saves them the
+mortification of knowing that the ostentatious politeness of some
+moustached acquaintance is an exhibition got up by him for the
+entertainment of his friends.
+
+Poor John Bull, you have made great sacrifices for this tour. You have
+cut the city, and the counting-house, that your wife may become
+enamoured of dress, and your daughter of a dancing-master--that your
+son may learn to play roulette and smoke cigars, and that you yourself
+may ramble some thousand miles over paved roads, without an object to
+amuse, without an incident to attract you. While this is a gloomy
+picture enough, there is another side to the medal still worse. John
+Bull goes home generally sick of what he has seen, and much more
+ignorant of the Continent than when he set out. His tour, however, has
+laid in its stock of foreign affectation, that renders his home
+uncomfortable; his daughters pine after the flattering familiarities
+of their whiskered acquaintances at Ems, or Wiesbaden; and his sons
+lose all zest for the slow pursuit of competence, by reflecting on the
+more decisive changes of fortune, that await on _rouge et noir_. Yet
+even this is not the worst. What I deplore most of all, is the false
+and erroneous notions continental nations procure of our country, and
+its habits, from such specimens as these. The Englishman who, seen at
+home, at the head of his counting-house, or in the management of his
+farm, presents a fine example of those national traits we are so
+justly proud of--honest, frank, straightforward in all his dealings,
+kind and charitable in his affections; yet see him abroad, the sphere
+of his occupations exists no longer--there is no exercise for the
+manly habits of his nature: his honesty but exposes him to be duped;
+his frankness degenerates into credulity; the unsuspecting openness of
+his character makes him the butt of every artful knave he meets with;
+and he is laughed at from Rotterdam to Rome for qualities which,
+exercised in their fitting sphere, have made England the greatest
+country of the universe. Hence we have the tone of disparagement now
+so universally maintained about England, and Englishmen, from one end
+of the Continent to the other. It is not that our country does not
+send forth a number of men well qualified to induce different
+impressions of their nation; but unfortunately, such persons move only
+in that rank of foreign society where these prejudices do not exist;
+and it is among a different class, and unhappily a more numerous one
+also, that these undervaluing opinions find currency and belief.
+
+There is nothing more offensive than the continual appeal made by
+Frenchmen, Germans, and others, to English habits, as seen among this
+class of our countrymen. It is in vain that you explain to them that
+these people are neither among the more educated nor the better ranks
+of our country. They cannot comprehend your distinction. The habits of
+the Continent have produced a kind of table-land of good-breeding,
+upon which all men are equals. Thus, if you rarely meet a foreigner
+ignorant of the every-day _convenances_ of the world, you still more
+rarely meet with one unexceptionably well-bred. The _table d'h�te_,
+like the mess in our army, has the effect of introducing a certain
+amount of decorum that is felt through every relation of life; and,
+although the count abroad is immeasurably beneath the gentleman at
+home, here, I must confess, that the foreign cobbler is a more
+civilized person than his type in England. This is easily understood:
+foreign breeding is not the outward exhibition of an inward
+principle--it is not the manifestation of a sense of mingled kindness,
+good taste, and self-respect--it is merely the rigid observance of a
+certain code of behaviour that has no reference whatever to any thing
+felt within; it is the mere popery of politeness, with its
+saint-worship, its penances, and its privations. An Englishman makes
+way for you to accommodate your passage; a foreigner--a Frenchman I
+should say--does so for an opportunity to flourish his hat or to
+exhibit an attitude. The same spirit pervades every act of both; duty
+in one case, display in the other, are the ruling principles of life;
+and, where persons are so diametrically different, there is little
+likelihood of much mutual understanding or mutual esteem. To come
+back, however, the great evil of this universal passion for travelling
+lies in the opportunity afforded to foreigners, of sneering at our
+country, and ridiculing our habits. It is in vain that our
+institutions are models of imitation for the world--in vain that our
+national character stands pre-eminent for good-faith and fidelity--in
+vain the boast that the sun never sets upon a territory that girths
+the very globe itself, so long as we send annually our tens of
+thousands out upon the Continent, with no other failing than mere
+unfitness for foreign travel, to bring down upon us the sneer, and the
+ridicule, of every ignorant and unlettered Frenchman, or Belgian, they
+meet with.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A NUT FOR DOMESTIC HAPPINESS.
+
+
+Our law code would, were its injunctions only carried out in private
+life, effect most extraordinary reformations in our customs and
+habits. The most singular innovations in our tastes and opinions would
+spring out of the statutes. It was only a few days ago where a man
+sought reparation for the greatest injury one could inflict on
+another, the great argument of the defendant's counsel was based on
+the circumstance that the plaintiff and his wife had not been proved
+to have lived happily together, except on the testimony of their
+servants. Great stress was laid upon this fact by the advocate; and
+such an impression did it make on the minds of the jury, that the
+damages awarded were a mere trifle. Now, only reflect for a moment on
+the absurdity of such a plea, and think how many persons there are
+whose quiet and unobtrusive lives are unnoticed beyond the precincts
+of their own door--nay, how many estimable and excellent people who
+live less for the world than for themselves, and although, probably
+for this very reason, but little exposed to the casualty in question,
+would yet deem the injustice great that placed them beyond the pale of
+reparation because they had been homely and domestic.
+
+Civilisation and the march of mind are fine things, and doubtless it
+is a great improvement that the criminal is better lodged, and fed, in
+the prison, than the hungry labourer in the workhouse. It is an
+admirable code that makes the debt of honour, the perhaps swindled
+losses of the card-table, an imperative obligation, while the money
+due to toiling, working industry, may be evaded or escaped from.
+Still, it is a bold step to invade the privacy of domestic life, to
+subvert the happiness we deem most national, and to suggest that the
+world has no respect for, nor the law no belief in, that peaceful
+course in life, which, content with its own blessings, seeks neither
+the gaze of the crowd, nor the stare of fashion. Under the present
+system, a man must appear in society like a candidate on the
+hustings--profuse in protestations of his happiness and redolent of
+smiles; he must lead forth his wife like a blooming _debutante_, and,
+while he presents her to his friends, must display, by every endeavour
+in his power, the angelic happiness of their state. The _coram
+publico_ endearments, so much sneered at by certain fastidious people,
+are now imperative; and, however secluded your habits, however
+retiring your tastes, it is absolutely necessary you should appear a
+certain number of times every year before the world, to assure that
+kind-hearted and considerate thing, how much conjugal felicity you are
+possessed of.
+
+It is to no purpose that your man-servant and your maid-servant, and
+even the stranger within your gates, have seen you in the apparent
+enjoyment of domestic happiness: it is the crowd of a ball-room must
+testify in your favour--it is the pit of a theatre--it is the company
+of a steam-boat, or the party on a railroad, you must adduce in
+evidence. They are the best--they are the only judges of what you, in
+the ignorance of your heart, have believed a secret for your own
+bosom.
+
+Your conduct within-doors is of little moment, so that your bearing
+without satisfy the world. What a delightful picture of universal
+happiness will England then present to the foreigner who visits our
+salons! With what ecstasy will he contemplate the angelic felicity of
+conjugal life! Instead of the indignant coldness of a husband,
+offended by some casual levity of his wife, he will now redouble his
+attentions, and take an opportunity of calling the company to witness
+that they live together like turtle-doves. He knows not how soon, if
+he mix much in fashionable life, their testimony may avail him; and
+the loving smile he throws his spouse across the supper-table is
+worth three thousand pounds before any jury in Middlesex.
+
+Romance writers will now lose one stronghold of sentiment. Love in a
+cottage will possess as little respect as it ever did attraction for
+the world. The pier at Brighton, a Gravesend steamer, Hyde Park on a
+Sunday, will be the appropriate spheres for the interchange of
+conjugal vows. No absurd notions of solitude will then hold sway.
+Alas! how little prophetic spirit is there in poetry! But a few years
+ago, and one of our sirens of song said,
+
+    "When should lovers breathe their vows?
+      When should ladies hear them?
+    When the dew is on the boughs--
+      When none else is near them."
+
+Not a word of it! The appropriate place is amid the glitter of jewels,
+the glare of lamps, the crush of fashion, and the din of conversation.
+The private boxes of the opera are even too secluded, and your
+happiness is no more genuine, until recognised by society, than is an
+exchequer bill with the mere signature of Lord Monteagle.
+
+The benefits of this system will be great. No longer will men be
+reduced to the cultivation of those meeker virtues that grace and
+adorn life; no more will they study those accomplishments that make
+home happy and their hearth cheerful. A winter at Paris and a box at
+the Variet�s will be more to the purpose. Scribe's farces will teach
+them more important lessons, and they will obtain an instructive
+example in the last line of a vaudeville, where an injured husband
+presents himself at the fall of the curtain, and, as he bows to the
+audience, embraces both his wife and her lover, exclaiming,
+"_Maintenant je suis heureux--ma femme--mon meilleur ami!_" He then
+may snap his fingers at Charles Phillips and Adolphus: he has not only
+proved his affection to his wife, but his confidence in his friend.
+Let him lay the damages at ten thousand, and, with a counsel that can
+cry, he'll get every shilling of the money.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR LADIES BOUNTIFUL.
+
+
+Jean Jacques tells us, that when his wife died every farmer in the
+neighbourhood offered to console him by one of their daughters; but
+that a few weeks afterwards his cow having shared the same fate, no
+one ever thought of replacing his loss by the offer of another;
+thereby proving the different value people set upon their cows and
+children--this seems absurd enough, but is it a bit more so, than what
+is every day taking place in professional life? How many parsons are
+there who would not lend you five pounds, would willingly lend you
+their pulpit, and the commonest courtesy from a hospital surgeon is,
+to present his visitor with a knife and entreat him to carve a
+patient. He has never seen the individual before, he doesn't know
+whether he be short-sighted, or nervous, or ignorant, or rash, all he
+thinks of, is doing the honours of the institution; and although like
+a hostess, who sees the best dish at her table mangled by an unskilful
+carver, he suffers in secret, yet is she far too well-bred to evince
+her displeasure, but blandly smiles at her friend, and says "No
+matter, pray go on." This, doubtless, is highly conducive to science;
+and as medicine is declared to be a science of experiment, great
+results occasionally arise from the practice. Now that I am talking of
+doctors--what a strange set they are, and what a singular position do
+they hold in society; admitted to the fullest confidence of the world,
+yet by a strange perversion, while they are the depositaries of
+secrets that hold together the whole fabric of society, their
+influence is neither fully recognised, nor their power acknowledged.
+The doctor is now what the monk once was, with this additional
+advantage, that from the nature of his studies and the research of his
+art, he reads more deeply in the human heart, and penetrates into its
+most inmost recesses. For him, life has little romance; the grosser
+agency of the body re-acting ever on the operations of the mind,
+destroy many a poetic daydream and many a high-wrought illusion. To
+him alone does a man speak "_son dernier mot_:" while to the lawyer
+the leanings of self-respect will make him always impart a favourable
+view of his case. To the physician he will be candid, and even more
+than candid--yes, these are the men who, watching the secret workings
+of human passion, can trace the progress of mankind in virtue and in
+vice; while ministering to the body they are exploring the mind, and
+yet, scarcely is the hour of danger passed, scarcely the shadow of
+fear dissipated, when they fall back to their humble position in life,
+bearing with them but little gratitude, and, strange to say, no fear!
+
+The world expects them to be learned, well-bred, kind, considerate,
+and attentive, patient to their querulousness, and enduring under
+their caprice; and, after all this, the humbug of homoeopathy, the
+preposterous absurdity of the water cure, or the more reprehensible
+mischief of Mesmerism, will find more favour in their sight than the
+highest order of ability accompanied by great natural advantages.
+
+Every man--and still more, every woman--imagine themselves to be
+doctors. The taste for physic, like that for politics, is born with
+us, and nothing seems easier than to repair the injuries of the
+constitution, whether of the state or the individual. Who has not
+seen, over and over again, physicians of the first eminence put aside,
+that the nostrum of some ignorant pretender, or the suggestion of some
+twaddling old woman, should be, as it is termed, tried? No one is too
+stupid, no one too old, no one too ignorant, too obstinate, or too
+silly, not to be superior to Brodie and Chambers, Crampton and Marsh;
+and where science, with anxious eye and cautious hand, would scarcely
+venture to interfere, heroic ignorance would dash boldly forward and
+cut the Gordian difficulty by snapping the thread of life. How comes
+it that these old ladies, of either sex, never meddle with the law? Is
+the game beneath them, where the stake is only property, and not life?
+or is there less difficulty in the knowledge of an art whose
+principles rest on so many branches of science, than in a study
+founded on the basis of precedent? Would to heaven the "Ladies
+Bountiful" would take to the quarter-sessions and the assizes, in lieu
+of the infirmaries and dispensaries, and make Blackstone their
+aid-de-camp--_vice_ Buchan retired.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE PRIESTS.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+There would be no going through this world if one had not an
+India-rubber conscience, and one could no more exist in life without
+what watch-makers call accommodation, in the machinery of one's heart,
+than a blue-bottle fly could grow fat in the shop of an apothecary.
+Every man's conscience has, like Janus, two faces--one looks most
+plausibly to the world, with a smile of courteous benevolence, the
+other with a droll leer seems to say, I think we are doing them. In
+fact, not only would the world be impossible, and its business
+impracticable, but society itself would be a bear-garden without
+hypocrisy.
+
+Now, the professional classes have a kind of licence on this subject;
+just as a poet is permitted to invent sunsets, and a painter to
+improvise clouds and cataracts, so a lawyer dilates upon the virtues
+or attractions of his client, and a physician will weep you good round
+substantial tears, at a guinea a drop, for the woes of his patient;
+but the church, I certainly thought, was exempt from this practice. A
+paragraph in a morning paper, however, disabused my ignorance in the
+most remarkable manner. The Roman Catholic hierarchy have unanimously
+decided that all persons following the profession of the stage, are
+to be considered without the pale of the church, they are neither to
+be baptized nor confirmed, married nor buried; they may get a name in
+the streets, and a wife there also, but the church will neither bless
+the one, nor confirm the other; in fact, the sock and the buskin are
+proclaimed in opposition to Christianity, and Madame Lafarge is not a
+bit more culpable than Robert Macaire. A few days since, one of the
+most fashionable churches in Paris was crowded to suffocation by the
+attraction of high mass, celebrated with the assistance of the whole
+opera choir, with Duprez at their head. The sum contributed by the
+faithful was enormous, and the music of Mozart was heard to great
+effect through the vaulted aisles of Notre Dame, yet the very morning
+after, not an individual of the choir could receive the benediction of
+the church--the _rationale_ of all which is, that the Dean of Notre
+Dame, like the Director of the Odeon, likes a good house and a heavy
+benefit. He gets the most attractive company he can secure, and
+although he makes no scruple to say they are the most disreputable
+acquaintances, still they fill the benches, and it will be time enough
+to damn them when the performance is over!
+
+Whenever the respectable Whigs are attacked for their alliance with
+O'Connell, they make the same reply the priest would probably do in
+this circumstance--How can we help it? We want a mob; if he sings, we
+have it--we know his character as well as you; so only let us fill our
+pockets, and then ---- I do not blame them in the least, if the popery
+of their politics has palled upon the appetite; if they can work no
+more miracles of reform and revolution, I do not see how they can help
+calling in aid from without.
+
+Dan, however, will not consent, like Duprez, to be damned when he is
+done with; he insists on a share of the profits, and, moreover, to be
+treated with some respect too. He knows he is the star of the company,
+and can make his own terms; and, even now, when the house is broken
+up, and the manager beggared, and the actors dismissed, like Matthews,
+he can get up a representation all to himself, and make a handsome
+thing of it besides.
+
+If one could see it brought about something in the fashion of Sancho's
+government of Barrataria, I should certainly like to see O'Connell on
+the throne of Ireland for about twenty-four hours, and to salute King
+Dan, _par la grace de diable_, king of Erin, just for the joke's sake!
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR LEARNED SOCIETIES.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+We laugh at the middle ages for their trials by ordeal, their jousts,
+their tournaments, their fat monasteries, and their meagre people; but
+I am strongly disposed to think, that before a century pass over,
+posterity will give us as broad a grin for our learned societies. Of
+all the features that characterise the age, I know of none so
+pre-eminently ridiculous, as nine-tenths of these associations would
+prove; supported by great names, aided by large sums, with a fine
+house, a library and a librarian, they do the honours of science
+pretty much as the yeomen of the guard do those of a court on a levee
+day, and they bear about the same relation to literature and art, that
+do the excellent functionaries I have mentioned, to the proceedings
+around the throne.
+
+An old gentleman, hipped by celibacy, and too sour for society, has
+contracted a habit of looking out of his window every morning, to
+observe the weather: he sees a cloud very like a whale, or he fancies
+that when the wind blows in a particular direction, and it happens to
+rain at the same time, that the drops fall in a peculiarly slanting
+manner. He notes down the facts for a month or two, and then
+establishes a meteorological society, of which he is the perpetual
+president, with a grant from Parliament to extend its utility. Another
+takes to old volumes on a book-stall; and becoming, as most men are
+who have little knowledge of life, fascinated with his own
+discoveries, thinks he has ascertained some curious details of ancient
+history, and communicating his results to others as stupid and old as
+himself, they dub themselves antiquarians, or arch�ologists, and
+obtain a grant also.
+
+Now, one half of these societies are neither more nor less than most
+impertinent sarcasms on the land we live in. The man who sets himself
+down deliberately to chronicle the clouds in our atmosphere, and jot
+down the rainy days in our calendar, is, to my thinking, performing
+about as grateful a task, as though he were to count the carbuncles on
+his friend's nose. We have, it is true, a most abominable climate: the
+sun rarely shows himself, and, when he does, it is through a tattered
+garment of clouds, dim and disagreeable; but why throw it in our
+teeth? and, still more, why pay a body of men to publish the slander?
+Then again, as to history, all the world knows that since the Flood
+the Irish have never done any thing else than make love, illicit
+whiskey, and beat each other. What nonsense, then, to talk about the
+ancient cultivation of the land, of its high rank in literature, and
+its excellence in art. A stone bishop, with a nose like a negro, and a
+crosier like a garden-rake, are the only evidences of our ancestors'
+taste in sculpture; and some doggrel verses in Irish, explaining how
+King Phelim O'Toole cheated a brother monarch out of his
+small-clothes, are about the extent of our historic treasures. But,
+for argument's sake, suppose it otherwise; imagine for a moment that
+our ancestors were all that Sir William Betham and Mr. Petrie would
+make them--I do not know how other people may feel, but I myself deem
+it no pleasant reflection to think of _their_ times and look at _our
+own_. What! we were poets and painters, architects, historians, and
+musicians! What have we now among us to represent these great and
+mighty gifts? I am afraid, except our Big Beggarman, we have not a
+single living celebrity; and is this a comfortable reflection, is this
+a pleasing thought, that while, fourteen hundred years ago, some Irish
+Raphael and some Galway Grisi were the delight of our illustrious
+ancestors--that while the splendour of King Malachi, with his collar
+of gold, astonished the ladies in the neighbourhood of Trim--we have
+nothing to boast of, save Dan for Lord Mayor, and Burton Bindon's
+oysters? Once more, I say, if what these people tell us be facts, they
+are the most unpalatable facts could be told to a nation; and I see no
+manner of propriety or good-breeding in replying to a gipsy who begs
+for a penny, by the information, that "his ancestors built the
+Pyramids."
+
+Again, if our days are dark, our nights are worse; and what, in
+Heaven's name, have we to do with an observatory and a telescope as
+long as the _Great Western_? The planets are the most expensive
+vagabonds to the Budget, and the fixed stars are a fixed imposition.
+Were I Chancellor of the Exchequer, I'd pension the Moon, and give the
+Great Bear a sum of money as compensation. Do not tell me of the
+distresses of the people, arising from cotton, or corn, China, or
+Chartists--it is our scientific institutions are eating into the
+national resources. There is not an egg-saucepan of antiquity that
+does not cost the country a plum, and every wag of a comet's tail may
+be set down at half-a-million. I warrant me the people in the Moon
+take us a deuced deal more easily, and give themselves very little
+trouble to make out the size of Ireland's eye or the height of
+Croaghpatrick. No, no; let the Chancellor of the Exchequer come down
+with a slapping measure of retrenchment, and make a clear stage of all
+of them. Every man with money to buy a cotton umbrella is his own
+meteorologist; and a pocket telescope, price eight-and-fourpence, is
+long enough, in all conscience, for any man in a climate like ours;
+or, if such a course seem too peremptory, call on these people for
+their bill, and let there be a stated sum for each item. At Dolly's
+chop-house, you know to the exact farthing how much your beefsteak and
+glass of ale will cost you; and if you wish, in addition, a slice of
+Stilton with your XX, you consult your pocket before you speak. Let
+not the nation be treated worse than the individual: let us first look
+about us, and see if a year of prosperity and cheap potatoes will
+permit us the indulgence of obtaining a new luminary or an old
+chronicle; then, when we know the cost, we may calculate with safety.
+Suppose a fixed star, for instance, be set down at ten pounds; a
+planet at five; Saturn has so many belts, I would not give more than
+half-a-crown for a new one; and, as for an eclipse of the sun, I had
+rather propose a reward for the man who could tell us when we could
+see him palpably.
+
+For the present I merely throw out these suggestions in a brief,
+incomplete manner, intending, however, to return to the subject on
+another occasion.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE LAWYERS.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Authors have long got the credit of being the most accomplished
+persons going--thoroughly conversant not only with the features of
+every walk and class in life, but also with their intimate sentiments,
+habits of thought, and modes of expression. Now, I have long been of
+opinion, that in all these respects, lawyers are infinitely their
+superiors. The author chooses his characters as you choose your dish,
+or your wine at dinner--he takes what suits, and leaves what is not
+available to his purpose. He then fashions them to his hand--finishing
+off this portrait, sketching that one--now bringing certain figures
+into strong light, anon throwing them into shadow: they are his
+creatures, who must obey him while living, and even die at his
+command. Now, the lawyer is called on for all the narrative and
+descriptive powers of his art, at a moment's notice, without time for
+reading or preparation; and worse than all, his business frequently
+lies among the very arts and callings his taste is most repugnant to.
+One day he is to be found creeping, with a tortoise slowness through
+all the wearisome intricacy of an equity case--the next he is borne
+along in a torrent of indignant eloquence, in defence of some Orange
+processionist or some Ribbon associate: now he describes, with the
+gravity of a landscape gardener, the tortuous windings of a
+mill-stream; now expatiating in Lytton Bulwerisms over the desolate
+hearth and broken fortunes of some deserted husband. In one court he
+attempts to prove that the elderly gentleman whose life was insured
+for a thousand at the Phoenix, was instrumental to his own decease, for
+not eating Cayenne with his oysters; in another, he shows, with
+palpable clearness, that being stabbed in the body, and having the
+head fractured, is a venial offence, and merely the result of
+"political excitement" in a high-spirited and warm-hearted people.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+These are all clever efforts, and demand consummate powers, at the
+hand of him who makes them; but what are they to that deep and
+critical research with which he seems, instinctively, to sound the
+depths of every scientific walk in life, and every learned profession.
+Hear him in a lunacy case--listen to the deep and subtle distinctions
+he draws between the symptoms of mere eccentricity and erring
+intellect--remark how insignificant the physician appears in the case,
+who has made these things the study of a life long--hear how the
+barrister confounds him with a hail-storm of technicals--talking of
+the pineal gland as if it was an officer of the court, and of atrophy
+of the cerebral lobes, as if he was speaking of an attorney's clerk.
+Listen to him in a trial of supposed death by poison; what a triumph
+he has there, particularly if he be a junior barrister--how he walks
+undismayed among all the tests for arsenic--how little he cares for
+Marsh's apparatus and Scheele's discoveries--hydro-sulphates,
+peroxydes, iodurates, and proto-chlorides are familiar to him as
+household words. You would swear that he was nursed at a glass
+retort, and sipped his first milk through a blow-pipe. Like a child
+who thumps the keys of a pianoforte, and imagines himself a Liszt or
+Moschelles, so does your barrister revel amid the phraseology of a
+difficult science--pelting the witnesses with his insane blunders, and
+assuring the jury that their astonishment means ignorance. Nothing in
+anatomy is too deep--nothing in chemistry too subtle--no fact in
+botany too obscure--no point in metaphysics too difficult. Like
+Dogberry, these things are to him but the gift of God; and he knows
+them at his birth. Truly, the chancellor is a powerful magician; and
+the mystic words by which he calls a gentleman to the bar, must have
+some potent spell within them. The youth you remember as if it were
+yesterday, the lounger at evening parties, or the chaperon of riding
+damsels to the Phoenix, comes forth now a man of deep and consummate
+acquirement--he whose chemistry went no further than the composition
+of a "tumbler of punch," can now perform the most difficult
+experiments of Orfila or Davy, or explain the causes of failure in a
+test that has puzzled the scientific world for half a century. He
+knows the precise monetary value of a deserted maiden's affections--he
+can tell you the exact sum, in bank notes, that a widow will be
+knocked down for, when her heart has been subject to but a feint
+attack of Cupid. With what consummate skill, too, he can show that an
+indictment is invalid, when stabbing is inserted for cutting; and when
+the crown prosecutor has been deficient in his descriptive anatomy,
+what a glorious field for display is opened to him. Then, to be sure,
+what droll fellows they are!--how they do quiz the witness as he sits
+trembling on the table--what funny allusions to his habits of
+life--his age--his station--turning the whole battery of their powers
+of ridicule against him--ready, if he venture to retort, to throw
+themselves on the protection of the court. And truly, if a little
+Latin suffice for a priest, a little wit goes very far in a law court.
+A joke is a universal blessing: the judge, who, after all, is only "an
+old lawyer," loves it from habit: the jury, generally speaking, are
+seldom in such good company, and they laugh from complaisance; and the
+bar joins in the mirth, on that great reciprocity principle, which
+enables them to bear each other's dulness, and dine together
+afterwards. People are insane enough to talk of absenteeism as one of
+the evils of Ireland, and regret that we have no resident aristocracy
+among us--rather let us rejoice that we have them not, so long as the
+lawyers prove their legitimate successors.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+How delightful in a land where civilization has still some little
+progress before it, and where the state of crime is not quite
+satisfactory--to know that we have those amongst us who know all
+things, feel all things, explain all things, and reconcile all
+things--who can throw such a Claude Lorraine light over right and
+wrong, that they are both mellowed into a sweet and hallowed softness,
+delightful to gaze on. How the secret of this universal acquirement is
+accomplished I know not--perhaps it is the wig.
+
+What set me first on this train of thought, was a trial I lately read,
+where a cross action was sustained for damage at sea--the owners of
+the brig Durham against the Aurora, a foreign vessel, and _vice
+vers�_, for the result of a collision at noon, on the 14th of October.
+It appeared that both vessels had taken shelter in the Humber from
+stress of weather, nearly at the same time--that the Durham, which
+preceded the Prussian vessel, "clewed up her top-sails, and dropped
+her anchor _rather_ suddenly; and the Aurora being in the rear, the
+vessels came in collision." The question, therefore, was, whether the
+Durham came to anchor too precipitately, and in an unseamanlike
+manner; or, in other words, whether, when the "Durham clewed up
+top-sails and let go her anchor, the Aurora should not have luffed up,
+or got sternway on her," &c. Nothing could possibly be more
+instructive, nor anything scarcely more amusing, than the lucid
+arguments employed by the counsel on both sides. The learned Thebans,
+that would have been sick in a ferry-boat, spoke as if they had
+circumnavigated the globe. Stay-sails, braces, top-gallants, clews,
+and capstans they hurled at each other like _bon bons_ at a carnival;
+and this naval engagement lasted from daylight to dark. Once only,
+when the judge "made it noon," for a little refection, did they cease
+conflict, to renew the strife afterwards with more deadly daring, till
+at last so confused were the witnesses--the plaintiff, defendant, and
+all, that they half wished, they had gone to the bottom, before they
+thought of settling the differences in the Admiralty Court. This was
+no common occasion for the display of these powers so peculiarly the
+instinctive gift of the bar, and certainly they used it with all the
+enthusiasm of a _bonne bouche_.
+
+How I trembled for the Aurora, when an elderly gentleman, with a wart
+on his nose, assured the court that the Durham had her top-sail backed
+ten minutes before the anchor fell; and then, how I feared again for
+the Durham, as a thin man in spectacles worked the Prussian about in a
+double-reefed mainsail, and stood round in stays so beautifully. I
+thought myself at sea, so graphic was the whole description--the waves
+splashed and foamed around the bulwarks, and broke in spray upon the
+deck--the wind rattled amid the rigging--the bulkheads creaked, and
+the good ship heaved heavily in the trough of the sea, like a mighty
+monster in his agony. But my heart quailed not--I knew that Dr.
+Lushington was at the helm, and Dr. Haggard had the look-out a-head--I
+felt that Dr. Robinson stood by the lee braces, and Dr. Addison
+waited, hatchet in hand, to cut away the mainmast. These were
+comforting reflections, till I was once more enabled to believe myself
+in her Majesty's High Court of Admiralty.
+
+Alas! ye Coopers--ye Marryats--ye Chamiers--ye historians of storm and
+sea-fight, how inferior are your triumphs compared with the
+descriptive eloquence of a law court. Who can pourtray the broken
+heart of blighted affection, like Charles Phillips in a breach of
+promise? What was Scott compared to Scarlett?--how inferior is Dickens
+to Counsellor O'Driscoll?--here are the men, who, without the trickery
+of trade, ungilt, unlettered, and unillustrated, can move the world to
+laughter and to tears. They ask no aid from Colburn, nor from
+Cruikshank--they need not "Brown" nor Longman. Heaven-born warriors,
+doctors, chemists, and anatomists--deep in every art, learned in every
+science--mankind is to them an open book, which they read at will, and
+con over at leisure--happy country, where we have you in abundance,
+and where your talents are so available, that they can be had for
+asking.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE IRISH.
+
+AN IRISH ENCORE.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+We certainly are a very original people, and contrive to do everything
+after a way of our own! Not content with cementing our friendships by
+fighting, and making the death of a relative the occasion of a merry
+evening, we even convert the habits we borrow from other lands into
+something essentially different from their original intention, and
+infuse into them a spirit quite national.
+
+The echo which, when asked "How d'ye do, Paddy Blake?" replied,
+"Mighty well, thank you," could only have been an Irish echo. Any
+other country would have sulkily responded, "Blake--ake--ake--ake," in
+_diminuendo_ to the end of the chapter. But there is a courtesy, an
+attention, a native politeness on our side of the channel, it is in
+vain to seek elsewhere. A very strong instance in point occurs in a
+morning paper before me, and one so delightfully characteristic of our
+habits and customs, it would be unpardonable to pass it without
+commemoration. At an evening concert at the Rotundo, we are informed
+that Mr. Knight--I believe his name is--enchanted his audience by the
+charming manner he sung "Molly Astore." Three distinct rounds of
+applause followed, and an encore that actually shook the building, and
+may--though we are not informed of the circumstance--have produced
+very remarkable effects in the adjacent institution; upon which Mr.
+Knight, with his habitual courtesy, came forward and sang--what, think
+ye, good reader? Of course you will say, "Molly Astore," the song he
+was encored for. Alas! for your ignorance;--that might do very well in
+Liverpool or Manchester, at Bath, Bristol, or Birmingham--the poor
+benighted Saxons there might like to get what they asked so eagerly
+for; but we are men of very different mould, and not accustomed to the
+jog-trot subserviency of such common-sense notions; and accordingly,
+Mr. Knight sang "The Soldier Tired"--a piece of politeness on his part
+that actually convulsed the house with acclamations; and so on to the
+end of the entertainment, "the gentleman, when encored, invariably
+sang a new song"--I quote the paper _verbatim_--"which testimony of
+his anxiety to meet the wishes of the audience afforded universal
+satisfaction."
+
+Now, I ask--and I ask it in all the tranquillity of triumph--show me
+the country on a map where such a studied piece of courteous civility
+could have been practised, or which, if attempted, could have been so
+thoroughly, so instantaneously appreciated. And what an insight does
+it give us into some of the most difficult features of our national
+character. May not this Irish encore explain the success with which
+Mr. O'Connell consoles our "poverty" by attacks on the clergy, and
+relieves our years of scarcity by creating forty-shilling freeholders.
+We ask for bread; and he tells us we are a great people--we beg for
+work, and he replies, that we must have repeal of the union--we
+complain of our poverty, and his remedy is--subscribe to the rent.
+Your heavy-headed Englishman--your clod-hopper from Yorkshire--or
+your boor from Northumberland, would never understand this, if you
+gave him a life-long to con over it. Norfolk pudding to his gross and
+sensual nature would seem better than the new registration bill; and
+he'd rather hear the simmering music of the boiled beef for his
+dinner, than all the rabid ruffianism of a repeal meeting.
+
+But to come back to ourselves. What bold and ample views of life do
+our free-and-easy habits disclose to us, not to speak of the very
+servant at table, who will often help you to soup, when you ask for
+sherry, and give you preserves, when you beg for pepper. What amiable
+cross-purposes are we always playing at--not bigotedly adhering to our
+own narrow notions, and following out our own petty views of life, but
+eagerly doing what we have no concern in, and meritoriously performing
+for our friends, what they had been well pleased, we'd have let alone.
+
+This amiable waywardness--this pleasing uncertainty of
+purpose--characterises our very climate; and the day that breaks in
+sunshine becomes stormy at noon, calm towards evening, and blows a
+hurricane all night. So the Irishman that quits his home brimful of
+philanthropy is not unlikely to rob a church before his return. But so
+it is, there is nobody like us in any respect. We commemorate the
+advent of a sovereign by erecting a testimonial to the last spot he
+stood on at his departure; and we are enthusiastic in our gratitude
+when, having asked for one favour, we receive something as unlike it
+as possible.
+
+Our friends at the other side are beginning to legislate for us in the
+true spirit of our prejudices; and when we have complained of "a
+beggared proprietary and a ruined gentry," they have bolstered up our
+weakness with the new poor law. So much for an Irish encore.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR VICEREGAL PRIVILEGES.
+
+     "The sixth of Anne, chap. seventeen, makes it unlawful to
+     keep gaming-houses in any part of the city except the
+     'Castle,' and prohibits any game being played even there
+     except during the residence of the Lord Lieutenant. This act
+     is still on the statute book."--_Dublin Paper._
+
+
+One might puzzle himself for a very long time for an explanation of
+this strange _morceau_ of legislation, without any hope of arriving at
+a shadow of a reason for it.
+
+That gaming should be suppressed by a government is in no wise
+unnatural; nor should we feel any surprise at our legislature having
+been a century in advance of France, in the due restriction of this
+demoralizing practice. But that the exercise of a vice should be
+limited to the highest offices of the state is, indeed, singular, and
+demands no little reflection on our part to investigate the cause.
+
+Had the functions of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland been of that drowsy,
+tiresome, uninteresting nature, that it was only deemed fair by the
+legislature to afford him some amusing pastime to distract his
+"_ennui_" and dispel his melancholy, there might seem to have been
+then some reason for this extraordinary enactment. On the contrary,
+however, every one knows that from the remotest times to the present,
+every viceroy of Ireland has had quite enough on his hands. Some have
+been saving money to pay off old mortgages, others were farming the
+Phoenix; some took to the King Cambyses' vein, like poor dear Lord
+Normanby--raked up all the old properties and faded finery of the
+Castle, and with such material as they could collect, made a kind of
+Drury-lane representation of a court. And very lately, and with an
+originality so truly characteristic of true genius, Lord Ebrington
+struck out a line of his own, and slept away his time with such a
+persevering intensity of purpose, that "the least wide-awake" persons
+of his government became actually ashamed of themselves. But to go
+back. What, I would ask, was the intention of this act? I know you
+give it up. Well, now, I have made the matter the subject of long and
+serious thought, and I think I have discovered it.
+
+Have you ever read, in the laws of the smaller German states, the
+singular rules and regulations regarding the gaming-table? If so, you
+will have found how the entire property of the "_rouge et noir_" and
+"_roulette_" is vested in certain individuals in return for very
+considerable sums of money, paid by them to the government, for the
+privilege of robbing the public. These honourable and estimable people
+farm out iniquity as you would do your demesne, selling the cheatable
+features of mankind, like the new corn law, on the principle of "a
+general average." The government of these states, finding--no uncommon
+thing in Germany--a deficiency in their exchequer, have hit upon this
+ready method of supplying the gap, by a system which has all the
+regularity of a tax, with the advantage of a voluntary contribution.
+These little kingdoms, therefore, of some half-dozen miles in
+circumference, are nothing more than _rouge et noir_ tables, where the
+grand duke performs the part of croupier, and gathers in the gold.
+Now, I am convinced that something of this kind was intended by our
+lawgivers in the act of parliament to which I have alluded, and that
+its programme might run thus--that "as the office of Lord Lieutenant
+in Ireland is one of great responsibility, high trust, and necessarily
+demanding profuse expenditure; and that, as it may so happen that the
+same should, in the course of events, be filled by some Whig-Radical
+viceroy of great pretension and little property; and that as the
+ordinary sum for maintaining his dignity may be deemed insufficient,
+we hereby give him the exclusive liberty and privilege of all games of
+chance, skill, or address, in the kingdom of Ireland, whether the same
+may be chicken-hazard, blind hookey, head and tail, &c.--thimble-rigging
+was only known later--to be enjoyed by himself only, or by persons
+deputed by him; such privilege in nowise to extend to the lords
+justices, but only to exist during the actual residence and presence
+of the Lord Lieutenant himself."--_See the Act._
+
+I cannot but admire the admirable tact that dictated this portion of
+legislation; at the same time, it does seem a little hard that the
+chancellor, the archbishop, and the other high functionaries, who
+administer the law in the absence of the viceroy, should not have been
+permitted the small privilege of a little unlimited loo, or even
+beggar-my-neighbour, particularly as the latter game is the popular
+one in Ireland.
+
+There would seem, too, something like an appreciation of our national
+character in the spirit of this law, which, unhappily for England, and
+Ireland, too, has not always dictated her enactments concerning us.
+It is well known that we hate and abhor anything in the shape of a
+legal debt. Few Irishmen will refuse you the loan of five pounds;
+still fewer can persuade themselves to pay five shillings. The kingdom
+of Galway has long been celebrated for its enlightened notions on this
+subject, showing how much more conducive it is to personal
+independence and domestic economy, to spend five hundred pounds in
+resisting a claim, than to satisfy it by the payment of twenty.
+Accordingly, had any direct taxation of considerable amount been
+proposed for the support of viceregal dignity, the chances are--much
+as we like show and glitter, ardently as we admire all that gives us
+the semblance of a state--we should have buttoned up our pockets, and
+upon the principle of those economical little tracts, that teach us to
+do so much for ourselves, every man would have resolved to be "his own
+Lord Lieutenant;" coming, however, in the shape of an indirect
+taxation, a voluntary contribution to be withheld at pleasure, the
+thing was unobjectionable.
+
+You might not like cards, still less the company--a very possible
+circumstance, the latter, in some times we wot of not long
+since--Well, then, you saved your cash and your character by staying
+at home; on the other hand, it was a comfort to know that you could
+have your rubber of "shorts" or your game at _�cart�_, while at the
+same time you were contributing to the maintenance of the crown, and
+discharging the _devoirs_ of a loyal subject. It is useless, however,
+to speculate upon an obsolete institution; the law has fallen into
+disuse, and the more is the pity. How one would like to have seen Lord
+Normanby, with that one curl of infantine simplicity that played upon
+his forehead, with that eternal leer of self-satisfied loveliness that
+rested on his features, playing banker at _rouge et noir_, or calling
+the throws at hazard. I am not quite so sure that the concern would
+have been so profitable as picturesque. The principal frequenters of
+his court were "York too;" Lord Plunket was a "downy cove;" and if
+Anthony Blaek took the box, most assuredly "I'd back the caster." Now
+and then, to be sure, a stray, misguided country gentleman--a kind of
+"wet Tory"--used to be found at that court; just as one sees some
+respectable matronly woman at Ems or Baden, seated in a happy
+unconsciousness that all the company about her are rogues and
+swindlers, so _he_ might afford some good sport, and assist to
+replenish the famished exchequer. Generally speaking, however, the
+play would not have kept the tables; and his lordship would have been
+_in_ for the wax-lights, without the slightest chance of return.
+
+As for his successor, "patience" would have been his only game; and
+indeed it was one he had to practise whilst he remained amongst us.
+Better days have now come: let us, therefore, inquire if a slight
+modification of the act might not be effected with benefit, and an
+amendment, somewhat thus, be introduced into the bill:--"That the
+words 'Lord Mayor' be substituted for the words 'Lord Lieutenant;' and
+that all the privileges, rights, immunities, &c., aforesaid, be
+enjoyed by him to his sole use and benefit; and also that, in place of
+the word 'Castle,' the word 'Mansion-house' stand part of this
+bill"--thus reserving to his lordship all monopoly in games of chance
+and address, without in anywise interfering with such practices of the
+like nature exercised by him elsewhere, and always permitted and
+conceded by whatever government in power.
+
+Here, my dear countrymen, is no common suggestion. I am no prophet,
+like Sir Harcourt Lees; but still I venture to predict, that this
+system once legalised at the Mayoralty, the tribute is totally
+unnecessary. The little town of Spa, with scarce 10,000 inhabitants,
+pays the Belgian government 200,000 francs per annum for the liberty:
+what would Dublin--a city so populous and so idle? only think of the
+tail!--how admirably they could employ their little talent as
+"bonnets," and the various other functionaries so essential to the
+well-being of a gambling-house; and, lastly, think of great Dan
+himself, with his burly look, seated in civic dignity at the green
+cloth, with a rake instead of a mace before him, calling out, "Make
+your game, gentlemen, make your game"--"Never venture, never
+win"--"Faint heart," &c., &c.
+
+How suitable would the eloquence that has now grown tiresome, even at
+the Corn Exchange, be at the head of a gaming-table; and how well
+would the Liberator conduct a business whose motto is so admirably
+expressed by the phrase, "Heads, _I_ win; tails, _you_ lose." Besides,
+after all, nothing could form so efficient a bond of union between the
+two contending parties in the country as some little mutual territory
+of wickedness, where both might forget their virtues and their
+grievances together. Here you'd soon have the violent party-man of
+either side, oblivious of everything but his chance of gain; and what
+an energy would it give to the great Daniel to think that, while
+filling his pockets, he was also spoiling the Egyptians! Instead,
+therefore, of making the poor man contribute his penny, and the
+ragged man two-pence, you'd have the Rent supplied without the trouble
+of collection; and all from the affluent and the easy, or at least the
+idle, portion of the community.
+
+This is the second time I have thrown out a suggestion--and all for
+nothing, remember--on the subject of afinance; and little reflection
+will show that both my schemes are undeniable in their benefits. Here
+you have one of the most expensive pleasures a poor country has ever
+ventured to afford itself--a hired agitator, pensioned, without any
+burden on the productive industry of the land; and he himself, so far
+from having anything to complain of, will find that his revenue is
+more than quadrupled.
+
+Look at the question, besides, in another point of view, and see what
+possible advantages may arise from it. Nothing is so admirable an
+antidote to all political excitement as gambling: where it flourishes,
+men become so inextricably involved in its fascinations and
+attractions that they forget everything else. Now, was ever a country
+so urgently in want of a little repose as ours? and would it not be
+well to purchase it, and pension off our great disturbers, at any
+price whatever? Cards are better than carding any day; short whist is
+an admirable substitute for insurrection; and the rattle of a dice-box
+is surely as pleasant music as the ruffian shout for repeal.
+
+
+
+
+RICH AND POOR--POUR ET CONTRE.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+If I was a king upon a throne this minute, an' I wanted to have a
+smoke for myself by the fireside--why, if I was to do my best, what
+could I smoke but one pen'orth of tobacco, in the night, after
+all?--but can't I have that just as asy?
+
+"If I was to have a bed with down feathers, what could I do but sleep
+there?--and sure I can do that in the settle-bed above."
+
+Such is the very just and philosophical reflection of one of Griffin's
+most amusing characters, in his inimitable story of "The
+Collegians"--a reflection that naturally sets us a thinking, that if
+riches and wealth cannot really increase a man's capacity for
+enjoyment with the enjoyments themselves, their pursuit is, after all,
+but a poor and barren object of even worldly happiness.
+
+As it is perfectly evident that, so far as mere sensual gratifications
+are concerned, the peer and the peasant stand pretty much on a level,
+let us inquire for a moment in what the great superiority consists
+which exalts and elevates one above the other? Now, without entering
+upon that wild field for speculation that power (and what power equals
+that conferred by wealth?) confers, and the train of ennobling
+sentiment suggested by extended views of philanthropy and
+benevolence--for, in this respect, it is perfectly possible the poor
+man has as amiable a thrill at his heart in sharing his potato with a
+wandering beggar, as the rich one has in contributing his thousand
+pounds' donation to some great national charity--let us turn rather to
+the consideration of those more tangible differences that leave their
+impress upon character, and mould men's minds into a fashion so
+perfectly and thoroughly distinct.
+
+To our thinking, then, the great superiority wealth confers lies in
+the seclusion the rich man lives in from all the grosser agency of
+every-day life--its make-shifts, its contrivances, its continued
+warfare of petty provision and continual care, its unceasing effort to
+seem what it is not, and to appear to the world in a garb, and after a
+manner, to which it has no just pretension. The rich man knows nothing
+of all this: life, to him, rolls on in measured tread; and the world,
+albeit the changes of season and politics may affect him, has nothing
+to call forth any unusual effort of his temper or his intellect; his
+life, like his drawing-room, is arranged for him; he never sees it
+otherwise than in trim order; with an internal consciousness that
+people must be engaged in providing for his comforts at seasons when
+he is in bed or asleep, or otherwise occupied, he gives himself no
+farther trouble about them; and, in the monotony of his pleasures,
+attains to a tranquillity of mind the most enviable and most happy.
+
+Hence that perfect composure so conspicuous in the higher ranks, among
+whom wealth is so generally diffused--hence that delightful simplicity
+of manner, so captivating from its total absence of pretension and
+affectation--hence that unbroken serenity that no chances or
+disappointments would seem to interfere with; the knowledge that he is
+of far too much consequence to be neglected or forgotten, supports him
+on every occasion, and teaches that, when anything happens to his
+inconvenience or discomfort, that it could not but be unavoidable.
+
+Not so the poor man: his poverty is a shoe that pinches every hour of
+the twenty-four; he may bear up from habit, from philosophy, against
+his restricted means of enjoyment; he may accustom himself to limited
+and narrow bounds of pleasure; he may teach himself that, when wetting
+his lips with the cup of happiness, that he is not to drink to his
+liking of it: but what he cannot acquire is that total absence of all
+forethought for the minor cares of life, its provisions for the
+future, its changes and contingencies--hence he does not possess that
+easy and tranquil temperament so captivating to all within its
+influence; he has none of the careless _abandon_ of happiness, because
+even when happy he feels how short-lived must be his pleasure, and
+what a price he must pay for it. The thought of the future poisons the
+present, just as the dark cloud that gathers round the mountain-top
+makes the sunlight upon the plain seem cold and sickly.
+
+All the poor man's pleasures have taken such time and care in their
+preparation that they have lost their freshness ere they are tasted.
+The cook has sipped so frequently at the pottage, he will not eat of
+it when at table. The poor man sees life "_en papillotes_" before he
+sees it "dressed." The rich man sees it only in the resplendent blaze
+of its beauty, glowing with all the attraction that art can lend it,
+and wearing smiles put on for his own enjoyment. But if such be the
+case, and if the rich man, from the very circumstance of his position,
+imbibe habits and acquire a temperament possessing such charm and
+fascination, does he surrender nothing for all this? Alas! and alas!
+how many of the charities of life lie buried in the still waters of
+his apathetic nature! How many of the warm feelings of his heart are
+chilled for ever, for want of ground for their exercise! How can he
+sympathise who has never suffered? how can he console who has never
+grieved? There is nothing healthy in the placid mirror of that glassy
+lake; uncurled by a breeze, unruffled by a breath of passion, it wants
+the wholesome agitation of the breaking wave--the health-giving,
+bracing power of the conflicting element that stirs the heart within,
+and nerves it for a noble effort.
+
+All that he has of good within him is cramped by _convenance_ and
+fashion; for he who never feared the chance of fortune, trembles, with
+a coward's dread, before the sneer of the world. The poor man,
+however, only appeals to this test on a very different score. The
+"world" may prescribe to him the fashion of his hat, or the colour of
+his coat--it may dictate the _locale_ of his residence, and the style
+of his household, and he may, so far as in him lies, comply with a
+tyranny so absurd; but with the free sentiments of his nature--his
+honest pride, his feeling sympathy--with the open current of his warm
+affection he suffers no interference: of this no man shall be the
+arbiter. If, then, the shoals and quicksands of the world deprive him
+of that tranquil guise and placid look--the enviable gift of richer
+men--he has, in requital, the unrestricted use of those greater gifts
+that God has given him, untrammelled by man's opinion, uncurbed by
+the control of "the world."
+
+Each supports a tyranny after his own kind:--
+
+The rich man--above the dictates of fashion--subjects the thoughts of
+his mind and the meditations of his heart to the world's rule.
+
+The poor man--below it--keeps these for his prerogative, and has no
+slavery save in form.
+
+Happy the man who, amid all the seductions of wealth, and all the
+blandishments of fortune, can keep his heart and mind in the healthy
+exercise of its warm affections and its generous impulses. But still
+happier he, whose wealth, the native purity of his heart--can limit
+his desires to his means, and untrammelled by ambition, undeterred by
+fear of failure, treads the lowly but peaceful path in life, neither
+aspiring to be great, nor fearing to be humble.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR ST. PATRICK'S NIGHT.
+
+
+There is no cant offends me more than the oft-repeated criticisms on
+the changed condition of Ireland. How very much worse or how very much
+better we have become since this ministry, or that measure--what a
+deplorable falling off!--what a gratifying prospect! how poor! how
+prosperous! &c. &c. Now, we are exactly what and where we used to be:
+not a whit wiser nor better, poorer nor prouder. The union, the relief
+bill, the reform and corporation acts, have passed over us, like the
+summer breeze upon the calm water of a lake, ruffling the surface for
+a moment, but leaving all still and stagnant as before. Making new
+laws for the use of a people who would not obey the old ones, is much
+like the policy of altering the collar or the cuffs of a coat for a
+savage, who insists all the while on going naked. However, it amuses
+the gentlemen of St. Stephen's; and, I'm sure I'm not the man to
+quarrel with innocent pleasures.
+
+To me, looking back, as my Lord Brougham would say, from the period of
+a long life, I cannot perceive even the slightest difference in the
+appearance of the land, or the looks of its inhabitants. Dublin is the
+same dirty, ill-cared-for, broken-windowed, tumble-down concern it
+used to be--the country the same untilled, weed-grown, unfenced thing
+I remember it fifty years ago--the society pretty much the same
+mixture of shrewd lawyers, suave doctors, raw subalterns, and fat,
+old, greasy country gentlemen, waiting in town for remittances to
+carry them on to Cheltenham--that paradise of Paddies, and elysium of
+Galway _belles_. Our table-talk the old story, of who was killed last
+in Tipperary or Limerick, with the accustomed seasoning of the
+oft-repeated alibi that figures at every assizes, and is successful
+with every jury. These pleasant topics, tinted with the party colour
+of the speaker's politics, form the staple of conversation; and,
+"barring the wit," we are pretty much what our fathers were some half
+century earlier. Father Mathew, to be sure, has innovated somewhat on
+our ancient prejudices; but I find that what are called "the upper
+classes" are far too cultivated and too well-informed to follow a
+priest. A few weeks ago, I had a striking illustration of this fact
+brought before me, which I am disposed to quote the more willingly as
+it also serves to display the admirable constancy with which we adhere
+to our old and time-honoured habits. The morning of St. Patrick's day
+was celebrated in Dublin by an immense procession of teetotallers,
+who, with white banners, and whiter cheeks, paraded the city,
+evidencing in their cleanly but care-worn countenances, the benefits
+of temperance. On the same evening a gentleman--so speak the morning
+papers--got immoderately drunk at the ball in the Castle, and was
+carried out in a state of insensibility. Now, it is not for the sake
+of contrast I have mentioned this fact--my present speculation has
+another and very different object, and is simply this:--How comes it,
+that since time out of mind the same event has recurred on the
+anniversary of St. Patrick at the Irish court? When I was a boy I
+remember well "the gentleman who became so awfully drunk," &c. Every
+administration, from the Duke of Rutland downwards, has had its
+drunken gentleman on "St. Patrick's night." Where do they keep him all
+the year long?--what do they do with him?--are questions I continually
+am asking myself. Under what name and designation does he figure in
+the pension list? for of course I am not silly enough to suppose that
+a well-ordered government would depend on chance for functionaries
+like these. One might as well suppose they would calculate on some one
+improvising Sir William Betham, or extemporaneously performing "God
+save the Queen," on the state trumpet, in lieu of that amiable
+individual who distends his loyal cheeks on our great anniversaries.
+No, no. I am well aware he is a member of the household, or at least
+in the pay of the government. When the pope converts his Jew on Holy
+Thursday, the Catholic church have had ample time for preparation: the
+cardinals are on the look-out for weeks before, to catch one for his
+holiness--a good respectable hirsute Israelite, with a strong Judas
+expression to magnify the miracle. But then the Jew is passive in the
+affair, and has only to be converted patiently--whereas "the
+gentleman" has an active duty to discharge; he must imbibe sherry,
+iced punch, and champagne, at such a rate that he can be able to shock
+the company, before the rooms thin, with his intemperate excess.
+Besides, to give the devil--the pope, I mean--his Jew, they snare a
+fresh one every Easter. Now, I am fully persuaded that, at our Irish
+court, the same gentleman has performed the part for upwards of fifty
+years.
+
+At the ancient banquets it was always looked upon as a triumph of
+Amphitryonism when a guest or two died the day after of indigestion,
+from over eating. Now, is it not possible that our classic origin may
+have imparted to us the trait I am speaking of, and that "the
+gentleman" is retained as typical of our exceeding hilarity and
+consummate conviviality--an evidence to the "great unasked" that the
+festivities within doors are conducted on a scale of boundless
+profusion and extravagance--that the fountains from which honour
+flows, run also with champagne, and that punch and the peerage are to
+be seen bubbling from the same source.
+
+It is a sad thing to think that the gifted man, who has served his
+country so faithfully in this capacity for so long a period, must now
+be stricken in years. Time and rum must be telling upon him; and yet,
+what should we do were we to lose him?
+
+In the chapel of Maria Zell, in Styria, there is a portly figure of
+St. Somebody, with more consonants than I find it prudent to venture
+on from mere memory; the priest is rolling his eyes very benignly on
+the frequenters of the chapel, as they pass by the shrine he resides
+in. The story goes, that when the saint ceases winking, some great
+calamity will occur to the commune and its inhabitants. Now, the last
+time I saw him, he was in great vigour, ogled away with his accustomed
+energy, and even, I thought--perhaps it was a suspicion on my
+part--had actually strained his eyeballs into something like a squint,
+from actual eagerness to oblige his votaries--a circumstance happily
+of the less moment in our days, as a gifted countryman of ours could
+have remedied the defect in no time. But to return; my theory is, that
+when we lose our tipsy friend it's all up with us; "Birnam wood will
+then have come to Dunsinane;" and what misfortunes may befal us, Sir
+Harcourt Lees may foresee, but I confess myself totally unable to
+predicate.
+
+Were I the viceroy, I'd not sleep another night in the island. I'd
+pack up the regalia, send for Anthony Blake to take charge of the
+country, and start for Liverpool in the mail-packet.
+
+Happily, however, such an event may be still distant; and although the
+Austrians have but one Metternich, we may find a successor to our
+"Knight of St. Patrick."
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR "GENTLEMAN JOCKS."
+
+
+"The Honourable Fitzroy Shuffleton," I quote _The Morning Post_, "who
+rode Bees-wing, came in a winner amid deafening cheers. Never was a
+race better contested; and although, when passing the distance-post,
+the Langar colt seemed to have the best of it, yet such was Mr.
+Shuffleton's tact and jockeyship, that he shot a-head in advance of
+his adversary, and came in first." I omit the passages descriptive of
+the peculiar cleverness displayed by this gifted gentleman. I omit
+also that glorious outbreak of newspaper eloquence, in which the
+delight of his friends is expressed--the tears of joy from his
+sisters--the cambric handkerchiefs that floated in the air--the
+innumerable and reiterated cries of "Well done!--he's a trump!--the
+right sort!" &c. &c., so profusely employed by the crowd, because I am
+fully satisfied with what general approbation such proofs of ability
+are witnessed.
+
+[Illustration: Gentlemen Jocks.]
+
+We are a great nation, and nowhere is our greatness more conspicuous
+than in the education of our youth. The young Frenchman seems to
+fulfil his destiny, when, having drawn on a pair of the most
+tight-fitting kid gloves, of that precise shade of colour so approved
+of by Madame Laffarge, he saunters forth on the Boulevard de Gand, or
+lounges in the _coulisse_ of the opera.
+
+The German, whose contempt not only extends to glove-leather, but
+clean hands, betakes himself early in life to the way he should go,
+and from which, to do him justice, he never shows any inclination to
+depart. A meerschaum some three feet long, and a tobacco bag like a
+school-boy's satchel, supply his wants in life. The dreamy visions of
+the unreal woes, and the still more unreal greatness of his country,
+form the pabulum for his thoughts; and he has no other ambition, for
+some half dozen years of his life, than to boast his utter
+indifference to kings and clean water.
+
+Now, we manage matters somewhat better. Our young men, from the very
+outset of their career, are admirable jockeys; and if by any fatality,
+like the dreadful revolution of France, our nobles should be compelled
+to emigrate from their native land, instead of teaching mathematics
+and music, the small sword and quadrilles, we shall have the
+satisfaction of knowing that we supply stable-boys to the whole of
+Europe.
+
+Whatever other people may say or think, I put a great value on this
+equestrian taste. I speak not here of the manly nature of horse
+exercise--of the noble and vigorous pursuits of the hunting field. No;
+I direct my observations solely to the heroes of Ascot and Epsom--of
+Doncaster and Goodwood. I only speak of those whose pleasure it is to
+read no book save the Racing Calendar, and frequent no lounge but
+Tattersall's; who esteem the stripes of a racing-jacket more
+honourable than the ribbon of the Bath, and look to a well-timed
+"hustle" or "a shake" as the climax of human ability. These are fine
+fellows, and I prize them. But if it be not only praiseworthy, but
+pleasant, to ride for the Duke's cup at Goodwood, or the Corinthian's
+at the Curragh, why not extend the sphere of the utility, and become
+as amiable in private as they are conspicuous in public life?
+
+We have seen them in silk jackets of various hues, with leathers and
+tops of most accurate fitting, turn out amid the pelting of a most
+pitiless storm, to ride some three miles of spongy turf, at the hazard
+of their necks, and the almost certainty of a rheumatic fever; and
+why, donning the same or some similar costume, will they not perform
+the office of postillion, when their fathers, or mayhap, some
+venerated aunt, is returning by the north road to an antiquated
+mansion in Yorkshire? The pace, to be sure, is not so fast--but it
+compensates in safety what it loses in speed--the assemblage around is
+not so numerous, or the excitement so great; but filial tenderness is
+a nobler motive than the acclamations of a mob. In fact, the parallel
+presents all the advantages on one side: and the jockey is as inferior
+to the postillion as the fitful glare of an _ignis-fatuus_ is to the
+steady brilliancy of a gas-lamp.
+
+An Englishman has a natural pride in the navy of his country--our
+wooden walls are a glorious boast; but, perhaps, after all, there is
+nothing more captivating in the whole detail of the service, than the
+fact that even the highest and the noblest in the land has no royal
+road to its promotion, but, beginning at the very humblest step, he
+must work his way through every grade and every rank, like his
+comrades around him. Many there are now living who remember Prince
+William, as he was called--late William the Fourth, of glorious
+memory--sitting in the stern seats of a gig, his worn jacket and
+weather-beaten hat attesting that even the son of a king had no
+immunity from the hardships of the sea. This is a proud thought for
+Englishmen, and well suited to gratify their inherent loyalty and
+their sturdy independence. Now, might we not advantageously extend the
+influence of such examples, by the suggestion I have thrown out above?
+If a foreigner be now struck by hearing, as he walks through the
+dockyard at Plymouth, that the little middy who touches his hat with
+such obsequious politeness, is the Marquis of ----, or the Earl of
+----, with some fifty thousand per annum, how much more astonished
+will he be on learning that he owes the rapidity with which he
+traversed the last stage to his having been driven by Lord Wilton--or
+that the lengthy proportions, so dexterously gathered up in the
+saddle, belong to an ex-ambassador from St. Petersburgh. How surprised
+would he feel, too, that instead of the low habits and coarse tastes
+he would look for in that condition in life, he would now see elegant
+and accomplished gentlemen, sipping a glass of cura�oa at the end of a
+stage; or, mayhap, offering a pinch of snuff from a box worth five
+hundred guineas. What a fascinating conception would he form of our
+country from such examples as this! and how insensibly would not only
+the polished taste and the high-bred depravity of the better classes
+be disseminated through the country; but, by an admirable reciprocity,
+the coarsest vices of the lowest would be introduced among the highest
+in the land. The race-course has done much for this, but the road
+would do far more. Slang is now but the language of the _�lite_--it
+would then become the vulgar tongue; and, in fact, there is no
+predicting the amount of national benefit likely to arise from an
+amalgamation of all ranks in society, where the bond of union is so
+honourable in its nature. Cultivate, then, ye youth of England--ye
+scions of the Tudors and the Plantagenets--with all the blood of all
+the Howards in your veins--cultivate the race-course--study the
+stable--read the Racing Calendar. What are the precepts of Bacon or
+the learning of Boyle compared to the pedigree of Grey Momus, or the
+reason that Tramp "is wrong?" "A dark horse" is a far more interesting
+subject of inquiry than an eclipse of the moon, and a judge of pace a
+much more exalted individual than a judge of assize.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR YOUNGER SONS.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Douglas Jerrold, in his amusing book, "Cakes and Ale," quotes an
+exquisite essay written to prove the sufficiency of thirty pounds
+a-year for all a man's daily wants and comforts--allowing at least
+five shillings a quarter for the conversion of the Jews--and in which
+every outlay is so nicely calculated, that it must be wilful
+eccentricity if the pauper gentleman, at the end of the year, either
+owes a shilling or has one. To say the least of it, this is close
+shaving; and, as I detest experimental philosophy, I'd rather not try
+it. At the same time, in this age of general glut, when all
+professions are overstocked--when you might pave the Strand with
+parsons' skulls, and thatch your barn with the surplus of the college
+of physicians; when there are neither waste lands to till and give us
+ague and typhus, nor war to thin us--what are we to do? The
+subdivision of labour in every walk in life has been carried to its
+utmost limits: if it takes nine tailors to make a man, it takes nine
+men to make a needle. Even in the learned professions, as they are
+called, this system is carried out; and as you have a lawyer for
+equity, another for the Common Pleas, a third for the Old Bailey, &c.,
+so your doctor, now-a-days, has split up his art, and one man takes
+charge of your teeth, another has the eye department, another the ear,
+a fourth looks after your corns; so that, in fact, the complex
+machinery of your structure strikes you as admirably adapted to give
+employment to an ingenious and anxious population, who, until our
+present civilization, never dreamed of morselling out mankind for
+their benefit.
+
+As to commerce, our late experiences have chiefly pointed to the
+pleasure of trading with nations who will not pay their debts,--like
+the Yankees. There is, then, little encouragement in that quarter.
+What then remains I scarcely know. The United Services are pleasant,
+but poor things by way of a provision for life. Coach-driving, that
+admirable refuge for the destitute, has been smashed by the railroads;
+and there is a kind of prejudice against a man of family sweeping the
+crossings. For my own part, I lean to something dignified and
+respectable--something that does not compromise "the cloth," and
+which, without being absolutely a sinecure, never exacts any undue or
+extraordinary exertion,--driving a hearse, for instance: even this,
+however, is greatly run upon; and the cholera, at its departure, threw
+very many out of employment. However, the question is, what can a man
+of small means do with his son? Short whist is a very snug thing--if a
+man have natural gifts,--that happy conformation of the fingers, that
+ample range of vision, that takes in everything around. But I must
+not suppose these by any means general--and I legislate for the mass.
+The turf has also the same difficulties,--so has toad-eating; indeed
+these three walks might be included among the learned professions.
+
+As to railroads, I'm sick of hearing of them for the last three years.
+Every family in the empire has at least one civil engineer within its
+precincts; and I'm confident, if their sides were as hard as their
+skulls, you could make sleepers for the whole Grand Junction by merely
+decimating the unemployed.
+
+Tax-collecting does, to be sure, offer some little prospect; but that
+won't last. Indeed, the very working of the process will limit the
+advantages of this opening,--gradually converting all the payers into
+paupers. Now I have meditated long and anxiously on the subject,
+conversing with others whose opportunities of knowing the world were
+considerable, but never could I find that ingenuity opened any new
+path, without its being so instantaneously overstocked that
+competition alone denied every chance of success.
+
+One man of original genius I did, indeed, come upon, and his career
+had been eminently successful. He was a Belgian physician, who, having
+in vain attempted all the ordinary modes of obtaining practice,
+collected together the little residue of his fortune, and sailed for
+Barbadoes, where he struck out for himself the following singularly
+new and original plan:--He purchased all the disabled, sick, and
+ailing negroes that he could find; every poor fellow whose case seemed
+past hope, but yet to his critical eye was still curable, these he
+bought up; they were, of course, dead bargains. The masters were
+delighted to get rid of them--they were actually "eating their heads
+off;" but the doctor knew, that though they looked somewhat "groggy,"
+still there was a "go" in them yet.
+
+By care, skill, and good management, they recovered under his hands,
+and frequently were re-sold to the original proprietor, who was
+totally unconscious that the sleek and shining nigger before him had
+been the poor, decrepid, sickly creature of some weeks before.
+
+The humanity of this proceeding is self-evident: a word need not be
+said more on that subject. But it was no less profitable than
+merciful. The originator of the plan retired from business with a
+large fortune, amassed, too, in an inconceivably short space of time.
+The shrewdest proprietor of a fast coach never could throw a more
+critical eye over a new wheeler or a broken-down leader, than did he
+on the object of his professional skill; detecting at a glance the
+extent of his ailments, and calculating, with a Babbage-like accuracy,
+the cost of keep, physic, and attendance, and setting them off, in his
+mind, against the probable price of the sound man. What consummate
+skill was here! Not merely, like Brodie or Crampton, anticipating the
+possible recovery of the patient, but estimating the extent of the
+restoration--the time it would take--ay, the very number of basins of
+chicken-broth and barley-gruel that he would devour, _ad interim_.
+This was the cleverest physician I ever knew. The present altered
+condition of West Indian property has, however, closed this opening to
+fortune, in which, after all, nothing short of first-rate ability
+could have ensured success.
+
+I have just read over the preceding "nut" to my old friend, Mr.
+Synnet, of Mulloglass, whose deep knowledge of the world makes him no
+mean critic on such a subject. His words are these:--
+
+"There is some truth in what you remark--the world is too full of us.
+There is, however, a very nice walk in life much neglected."
+
+"And what may that be?" said I, eagerly.
+
+"The mortgagee," replied he, sententiously.
+
+"I don't perfectly comprehend."
+
+"Well, well! what I mean is this: suppose, now, you have only a couple
+of thousand pounds to leave your son--maybe, you have not more than a
+single thousand--now, my advice is, not to squander your fortune in
+any such absurdity as a learned profession, a commission in the Line,
+or any other miserable existence, but just look about you, in the west
+of Ireland, for the fellow that has the best house, the best cellar,
+the best cook, and the best stable. He is sure to want money, and will
+be delighted to get a loan. Lend it to him: make hard terms, of
+course. For this--as you are never to be paid--the obligation of your
+forbearance will be the greater. Now, mark me, from the day the deed
+is signed, you have snug quarters in Galway, not only in your friend's
+house, but among all his relations--Blakes, Burkes, Bodkins, Kirwans,
+&c., to no end; you have the run of the whole concern--the best of
+living, great drink, and hunting in abundance. You must talk of the
+loan now and then, just to jog their memory; but be always 'too much
+the gentleman' to ask for your money; and it will even go hard, but
+from sheer popularity, they will make you member for the county. This
+is the only new thing, in the way of a career, I know of, and I have
+great pleasure in throwing out the suggestion for the benefit of
+younger sons."
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE PENAL CODE.
+
+
+It has often struck me that the monotony of occupation is a heavier
+infliction than the monotony of reflection. The same dull round of
+duty, which while it demands a certain amount of labour, excludes all
+opportunity of thought, making man no better than the piston of a
+steam-engine, is a very frightful and debasing process. Whereas,
+however much there may be of suffering in solitude, our minds are not
+imprisoned; our thoughts, unchained and unfettered, stroll far away to
+pleasant pasturages; we cross the broad blue sea, and tread the ferny
+mountain-side, and live once more the sunny hours of boyhood; or we
+build up in imagination a peaceful and happy future.
+
+That the power of fancy and the play of genius are not interrupted by
+the still solitude of the prison, I need only quote Cervantes, whose
+immortal work was accomplished during the tedious hours of a
+captivity, unrelieved by one office of friendship, uncheered by one
+solitary ray of hope.
+
+Taking this view of the matter, it will be at once perceived how much
+more severe a penalty solitary confinement must be, to the man of
+narrow mind and limited resources of thought, than to him of
+cultivated understanding and wider range of mental exercise. In the
+one case, it is a punishment of the most terrific kind--and nothing
+can equal that awful lethargy of the soul, that wraps a man as in a
+garment, shrouding him from the bright world without, and leaving him
+nought save the darkness of his gloomy nature to brood over. In the
+other, there is something soothing amid all the melancholy of the
+state, in the unbroken soaring of thought, that, lifting man above the
+cares and collisions of daily life, bear him far away to the rich
+paradise of his mind-made treasures--peopling space with images of
+beauty--and leave him to dream away existence amid the scenes and
+features he loved to gaze on.
+
+Now, to turn for the moment from this picture, let us consider whether
+our government is wise in this universal application of a punishment,
+which, while it operates so severely in one case, may really be
+regarded as a boon in the other.
+
+The healthy peasant, who rises with the sun, and breathes the free air
+of his native hills, may and will feel all the infliction of
+confinement, which, while it chains his limbs, stagnates his
+faculties. Not so the sedentary and solitary man of letters. Your cell
+becomes _his_ study: the window may be somewhat narrower--the lattice,
+that was wont to open to the climbing honeysuckle, may now be barred
+with its iron stanchions; but he soon forgets this. "His mind to him a
+palace is," wherein he dwells at peace. Now, to put them on something
+of a par, I have a suggestion to make to the legislature, which I
+shall condense as briefly as possible. Never sentence your man of
+education, whatever his offence, to solitary confinement; but condemn
+him to dine out, in Dublin, for seven or fourteen years--or, in murder
+cases, for the term of his natural life. For slight offences, a week's
+dinners, and a few evening parties might be sufficient--while old
+offenders and bad cases, might be sent to the north side of the city.
+
+It may be objected to this--that insanity, which so often occurs in
+the one case, would supervene in the other; but I rather think not. My
+own experience could show many elderly people of both sexes, long
+inured to this state, who have only fallen into a sullen and apathetic
+fatuity; but who, bating deafness and a look of dogged stupidity, are
+still reasoning beings--what they once were, it is hard to say.
+
+But I take the man who, for some infraction of the law, is suddenly
+carried away from his home and friends--the man of mind, of reading,
+and reflection. Imagine him, day after day, beholding the everlasting
+saddle of mutton--the eternal three chickens, with the tongue in the
+midst of them; the same travesty of French cookery that pervades the
+side-dishes--the hot sherry, the sour Moselle: think of him, eating
+out his days through these, unchanged, unchangeable--with the same
+_cort�ge_ of lawyers and lawyers' wives--doctors, male and
+female--surgeons, subalterns, and, mayhap, attorneys: think of the old
+jokes he has been hearing from childhood still ringing in his ears,
+accompanied by the same laugh which he has tracked from its burst in
+boyhood to its last cackle in dotage: behold him, as he sits amid the
+same young ladies, in pink and blue, and the same elderly ones, in
+scarlet and purple; see him, as he watches every sign and pass-word
+that have marked these dinners for the long term of his sentence, and
+say if his punishment be not indeed severe.
+
+Then think how edifying the very example of his suffering, as, with
+pale cheek and lustreless eye--silent, sad, and lonely--he sits there!
+How powerfully such a warning must speak to others, who, from accident
+or misfortune, may be momentarily thrown in his society.
+
+The suggestion, I own, will demand a much more ample detail, and
+considerable modification. Among other precautions, for instance, more
+than one convict should not be admitted to any table, lest they might
+fraternize together, and become independent of the company in mutual
+intercourse, &c.
+
+These may all, however, be carefully considered hereafter: the
+principle is the only thing I would insist on for the present, and now
+leave the matter in the hands of our rulers.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE OLD.
+
+
+Of all the virtues which grace and adorn the inhabitants of these
+islands, I know of none which can in anywise be compared with the deep
+and profound veneration we show to old age. Not content with paying it
+that deference and respect so essentially its due, we go even further,
+and by a courteous adulation would impose upon it the notion, that
+years have not detracted from the gifts which were so conspicuous in
+youth, and that the winter of life is as full of promise and
+performance, as the most budding hours of spring-time.
+
+Walk through the halls of Greenwich and Chelsea--or, if the excursion
+be too far for you, as a Dubliner, stroll down to the Old Man's
+Hospital, and cast your eyes on those venerable "fogies," as they are
+sometimes irreverently called, and look with what a critical and
+studious politeness the state has invested every detail of their daily
+life. Not fed, housed, or clothed like the "debris" of humanity, to
+whom the mere necessaries of existence were meted out, but actually a
+species of flattering illusion is woven around them. They are dressed
+in a uniform; wear a strange, quaint military costume; are officered
+and inspected like soldiers; mount guard; answer roll-call, and mess
+as of yore.
+
+They are permitted, from time to time, to clean and burnish pieces of
+ordnance, old, time-worn, and useless as themselves, and are marched
+certain short and suitable distances to and from their dining-hall,
+with all the "pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war." I like
+all this. There is something of good and kindly feeling in
+perpetuating the delusion that has lasted for so many years of life,
+and making the very resting-place of their meritorious services recall
+to them the details of those duties, for the performance of which they
+have reaped their country's gratitude.
+
+The same amiable feeling, the same grateful spirit of respect, would
+seem, from time to time, to actuate the different governments that
+wield our destinies, in their promotions to the upper house.
+
+Some old, feeble, partizan of the ministry, who has worn himself to a
+skeleton by late sittings; dried, like a potted herring, by committee
+labour; hoarse with fifty years' cheering of his party, and deaf from
+the cries of "divide" and "adjourn" that have been ringing in his ears
+for the last cycle of his existence, is selected for promotion to the
+peerage. He was eloquent in his day, too, perhaps; but that day is
+gone by. His speech upon a great question was once a momentous event,
+but now his vote is mumbled in tones scarce audible.--Gratefully
+mindful of his "has been," his party provide him with an asylum,
+where the residue of his days may be passed in peace and pleasantness.
+
+Careful not to break the spell that has bound him to life, they
+surround him with some semblance of his former state, suited in all
+respects to his age, his decrepitude, and his debility; they pour
+water upon the leaves of his politics, and give him a weak and
+pleasant beverage, that can never irritate his nerves, nor destroy his
+slumbers. Some insignificant bills--some unimportant appeals--some
+stray fragments that fall from the tables of sturdier politicians, are
+his daily diet; and he dozes away the remainder of life, happy and
+contented in the simple and beautiful delusion that he is legislating
+and ruling--just as warrantable the while, as his compeer of Chelsea,
+in deeming his mock parades the forced marches of the Peninsula, and
+his Sunday guards the dispositions for a Toulouse or a Waterloo.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE ART UNION.
+
+
+The battle between the "big and little-endians" in Gulliver, was
+nothing to the fight between the Destructives and Conservatives of the
+Irish Art Union. A few months since the former party deciding that the
+engraved plate of Mr. Burton's picture should be broken up; the latter
+protesting against the Vandalism of destroying a first-rate work of
+art, and preventing the full triumph of the artist's genius, in the
+circulation of a print so creditable to himself and to his country.
+
+The great argument of the Destructives was this:--We are the devoted
+friends of art--we love it--we glory in it--we cherish it: yea, we
+even give a guinea a-year a-piece for the encouragement of a society
+established for its protection and promotion;--this society pledging
+themselves that we shall have in return--what think ye?--the immortal
+honour of raising a school of painting in our native country?--the
+conscientious sense of a high-souled patriotism?--the prospect of
+future estimation at the hands of a posterity who are to benefit by
+our labours? Not at all: nothing of all this. We are far too great
+materialists for such shadowy pleasures; we are to receive a plate,
+whose value is in the direct ratio of its rarity, "which shall
+certainly be of more than the amount of our subscription," and, maybe,
+of five times that sum. The fewer the copies issued, the rarer (_i.
+e._, the dearer) each impression. We are the friends of
+art--therefore, we say, smash the copper-plate, destroy every vestige
+of the graver's art, we are supplied, and heaven knows to what price
+these engravings may not subsequently rise!
+
+[Illustration: "This is a Rembrandt."]
+
+Now, I like these people. There is something bold, something masterly,
+something decided, in their coming forward and fighting the battle on
+its true grounds. There is no absurd affectation about the circulation
+of a clever picture disseminating in remote and scarce-visited
+districts the knowledge of a great man and a great work; there is no
+prosy nonsense about encouraging the genius of our own country, and
+showing with pride to her prouder sister, that we are not unworthy to
+contend in the race with her. Nothing of this.--They resolve
+themselves, by an open and candid admission, into a committee of
+printsellers, and they cry with one voice--"No free trade in 'The
+Blind Girl'--no sliding scale--no fixed duty--nothing save absolute,
+actual prohibition!" It is with pride I confess myself of this party:
+perish art! down with painting! to the ground with every effort of
+native genius! but keep up the price of our engraving, which, with the
+rapid development of Mr. Burton's talent, may yet reach ten, nay,
+twenty guineas for an impression. But in the midst of my enthusiasm, a
+still small voice of fear is whispering ever:--Mayhap this gifted man
+may live to eclipse the triumphs of his youthful genius: it may be,
+that, as he advances in life, his talents, matured by study and
+cultivation, may ascend to still higher flights, and this, his early
+work, be merely the beacon-light that attracted men in the outset of
+his career, and only be esteemed as the first throes of his intellect.
+What is to be done in this case? It is true we have suppressed "The
+Blind Girl;" we have smashed _that_ plate; but how shall we prevent
+him from prosecuting those studies that already are leading him to the
+first rank of his profession? Disgust at our treatment may do much;
+but yet, his mission may suggest higher thoughts than are assailable
+by us and our measures. I fear, now, that but one course is open; and
+it is with sorrow I confess, that, however indisposed to the shedding
+of blood, however unsuited by my nature and habits to murderous deeds,
+I see nothing for us but--to smash Mr. Burton.
+
+By accepting this suggestion, not only will the engravings, but the
+picture itself, attain an increased value. If dead men are not
+novelists, neither are they painters; and Mr. Burton, it is expected,
+will prove no exception to the rule. Get rid of him, then, at once,
+and by all means. Let this resolution be brought forward at the next
+general meeting, by any leader of the Destructive party, and I pledge
+myself to second and defend it, by every argument, used with such
+force and eloquence for the destruction of the copper-plate. I am sure
+the talented gentleman himself will, when he is put in possession of
+our motives, offer no opposition to so natural a desire on our part,
+but will afford every facility in his power for being, as the war-cry
+of the party has it, "broken up and destroyed."
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A NUT FOR THE KINGSTOWN RAILWAY.
+
+
+If the wise Calif who studied mankind by sitting on the bridge at
+Bagdad, had lived in our country, and in our times, he doubtless would
+have become a subscriber to the Kingstown railway. There, for the
+moderate sum of some ten or twelve pounds per annum, he might have
+indulged his peculiar vein, while wafted pleasantly through the air,
+and obtained a greater insight into character and individuality,
+inasmuch as the objects of his investigation would be all sitting
+shots, at least for half an hour. Segur's "Qu�tre Ages de la Vie"
+never marked out mankind like the half-hour trains. To the uninitiated
+and careless observer, the company would appear a mixed and
+heterogeneous mass of old and young, of both sexes--some sickly, some
+sulky, some solemn, and some shy. Classification of them would be
+deemed impossible. Not so, however; for, as to the ignorant the
+section of a mountain would only present some confused heap of stone
+and gravel, clay and marl; to the geologist, strata of divers kinds,
+layers of various ages, would appear, all indicative of features, and
+teeming with interests, of which the other knew nothing: so, to the
+studious observer, this seeming commixture of men, this tangled web of
+humanity, unravels itself before him, and he reads them with pleasure
+and with profit.
+
+So thoroughly distinctive are the classes, as marked out by the hour
+of the day, that very little experience would enable the student to
+pronounce upon the travellers--while so striking are the features of
+each class, that "given one second-class traveller, to find out the
+contents of a train," would be the simplest problem in algebra. As for
+myself, I never work the equation: the same instinct that enabled
+Cuvier, when looking at a broken molar tooth, to pronounce upon the
+habits, the size, the mode of life and private opinions of some
+antediluvian mammoth, enables me at a glance to say--"This is the
+apothecaries' train--here we are with the Sandycoves."
+
+You are an early riser--some pleasant proverb about getting a worm for
+breakfast, instilled into you in childhood, doubtless inciting you:
+and you hasten down to the station, just in time to be too late for
+the eight o'clock train to Dublin. This is provoking; inasmuch as no
+scrutiny has ever enabled any traveller to pry into the habits and
+peculiarities of the early voyager. Well, you lounge about till the
+half-after, and then the _conveniency_ snorts by, whisks round at the
+end, takes a breathing canter alone for a few hundred yards, and comes
+back with a grunt, to resume its old drudgery. A general scramble for
+places ensues--doors bang--windows are shut and opened--a bell
+rings--and, snort! snort! ugh, ugh, away you go. Now--would you
+believe it?--every man about you, whatever be his age, his size, his
+features, or complexion, has a little dirty blue bag upon his knees,
+filled with something. They all know each other--grin, smile, smirk,
+but don't shake hands--a polite reciprocity--as they are none of the
+cleanest: cut little dry jokes about places and people unknown, and
+mix strange phrases here and there through the dialogue, about
+"_demurrers_ and _declarations_, traversing _in prox_ and _quo
+warranto_." You perceive it at once--it is very dreadful; but they are
+all attorneys. The ways of Providence are, however, inscrutable; and
+you arrive in safety in Dublin.
+
+Now, I am not about to take you back; for at this hour of the morning
+you have nothing to reward your curiosity. But, with your leave, we'll
+start from Kingstown again at nine. Here comes a fresh, jovial-looking
+set of fellows. They have bushy whiskers, and geraniums in the
+button-hole of their coats. They are traders of various sorts--men of
+sugar, soap, and sassafras--Macintoshes, molasses, mouse-traps--train-oil
+and tabinets. They have, however, half an acre of agricultural
+absurdity, divided into meadow and tillage, near the harbour, and they
+talk bucolic all the way. Blindfold them all, and set them loose, and
+you will catch them groping their way down Dame-street in half an
+hour.
+
+9�.--The housekeepers' train. Fat, middle-aged women, with cotton
+umbrellas--black stockings with blue _fuz_ on them; meek-looking men,
+officiating as husbands, and an occasional small child, in plaid and
+the small-pox.
+
+10.--The lawyers' train. Fierce-looking, dictatorial, categorical
+faces look out of the window at the weather, with the stern glance
+they are accustomed to bestow on the jury, and stare at the sun in the
+face, as though to say--"None of your prevarication with _me_; answer
+me, on your oath, is it to rain or not?"
+
+10�.--The return of the doctors. They have been out on a morning beat,
+and are going home merry or mournful, as the case may be. Generally
+the former, as the sad ones take to the third class. These are jocose,
+droll dogs; the restraint of physic over, they unbend, and chat
+pleasantly, unless there happen to be a sickly gentleman present, when
+the instinct of the craft is too strong for them; and they talk of
+their wonderful cures of Mr. Popkins's knee, or Mr. Murphy's elbow, in
+a manner very edifying.
+
+11.--The men of wit and pleasure. These are, I confess, difficult of
+detection; but the external signs are very flash waistcoats, and
+guard-chains, black canes, black whiskers, and strong Dublin accents.
+A stray governess or two will be found in this train. They travel in
+pairs, and speak a singular tongue, which a native of Paris might
+suppose to be Irish.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE DOCTORS.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Should you ask, Who is the greatest tyrant of modern days? Mr.
+O'Connell will tell you--Nicholas, or Espartero. An Irish Whig member
+will reply, Dan himself. An _attach�_ at an embassy would say, Lord
+Palmerston,--"'Tis Cupid ever makes us slaves!" A French _deput�_ of
+the Thiers party will swear it is Louis Philippe. Count D'Orsay will
+say, his tailor. But I will tell you it is none of these: the most
+pitiless autocrat of the nineteenth century is--the President of the
+College of Physicians.
+
+Of all the unlimited powers possessed by irresponsible man, I know of
+nothing at all equal to his, who, _mero motu_, of his own free will
+and caprice, can at any moment call a meeting of the dread body at
+whose head he stands, assemble the highest dignitaries of the
+land--archbishops and bishops, chancellors, chief barons, and chief
+remembrancers--to listen to the minute anatomy of a periwinkle's
+mustachios, or some singular provision in the physiology of a crab's
+breeches-pocket: all of whom, _luto non obstante_, must leave their
+peaceful homes and warm hearths to "assist" at a meeting in which,
+nine cases out of ten, they take as much interest as a Laplander does
+in the health of the Grand Lama; or Mehemet Ali in the proceedings of
+Father Mathew.
+
+By nine o'clock the curtain rises, displaying a goodly mob of medical
+celebrities: the old ones characterised by the astute look and
+searching glance, long and shrewd practice in the world's little
+failings ever confers; the young ones, anxious, wide awake, and
+fidgetty, not quite satisfied with what services they may be called on
+to render in candle-snuffing and crucible work; while between both is
+your transition M.D.--your medical tadpole, with some practice and
+more pretension, his game being to separate from the great unfeed, and
+rub his shoulders among the "dons" of the art, from whose rich board
+certain crumbs are ever falling, in the shape of country jaunts, small
+operations, and smaller consultings. Through these promiscuously walk
+the "_gros bonnets_" of the church and the bar, with now and then--if
+the scene be Ireland--a humane Viceroy, and a sleepy commander of the
+forces. Round the room are glass cases filled with what at first blush
+you might be tempted to believe were the _ci-devant_ professors of the
+college, embalmed, or in spirits; but on nearer inspection you detect
+to be a legion of apes, monkeys, and ourangoutangs, standing or
+sitting in grotesque attitudes. Among them, pleasingly diversified,
+you discover murderers' heads, parricides' busts in plaster,
+bicephalous babies, and shapeless monsters with two rows of teeth.
+Here you are regaled with refreshments "with what appetite you may,"
+and chat away the time, until the tinkle of a small bell announces the
+approach of the lecture.
+
+For the most part, this is a good, drowsy, sleep-disposing affair of
+an hour long, written to show, that from some peculiarity lately
+discovered in the cerebral vessels, man's natural attitude was to
+stand on his head; or that, from chemical analysis just invented, it
+was clear, if we live to the age of four hundred years and upwards,
+part of our duodenum will be coated with a delicate aponeurosis of
+sheet iron.
+
+Now, with propositions of this kind I never find fault. I am satisfied
+to play my part as a biped in this breathing world, and to go out of
+it too, without any rivalry with Methuselah. But I'll tell you with
+what I am by no means satisfied,--nor shall I ever feel satisfied--nor
+do I entertain any sentiment within a thousand miles of gratitude to
+the man who tells me, that food--beef and mutton, veal, lamb, &c.--are
+nothing but gas and glue. The wretch who found out the animalcul� in
+clean water was bad enough. There are simple-minded people who
+actually take this as a beverage: what must be their feelings now, if
+they reflect on the myriads of small things like lobsters; with claws
+and tails, all fighting and swallowing each other, that are disporting
+in their stomachs? But only think of him who converts your cutlet into
+charcoal, and your steak into starch! It may stick to your ribs after
+that, to be sure; but will it not stick harder to your conscience?
+With what pleasure do you help yourself to your haunch, when the
+conviction is staring you in the face, that what seems venison is but
+adipose matter and azote? That you are only making a great Nassau
+balloon of yourself when you are dreaming of hard condition, and
+preparing yourself for the fossil state when blowing the froth off
+your porter.
+
+Of latter years the great object of science would appear to be an
+earnest desire to disenchant us from all the agreeable and pleasant
+dreams we have formed of life, and to make man insignificant without
+making him humble. Thus, one class of philosophers labour hard to
+prove that manhood is but monkeyhood--that a slight adaptation of the
+tail to the customs of civilized life has enabled us to be seated;
+while the invention of looking-glasses, bear's grease, cold cream, and
+macassar, have cultivated our looks into the present fashion.
+
+Another, having felt over our skulls, gravely asserts, "There is a
+_vis � tergo_ of wickedness implanted in us, that must find vent in
+murder and bloodshed." While the magnetic folk would make us believe
+that we are merely a kind of ambulating electric-machine, to be
+charged at will by the first M. Lafontaine we meet with, and mayhap
+explode from over-pressure.
+
+While such liberties are taken with us without, the case is worse
+within. Our circulation is a hydraulic problem; our stomach is a
+mill--a brewing vat--a tanner's yard--a crucible, or a retort. You
+yourself, in all the resplendent glory of your braided frock, and your
+decoration of the Guelph, are nothing but an aggregate of mechanical
+and chemical inventions, as often going wrong as right; and your wife,
+in the pride of her Parisian bonnet, and robe _� la Victorine_, is
+only gelatine and adipose substance, phosphate of lime, and a little
+arsenic.
+
+Now, let me ask, what remains to us of life, if we are to be robbed of
+every fascination and charm of existence in this fashion? And
+again--has medical science so exhausted all the details of practical
+benefit to mankind, that it is justified in these far-west
+explorations into the realms of soaring fancy, or the gloomy depths of
+chemical analysis? Hydrophobia, consumption, and tetanus are not so
+curable that we can afford to waste our sympathies on chimpanzees:
+nor is this world so pleasant that we must deny ourselves the
+advantage of all its illusions, and throw away the garment in which
+Nature has clothed her nakedness. No, no. There was sound philosophy
+in Peter, in the "Tale of a Tub," who assured his guests that whatever
+their frail senses might think to the contrary, the hard crusts were
+excellent and tender mutton; but I see neither rhyme nor reason in
+convincing us, that amid all the triumphs of turtle and white bait,
+Ardennes ham and _p�t� de Strasbourg_, our food is merely coke and
+glue, roach, lime, starch, and magnesia.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE ARCHITECTS.
+
+
+"God made the country," said the poet: but in my heart I believe he
+might have added--"The devil made architects." Few cities--I scarcely
+know of one--can boast of such environs as Dublin. The scenery,
+diversified in its character, possesses attraction for almost every
+taste: the woody glade--the romantic river--the wild and barren
+mountain--the cultivated valley--the waving upland--the bold and
+rocky coast, broken with promontory and island--are all to be found,
+even within a few miles of the capital; while, in addition, the nature
+of our climate confers a verdure and a freshness unequalled, imparting
+a depth and colour to the landscape equal to the beauty of its
+outline.
+
+Whether you travel inland or coastwise, the country presents a
+succession of sites for building, there being no style of house for
+which a suitable spot cannot readily be found; and yet, with all this,
+the perverse taste of man has contrived, by incongruous and
+ill-conceived architecture, to mar almost every point of view, and
+destroy every picturesque feature of the landscape.
+
+The liberty of the subject is a bright and glorious prerogative; and
+nowhere should its exercise be more freely conceded than in those
+arrangements an individual makes for his own domestic comfort, and the
+happiness of his home.
+
+That one man likes a room in which three people form a crowd, and that
+another prefers an apartment spacious as Exeter Hall, is a matter of
+individual taste, with which the world has nothing whatever to do.
+Your neighbour in the valley may like a cottage not larger than a
+sugar-hogshead, with rats for company and beetles for bed-fellows;
+your friend on the hill-side may build himself an imaginary castle,
+with armour for furniture, and antique weapons for ornaments;--with
+all this you have no concern--no more than with his banker's book, or
+the thoughts of his bosom: but should the one or the other, either by
+a thing like a piggery, or an incongruous mass like a jail, destroy
+all the beauty and mar all the effect of the scenery for miles round,
+far beyond the precincts of his own small tenure--should he outrage
+all the principles of taste, and violate every sentiment of landscape
+beauty, by some poor and contemptible, or some pretentious and vulgar
+edifice--then, do I say, you are really aggrieved; and against such a
+man you have a just and equitable complaint, as one interfering with
+the natural pleasures and just enjoyments to which, as a free citizen
+of a free state, you have an indubitable, undeniable right.
+
+That waving, undulating meadow, hemmed in with its dark woods, and
+mirrored in the fair stream that flows peacefully beneath it, was
+never, surely, intended to be disfigured with a square house like a
+salt-box, and a verandah like a register-grate: the far-stretching
+line of yellow coast that you see yonder, where the calm sea is
+sleeping, land-locked by those jutting headlands, was never meant to
+be pock-marked with those vile bathing lodges, with green baize
+draperies drying before them.
+
+Was that bold and granite-sided mountain made thus to be hewed out
+into parterres for polyanthuses, and stable-lanes for Cockneys'
+carmen?--or is the margin of our glorious bay, the deep frame-work of
+the bright picture, to be carved into little terraces, with some
+half-dozen slated cabins, or a row of stiff-looking, Leeson-street-like
+houses, with brass knockers and a balcony? Forbid it, heaven! We have
+a board of wide and inconvenient streets, who watch over all the
+irregularities of municipal architecture, and a man is no more
+permitted to violate the laws of good taste, than he is suffered to
+transgress those of good morals. Why not have a similar body to
+protect the fairer part of the created globe? Is Pill-lane more sacred
+than Bray-head? Has Copper-alley stronger claims than the
+Glen-of-the-Downs? Is the Cross-poddle more classic ground than
+Poolaphuca?
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR A NEW COLONY.
+
+
+If you happen to pass by Dodd's auction-room, on any Wednesday,
+towards the hour of three in the afternoon, the chances are about
+seven to one that you hear a sharp, smart voice articulating, somewhat
+in this fashion:--"A very handsome tea-service, ladies. What shall I
+say for this remarkably neat pattern? One tea-pot, one sugar-bowl, one
+slop-basin, and twelve cups and saucers.--Show them round, Tim," &c.
+
+Now it is with no intention of directing the public eye to the "willow
+pattern," that I have alluded to this circumstance. It is simply,
+because that thereby hangs an association, and I have never heard the
+eloquent expatiator on china, without thinking of the Belgian navy,
+which consists of--"One gun-boat, one pinnace, one pilot, one
+commodore, and twelve little sailors." Unquestionably, there never was
+a cheaper piece of national extravagance than this, nor do I believe
+that any public functionary enjoys a more tranquil and undisturbed
+existence than the worthy "_ministre de la marine_," whose duty it is
+to preside over the fleet I have mentioned. Once, and once only do I
+remember that his quiet life was shaken by the rude assault of
+political events: it was when the imposing force under his sway
+undertook a voyage of discovery some miles down the Scheldt, which
+they did alike to the surprise and admiration of the whole land.
+
+After a day's peaceful drifting with the river's current, they reached
+the fort of Lillo, where, _more majorum_, as night was falling, they
+prudently dropped anchor, having a due sense of the danger that might
+accrue "from running down a continent in the dark." There was,
+besides, a feeling of high-souled pride in anchoring within sight,
+under the guns, as it were, of the Dutch fort--the insolent Dutch,
+whom they, with some aid from France--as the Irishman said of his
+marriage, for love, and a trifle of money--had driven from their
+country; and, although the fog rendered everything invisible, and the
+guns were spiked, still the act of courage was not disparaged; and
+they fell to, and sang the Braban�on, and drank Flemish beer till
+bed-time.
+
+Happy and patriotic souls! little did you know, that amid your dreams
+of national greatness, some half-dozen imps of Dutch middies were
+painting out the magnificent tricolor streaks that adorned your good
+craft, and making the whole one mass of dirty black.
+
+Such was the case, however; and when day broke, those brilliant
+emblems of Belgian independence had vanished, and in their place a
+murky line of pitch now stood.
+
+Homeward they bent their course, sadder and wiser men; and, to their
+credit be it spoken, having told their sorrows to their sage minister,
+they have lived a life of happy retirement, and never strayed beyond
+the peaceful limits of the Antwerp basin.
+
+Far be from me the unworthy object of drawing before the public gaze
+the blissful and unpretending service, that shuns the noontide glitter
+of the world's applause, and better loves the quiet solitude of their
+own unobtrusive waters; and had they thus remained, nothing would have
+tempted me to draw them from their obscurity. But alas! national
+ambition has visited even the seclusion of this service. Not content
+with coasting voyages, some twelve miles down their muddy river--not
+satisfied with lording it over fishing smacks and herring wherries,
+this great people have resolved on becoming a maritime power in blue
+water, and running a race of rivalry with England, France, and Russia;
+and to it they have set in right earnest.
+
+They began by purchasing a steam-vessel, which happens to turn out on
+such a scale of size, as to be inadmissible into any harbour they
+possess. By dint of labour, time, cost, and great outlay, they
+succeeded, after four months, in getting her into dock. But alas! if
+it took that time to admit her, it takes six months to let her out
+again; and, when out, what are they to do with her?
+
+When Admiral Dalrymple turned farmer, he mentions in one of his
+letters, the sufferings his unhappy ignorance of all agricultural
+pursuits involved him in, and feelingly tells us: "I have given ten
+pounds for a dunghill, and would now willingly give any man twenty, to
+tell me what to do with it." This was exactly the case with the
+Belgians. They had bought a steam-ship, they put coals in her, and a
+crew; and then, for the life and soul of them, they did not know what
+to do with them.
+
+They desired an export trade--a _d�bouch�_ for their Namur cutlery and
+Verviers' frieze. But where could they go? They had no colonies.
+Holland had, to be sure: but then, they had quarrelled with Holland,
+and there was no use repining. "What can't be cured," &c. Besides, if
+they had lost a colony, they had gained a cardinal; and if they had no
+merchantmen, they had at least high-mass; and if they were excluded
+from Batavia, why they had free access to the "Abb� Boon."
+
+There were, however, some impracticable people engaged in traffic,
+who would not listen to these great advantages, and who were obstinate
+enough to suppose that the country was as prosperous when it had a
+market for its productions, as it was when it had none. And although
+the priests, who have multiplied some hundredfold since the
+revolution, were willing "to consume" to any extent, yet, unhappily,
+they were not as profitable customers as their _ci-devant_ friends
+beyond sea.
+
+Nothing then remained but to have a colony, and after much
+consideration, long thought, and anxious deliberation, it was
+announced to the chamber that the Belgians had a colony, and that the
+colony was called "Guatemala."
+
+When Sancho Panza appealed to Don Quixote, to realise his promised
+dream of greatness, you may remember, he always asked for an island:
+"Make me governor of an island!" There was something defined,
+accurate, and tangible, as it were, in the sea-girt possession, that
+suggested to the honest squire's mind the idea of perfect, independent
+rule. And in the same way, the Belgians desired to have an island.
+
+Some few, less imaginative, suspected, however, that an island must
+always have its limit to importation quicker attained than a
+continent, and they preferred some vast, unexplored tract, like India,
+or Central America, where the consumption of corduroy and cast-iron
+might have an unexhausted traffic for centuries.
+
+Now, it is a difficult condition to find out that spot on a map which
+should realise both expectations. Happily, however, M. Van de Weyer
+had to deal with a kind and confiding people, whose knowledge of
+geography is about equal to a blind man's appreciation of scarlet or
+sky-blue. Not only, therefore, did he represent to one party, the
+newly-acquired possession as an island, and to the other as a vast
+continent, but he actually shifted its _locale_ about the globe, from
+the tropics to the north-pole, with such admirable dexterity, that not
+only is all cavil silenced about its commercial advantages, but its
+very climate has an advocate in every taste, and an admirer in every
+household. Steam-engines, therefore, are fabricated; cannon are cast;
+railroads are in preparation; broadcloth is weaving; flax is growing;
+lace is in progress, all through the kingdom, for the new colony of
+Guatemala,--whose only inhabitants are little grateful for the
+profound solicitude they are exciting, inasmuch as, being but rats and
+sea-gulls, their modes of living and thinking give them a happy
+indifference about steam-travelling, and the use of fine linen.
+
+No matter;--the country is prospering--shares are rising--speculations
+are rife--loans are effected every day in the week, and M. Van de
+Weyer sleeps in the peaceful composure of a man who knows in his
+heart, that even if they get their unwieldy craft to sea, there is not
+a man in the kingdom who could, by any ingenuity, discover the
+whereabout of the far-famed Guatemala.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A "SWEET" NUT FOR THE YANKEES.
+
+
+Lord Chesterfield once remarked that a thoroughly vulgar man could not
+speak the most common-place word, nor perform the most ordinary act,
+without imparting to the one and the other a portion of his own inborn
+vulgarity. And exactly so is it with the Yankees; not a question can
+arise, no matter how great its importance, nor how trivial its
+bearings, upon which, the moment they express an opinion, they do not
+completely invest with their own native coarseness, insolence, and
+vulgarity. The boundary question was made a matter of violent
+invective and ruffian abuse; the right of search was treated with the
+same powers of ribaldry towards England; and now we have these amiable
+and enlightened citizens defending the wholesale piracy of British
+authors, not on the plausible but unjust pretext of the benefit to be
+derived from an extended acquaintance with English literature; but,
+only conceive! because, if "English authors were invested with any
+control over the republication of their own books, it would be no
+longer possible for American editors to alter and adapt them as they
+do now to the American taste." However incredible this may seem, the
+passage formed part of a document actually submitted to congress, and
+favourably received by that body. This is not the place for me to
+dwell on the unprincipled usurpation by which men who have contributed
+nothing to the production of a work, assume the power of reaping its
+benefits, and profiting by its success. The wholesale robbery of
+English authors has been of late well and ably exposed. The gifted
+and accomplished author of "Darnley" and "The Gipsy" has devoted his
+time and his talents to the subject; and although the world at large
+have few sympathies with the wrongs of those who live to please them,
+yet the day is not distant when the rights of a large and influential
+body, who stamp the age with the image of their own minds, can be no
+longer neglected, and the security of literary property must become at
+least as great as of mining scrip, or the shares in a railroad.
+
+My present business is with the Yankee declaration, that English
+authors to be readable in America must be passed through the ordeal of
+re-writing. I scarcely think that the annals of impertinence and
+ignorance could equal this. What! is it seriously meant that Scott and
+Byron, Wordsworth, Southey, Rogers, Bulwer, James, Dickens, and a host
+of others, must be converted into the garbage of St. Giles, or the
+foetid slang of Wapping, before they can pass muster before an American
+public? Must the book reek of "gin twist," "cock tail," and fifty
+other abominations, ere it reach an American drawing-room? Must the
+"bowie-knife and the whittling-stick" mark its pages; and the coarse
+jest of some tobacco-chewing, wild-cat-whipping penny-a-liner
+disfigure and sully the passages impressed with the glowing brilliancy
+of Scott, or the impetuous torrent of Byron's genius? Is this a true
+picture of America? Is her reading public indeed degraded to this
+pass? I certainly have few sympathies with brother Jonathan. I like
+not his spirit of boastful insolence, his rude speech, or his
+uncultivated habits; but I confess I am unwilling to credit this. I
+hesitate to believe in such an amount of intellectual depravity as can
+turn from the cultivated writings of Scott and Bulwer to revel in the
+coarseness and vulgarity of a Yankee editor, vamping up his stolen
+wares with oaths from the far west, or vapid jests from life in the
+Prairies. Again, what shall I say of those who follow this traffic? Is
+it not enough to steal that which is not theirs, to possess themselves
+of what they have no right or claim to? Must they mangle the corpse
+when they have extinguished life? Must they, while they cheat the
+author of his gain, rob him also of his fair fame? "He who steals my
+purse steals trash," but how shall I characterise that extent of
+baseness that dares to step in between an author and his
+reputation--inserting between him and posterity their own illiterate
+degeneracy and insufferable stupidity?
+
+Would not the ghost of Sir Walter shudder in his grave at the thought
+of the fair creations of his mind--Jeanie Deans and Rebecca--Yankeefied
+into women of Long Island, or damsels from Connecticut? Is Childe
+Harold to be a Kentucky-man? and are the vivid pictures of life
+Bulwer's novels abound in, to be converted into the prison-discipline
+school of manners, that prevail in New York and Boston, where, as
+Hamilton remarks, "the men are about as like gentlemen, as are our new
+police?" What should we say of the person who having stolen a
+Rembrandt or a Vandyke from its owner, would seek to legalise his
+theft by daubing over the picture with his own colours--obliterating
+every trace of the great master, and exulting that every stroke of his
+brush defaced some touch of genius, and that beneath the savage
+vandalism of his act, every lineament of the artist was obliterated? I
+ask you, would not mere robbery be a virtue beside such a deed as
+this? Who could compare the sinful promptings to which want and
+starvation give birth to, to the ruffian profligacy of such
+barbarity? And now, when I tell you, that not content with this, not
+satisfied to desecrate the work, the wretch goes a step farther and
+stabs its author--what shall I say of him now, who, when he had
+defaced the picture, marred every effect, distorted all drawing, and
+rendered the whole a chaotic mass of indistinguishable nonsense, goes
+forth to the world, and announces, "This is a Rembrandt, this is a
+Vandyke: ay, look at it and wonder: but with all its faults, and all
+its demerits, it is cried up above our native artists; it has got the
+seal of the old world's approval upon it, and in vain we of younger
+origin shall dare to dissent from its judgments." Now, once more, I
+say, can you show the equal of this moral turpitude? and such I pledge
+myself is the conduct of your transatlantic pirates with respect to
+British literature. Mr. Dickens, no mean authority, asserts that in
+the same sheet in which they boast the sale of many thousand copies of
+an English reprint, they coarsely attack the author of that very book,
+and heap scurrility and slander on his head.
+
+Yes, such is the fact; not satisfied with robbery, they murder
+reputation also. And then we find them expatiating in most moving
+terms over the superiority of their own neglected genius!
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE SEASON--JULLIEN'S QUADRILLES.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+A very curious paper might be made by any one who, after an absence of
+some years from Ireland, should chronicle his new impressions of the
+country, and compare them with his old ones. The changes time works
+everywhere, even in a brief space, are remarkable, but particularly so
+in a land where everything is in a state of transition--where the
+violence with which all subjects are treated, the excited tone people
+are wont to assume on every topic, are continually producing their
+effects on society--dismembering old alliances--begetting new
+combinations. Such is the case with us here; and every year evidences
+by the strange anomalies it presents in politics, parties, public
+feeling, and private habits, how little chance there is for a prophet
+to make a character by his predictions regarding Ireland. He would,
+indeed, be a skilful chemist who would attempt the analysis of our
+complex nature; but far greater and more gifted must he be, who, from
+any consideration of the elements, would venture to pronounce on the
+probable results of their action and re-action, and declare what we
+shall be some twenty years hence.
+
+Oh, for a good Irish "Rip van Winkle," who would at least let us look
+on the two pictures--what we were, and what we are. He should be a
+Clare man--none others have the same shrewd insight into character,
+the same intuitive knowledge of life; none others detect, like them,
+the flaws and fractures in human nature. There may be more
+mathematical genius in Cork, and more classic lore in Kerry; there may
+be, I know there is, a more astute and patient pains-taking spirit of
+calculation in the northern counties; but for the man who is only to
+have one rapid glance at the game, and say how it fares--to throw a
+quick _coup-d'oeil_ on the board, and declare the winner, Clare for
+ever!
+
+Were I a lawgiver, I would admit any attorney to practise who should
+produce sufficient evidence of his having served half the usual time
+of apprenticeship in Ennis. The Pontine marshes are not so prolific of
+fever, as the air of that country of ready-witted intelligence and
+smartness; and now, ere I return from my digression, let me solemnly
+declare, that, for the opinion here expressed, I have not received any
+money or moneys, nor do I expect to receive such, or any place,
+pension, or other reward, from Tom Steele or any one else concerned.
+
+Well, we have not got this same western "Rip van Winkle," nor do I
+think we are likely to do so, for this simple reason, that if he were
+a Clare man, he'd never have been caught "napping;" so, now, let us
+look about us and see if, on the very surface of events, we shall not
+find something to our purpose. But where to begin, that's the
+question: no clue is left to the absentee of a few years by which to
+guide his path. He may look in vain even for the old landmarks which
+he remembered in boyhood; for somehow he finds them all in
+masquerade. The goodly King William he had left in all the effulgence
+of his Orange livery, is now a cross between a river-god and one of
+Dan's footmen. Let him turn to the Mansion-house to revive his memory
+of the glorious hip, hip, hurra's he has shouted in the exuberance of
+his loyalty, and straightway he comes plump against Lord Mayor
+O'Connell, proceeding in state to Marlborough-street chapel. He asks
+who are these plump gentlemen with light blue silk collars, and
+well-rounded calves, whose haughty bearing seems to awe the beholders,
+and he is told that he knew them of old, as wearing dusky black coats
+and leather shorts; pleasant fellows in those days, and well versed in
+punch and polemics. The hackney-coaches have been cut down into
+covered cars, and the "bulky" watchmen reduced to new police. Let him
+turn which way he will--let it be his pleasure to hear the popular
+preacher, the eloquent lawyer, or the scientific lecturer, and if his
+memory be only as accurate as his hearing, he will confess "time's
+changes;" and when he learns who are deemed the fashionable
+entertainers of the day--at whose boards sit lords and baronets most
+frequently, he will exclaim with the poet--
+
+    "Pritchard's genteel, and Garrick's six feet high."
+
+Well, well, it's bad philosophy, and bad temper, too, to quarrel with
+what is; nowhere is the wisdom of Providence more seen than in the
+universal law, by which everything has its place somewhere; the
+gnarled and bent sapling that would be rejected by the builder, is
+exactly the piece adapted for the knee timber of a frigate; the
+jagged, ill-formed rock that would ill suit the polished portico, is
+invaluable in a rustic arch; and, perhaps, on the same principle,
+dull lawyers make excellent judges, and the people who cannot speak
+within the limits of Lindley Murray, are admirable public writers and
+excellent critics; and as Doctor Pangloss was a good man "because he
+knew what wickedness was," so nothing contributes to the detection of
+faults in others, like the daily practice of their commission by
+ourselves; and never can any man predict failure to another with such
+eloquence and impressiveness, as when he himself has experienced what
+it is to "be damned."
+
+Here I am in another digression, and sorry am I not to follow it out
+further; but for the present I must not--so now, to try back: I will
+suppose my absentee friend to have passed his "day in town," amazed
+and surprised at the various changes about him; I will not bewilder
+him with any glance at our politics, nor puzzle him with that game of
+cross corners by which every one seems to have changed his place; nor
+attempt any explanation of the mysterious doctrine by which the party
+which affects the strongest attachment to the sovereign should exult
+in any defeat to her armies; nor how the supporters of the government
+contribute to its stability, by rabid attacks on its members, and
+absurd comparisons of their own fitness for affairs, with the heads of
+our best and wisest. These things he must have remembered long ago,
+and with respect to them, we are pretty much as we were; but I will
+introduce him to an evening party--a society where the _�lite_ of
+Dublin are assembled; where, amid the glare of wax lights, and the
+more brilliant blaze of beauty, our fairest women and most gifted and
+exalted men are met together for enjoyment. At first blush there will
+appear to him to have been no alteration nor change here. Even the
+very faces he will remember are the same he saw a dozen years ago:
+some pursy gentlemen with bald foreheads or grey whiskers who danced
+before, are now grown whisters; a few of the ladies, who then figured
+in the quadrille, have assumed the turban, and occupy an ottoman; the
+gay, laughing, light-hearted youth he formerly hobnobbed with at
+supper, is become a rising barrister, and has got up a look of learned
+pre-occupation, much more imposing to his sister than to Sir Edward
+Sugden; the wild, reckless collegeman, whose name was a talisman in
+the "Shades," is now a soft-voiced young physician, vibrating in his
+imitation of the two great leaders in his art, and alternately
+assuming the "Epic or the Lake" school of physic. All this may amuse,
+but cannot amaze him: such is the natural current of events, and he
+ought to be prepared for it. The evening wears on, however; the frigid
+politeness and ceremonious distance which we have for some years back
+been borrowing from our neighbours, and which seem to suit our warmer
+natures pretty much as a suit of plate armour would a _danseuse_ in a
+ballet--this begins to wear off, and melt away before the genial heat
+of Irish temperament; "the mirth and fun grow fast and furious;" and a
+new dance is called for. What, then, is the amazement, shall I say the
+horror, of our friend to hear the band strike up a tune which he only
+remembered as associated with everything base, low, and disgraceful;
+which, in the days of his "libertine youth," he only heard at riotous
+carousals and roistering festivals; whose every bar is associated with
+words--ay, there's the rub--which, in his maturer years, he blushes to
+have listened to! he stares about him in wonderment; for a moment he
+forgets that the young lady who dances with such evident enjoyment of
+the air, is ignorant of its history; he watches her sparkling eye and
+animated gesture, without remembering that _she_ knows nothing of the
+associations at which her partner is, perhaps, smirking; he sees her
+_vis-�-vis_ exchanging looks with his friend, that denote _their_
+estimation of the music; and in very truth, so puzzled is he, he
+begins to distrust his senses. The air ceases, and is succeeded by
+another no less known, no less steeped in the same class of
+associations, and so to the conclusion. These remembrances of past
+wickedness go on "crescendo," till the _finale_ caps the whole with a
+melody, to which even the restraints of society are scarcely able to
+prevent a humming accompaniment of concurring voices, and--these are
+the Irish Quadrilles! What can account for this? What special pleading
+will find an argument in its favour? When Wesley objected to all the
+good music being given to the devil, he only excused his adoption of
+certain airs which, in their popular form, had never been connected
+with religious words and feelings; and in his selection of them, was
+rigidly mindful to take such only as in their character became easily
+convertible to his purpose: he never enlisted those to which, by an
+unhappy destiny, vulgarising and indelicate associations have been so
+connected as to become inseparably identified; and although the object
+is widely different, I cannot see how, for the purposes of social
+enjoyment, we should have diverged from his example. If we wished a
+set of Irish quadrilles, how many good and suitable airs had we not
+ready at our hands? Is not our national music proverbially rich, and
+in the very character of music that would suit us? Are there not airs
+in hundreds, whose very names are linked with pleasing and poetic
+memories, admirably adapted to the purpose? Why commit the choice, as
+in this case, to a foreigner who knew nothing of them, nor of us? And
+why permit him to introduce into our drawing-rooms, through the means
+of a quadrille band, a class of reminiscences which suggest levity in
+young men, and shame in old ones? No, no; if the Irish quadrilles are
+to be fashionable, let it be in those classic precincts where their
+merits are best appreciated, and let Monsieur Jullien's popularity be
+great in Barrack-street!
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR "ALL IRELAND."
+
+
+From Carrickfergus to Cape Clear, the whole island is on the "_qui
+vive_" as to whether her gracious majesty the queen will vouchsafe to
+visit us in the ensuing summer. The hospitable and magnificent
+reception which awaited her in Scotland has given a more than ordinary
+impulse to every plan by which we might evince our loyalty, and
+exhibit ourselves to our sovereign in a point of view not less
+favourable than our worthy neighbours across the sea.
+
+At first blush, nothing would seem more easy to accomplish than this.
+A very cursory glance at Mr. O'Connell's speeches will convince any
+one that a land more favourably endowed by nature, or blessed with a
+finer peasantry, never existed: with features of picturesque beauty
+dividing the attention of the traveller, with the fertility of the
+soil; and, in fact, presenting such a panorama of loveliness, peace,
+plenty, and tranquillity, that a very natural doubt might occur to Sir
+Robert Peel's mind in recommending this excursion to her majesty,
+lest the charms of such an Arcadia should supersede the more homely
+attractions of England, and "our ladye the queene" preferring the
+lodge in the Phoenix to the ancient towers of Windsor, fix her
+residence amongst us, and thus at once repeal the Union.
+
+It were difficult to say if some vision of this kind did not float
+across the exalted imagination of the illustrious Daniel, amid that
+shower of fortune's favours such a visit would inevitably bring
+down--baronetcies, knighthood, deputy-lieutenancies would rain upon
+the land, and a general epidemic of feasting and festivity raise every
+heart in the island, and nearly break Father Mathew's.
+
+If the Scotch be warm in their attachment, our affections stand at a
+white heat; if they be enthusiastic, we can go clean mad; and for that
+one bepraised individual who boasted he would never wash the hand
+which had the honour to touch that of the queen, we could produce a
+round ten thousand whose loyalty, looking both ways, would enable
+them, under such circumstances, to claim superiority, as they had
+never washed theirs since the hour of their birth.
+
+Notwithstanding all these elements of hospitality, a more mature
+consideration of the question would show how very difficult it would
+be to compete successfully with the visit to Scotland. Clanship, the
+remains of feudalism, and historical associations, whose dark colours
+have been brought out into glowing brightness under the magic pencil
+of Scott--national costume and national customs--the wild sports of
+the wilder regions--all conspired to give a peculiar interest to this
+royal progress; and from the lordly Baron of Breadalbane to the kilted
+Highlander upon the hills, there was something of ancient splendour
+and by-gone homeliness mixed up together that may well have evoked the
+exclamation of our queen, who, standing on the terrace at Drummond,
+and gazing on the scene below her, uttered--"HOW GRAND!"
+
+Now, unfortunately in many, if not in all these advantages, we have no
+participation. Clanship is unknown amongst us,--only one Irishman has
+a tail, and even that is as ragged an appendage as need be. Our
+national costume is nakedness; and of our national customs, we may
+answer as the sailor did, who, being asked what he had to say in his
+defence against a charge of stealing a quadrant, sagely replied--"Your
+worship, it's a damn'd ugly business, and the less that's said about
+it the better."
+
+Two doubts press upon us--who is to receive her Majesty; and how are
+they to do it? They who have large houses generally happen to have
+small fortunes, and among the few who have adequate means, there is
+scarcely one who could accommodate one half of the royal suite. In
+Scotland, everything worthy of being seen lies in a ring-fence. The
+Highlands comprise all that is remarkable in the country; and thus the
+tour of them presents a quick succession of picturesque beauty without
+the interval of even half a day's journey devoid of interest. Now, how
+many weary miles must her Majesty travel in Ireland from one
+remarkable spot to another--what scenes of misery and want must she
+wade through from the south to the west. Would any charms of
+scenery--would any warmth of hospitality--repay her for the anguish
+such misery must inflict upon her, as her eye would range over the
+wild tract of country where want and disease seem to have fixed their
+dwelling, and where the only edifice that rises above the mud-cabin
+of the way-side presents the red brick front of a union poor-house?
+These, however, are sad topics--what are we to do with the Prince? His
+Royal Highness loves sporting: we have scarcely a pheasant--we have
+not one capercailzie in the island; but then we have our national
+pastimes. If we cannot turn out a stag to amuse him, why we can
+enlarge a tithe-proctor; and, instead of coming home proud that he has
+bagged a roe, he shall exult in having brought down a rector. How poor
+and insignificant would any _battue_ be in comparison with a good
+midnight burning--how contemptible the pursuit of rabbits and hares,
+when compared with a "tithe affray," or the last collision with the
+military in Tipperary. I have said that the Scotch have a national
+costume; but if _semi_-nakedness be a charm in them, what shall be
+said of us, who go the "whole hog?" The details of their ancient
+dress--their tartan, their kilt, their philabeg, that offered so much
+interest to the royal suite--how shall they vie with the
+million-coloured patches of an Irishman's garment? or what bonnet that
+ever flaunted in the breeze is fit to compare with the easy jauntiness
+of Paddy's _caubeen_, through which, in lieu of a feather, a lock of
+his hair is floating?
+
+    "Nor clasp nor nodding plume was there;
+    But for feather he wore one lock of hair."
+
+                                        _Marmion._
+
+
+Then, again, how will the watch-fires that blazed upon the mountains
+pale before the glare of a burning haggard; and what cheer that ever
+rose from Highland throats will vie with the wild yell of ten thousand
+Black-feet on the march of a midnight marauding? No, no; it is quite
+clear the Scotch have no chance with us. Her Majesty may not have all
+her expectations fulfilled by a visit to Ireland; but most assuredly a
+"touch of our quality" will show her many things no near country could
+present, and the probability is, she will neither have time nor
+leisure for a trip to New Zealand.
+
+Everything that indicates nationality will then have its reward. Grave
+dignitaries of the Church will practise the bagpipes, and
+prothonotaries will refresh their jig-dancing; whatever is Irish, will
+be _la vogue_; and, instead of reading that her Majesty wore a shawl
+of the Gordon tartan, manufactured at Paisley, we shall find that the
+Queen appeared in a novel pattern of rags, devised at Mud Island;
+while his Royal Highness will compliment the mildness of our climate
+by adopting our national dress. What a day for Ireland that will
+be!--we shall indeed be "great, glorious, and free;" and if the
+evening only concludes with the Irish Quadrilles, I have little doubt
+that her Majesty will repeat her exclamation of "How grand!" as she
+beholds the members of the royal suite moving gracefully to the air of
+"Stonybatter."
+
+Let us, then, begin in time. Let there be an order of council to
+preserve all the parsons, agents, tithe-proctors, and landlords till
+June; let there be no more shooting in Tipperary for the rest of the
+season; let us "burke" Father Mathew, and endeavour to make our heads
+for the approaching festivities; and what between the new poor-law and
+the tariff, I think we shall be by that time in as picturesque a state
+of poverty as the most critical stickler for nationality would
+desire.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR "A NEW COMPANY."
+
+
+By no one circumstance in our social condition is a foreigner more
+struck than by the fact that there is not a want, an ailing, an
+incapacity for which British philanthropy has not supplied its remedy
+of some sort or other. A very cursory glance at the advertising
+columns of the _Times_ will be all-sufficient to establish this
+assertion. Mental and bodily infirmities, pecuniary difficulties,
+family afflictions, natural defects, have all their separate _corps_
+of comforters; and there is no suffering condition in life that has
+not a benevolent paragraph specially addressed to its consolation. To
+the "afflicted with gout;" to "all with corns and bunions;" to "the
+friends of a nervous invalid"--who is, by the bye, invariably a
+vicious madman; to "the childless;" to "those about to marry." Such
+are the headings of various little crumbs of comfort by which the
+active philanthropy of England sustains its reputation, and fills its
+pocket. From tooth-powder to tea-trays--from spring-mattrasses to
+fictitious mineral waters--from French blacking to the Widow Welch's
+Pills--all have their separate votaries; and it would be difficult to
+conceive any real or imaginary want unsupplied in this prolific age of
+contrivance.
+
+A gentleman might descend from the moon, like our clever friend, "The
+Commissioner," and, by a little attention to these plausible
+paragraphs, become as thoroughly John Bull in all his habits and
+observances as though he were born within St. Pancras. "A widow lady
+with two daughters would take a gentleman to board, where all the
+advantages and comforts of a private family might be found, within ten
+minutes' walk from Greenwich. Unexceptionable references will be given
+and expected on either side." Here, without a moment's delay, he might
+be domiciled in an English family; here he might retire from all the
+cares and troubles of life, enjoying the tranquil pleasures of the
+widow's society, with no other risk or danger, save that of falling in
+love with one or both of the fair daughters, who have "a taste for
+music," and "speak French."
+
+It is said that few countries offer less resources to the stranger
+than England; which I stoutly deny, and assert that no land has set up
+so many sign-posts by which to guide the traveller--so many directions
+by which to advise his course. With us there is no risk of doing
+anything inappropriate, or incompatible with your station, if you will
+only suffer yourself to be borne along on the current. Your tailor
+knows not only the precise shade of colour which suits your
+complexion, but, as if by intuition, he divines the exact cut that
+suits your condition in life. Your coachmaker, in the same way, augurs
+from the tone of your voice, and the _contour_ of your features, the
+shade of colour for your carriage; and should you, by any misfortune,
+happen to be knighted, the Herald's-office deduce, from the very
+consonants of your name, the _quantum_ of emblazonry they can bestow
+on you, and from how far back among the burglars and highwaymen of
+antiquity they can venture to trace you. Should you, however, still
+more unfortunately, through any ignorance of etiquette, or any
+inattention to those minor forms of breeding with which every native
+is conversant, offer umbrage, however slight and unintentional, to
+those dread functionaries, the "new police;" were you by chance to
+gaze longer into a jeweller's window than is deemed decorous; were you
+to fall into any reverie which should induce you to slacken your pace,
+perchance to hum a tune, and thus be brought before the awful "Sir
+Peter," charged by "G 743" with having impeded the passengers--collected
+a crowd--being of suspicious appearance, and having refused "to tell
+who your friends were"--the odds are strongly against you that you
+perform a hornpipe upon the treadmill, or be employed in that very
+elegant chemical analysis, which consists in the extraction of
+magnesia from oyster-shells.
+
+Now, let any man consider for a moment what a large, interesting, and
+annually-increasing portion of our population there is, who, from
+certain peculiarities attending their early condition, have never been
+blessed with relatives or kindred--who, having no available father and
+mother, have consequently no uncles, aunts, or cousins, nor any good
+friends. Here the law presses with a fearful severity upon the
+suffering and the afflicted, not upon the guilty and offending. The
+state has provided no possible contingencies by which such persons are
+to escape. A man can no more create a paternity than he can make a new
+planet. I have already said that with wealth at his disposal, ancestry
+and forefathers are easily procured. He can have them of any age, of
+any country, of any condition in life--churchmen or laymen--dignitaries
+of the law or violators of it;--'tis all one, they are made to order.
+But let him be in ever such urgent want of a near relative; let it be
+a kind and affectionate father, an attached and doting mother, that he
+stands in need of--he may study _The Times_ and _The Herald_--he may
+read _The Chronicle_ and _The Globe_, in vain! No benevolent society
+has directed its philanthropy in this channel; and not even a
+cross-grained uncle or a penurious aunt can be had for love or money.
+
+Now this subject presents itself in two distinct views--one as regards
+its humanity, the other its expediency. As the latter, in the year of
+our Lord, 1844, would seem to offer a stronger claim on our attention,
+let us examine it first. Consider them how you will, these people form
+the most dangerous class of our population--these are the "waifs and
+strays" of mankind. Like snags and sawyers in the Mississippi, having
+no voyage to perform in life, their whole aim and destiny seems to be
+the shipwreck of others. With one end embedded in the mud of uncertain
+parentage, with the other they keep bobbing above the waves of life;
+but let them rise ever so high, they feel they cannot be extricated.
+
+If rich, their happiness is crossed by their sense of isolation; for
+them there are no plum-pudding festivals at Christmas, no family
+goose-devourings at Michaelmas. They have none of those hundred little
+ties and torments which weary and diversify life. They have acres, but
+they have no uncles--they have gardens and graperies, but they cannot
+raise a grandfather--they may have a future, but they have scarcely a
+present; and they have no past.
+
+Should they be poor, their solitary state suggests recklessness and
+vice. It is the restraint of early years that begets submission to the
+law later on, and he who has not learned the lesson of obedience when
+a child, is not an apt scholar when he becomes a man. This, however,
+is a part of the moral and humane consideration of the question, and
+like most other humane considerations, involves expense. With that we
+have nothing to do; our present business is with the rich; for their
+comfort and convenience our hint is intended, and our object to
+supply, on the shortest notice, and the most reasonable terms, such
+relatives of either sex as the applicant shall stand in need of.
+
+Let there be, therefore, established a new joint stock company to be
+called the "GRAND UNITED ANCESTRAL, KINDRED, AND BLOOD RELATION
+SOCIETY"--capital any number of pounds sterling. Actuaries--Messrs.
+Oliver Twist and Jacob Faithful.
+
+Only think of the benefits of such a company! Reflect upon the numbers
+who leave their homes every morning without parentage, and who might
+now possess any amount of relatives they desire before night. Every
+one knows that a respectable livelihood is made by a set of persons
+whose occupation it is to become bails at the different police
+offices, for any class of offence, and to any amount. They exercise
+their calling somewhat like bill-brokers, taking special pains always
+to secure themselves against loss, and make a trifle of money, while
+displaying an unbounded philanthropy. Here then is a class of persons
+most appropriate for our purpose: fathers, uncles, first cousins, even
+grandfathers, might be made out of these at a moment's notice. What
+affecting scenes, too, might be got up at Bow-street, under such
+circumstances, of penitent sons, and pardoning parents, of unforgiving
+uncles and imploring nephews. How would the eloquence of the
+worshipful bench revel, on such occasions, for its display. What
+admonitions would it not pour forth, what warnings, what
+commiseration, and what condolings. Then what a satisfaction to the
+culprit to know that all these things were managed by a respectable
+company, who were "responsible in every case for the good conduct of
+its servants." No extortion permitted--no bribery allowed; a regular
+rate of charges being printed, which every individual was bound, like
+a cab-man, to show if required.
+
+So much for a father, if respectable; so much more, if professional;
+or in private life, increased premium. An angry parent, we'll say two
+and sixpence; sorrowful, three shillings; "deeply afflicted and bound
+to weep," five shillings.
+
+A widowed mother, in good weeds, one and sixpence; do, do, in a cab,
+half a crown; and so on.
+
+How many are there besides who, not actually in the condition we speak
+of, would be delighted to avail themselves of the benefits of this
+institution. How many moving in the society of the west end, with a
+father a tobacconist or a cheesemonger in the city, would gladly pay
+well for a fashionable parent supposed to live upon his estate in
+Yorkshire, or entertaining, as the _Morning Post_ has it, a
+"distinguished party at his shooting lodge in the Highlands." What a
+luxury, when dining his friends at the Clarendon, to be able to talk
+of his "Old Governor" hunting his hounds twice a week, while, at the
+same moment, the real individual was engaged in the manufacture of
+soap and short sixes. What happiness to recommend the game-pie, when
+the grouse was sent by his Uncle, while he felt that the only
+individual who stood in that capacity respecting him, had three gilt
+balls over his door, and was more conversant with duplicates than
+double barrels.
+
+But why pursue a theme whose benefits are self-evident, and come home
+to every bosom in the vast community. It is one of "the wants of our
+age," and we hope ere long to see the "fathers" as much respected in
+Clerkenwell or College-street, as ever they were in Clongowes or
+Maynooth.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A NUT FOR "POLITICAL ECONOMISTS."
+
+
+This is the age of political economists and their nostrums. Every
+newspaper teems with projects for the amelioration of our working
+classes, and the land is full of farming societies, temperance unions,
+and a hundred other Peter Purcellisms, to improve its social
+condition; the charge to make us
+
+    "Great, glorious, and free,"
+
+remaining with that estimable and irreproachable individual who
+tumbles in Lower Abbey-street.
+
+The Frenchman's horse would, it is said, have inevitably finished his
+education, and accomplished the faculty of existing without food, had
+he only survived another twenty-four hours. Now, the condition of
+Ireland is not very dissimilar, and I only hope that we may have
+sufficient tenacity of life to outlive the numerous schemes for our
+prosperity and advancement.
+
+Nothing, indeed, can be more singular than the manner of every
+endeavour to benefit his country. We are poor--every man of us is only
+struggling; therefore, we are recommended to build expensive
+poorhouses, and fill them with some of ourselves. We have scarcely
+wherewithal to meet the ordinary demands of life, and straightway are
+told to subscribe to various new societies--repeal funds--agricultural
+clubs--O'Connell tributes--and Mathew testimonials. This, to any
+short-sighted person, might appear a very novel mode of filling our
+own pockets. There are one-idea'd people in the world, who can only
+take up the impression which, at first blush, any subject suggests;
+they, I say, might fancy that a continued system of donation,
+unattended by anything like receipt, is not exactly the surest element
+of individual prosperity. I hope to be able to controvert this
+plausible, but shallow theory, and to show--and what a happy thing it
+is for us--to show that, not only is our poverty the source of our
+greatest prosperity, but that if by any accident we should become
+rich, we must inevitably be ruined; and to begin--
+
+Absenteeism is agreed on all hands to be the bane of Ireland. No one,
+whatever be his party prejudices, will venture to deny this. The
+high-principled and well-informed country gentleman professes this
+opinion in common with the illiterate and rabid follower of
+O'Connell; I need not, therefore, insist further on a proposition so
+universally acknowledged. To proceed--of all people, none are so
+naturally absentees as the Irish; in fact, it would seem that one
+great feature of our patriotism consists in the desire to display, in
+other lands, the ardent attachment we bear our own. How can we tell
+Frenchmen, Italians, Germans, Russians, Swedes, and Swiss, how devoted
+we are to the country of our birth, if we do not go abroad to do so?
+How can we shed tears as exiles, unless we become so? How can we rail
+about the wrongs of Ireland and English tyranny, if we do not go among
+people, who, being perfectly ignorant of both, may chance to believe
+us? These are the patriotic arguments for absenteeism; then come
+others, which may be classed under the head of "expediency reasons,"
+such as debts, duns, outlawries, &c. Thirdly, the temptations of the
+Continent, which, to a certain class of our countrymen, are of the
+very strongest description--Corn Exchange politics, vulgar associates,
+an air of bully, and a voice of brogue, will not form such obstacles
+to success in Paris, as in Dublin. A man can scarcely introduce an
+Irish provincialism into his French, and he would be a clever fellow
+who could accomplish a bull under a twelvemonth. These, then, form the
+social reasons; and from a short revision of all three, it will be
+seen that they include a very large proportion of the land--Mr.
+O'Connell talks of them as seven millions.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+It being now proved, I hope, to my reader's satisfaction, that the
+bent of an Irishman is to go abroad, let us briefly inquire, what is
+it that ever prevents him so doing? The answer is an easy one. When
+Paddy was told by his priest that whenever he went into a
+public-house to drink, his guardian angel stood weeping at the door,
+his ready reply was, "that if he had a tester he'd have been in too;"
+so it is exactly with absenteeism; it is only poverty that checks it.
+The man with five pounds in his pocket starts to spend it in England;
+make it _ten_, and he goes to Paris; _fifteen_, and he's up the Rhine;
+_twenty_, and Constantinople is not far enough for him! Whereas, if
+the sum of his wealth had been a matter of shillings, he'd have been
+satisfied with a trip to Kingstown, a chop at Jude's, a place in the
+pit, and a penny to the repeal fund; all of which would redound to his
+patriotism, and the "prosperity of Ireland."
+
+The same line of argument applies to every feature of expense. If we
+patronise "Irish manufacture," it is because we cannot afford English.
+If we like Dublin society, it is upon the same principle; and, in
+fact, the cheap pleasures of home, form the sheet-anchor of our
+patriotism, and we are only "guardian angels," because "we haven't a
+tester."
+
+Away then with any flimsy endeavours to introduce English capital or
+Scotch industry. Let us persevere in our present habits of mutual
+dislike, attack, and recrimination; let us interfere with the projects
+of English civilisation, and forward, by every means in our power, the
+enlightened doctrines of popery, and the patriotic pastime of
+parson-shooting, for even in sporting we dispense with a "game
+license;" let no influx of wealth offer to us the seduction of
+quitting home, and never let us feel with our national poet that
+"Ireland is a beautiful country to live out of."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR "GRAND DUKES."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+God help me but I have always looked upon a "grand duke" pretty much
+in the same light that I have regarded the "Great Lama," that is to
+say, a very singular and curious object of worship in its native
+country. How any thing totally destitute of sovereign attributes could
+ever be an idol, either for religious or political adoration, is
+somewhat singular, and after much pains and reflections on the
+subject, I came to the opinion, that German princes were valued by
+their subjects pretty much on the principle the Indians select their
+idols, and knowing men admire thorough-bred Scotch terriers--viz., not
+their beauty.
+
+Of all the cant this most canting age abounds in, nothing is more
+repulsive and disgusting than the absurd laudation which travellers
+pour forth concerning these people, by the very ludicrous blunder of
+comparing a foreign aristocracy with our own. Now, what is a German
+grand duke? Picture to yourself a very corpulent, moustached, and
+befrogged individual, who has a territory about the size of the Phoenix
+Park, and a city as big and as flourishing as the Blackrock; the
+expenses of his civil list are defrayed by a chalybeate spring, and
+the budget of his army by the license of a gambling-house, and then
+read the following passage from "Howitt's Life in Germany," which,
+with that admirable appreciation of excellence so eminently their
+characteristic, the newspapers have been copying this week past--
+
+"You may sometimes see a grand duke come into a country inn, call for
+his glass of ale, drink it, pay for it, and go away as unceremoniously
+as yourself. The consequence of this easy familiarity is, that princes
+are everywhere popular, and the daily occurrence of their presence
+amongst the people, prevents that absurd crush and stare at them,
+which prevails in more luxurious and exclusive countries."
+
+That princes do go into country inns, call for ale, and drink it, I
+firmly believe; a circumstance, however, which I put the less value
+upon, inasmuch as the inn is pretty much like the prince's own house,
+the ale very like what he has at home, and the innkeeper as near as
+possible, in breeding, manner, and appearance, his equal. That he
+_pays_ for the drink, which our author takes pains to mention, excites
+all my admiration; but I confess I have no words to express my
+pleasure on reading that "he goes away again," and, as Mr. Howitt has
+it, "as unceremoniously as yourself," neither stopping to crack the
+landlord's crown, smash the pewter, break the till, nor even put a
+star in the looking-glass over the fire-place, a condescension on his
+part which leads to the fact, that "princes are everywhere popular."
+
+Now, considering that Mr. Howitt is a Quaker, it is somewhat
+remarkable the high estimate he entertains of this "grand ducal"
+forbearance. What he expected his highness to have done when he had
+finished his drink, I am as much at a loss to conjecture, as what
+trait we are called upon to admire in the entire circumstance; when
+the German prince went into the inn, and knocking three times with a
+copper kreutzer on the counter, called for his choppin of beer, he was
+exactly acting up to the ordinary habits of his station, as when the
+Duke of Northumberland, on his arriving with four carriages at the
+"Clarendon," occupied a complete suite of apartments, and partook of a
+most sumptuous dinner. Neither more nor less. His Grace of Alnwick
+might as well be lauded for his ducal urbanity as the German prince
+for his, each was fulfilling his destiny in his own way, and there was
+not anything a whit more worthy of admiration in the one case, than in
+the other.
+
+But three hundred pounds per annum, even in a cheap country, afford
+few luxuries; and if the Germans are indifferent to cholic, there
+might be, after all, something praiseworthy in the beer-drinking, and
+here I leave it.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE EAST INDIA DIRECTORS.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+When the East India Directors recalled Lord Ellenborough, and replaced
+him by Sir Henry Harding, the impression upon the public mind was, as
+was natural it should be, that the course of policy adopted by the
+former, was such as met not their approval, and should not be
+persisted in by his successor.
+
+To supersede one man by another, that he might perform the very same
+acts in the same way, would be something too ludicrous and absurd.
+When John Bull chass�es the Tories, and takes to the Whigs, it is
+because he has had enough of Peel, and wants to try a stage with Lord
+John, who handles the ribbons differently, and drives another sort of
+a team; a piebald set of screws they are, to be sure, but they can go
+the pace when they are at it; and, as the road generally lies
+downhill, they get along right merrily. But John would never think of
+a change, if the pace were to be always the same. No; he'd just put up
+with the set he had, and take his chance. Not so your India Directors.
+They are quite satisfied with everything; all is right, orderly, and
+proper; but still they would rather that another man were at the head
+of affairs, to do exactly what had been done before. "What are you
+doing, Peter?"--"Nothing, sir." "And you, Jem, what are you
+about?"--"Helping Peter, sir." That is precisely the case, and Sir
+Henry is gone out to help Lord Ellenborough.
+
+Such a line of proceeding is doubtless singular enough, and many
+sensible people there are, who cannot comprehend the object and
+intention of the wise Directors; while, by the press, severe
+imputations have been thrown upon their consistency and intelligence,
+and some have gone so far as to call their conduct unparalleled.
+
+This, however, is unjust. The Old Almanack, as Lord Brougham would
+call it, has registered a not inapplicable precedent; and, in the
+anxious hope of being remembered by the "Old Lady," I hasten to
+mention it:--
+
+When Louis XIV. grew tired of Madame la Valli�re, and desired to
+replace her by another in his favour, he committed the difficult task
+of explanation on the subject, to his faithful friend and confessor,
+Bossuet. The worthy Bishop undertook his delicate mission with
+diffidence; but he executed it with tact. The gentle La Valli�re wept
+bitterly; she knew nothing of the misfortune that menaced her. She
+believed that her star still stood in the ascendant, and fancied (like
+Lord Ellenborough) that her blandishments were never more
+acknowledged. "Whence, then, this change?" cried she, in the agony of
+her grief. "How have I offended him?"
+
+"You mistake me, my daughter," said Mons. de M�aux. "His Majesty is
+most tenderly attached to you; but religious scruples--qualms of
+conscience--have come upon him. 'C'est par la peur du diable,' that he
+consents to this separation."
+
+[Illustration: Honorable Members.]
+
+Poor Louise dried her tears; the case was bad enough, but there was
+one consolation--it was religion, and not a rival, had cost her a
+lover; and so she began her preparations for departure with a heart
+somewhat less heavy. On the day, however, of her leave-taking, a
+carriage, splashed and travel-stained, arrived at the "petite porte"
+of the Palace; and as instantaneously ran the rumour through the
+household that his Majesty's new mistress had arrived: and true it
+was, Madame de Maintenon had taken her place beside the fauteuil of
+the King.
+
+"So, Mons. de Bossuet," said La Valli�re, as he handed her to her
+carriage--"so, then, his Majesty has exiled me, 'par la peur du
+diable.'"
+
+The Bishop bowed in tacit submission and acquiescence.
+
+"In that case," resumed she, "c'est par complaisance au diable, that
+he accepts Madame de Maintenon."
+
+
+
+
+A FILBERT FOR SIR ROBERT PEEL.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Sir Robert Peel was never more triumphant than when, in the last
+session of Parliament, he rebuked his followers for a casual defection
+in the support of Government, by asking them what they had to complain
+of. Are _we_ not on the Treasury benches? said the Right Honourable
+Baronet. Do not my friend Graham and myself guide and direct you?--do
+we not distribute the patronage and the honours of the government,--take
+the pay--and rule the kingdom--what more would you have? Ungrateful
+bucolics, you know not what you want! The apostrophe was bold, but not
+original. I remember hearing of a West country farmer having ridden a
+long day's journey on a poor, ill-fed hack, which, as evening drew
+near, showed many symptoms of a fatal knock-up. The rider himself was
+well tired, too, and stopped at an ale-house for a moment's
+refreshment, while he left the jaded beast standing at the door. As he
+remounted his saddle, a few minutes after, he seized his reins
+briskly, flourished his whip (both like Sir Robert), and
+exclaimed:--"I've had two glasses of spirits.--Let us see if you won't
+go after that."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+"THE INCOME TAX."
+
+
+Among the many singular objections which have been made to the new
+property tax, I find Mr. C. Buller stating in the House, that his
+greatest dislike to the project lay in the exceedingly small amount of
+the impost.
+
+    "My wound is great because it is so small,"
+
+might have been the text of the honourable and learned gentleman's
+oration. After setting forth most eloquently the varied distresses of
+the country--its accumulating debt and heavy taxation--he turns the
+whole weight of his honest indignation against the new imposition,
+because, forsooth, it is so "little burdensome, and will inflict so
+slight an additional load upon the tax-payer." There is an attempt at
+argument, however, on the subject, which is somewhat amusing; for he
+continues not only to lament the smallness of the new tax, but the
+"slight necessity that exists" even for that. Had we some great
+national loss to make up, the deficiency of which rendered a call on
+the united people necessary, then, quoth he, how happily we should
+stand forward in support of the Constitution. In fact, he deplores, in
+the most moving terms, that ill off as the country is, yet it is not
+one-half so bad as it might be, or as he should like to see it. Ah!
+had we only some disastrous Continental war, devastating our
+commerce--ruining our Colonies, and eating into the very heart of our
+national resources--how gladly I should pay this Income Tax; but to
+remedy a curable evil--to restore, by prompt and energetic measures,
+the growing disease of the State--is a poor, pettifogging practice,
+that has neither heroism nor fame to recommend it. I remember hearing
+that at one of those excellent institutions, so appropriately
+denominated Magdalen Asylums, a poor, but innocent girl, presented
+herself for admission, pleading her lonely and deserted condition, as
+a plea for her reception. The patroness, an amiable and excellent
+person--but somewhat of the complexion of the honourable and learned
+Member for Liskeard--asked at once, whether she had resolved on a
+total reformation of her mode of life. The other replied, that her
+habits had been always chaste and virtuous, and that her character had
+been invariably above reproach. "Ah, in that case," rejoined the lady,
+"we can't admit you; this institution is expressly for the reception
+of penitents. If you could only qualify for a week or so, there is no
+objection to your admission."
+
+Is not this exactly Mr. Buller's proposition? "Let us have the Whigs
+back for a few years longer; let us return to our admirable foreign
+policy; and when we have successfully embroiled ourselves with
+America, lost Canada, been beaten in China, driven out of our Eastern
+possessions, and provoked a war with France, then I'm your man for an
+Income Tax; lay it on only heavily; let the nation, already bowed down
+under the heavy burden of its calamities, receive in addition the
+gracious boon of enormous taxation." Homoeopathy teaches us that
+nothing is so curative in its agency, as the very cause of our present
+suffering, or something as analogous to it as possible; and, like
+Hahnemann, Mr. Buller administers what the vulgar call "a hair of the
+dog that bit us," as the most sovereign remedy for all our evils.
+
+The country is like a sick man with a whitlow, for the cure of which
+his physician prescribes a slight, but clearly necessary, operation.
+Another medical Dr. Buller is, however, standing by. He at once
+insinuates his veto; remarks upon the trivial nature of the
+disease--the unpainful character of the remedy; "but wait," adds
+he--"wait till the inflammation extends higher; have patience till the
+hand becomes swollen and the arm affected; and then, when your agony
+is beyond endurance, and your life endangered, then we'll amputate the
+limb high up, and mayhap you may recover, after all."
+
+As for me, it is the only occasion I'm aware of, where a successful
+comparison can be instituted between honour and the Whigs; for
+assuredly neither have "any skill in surgery."
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE "BELGES."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Every one knows that men in masses, whether the same be called boards,
+committees, aggregate, or repeal meetings, will be capable of
+atrocities and iniquities, to which, as individuals, their natures
+would be firmly repugnant. The irresponsibility of a number is felt by
+every member, and Curran was not far wrong when he said, a
+"corporation was a thing that had neither a body to be kicked, nor a
+soul to be damned."
+
+It is, indeed, a melancholy fact, that nations partake much more
+frequently of the bad than the good features of the individuals
+composing them, and it requires no small amount of virtue to flavour
+the great caldron of a people, and make its incense rise gratefully to
+heaven. For this reason, we are ever ready to accept with enthusiasm
+anything like a national tribute to high principle and honour. Such
+glorious bursts are a source of pride to human nature itself, and we
+hail with acclamation these evidences of exalted feeling, which make
+men "come nearer to the gods." The greater the sacrifice to selfish
+interests and prejudices, the more do we prize the effort. Think for a
+moment what a sensation of surprise and admiration, wonderment, awe,
+and approbation it would excite throughout Europe, if, by the next
+arrival from Boston, came the news that "the Americans had determined
+to pay their debts!" That at some great congress of the States,
+resolutions were carried to the effect, "that roguery and cheating
+will occasionally lower a people in the estimation of others, and that
+the indulgences of such national practices may be, in the end,
+prejudicial to national honour;" "that honesty, if not the best, may
+be good policy, even in a go-a-head state of society;" "that smart
+men, however a source of well-founded pride to a people, are now and
+then inconvenient from the very excess of their smartness;" "that
+seeing these things, and feeling all the unhappy results which
+mistrust and suspicion by foreign countries must bring upon their
+commerce, they have determined to pay something in the pound, and go
+a-head once more." I am sure that such an announcement would be hailed
+with illuminations from Hamburg to Leghorn. American citizens would be
+cheered wherever they were found; pumpkin pie would figure at royal
+tables, and twist and cocktail be handed round with the coffee; our
+exquisites would take to chewing and its consequences; and our belles,
+banishing Rossini and Donizetti, would make the air vocal with the
+sweet sounds of Yankee Doodle. One cannot at a moment contemplate what
+excesses our enthusiasm might not carry us to; and I should not wonder
+in the least if some great publisher of respectable standing might not
+start a pirated reprint of the _New York Herald_.
+
+Let me now go back and explain, if my excitement will permit me, how
+I have been led into such extravagant imaginings. I have already
+remarked, that nations seldom gave evidence of noble bursts of
+feeling; still more rarely, I regret to say, do they evince any sorrow
+for past misconduct--any penitence for by-gone evil.
+
+This would be, indeed, the severest ordeal of a people's greatness;
+this, the brightest evidence of national purity. Happy am I to say
+such an instance is before us; proud am I to be the man to direct
+public attention to the fact. The following paragraph I copy verbatim
+from the _Times_.
+
+     "On the 18th of June, the anniversary of the battle of
+     Waterloo, a black flag was hoisted by the Belgians at the
+     top of the monument erected on the field where the battle
+     was fought."
+
+A black flag, the emblem of mourning, the device of sorrow and regret,
+waves over the field of Waterloo! Not placed there by vanquished
+France, whose legions fought with all their chivalry; not hoisted by
+the proud Gaul, on the plain where, in defeat, he bit the dust; but in
+penitence of heart, in deep sorrow and contrition, by the Belgians who
+ran--by the people who fled--by the soldiers who broke their ranks and
+escaped in terror.
+
+What a noble self-abasement is this; how beautifully touching such an
+instance of a people's sorrow, and how affecting to think, that while
+in the halls of Apsley House the heroes were met together to
+commemorate the glorious day when they so nobly sustained their
+country's honour, another nation should be in sackcloth and ashes, in
+all the trappings of woe, mourning over the era of their shame, and
+sorrowing over their degradation. Oh, if a great people in all the
+majesty of their power, in all their might of intellect, strength, and
+riches, be an object of solemn awe and wonder, what shall we say of
+one whose virtues partake of the humble features of every-day life,
+whose sacrifice is the tearful offering of their own regrets?
+
+Mr. O'Connell may declaim, and pronounce his eight millions the finest
+peasantry in the world--he may extol their virtues from Cork to
+Carrickfergus--he may ring the changes over their loyalty, their
+bravery, and their patriotism; but when eulogising the men who assure
+him "they are ready to die for their country," let him blush to think
+of the people who can "cry" for theirs.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR WORKHOUSE CHAPLAINS.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The bane and antidote of England is her immense manufacturing
+power--the faculty that enables her to inundate the whole habitable
+globe with the products of her industry, is at once the source of her
+prosperity and poverty--her millionnaire mill-owners and her
+impoverished thousands. Never was the skill of machinery pushed to the
+same wonderful extent--never the results of mechanical invention so
+astoundingly developed. Men are but the presiding genii over the
+wonder-working slaves of their creative powers, and the child, is the
+volition that gives impulse to the giant force of a mighty engine.
+Subdivision of labour, carried to an extent almost incredible, has
+facilitated despatch, and induced a higher degree of excellence in
+every branch of mechanism--human ingenuity is racked, chemical
+analysis investigated, mathematical research explored--and all, that
+Mr. Binns, of Birmingham, may make thirteen minikin pins--while Mr.
+Sims, of Stockport, has been making but twelve. Let him but succeed in
+this, and straightway his income is quadrupled--his eldest son is
+member for a manufacturing borough, his second is a cornet in the Life
+Guards--his daughter, with a fortune of one hundred thousand pounds,
+is married to the heir of a marquisate--and his wife, soaring above
+the murky atmosphere of the factory, breathes the purer air of western
+London, and advertises her _soir�es_ in the _Morning Post_. The
+pursuit of wealth is now the grand characteristic of our age and
+country; and the headlong race of money-getting seems the great
+feature of the day. To this end the thundering steamer ploughs the
+white-crested wave of the broad Atlantic--to this end the clattering
+locomotive darts through the air at sixty miles the hour--for this,
+the thousand hammers of the foundry, the ten thousand wheels of the
+factory are at work--and man, toiling like a galley-slave, scarce
+takes time to breathe in his mad career, as with straining eyeballs
+and outstretched hands, he follows in the pursuit of lucre.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Now, men are imitative creatures; and strange enough, too, they are
+oftentimes disposed from the indulgence of the faculty to copy things,
+and adapt them to purposes very foreign to their original destination.
+This manufacturing speed, this steeple-chase of printed calico and
+Paisley wear, is all very well while it is limited to the districts
+where it began. That two hundred and seventy thousand white cotton
+night-caps, with a blue tassel on every one of them, can be made in
+twenty-four hours at Messrs. Twist and Tredlem's factory, is a very
+gratifying fact, particularly to all who indulge in ornamental
+head-gear--but we see no reason for carrying this dispatch into the
+Court of Chancery, and insisting that every nod of the woolsack is to
+decide a suit at law. Yet have the lawyer and the physician both
+adopted the impetuous practices of the manufacturing world, and
+Haste, red haste! is now the cry.
+
+Lord Brougham's Chancery practice was only to be equalled by one of
+Lord Waterford's steeple-chases. He took all before him in a fly--he
+rode straight, plenty of neck, baulked nothing--up leap or down leap,
+sunk fence or double ditch, post and rail, or quickset, stone wall, or
+clay bank, all one to him--go it he would. Others might deny his
+judgment; he wanted to get over the ground, and _that_ he did do.
+
+The West-end physician, in the same way, visits his fifty patients
+daily, walks his hospital, delivers a lecture to old ladies about some
+"curious provision" of nature in the palm of the human hand (for
+fee-taking); and devoting something like three minutes and twelve
+seconds to each sick man's case, pockets some twenty thousand per
+annum by his dispatch.
+
+Speed is now the _El Dorado_. Jelly is advertised to be made in a
+minute, butter in five, soup seasoned and salted in three seconds of
+time. Even the Quakers--bless their quiet hearts!--couldn't escape the
+contagion, and actually began to walk and talk with some faint
+resemblance to ordinary mortals. The church alone maintained the even
+tenor of its way, and moved not in the wild career of the whirlwind
+world about it. Such was my gratulation, when my eye fell upon the
+following passage of the _Times_. Need I say with what a heavy heart I
+read it? It is Mr. Rushton who speaks:--
+
+     "In the month of December, 1841, he heard that a man had
+     been found dead in the streets of Liverpool; that all the
+     property he possessed had been taken from his person, and
+     that an attempt to trace his identity had been made in
+     vain. He was taken to the usual repository for the dead,
+     where an inquest had been held upon him, and from the 'dead
+     house,' as it was called, he was removed to the workhouse
+     burial-ground. The man who drove the hearse on the occasion
+     was very old, and not very capable of giving evidence. His
+     attendant was an idiot. It had been represented to Mr.
+     Hodgson and himself that the dead man had been taken in the
+     clothes in which he died and put into a coffin which was too
+     small for him; that a shroud was put over him; that the lid
+     of the coffin would not go down; and that he was taken from
+     the dead-house and buried in the parochial ground, no
+     funeral rites having been performed on the occasion. It had
+     also been communicated to Mr. Hodgson and himself that,
+     after two days, the clergyman who was instructed to perform
+     those rites over the paupers, came and performed one service
+     for the dead over all the paupers who had been buried in the
+     intermediate time."
+
+Now, without stopping to criticise the workhouse equipage, which
+appears to be driven by a man too old to speak, with an idiot for his
+companion; nor even to advert to the scant ceremony of burying a man
+in his daily dress, and in a coffin that would not close on him--what
+shall we say of the "patent parson power" that buries paupers in
+detachments, and reads the service over platoons of dead? The reverend
+chaplain feeling the uncertainty of human life, and knowing how frail
+is our tie to existence, waits in the perfect conviction of a large
+party before he condescends to appear. Knowing that dead men tell no
+tales, he surmises also that they don't run away, and so he says to
+himself--these people are not pressed for time, they'll be here when I
+come again--it is a sickly season, and we'll have a field-day on
+Saturday. Cheap soup for the poor, says Mrs. Fry. Cheap justice, says
+O'Connell. Cheap clothing, says a tailor who makes new clothes from
+old, with a machine called a devil--but cheap burial is the boast of
+the Liverpool chaplain, and he is the most original among them.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE "HOUSE."
+
+
+I have long been of opinion that a man may attain to a very
+respectable knowledge of Chinese ceremonies and etiquette before he
+can learn one half the usages of the honourable house. Seldom does a
+debate go forward without some absurd interruption taking place in a
+mere matter of form. Now it is a cry of "Order, order," to some
+gentleman who is subsequently discovered not to have been in the least
+disorderly, but whom the attack has so completely dumfounded, that he
+loses his speech and his self-possession, and sits down in confusion,
+to be sneered at in the morning papers, and hooted by his constituents
+when he goes home.
+
+Now some gifted scion of aristocracy makes an essay in braying and
+cock-crowing, both permitted by privilege, and overwhelms the speaker
+with the uproar. Now it is that intolerable nuisance, old Hume,
+shouting out "divide," or "adjourn;" or it is Colonel Sibthorpe who
+counts the house. These ridiculous privileges of members to interfere
+with the current of public business because they may be sleepy or
+stupid themselves, are really intolerable, besides being so numerous
+that the first dozen years of a parliamentary life will scarcely teach
+a man a tithe of them. But of all these "rules of the house," the
+most unjust and tyrannical is that which compels a man to put up with
+any impertinence because he has already spoken. It would seem as if
+each honourable member "went down" with a single ball cartridge in his
+pouch, which, when fired, the best thing he could do was to go home
+and wait for another distribution of ammunition; for by remaining he
+only ran the risk of being riddled without any power to return the
+fire.
+
+A case of this kind happened a few evenings since:--A Mr. Blewitt--I
+suppose the composer--made a very absurd motion, the object of which
+was to inquire "What office the Duke of Wellington held in the present
+government, and whether he was or was not a member of the cabinet."
+Without referring the learned gentleman to a certain erudite volume
+called the Yearly Almanack and Directory, Sir Robert Peel proceeded to
+explain the duke's position. He eulogised, as who would not? his
+grace's sagacity and his wisdom; the importance of his public
+services, and the great value the ministers, his _confr�res_, set upon
+a judgment which, in a long life, had so seldom been found mistaken;
+and then he concluded by quoting from one of the duke's recent replies
+to some secretary or other who addressed him on a matter foreign to
+his department--"That he was one of the few men in the present day who
+did not meddle in affairs over which they have no control." "A piece
+of counsel," quoth Sir Robert, "I would strenuously advise the
+honourable member to apply to his own case."
+
+Now we have already said that we think Blewitt--though an admirable
+musician--seems to be a very silly man. Still, if he really did not
+know what the duke represented in her Majesty's government--if he
+really were ignorant of what functions he exercised, the information
+might have been bestowed upon him without a retort like this. In the
+first place, his query, if a foolish, was at least a civil one; and in
+the second, it was his duty to understand a matter of this nature: it
+therefore came under his control, and Sir Robert's application of the
+quotation was perfectly uncalled-for. Well; what followed? Mr. Blewitt
+rose in wrath to reply, when the house called out, "Spoke, spoke!" and
+Blewitt was muzzled; the moral of which is simply this--you ask a
+question in the house, and the individual addressed has a right to
+insult you, you having no power of rejoinder, under the etiquette of
+"spoke." Any flippancy may overturn a man at this rate; and the words
+"loud laughter," printed in italics in the _Chronicle_, is sure to
+renew the emotion at every breakfast table the morning after.
+
+Now I am sorry for Blewitt, and think he was badly treated.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR "LAW REFORM."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Of all the institutions of England there is scarcely one more lauded,
+and more misunderstood, than trial by jury. At first blush, nothing
+can seem fairer and less objectionable than the unbiassed decision of
+twelve honest men, sworn to do justice. They hear patiently the
+evidence on both sides; and in addition to the light derivable from
+their own intelligence, they have the directing charge of the judge,
+who tells them wherein the question for their decision lies, what are
+the circumstances of which they are to take cognizance, and by what
+features of the case their verdict is to be guided. Yet look at the
+working of this much-boasted privilege. One jury brings in a verdict
+so contrary to all reason and justice, that they are sent back to
+reconsider it by the judge; another, more refractory still, won't come
+to any decision at all, and get carted to the verge of the county for
+their pains; and a third, improving on all former modes of proceeding,
+has adopted a newer and certainly most impartial manner of deciding a
+legal question. "Court of Common Pleas, London, July 6.--The Chief
+Justice (Tindal) asked the ground of objection, and ten of the jurymen
+answered that in the last case one of their colleagues had suggested
+that the verdict should be decided by tossing up!" Here is certainly a
+very important suggestion, and one which, recognising justice as a
+blind goddess, is strictly in conformity with the impersonation.
+Nothing could possibly be farther removed from the dangers of undue
+influence than decisions obtained in this manner. Not only are all the
+prejudices and party bearings of individual jurors avoided, but an
+honest and manly oblivion of all the evidence which might bias men if
+left to the guidance of their poor and erring faculties, is thus
+secured. It is human to err, says the poet moralist; and so the
+jurymen in question discovered, and would therefore rather refer a
+knotty question to another deity than Justice, whom men call Fortune.
+How much would it simplify our complex and gnarled code, the
+introduction of this system? In the next place, juries need not be any
+longer empannelled, the judge could "sky the copper" himself. The only
+question would be, to have a fair halfpenny. See with what rapidity
+the much-cavilled court would dispatch public business! I think I see
+our handsome Chief of the Common Pleas at home here, with his knowing
+eye watching the vibrations of the coin, and calling out in his
+sonorous tone, "Head--the plaintiff has it. Call another case." I peep
+into the Court of Chancery, and behold Sir Edward twirling the penny
+with more cautious fingers, and then with his sharp look and sharper
+voice, say, "Tail! Take a rule for the defendant."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+No longer shall we hear objections as to the sufficiency of legal
+knowledge possessed by those in the judgment-seat. There will be no
+petty likings for this, and dislikings for that court; no changes of
+venue; no challenges of the jury; even Lord Brougham himself, of whom
+Sir Edward remarked, "What a pity it was he did not know a little law,
+for then he would have known a little of everything"--even he might be
+a chancellor once more. What a power of patronage it would give each
+succeeding ministry to know that capacity was of no consequence; and
+that the barrister of six years' standing could turn his penny as well
+as the leader in Chancery. Public business need never be delayed a
+moment; and if the Chief Baron were occupied in chamber, the crier of
+the court could perform his functions till he came back again.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR "CLIMBING BOYS."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+One man may lead a horse to the water, but ten cannot make him drink,
+sayeth the adage; and so it might be said, any one might devise an act
+of parliament--but who can explain all its intentions and
+provisions--define its powers--and illustrate its meanings? One clause
+will occasionally vitiate another; one section completely contradict
+the preceding one; the very objects of the legislature are often so
+pared away in committee, that a mere shadowy outline remains of what
+the original framer intended; and were it not for the bold hand of
+executive justice, the whole might be inoperative. The judge, happily,
+supplies the deficiency of the lawmaker--and the thing were perfect,
+if judges were not, like doctors, given to differ--and thus,
+occasionally, disseminate somewhat opposite notions of the statutes of
+the land.
+
+Such being the case, it will not be deemed impertinent of one, who
+desires to conform in all respects to the law, to ask, from time to
+time, of our rulers and governors, certain questions, the answers to
+which, should he happily receive them, will be regarded by him as
+though written on tables of brass.
+
+Now, in a late session of parliament, some humane member brought in a
+bill to interdict the sweeping of chimneys by all persons small enough
+for the purpose, and ingeniously suggested supplying their place by
+others, whose size would have inevitably condemned them to perish in a
+flue. Never had philanthropist a greater share of popularity. Little
+sweeps sang his praises along the streets--penny periodicals had
+verses in his honour--the "song of the soot" was set to music--and
+people, in the frenzy of their enthusiasm, so far forgot their
+chimneys, that scarcely a street in town had not, at least, one fire
+every night in the week. Meanwhile, the tender sweeplings had lost
+their occupation, they had pronounced their farewell to the
+brush--what was to become of them? Alas, the legislature had not
+thought of that point; for, they were not influential enough to claim
+compensation. I grieve to think, but there is too much reason to fear,
+that many of them betook themselves to the ancient vocation of
+pickpockets. Yes, as Dr. Watts has it--
+
+    "Satan finds some mischief still
+    For idle hands to do."
+
+The divisional police-offices were filled each morning with small
+"suttees"--whose researches after handkerchiefs and snuff-boxes were
+of the most active kind; while their full-grown brethren, first
+impacted in a funnel of ten inches by eight, were cursing the Commons,
+and consigning to all manner of misfortune the benevolent framer of
+the bill.
+
+Now, I cannot help asking myself, was this the intention of the
+legislature--did they really mean that big people should try to
+penetrate where little ones were not small enough to pass?--or was it
+some piece of conciliation to the climbing boys, that they should see
+their masters grilled and wasted, in revenge for "the disabilities
+they had so long laboured under?" This point of great difficulty--and
+after much thought and deliberation, I have come to one solution of
+the whole question, and I only hope it may prove the right one. It is
+this. The bill is a parable--the climbing boy, and the full-grown
+sweep--and the chimney, and the householder, and the machine, are mere
+types which I would interpret thus:--the householder is John Bull, a
+good-natured, easy fellow, liking his ease, and studying his
+comfort--caring for his dinner, and detesting smoke above all things;
+he wishes to have his house neat and orderly, neither confusion nor
+disturbance--but his great dread is fire; the very thought of it sets
+him a-trembling all over. Now, for years past, he has remarked that
+the small sweeps, who mount so glibly to the top of the flue, rarely
+do anything but make a noise--they scream and shout for ten minutes,
+or so, and then come down, with their eyes red, and their noses
+bloody, and cry themselves sick, till they get bread-and-butter. John
+is worried and fretted at all this; he remembers the time a good-sized
+sweep used to go up and rake down all the soot in no time. These were
+the old Tory ministers, who took such wise and safe precautions
+against fire, that an insurance-office was never needed. "Not so now,"
+quoth John; "'od! rabbit it, they've got their climbing boys, who are
+always bleating and bawling, for the neighbourhood to look at
+them--and yet, devil a bit of good they do the whole time."
+
+And now, who are these? you would ask. I'll tell you--the "Climbing
+Boys" are the Howicks, and the Clements--the Smith O'Briens and the
+D'Israelis, and a host of others, scraping their way upwards, through
+soot and smoke, that they may put out their heads in high places, and
+cry "'weep! 'weep!" and well may they--they've had a dirty
+journey--and black enough their hands are, I warrant you, before they
+got there.
+
+To get rid of these, without offending them, John brings in his
+philanthropic bill, making it penal to employ them, or to have any
+other than the old legitimate sweeps, that know every turn of the
+flue, and have gone up and down any time these twenty years. No new
+machine for him--no Whig contrivance, to scrape the bricks and burn
+the house--but the responsible full-grown sweeps--who, if the passage
+be narrow, have strength to force their way, and take good care not to
+get dust in their eyes in the process.
+
+Such is my interpretation of the bill, and I only trust a discerning
+public may agree with me.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR "THE SUBDIVISION OF LABOUR."
+
+
+I forget the place, and the occasion also, but I have a kind of misty
+recollection of having once, in these nutting excursions of mine, been
+excessively eloquent on the subject of the advantages derivable from
+division of labour.
+
+Not a walk or condition in life is there to which it has not
+penetrated; and while natural talents have become cultivated from
+finding their most congenial sphere of operation, immense results have
+accrued in every art and science where a higher degree of perfection
+has been thus attained. Your doctor and your lawyer now-a-days select
+the precise portion of your person or property they intend to operate
+on. The oculist and the aurist, and the odontalgist and the
+pedicurist, all are suggestive of various local sufferings, by which
+they bound their skill; and so, the equity lawyer and the common-law
+lawyer, the special pleader and the bar orator, have subdivided
+knavery, without diminishing its amount. Even in literature, there are
+the heavy men who "do" the politics, and the quiet men who do the
+statistics, and the rough-and-ready men, who are a kind of
+servants-of-all-work, and so on. In universities, there is the science
+man and the classical man, the man of simple equations and the man of
+spondees. Painting has its bright colourists and its more
+sombre-loving artists, and so on--the great camps of party would seem
+to have given the impulse to every condition of life, and "speciality"
+is the order of the day.
+
+No sooner is a new discovery made, no matter whether in the skies
+above, or the dark bowels of the earth, than an opportunity of
+disagreement is sure to arise. Two, mayhap three, gentlemen, profess
+diversity of opinion; followers are never lacking, let any one be fool
+enough to turn leader--and straightway there comes out a new sect,
+with a Greek name for a title.
+
+It is only the other day, men began to find out that primitive rocks,
+and basalt, ochre, and sandstone, had lived a long time, and must
+surely know something of antiquity--if they only could tell it. The
+stones, from that hour, had an unhappy time of it--men went about in
+gangs with hammers and crowbars, shivering this and shattering
+that--picking holes in respectable old rocks, that never had a word
+said against them, and peeping into "quarts,"[1] like a policeman.
+
+    [1] Query "quartz."--_Devil._
+
+Men must be quarrelsome, you'd say, if they could fight about
+paving-stones--but so they did. One set would have it that the world
+was all cinders, and another set insisted it was only slack--and so,
+they called themselves Plutonians and Neptunians, and made great
+converts to their respective opinions.
+
+Gulliver tells us of "Big-endians" and "Little-endians," who hated
+each other like poison; and thus it is, our social condition is like a
+row in an Irish fair, where one strikes somebody, and nobody thinks
+the other right.
+
+Oh! for the happy days of heretofore, when the two kings of Brentford
+smelled at one nosegay. It couldn't happen now, I promise you.
+
+One of their majesties would have insisted on the petals, and the
+other been equally imperative regarding the stamina: they'd have
+pushed their claims with all the weight of their influence, and there
+would have been soon little vestige of a nosegay between them.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+But to come back, for all this is digression. The subdivision of
+labour, with all its advantages, has its reverse to the medal. You are
+ill, for instance. You have been dining with the Lord Mayor, and
+hip-hipping to the health of her Majesty's ministers; or drinking,
+mayhap, nine times nine to the independence of Poland, or civil and
+religious liberty all over the globe--or any other fiction of large
+dinners. You go home, with your head aching from bad wine, bad
+speeches, and bad music; your wife sees you look excessively flushed;
+your eyes have got an odd kind of expression, far too much of the
+white being visible; a half shut-up look, like a pastry-cook's shop on
+Sunday; there are evident signs, from blackness of the lips, that in
+your English ardour for the navy you have made a "port-hole" of your
+mouth; in fact, you have a species of semi-apoplectic threatening,
+that bodes ill for the insurance company.
+
+A doctor is sent for--he lives near, and comes at once--with a glance
+he recognises your state, and suggests the immediate remedy--the
+lancet.
+
+"Fetch a basin," says somebody, with more presence of mind than the
+rest.
+
+"Not so fast," quoth the medico. "I am a pure physician--I don't
+bleed: that's the surgeon's affair. I should be delighted to save the
+gentleman's life--but we have a bye-law against it in the college.
+Nothing could give me more pleasure than to cure you, if it wasn't for
+the charter. What a pity it is! I'm sure I wish, with all my heart,
+the cook would take courage to open a vein, or even give you a bloody
+nose with the cleaver."
+
+Do you think I exaggerate here? Try the experiment--I only ask that.
+
+Sending for the surgeon does not solve the difficulty; he may be a man
+who cuts corns and cataracts--who only operates for strabismus, or
+makes new noses for Peninsular heroes. In fact, if you don't hit the
+right number--and it's a large lottery--you may go out of the world
+without even the benefit of physic.
+
+This great system, however, does not end with human life. The
+coroners--resolved not to be behind their age--have made a great
+movement, and shown themselves men worthy of the enlightened era they
+live in. Read this:--
+
+     "On Friday morning last, a man named Patrick Knowlan, a
+     private in the 3rd Buffs, was discovered lying dead close
+     beneath the platform of a wharf at the bottom of
+     Holborn-lane, Chatham. It would appear that deceased had
+     mistaken his way, and fallen from the wharf, which is used
+     for landing coals from the river, a depth of about eight
+     feet, upon the muddy beach below, which was then strewn with
+     refuse coal. There was a large and severe wound upon the
+     left temple, and a piece of coal was sticking in the left
+     cheek, close below the eye. The whole left side of the face
+     was much contracted. He had evidently, from the state of his
+     clothes, been covered with water, which overflows this spot
+     at the period of spring tides. Although nothing certain is
+     known, it is generally supposed that he mistook Holborn-lane
+     for the West-lane, which leads to the barracks, and that
+     walking forward in the darkness he fell from the wharf. Mr.
+     Lewis, the coroner for the city of Rochester, claims
+     jurisdiction over all bodies found in the water at this
+     spot; and as the unfortunate man had evidently been
+     immersed, he thought this a proper case for the exercise of
+     his office, and accordingly summoned a jury to sit upon the
+     body at ten o'clock on Friday morning--but on his going to
+     view the deceased, he found that it was at the King's Arms,
+     Chatham, in the hands of Bines, the Chatham constable, as
+     the representative of Mr. Hinde, one of the coroners for the
+     eastern division of the county of Kent, who refused to give
+     up the key of the room, but allowed Mr. Lewis and his jury
+     to view the body. They then returned to the Nag's Head,
+     Rochester, and having heard the evidence of John Shepherd, a
+     fisherman, who deposed that a carter, going on to the beach
+     for coals, at half-past seven o'clock on Friday morning,
+     found the body as already described, the jury returned a
+     verdict of 'Found dead.' Mr. Hinde, the county coroner, held
+     another inquest upon the deceased, at the King's Arms; and
+     after taking the evidence of William Whittingham, the
+     carter who found the body, and Frederick Collins, a corporal
+     of the 3rd Buffs, who stated that he saw the deceased on the
+     evening preceding his death, and he was then sober, the jury
+     returned a verdict of 'Accidental death;' each of the
+     coroners issued a warrant for the interment of the body. The
+     disputed jurisdiction, it is believed, will now be submitted
+     to the decision of a higher court, in order to settle what
+     is here considered a _vexata qu�stio_."--_Maidstone
+     Journal._
+
+Is not this perfect? Only think of land coroners and water
+coroners--imagine the law defining the jurisdiction of the Tellurian
+as far forth into the sea as he could sit on a corpse without danger,
+and the Neptunian ruling the waves beyond in absolute sway--conceive
+the "solidist" revelling in all the accidents that befall life upon
+the world's highways, and the "fluidist" seeking his prey like a pearl
+diver, five fathoms low, beneath "the deep, deep sea." What a rivalry
+theirs, who divide the elements between them, and have nature's
+everlasting boundaries to define the limits of their empire.
+
+I hope to see the time when these great functionaries of law shall be
+provided with a suitable costume. I should glory to think of Mr. Hinde
+accoutred in emblems suggestive of earth and its habits--a wreath of
+oak leaves round his brows; and to behold Mr. Lewis in a garment of
+marine plants and sea shells sit upon his corpse, with a trident in
+his right hand. What a comfort for the man about to take French leave
+of life, that he could know precisely the individual he should
+benefit, and be able to go "by land" or "water," as his taste inclined
+him.
+
+I have no time here to dwell upon the admirable distinctions of the
+two verdicts given in the case I allude to. When the great change I
+suggest is fully carried out, the difficulty of a verdict will at
+once be avoided, for the jury, like boys at play, will only have to
+cry out at each case--"wet or dry."
+
+There would be probably too much expense incurred in poor localities
+by maintaining two officials; and I should suggest, in such cases, an
+amphibious coroner--a kind of merman, who should enjoy a double
+jurisdiction, and, as they say of half-bred pointers, be able "to take
+the water when required."
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR A "NEW VERDICT."
+
+
+Money-getting and cotton-spinning have left us little time for fun of
+any kind in England--no one has a moment to spare, let him be ever so
+droll, and a joke seems now to be esteemed a _bon� fide_ expenditure;
+and as "a pin a day" is said to be "a groat a year," there is no
+calculating what an inroad any manner of pleasantry might not make
+into a man's income. Book-writers have ceased to be laughter-moving--the
+stage has given it up altogether, except now and then in a new
+tragedy--society prefers gravity to gaiety--and, in fact, the spirit
+of comic fun and drollery would seem to have died out in the land--if
+it were not for that inimitable institution called trial by jury.
+Bless their honest hearts! jurymen do indeed relieve the drab-coloured
+look of every-day life--they come out in strong colour from the sombre
+tints of common-place events and people. Queer dogs! nothing can damp
+the warm ardour of their comic vein--all the solemnity of a court of
+justice--the look of the bar and the bench--the voice of the crier--the
+blue bags of briefs--the "terrible show," has no effect on their
+minds--"ruat coelum," they will have their joke.
+
+It is in vain for the judge, let him be ever so rigid in his charge,
+to tell them that their province is simply with certain facts, on
+which they have to pronounce an opinion of yea or nay. They must be
+jurymen, and "something more." It's not every day Mr. Sniggins, of
+Pimlico, is called upon to keep company with a chief-justice and
+sergeant learned in the law--Popkins don't leave his shop once a week
+to discuss Coke upon Littleton with an attorney-general. No: the event
+to them is a great one--there they sit, fawned on, and flattered by
+counsel on both sides--called impartial and intelligent, and all
+that--and while every impertinence the law encourages has been bandied
+about the body of the court, _they_ remain to be lauded and praised by
+all parties, for they have a verdict in their power, and when it
+comes--what a thing it is!
+
+There is a well-known story of an English nobleman, desiring to remain
+_incog._ in Calais, telling his negro servant--"If any one ask who I
+am, Sambo, mind you say, 'a Frenchman.'" Sambo carried out the
+instruction by saying--"My massa a Frenchman, and so am I." This
+anecdote exactly exemplifies a verdict of a jury--it cannot stop short
+at sense, but must, by one fatal plunge, involve its decision in
+absurdity.
+
+Hear what lately happened in the north of Ireland. A man was tried and
+found guilty of murder--the case admitted no doubt--the act was a
+cold-blooded, deliberate assassination, committed by a soldier on his
+sergeant, in the presence of many witnesses. The trial proceeded; the
+facts were proved; and--I quote the local newspaper--
+
+     "The jury retired, and were shut up when the judge left the
+     court, at half-past seven. At nine, his lordship returned to
+     court, when the foreman of the jury intimated that they had
+     agreed. They were then called into court, and having
+     answered to their names, returned a verdict of guilty, but
+     recommended the prisoner to mercy upon account of the close
+     intimacy that existed between the parties at the time of the
+     occurrence."
+
+Now, what ever equalled this? When the jury who tried Madame Laffarge
+for the murder of her husband, returned a verdict of guilty, with that
+recommendation to mercy which is implied by the words "des
+circonstances attenuantes," Alphonse Karr pronounced the "extenuating
+circumstances," to be the fact, that she always mixed gum with the
+arsenic, and never gave him his poison "neat."
+
+But even _they_ never thought of carrying out their humanity farther
+by employing the Belfast plea, that she had been "intimate with him"
+before she killed him. No, it was reserved for our canny northerns to
+find out this new secret of criminal jurisprudence, and to show the
+world that there is a deep philosophy in the vulgar expression, a
+blood relation--meaning thereby that degree of allianceship which
+admits of butchery, and makes killing no murder; for if intimacy be a
+ground of mercy, what must be friendship, what brotherhood, or
+paternity?
+
+Were this plea to become general, how cautious would men become about
+their acquaintances--what a dread they would entertain of becoming
+intimate with gentlemen from Tipperary!
+
+I scarcely think the Whigs would throw out such lures for Dan and his
+followers, if they could consider these consequences; and I doubt
+much--taking everything into consideration, that the "Duke" would see
+so much of Lord Brougham as he has latterly.
+
+"Whom can a man make free with, if not with his friends?" saith
+Figaro; and the Belfast men have studied Beaumarchais, and only
+"carried out his principle," as the Whigs say, when they speak of
+establishing popery in Ireland, to complete the intention of
+emancipation.
+
+Lawyers must have been prodigiously sick of all the usual arguments in
+defence of prisoners in criminal cases many a year ago. One of the
+cleverest lawyers and the cleverest men I ever knew, says he would
+hang any man who was defended on an _alibi_, and backed by a good
+character. Insanity is worn out; but here comes Belfast to the rescue,
+with its plea of intimacy. Show that your client was no common
+acquaintance--prove clearly habits of meeting and dining
+together--display a degree of friendship between the parties that
+bordered on brotherhood, and all is safe. Let your witness satisfy the
+jury that they never had an altercation or angry word in their lives,
+and depend upon it, killing will seem merely a little freak of
+eccentricity, that may be indulged with Norfolk Island, but not
+punished with the gallows.
+
+"Guilty, my lord, but very intimate with the deceased," is a new
+discovery in law, and will hereafter be known as "the Belfast
+verdict."
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE REAL "LIBERATOR."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+When Solomon said there was nothing new under the sun, he never knew
+Lord Normanby. That's a fact, and now to show cause.
+
+No attribute of regal, and consequently it may be inferred of
+viceregal personages, have met such universal praise from the world,
+as the wondrous tact they would seem to possess, regarding the most
+suitable modes of flattering the pride and gratifying the passions of
+those they govern.
+
+It happens not unfrequently, that they leave this blessed privilege
+unused, and give themselves slight pains in its exercise; but should
+the time come when its exhibition may be deemed fit or necessary,
+their instinctive appreciation is said never to fail them, and they
+invariably hit off the great trait of a people at once.
+
+Perhaps it may be the elevated standard on which they are placed,
+gives them this wondrous _coup-d'oeil_, and enables them to take wider
+views than mortals less eminently situated; perhaps it is some old
+leaven of privileges derivable from right divine. But no matter, the
+thing is so.
+
+Napoleon well knew the temper of Frenchmen in his day, and how certain
+short words, emblematic of their country's greatness and glory, could
+fascinate their minds and bend them to his purpose. In Russia, the
+czar is the head of the church, as of the state, and a mere word from
+him to one of his people is a treasure above all price. In Holland, a
+popular monarch taps some forty puncheons of schnapps, and makes the
+people drunk. In Belgium, he gets up a high mass, and a procession of
+virgins. In the States, a rabid diatribe against England, and a spice
+of Lynch Law, are clap-trap. But every land has its own peculiar
+leaning--to be gratified by some one concession or compliment in
+preference to every other.
+
+Now, when Lord Normanby came to Ireland, he must have been somewhat
+puzzled by the very multiplicity of these expectations. It was a
+regular "embarras de richesses." There was so much to give, and he so
+willing to give it!
+
+First, there was discouragement to be dealt out against
+Protestants--an easy and a pleasant path; then the priests were to be
+brought into fashion--a somewhat harder task; country gentlemen were
+to be snubbed and affronted; petty attorneys were to be petted and
+promoted; all claimants with an "O" to their names were to have
+something--it looked national; men of position and true influence were
+to be pulled down and degraded, and so on. In fact, there was a good
+two years of smart practice in the rupture of all the ties of society,
+and in the overthrow of whatever was respectable in the land, before
+he need cry halt.
+
+Away he went then, cheered by the sweet voices of the mob he loved,
+and quick work he made of it. I need not stop to say, how pleasant
+Dublin became when deserted of all who could afford to quit it; nor
+how peaceful were the streets which no one traversed--_ubi solitudinem
+faciunt pacem appellant_. The people, like Oliver, "asked for more;"
+ungrateful people! not content with Father Glynn at the viceroy's
+table, and the Bishop of "Mesopotamia" in the council, they cried,
+like the horseleech's daughters, "Give! give!"
+
+"What would they have, the spalpeens?" said Pierce Mahony; "sure ain't
+we destroying the place entirely, and nobody will be able to live here
+after us."
+
+"What do they want?" quoth Anthony Blake; "can't they have patience?
+Isn't the church trembling, and property not worth two years'
+purchase?"
+
+"Upon my life!" whispered Lord Morpeth, "I can't comprehend them. I
+fear we have been only but too good-natured!--don't you think so?"
+
+And so they pondered over their difficulties, but never a man among
+them could suggest a remedy for their new demand, nor make out a
+concession which had not been already made.
+
+"Did you butter Dan?" said Anthony.
+
+"Ay, and offered him the 'rolls' too," said Sheil.
+
+"It's no use," interposed Pierce; "he's not to be caught."
+
+"Couldn't ye make Tom Steele Bishop of Cashel?"
+
+"He wouldn't take it," groaned the viceroy.
+
+"Is Mr. Arkins a privy councillor?"
+
+"No; but he might if he liked. There's no use in these trifles."
+
+"_Eureka_, gents, I have it!" cried my lord; "order post-horses for me
+this instant--I have it!"
+
+And so he had, and by that act alone he stamped himself as the first
+man of his party.
+
+Swift philosophised on the satiric touch of building a madhouse, as
+the most appropriate charity to Ireland; but what would he have said
+had he heard that the greatest favour its rulers could bestow--the
+most flattering compliment to national feeling--was to open the gaols,
+to let loose robbers and housebreakers, highwaymen and cutthroats--to
+return burglars to their afflicted homes, and bring back felons to
+their weeping families. Some sneering critic will object to it, as
+scarcely complimentary to a country to say--"these gentlemen are only
+thieves--murderers; they cannot hurt _your_ morals. They were
+sentenced to transportation, but why should we spread vice among
+innocent bushmen, and disseminate wickedness through Norfolk Island?
+Let them loose where they are, they know the ways of the place,
+they'll not murder the 'wrong man;' depend upon it, too, the rent
+won't suffer by their remaining." And so my lord took off the
+hand-cuffs, and filed the fetters; and the bondsmen, albeit not all
+"hereditary," went free. Who should be called the Liberator, I ask,
+after this? Is it your Daniel, who promises year after year, and never
+performs; or you, my lord, who strikes off real chains, not
+metaphorical ones, and liberates real captives, not figurative slaves?
+
+It was, indeed, a "great day for Ireland" when the villains got loose;
+and must have been a strong lesson on the score of domestic duty to
+many a roving blade, who preferred spending that evening at home, to
+venturing out after dark. My lord covered himself with laurels, and
+albeit they were gathered, as Lord Wellesley said, in the "Groves of
+Blarney," they well became the brow they ornamented.
+
+I should scarcely have thought necessary to ring a p�an of praise on
+this great governor, if it were not for a most unaccountable attack
+his magnanimous and stupendous mercy, as Tom Steele would call it,
+has called forth from some organ of the press.
+
+This print, calling itself _The Cork Constitution_, thus
+discourseth:--
+
+     "Why, of 16 whom he pardoned, and of 41 whose sentences he
+     commuted in the gaol of our own city, 13 were re-committed,
+     and of these no fewer than 10 were in due time transported.
+     One of the latter, Mary Lynch, was subsequently five times
+     committed, and at last transported; Jeremiah Twomey, _alias_
+     Old Lock, was subsequently six times committed, and finally
+     transported, while two others were twice committed. These
+     are a specimen of the persons whom his lordship delighted to
+     honour. Of the whole 57 (who were liberated between January,
+     1835, and April, 1839), there were, at the time of their
+     sentences being commuted, or themselves discharged, 34 under
+     sentence of transportation, and two under sentence of death.
+     In the county gaol, 47 prisoners experienced the benefit of
+     viceregal liberality. Of these 18 had been under sentence of
+     transportation, 11 of them for life; but how many of them it
+     became the duty of the government to introduce a second or
+     third time to the notice of the judge, or what was their
+     ultimate destiny, we are, unfortunately, not informed. The
+     recorder, we observe, passed sentence of transportation
+     yesterday on a fellow named Corkery, who had some years ago
+     been similarly sentenced by one of the judges, but for whose
+     release his worship was unable to account. The explanation,
+     however, is easy. Corkery was one of the scoundrels
+     liberated by Lord Normanby, and he has since been living on
+     the plunder of the citizens, on whom that vain and visionary
+     viceroy so inconsiderately let him loose."
+
+Now I detest figures, and, therefore, I won't venture to dispute the
+man's arithmetic about the "ten in due time transported," nor Corkery,
+nor Mary Lynch, nor any of them.
+
+I take the facts on his own showing, and I ground upon them the most
+triumphant defence of the calumniated viceroy. What was it, I ask, but
+the very prescience of the lord lieutenant we praise in the act? He
+liberated a gaol full of ruffians, not to inundate the world with a
+host of felons and vagabonds, but, simply, to give them a kind of
+day-rule.
+
+"Let them loose," cried my lord; "take the irons off--devil a long
+they'll be free. Mark my words, that fellow will murder some one else
+before long. Thank you, Mary Lynch, it is a real pleasure to me to
+restore you to liberty;" and then, _sotto_, "you'll have a voyage out,
+nevertheless, I see that. Open the gates--pass out, gentlemen
+highwaymen. Don't be afraid, good people of Cork, these are infernal
+ruffians, they'll all be back again before six months. It's no
+consequence to me to see you at large, for I have the heartfelt
+conviction that most of you must be hanged yet."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Here is the true defence of the viceroy, here the real and
+well-grounded explanation of his conduct; and I hope when Lord
+Brougham attacks his noble friend--which of course he will--that the
+marquis will hurl back on him, with proud triumph, this irresistible
+mark of his united foresight and benevolence.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR "HER MAJESTY'S SERVANTS."
+
+
+If a fair estimate were at any moment to be taken of the time employed
+in the real business of the country, and that consumed by public
+characters in vindicating their conduct, recapitulating their good
+intentions, and glossing over their bad acts, it would be found that
+the former was to the latter as the ratio of Falstaff's bread to the
+"sack."
+
+A British House of Commons is in fact nineteen out of every twenty
+hours employed in the pleasant personalities of attack and defence. It
+is something that the "noble baron" said last session, or the "right
+hon. baronet" didn't say in the present one, engrosses all their
+attention; and the most animated debates are about certain expressions
+of some "honourable and learned gentleman," who always uses his words
+in a sense different from the rest of the nation.
+
+If this satisfies the public and stuffs the newspapers, perhaps I
+should not repine at it; but certainly it is very fatiguing and
+tiresome to any man with a moderately good memory to preserve the
+excellent traditions each ministry retains of their own virtues, and
+how eloquently the opposition can hold forth upon the various good
+things they would have done, had they been left quietly on the
+treasury benches. Now how much better and more business-like would it
+be if, instead of leaving these gentlemen to dilate and expatiate on
+their own excellent qualities, some public standards were to be
+established, by which at a glance the world at large could decide on
+their merits and examine into their fitness for office at a future
+period. Your butler and your coachman, when leaving your service, do
+not present themselves to a new master with characters of their own
+inditing, or if they did they would unquestionably require a very
+rigid scrutiny. What would you say if a cook who professes herself a
+perfect treasure of economy and excellence, warrants herself sober,
+amiable, and cleanly--who, without other vouchers for her fitness than
+her own, would dilate on her many virtues and accomplishments, and
+demand to be taken into your service because she has higher taste for
+self-panegyric than her rival. Such a thing would be preposterous in
+the kitchen, but it is exactly what takes place in parliament, and
+there is but one remedy for it. Let her majesty's servants, when they
+leave their places, receive written characters, like those of less
+exalted persons. These documents would then be on record when the
+applicants sought other situations, and could be referred to with more
+confidence by the nation than if given by the individuals themselves.
+
+How easily would the high-flown sentiments of any of the "outs" be
+tested by a simple comparison with his last character--how clearly
+would pretension be measured by what he had done in his last place. No
+long speeches, no four-hour addresses would be required at the
+hustings then. Show us your character, would be the cry--why did he
+leave his mistress? the question.
+
+The petty subterfuges of party would not stand such a test as this;
+all the little miserable explanations--that it was a quarrel in the
+kitchen, that the cook said this and the footman said that, would go
+for nothing. You were turned out, and why?--that's the bone and sinew
+of the matter.
+
+To little purpose would my Lord John remind his party that he was
+going to do every thing for every body--to plunder the parsons and
+pay the priests--to swamp the constitution and upset the
+church--respectable people would take time to look at his papers; they
+would see that he was an active little busy man, accustomed to do the
+whole work of a family single-handed; that he was in many respects
+attentive and industrious, but had a following of low Irish
+acquaintances whom he let into the house on every occasion, and that
+then nothing escaped them--they smashed the furniture, broke the
+looking-glasses, and kicked up a regular row: for this he was
+discharged, receiving all wages due.
+
+And then, instead of suffering long-winded panegyrics from the member
+for Tiverton, how easily would the matter be comprehended in one
+line--"a good servant, lively, and intelligent, but self-sufficient,
+and apt to take airs. Turned off for quarrelling with the French valet
+next door, and causing a difference between the families."
+
+Then again, how decisively the merits of a certain ex-chancellor might
+be measured in reading--"hired as butler, but insisted on cleaning the
+carriage, and scratched the panels; would dress the dinner, and
+spoiled the soup and burned the sauce; never attended to his own
+duties, but spent his time fighting with the other servants, and is in
+fact a most troublesome member of a household. He is, however, both
+smart and intelligent, and is allowed a small pension to wait on
+company days."
+
+Trust me, this plan, if acted on--and I feel it cannot be long
+neglected--will do more to put pretension on a par with desert, than
+all the adjourned debates that waste the sessions; it would save a
+world of unblushing self-praise and laudation, and protect the country
+from the pushing impertinence of a set of turned-off servants.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE LANDLORD AND TENANT COMMISSION.
+
+
+Every one knows the story of the man who, at the penalty of losing his
+head in the event of failure, promised the caliph of Bagdad that he
+would teach his ass to read in the space of ten years, trusting that,
+ere the time elapsed, either the caliph, or the ass, or he himself,
+would die, and the compact be at an end. Now, it occurs to me that the
+wise policy of this shrewd charlatan is the very essence of all
+parliamentary commissions. First, there is a grievance--then comes a
+debate--a very warm one occasionally, with plenty of invective and
+accusation on both sides--and then they agree to make a drawn game of
+it, and appoint "a Commission."
+
+Nothing can be more plausible in appearance than such a measure; nor
+could any man, short of Hume himself, object to so reasonable a
+proceeding as a patient and searching inquiry into the circumstances
+and bearings of any disputed question. The Commission goes to work: if
+a Tory one, consisting usually of some dumb country gentlemen, who
+like committee work;--if Whig, the suckling "barristers of six years'
+standing:" and at it they go. The newspapers announce that they are
+"sitting to examine witnesses"--a brief correspondence appears at
+intervals, to show that they have a secretary and a correspondent, a
+cloud then wraps the whole concern in its dark embrace, and not the
+most prying curiosity is ever able afterwards to detect any one fact
+concerning the commission or its labours, nor could you hear in any
+society the slightest allusion ever made to their whereabouts.
+
+It is, in fact, the polite mode of interment applied to the question
+at issue--the Commissioners performing the solemn duties of
+undertakers, and not even the most reckless resurrectionist being
+found to disturb the remains. Before the report should issue, the
+Commissioners die off, or the question has taken a new form; new
+interests have changed all its bearings; a new ministry is in power,
+or some more interesting matter has occupied the place it should fill
+in public attention; and if the Report was even a volume of "Punch,"
+it might pass undetected.
+
+Now and then, however, a Commission will issue for the real object of
+gleaning facts and conveying information; and then the duties are most
+uncomfortable, and but one course is open, which is, to protract the
+inquiry, like the man with the ass, and leave the result to time.
+
+In a country like ours, conflicting interests and opposing currents
+are ever changing the landmarks of party; and the commissioners feel
+that with years something will happen to make their labours of little
+consequence, and that they have only to prolong the period, and all is
+safe.
+
+At this moment, we have what is called a "Landlord and Tenant
+Commission" sitting, or sleeping, as it may be. They have to
+investigate diverse, knotty, and puzzling points, about people who
+want too much for their land, and others who prefer paying nothing for
+it. They are to report, in some fashion, respecting the prospects of
+estated gentlemen burdened with rent-charges and mortgages, and who
+won't improve properties they can scarcely live on--and a peasantry,
+who must nominally pay an exaggerated rent, depending upon the chance
+of shooting the agent before the gale-day, and thus obtaining easier
+terms for the future.
+
+They are to investigate the capabilities of waste lands, while
+cultivated lands lie waste beside them; they must find out why
+land-owners like money, and tenants hate paying it; and why a people
+hold life very cheap when they possess little means to sustain it.
+
+Now these, take them how you will, are not so easy of solution as you
+may think. The landlord, for his own sake, would like a thriving,
+well-to-do, contented tenantry; the tenants, for their sakes, would
+like a fair-dealing, reasonable landlord, not over griping and
+grabbing, but satisfied with a suitable value for his property. They
+both have no common share of intelligence and acuteness--they have a
+soil unquestionably fruitful, a climate propitious, little taxation,
+good roads, abundant markets; and yet the one is half ruined in his
+house and the other wholly beggared in his hovel--each averring that
+the cause lies in the tithes, the tariff, the poor-rate, or popery,
+the agent or the agitation: in fact, it is something or other which
+one favours and the other opposes--some system or sect, some party or
+measure, which one advocates and the other denounces; and no matter
+though its influence should not, in the remotest way, enter into the
+main question, there is a grievance--that's something; and as Sir
+Lucius says, "it's a mighty pretty quarrel as it stands"--not the
+less, that certain partizans on either side assist in the _m�l�e_, and
+the House of Commons or the Association Hall interfere with their
+influence.
+
+If, then, the Commissioners can see their way here, they are smart
+fellows, and no small praise is due to them. There are difficulties
+enough to puzzle long heads; and I only hope they may be equal to the
+task. Meanwhile, depopulation goes on briskly--landlords are shot
+every week in Tipperary; and if the report be but delayed for some few
+months longer, a new element will appear in the question--for however
+there may remain some pretenders to perpetuity of tenure, the
+landlords will not be there to grant the leases. Let the
+Commissioners, then, keep a look-out a-head--much of the embarrassment
+of the inquiry will be obviated by only biding their time; and if they
+but delay their report till next November, there will be but one party
+to legislate for in the island.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE HUMANE SOCIETY.
+
+
+If my reader will permit me to refer to my own labours, I would wish
+to remind him of an old "Nut" of mine, in which I endeavoured to
+demonstrate the defective morality and economy of our penal code--a
+system, by which the smallest delinquent is made to cost the state
+several hundreds of pounds, for an offence frequently of some few
+pennies in value; and a theft of a loaf is, by the geometrical scale
+of progressive aggrandisement, gradually swelled into a most expensive
+process, in which policemen, station-houses, inspectors, magistrates,
+sessions, assizes, judges, crown prosecutors, gaols, turnkeys, and
+transports, all figure; and the nation is left to pay the cost of this
+terrible array, for the punishment of a crime the prevention of which
+might, perhaps, have been effected for two-pence.
+
+I do not now intend to go over the beaten track of this argument; my
+intention is simply to refer to it, and adduce another instance of
+this strange and short-sighted policy, which prefers waiting to
+acting, and despises cheap, though timely interference with evil, and
+indulges in the somewhat late, but more expensive process of
+reparation.
+
+And to begin. Imagine--unhappily you need exercise no great stretch of
+the faculty, the papers teem with too many instances--imagine a poor,
+woe-begone, miserable creature, destitute and friendless, without a
+home, without a meal; his tattered clothing displaying through every
+rent the shrunken form and wasted limbs to which hunger and want have
+reduced him. See him as night falls, plodding onwards through the
+crowded thoroughfares of the great city; his lack-lustre eye glazed
+and filmy; his pale face and blue lip actually corpse-like in their
+ghastliness. He gazes at the passers-by with the vacant stare of
+idiotcy. Starvation has sapped the very intellect, and he is like one
+in some frightful vision; a vague desire for rest--a dreamy belief
+that death will release him--lives in the place of hope; and as he
+leans over the battlements of the tall bridge, the plash of the dark
+river murmurs softly to his ear. His despair has conjured up a
+thousand strange and flitting fancies, and voices seem to call to him
+from the dull stream, and invite him to lie down and be at peace.
+Meanwhile the crowd passes on. Men in all the worldliness of their
+hopes and fears, their wishes, their expectations, and their dreads,
+pour by. None regard _him_, who at that moment stands on the very
+brink of an eternity, whither his thoughts have gone before him. As he
+gazes, his eye is attracted by the star-like spangle of lights in the
+water. It is the reflection of those in the house of the Humane
+Society; and he suddenly remembers that there is such an institution;
+and he bethinks him, as well as his poor brain will let him, that some
+benevolent people have called this association by this pleasing title,
+and the very word is a balm to his broken heart.
+
+"Humane Society!" Muttering the words, he staggers onwards; a feeling
+too faint for hope still survives; and he bends his wearied steps
+towards the building. It is indeed a goodly edifice; Portland stone
+and granite, massive columns and a portico, are all there; and
+Humanity herself is emblematised in the figures which decorate the
+pedestal. The man of misery stands without and looks up at this
+stately pile; the dying embers emit one spark, and for a second, hope
+brightens into a brief flicker. He enters the spacious hall, on one
+side of which a marble group is seen representing the "good
+Samaritan;" the appeal comes home to his heart, and he could cry, but
+hunger has dried up his tears.
+
+I will not follow him in his weary pilgrimage among the liveried
+menials of the institution, nor shall I harass my reader by the cold
+sarcasm of those who tell him that he has mistaken the object of the
+association: that their care is not with life, but death; that the
+breathing man, alive, but on the verge of dissolution, has no interest
+for _them_; for _their_ humanity waits patiently for his corpse. It
+is true, one pennyworth of bread--a meal your dog would turn
+from--would rescue this man from death and self-murder. But what of
+that--how could such humble, unobtrusive charity inhabit a palace? How
+could it pretend to porters and waiting-men, to scores of officials,
+visiting doctors, and physicians in ordinary? By what trickery could a
+royal patron be brought to head the list of benefactors to a scheme so
+unassuming? Where would be the stomach-pumps and the galvanic
+batteries for science?--where the newspaper reports of a miraculous
+recovery?--where the magazine records of suspended animation?--or
+where that pride and pomp and circumstance of enlightened humanity
+which calls in chemistry to aid charity, and makes electricity the
+test of benevolence? No, no; the hungry man might be fed, and go his
+way unseen, untrumpeted--there would be no need of this specious
+plausibility of humanity which proclaims aloud--Go and drown yourself;
+stand self-accused and condemned before your Creator; and if there be
+but a spark of vitality yet remaining, we'll call you back to life
+again--a starving suicide! No effort shall be spared--messengers shall
+fly in every direction for assistance--the most distinguished
+physician--processes the most costly--experiments the most
+difficult--care unremitting--zeal untiring, are all yours. Cordials,
+the cost of which had sustained you in life for weeks long, are now
+poured down your unconscious throat--the limbs that knew no other bed
+than straw, are wrapped in heated blankets--the hand stretched out in
+vain for alms, is now rubbed by the jewelled fingers of a west-end
+physician.
+
+Men, men, is this charity?--is the fellow-creature nought?--is the
+corpse everything?--is a penny too much to sustain life?--is a hundred
+pounds too little to restore it? Away with your stuccoed walls and
+pillared corridors--support the starving, and you will need but little
+science to reanimate the suicide.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Nuts and Nutcrackers, by Charles James Lever
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NUTS AND NUTCRACKERS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 31685-8.txt or 31685-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/6/8/31685/
+
+Produced by Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/31685-8.zip b/31685-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51ca927
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-8.zip
diff --git a/31685-h.zip b/31685-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5abbf78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h.zip
diff --git a/31685-h/31685-h.htm b/31685-h/31685-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9e51d67
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/31685-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,8466 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Nuts And Nutcrackers, by Charles James Lever
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+
+    p {margin-top: .75em;
+       text-align: justify;
+       margin-bottom: .75em;
+       text-indent: 1em;
+      }
+
+    h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center; /* all headings centered */
+                       clear: both;
+                      }
+
+    h1,h3 {font-family: "Garamond", Times, serif;
+        }
+
+    h2 {font-family: "Garamond", Times, serif;
+        padding-top: 1em;}
+
+    hr.title1 {margin-top: 4em;
+               margin-bottom: 4em;
+               width: 15%;}
+
+    hr.title2 {margin-top: 4em;
+               margin-bottom: 0em;
+               width: 17%;}
+
+    hr.title3 {margin-bottom: 2em;
+               margin-top: 0em;
+                width: 17%;}
+
+    hr.ct {width: 10%;
+           margin-top: 0.5em;
+           margin-bottom: 2em;}
+
+    hr {width: 20%;
+        margin-top: 1em;
+        margin-bottom: 1em;
+        margin-left: auto;
+        margin-right: auto;
+        clear: both;
+        height: 1px;
+        border: 0;
+        background-color: black;
+        color: black;
+        }
+
+    table {margin-left: auto;
+           margin-right: auto;
+           margin-bottom: 2em;
+           }
+
+    td.lal {text-align: left;}
+
+    td.ral {text-align: right;
+            padding-left: 2em;}
+
+    body{margin-left: 15%;
+         margin-right: 15%;
+        }
+
+    p.publisher {margin-top: 4em;
+                 text-align: center;
+                 font-size: smaller;
+                 margin-bottom: 4em;
+                 text-indent: 0em;
+                 line-height: 150%;
+                 letter-spacing: 0.10ex;
+                }
+
+    p.edition {font-family: "Old English Text MT", cursive, sans-serif;
+               text-align: center;
+               text-indent: 0em;
+               margin-top: 4em;
+               margin-bottom: 2em;}
+
+    p.sig {margin-right: 30%;
+           text-align: right;
+           text-indent: 0em;
+           margin-top: 0em;}
+
+    p.ill {text-align: center;
+           text-indent: 0em;
+           letter-spacing: 0.20ex;
+           font-family: "Garamond", Times, serif;
+           font-weight: bold;}
+
+      .dropcap {
+        float: left;
+        padding-left: 3px;
+        font-size: 250%;
+        line-height: 93%;
+        overflow: visible;
+        }
+
+    .firstword {
+        text-transform: uppercase;
+        letter-spacing: 0.20ex;
+        }
+
+     p.newchapter {
+        text-indent: 0em;
+        }
+
+    div.tpage {width: 60%;
+               margin-left: auto;
+               margin-right: auto;
+               font-size: 90%;}
+
+    img {border-style: none;
+        }
+
+    .pagenum  { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */
+            /*  visibility: hidden;  */
+                position: absolute;
+                right: 1%;
+                font-size: x-small;
+                text-align: right;
+		font-weight: normal;
+                font-style: normal;
+                letter-spacing: 0ex;
+                text-indent: 0em;
+                font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
+              }
+
+     a:link {text-decoration: none;
+             color: #104E8B;
+             background-color: inherit;
+            }
+
+     a:visited {text-decoration: none;
+                color: #8B0000;
+                background-color: inherit;
+               }
+
+     a:hover {text-decoration: underline;}
+
+     a:active {text-decoration: underline;}
+
+    .blockquot{margin-left: 5%;
+               margin-right: 10%;
+               font-size: 90%;
+               }
+
+    .center   {text-align: center;
+               text-indent: 0em;}
+
+    .right    {text-align: right;
+               margin-right: 10%;
+              }
+
+    .smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
+
+    .caption  {text-indent: 0em;
+               font-family: "Courier", monospaced, serif}
+
+    .figcenter   {margin: auto;
+                  text-align: center;
+                  text-indent: 0em;
+                  padding-top: 1em;
+                 }
+
+    .figleft     {float: left;
+                  clear: left;
+                  margin-left: 0em;
+                  margin-bottom: 0em;
+                  margin-top: 0em;
+                  margin-right: 0.5em;
+                  padding: 0;
+                  text-align: center;
+                 }
+
+    .figright    {float: right;
+                  clear: right;
+                  margin-left: 0.5em;
+                  margin-bottom: 0em;
+                  margin-top: 0em;
+                  margin-right: 0em;
+                  padding: 0em;
+                  text-align: center;
+                 }
+
+    div.footnote p {text-indent: 0em;}
+
+    .footnotes        {border: dotted 1px;
+                       padding-bottom: 1em;
+                       margin-top: 2em;
+                      }
+
+    .footnote         {margin-left: 10%;
+                       margin-right: 10%;
+                       font-size: smaller;
+                      }
+
+    .footnote .label  {position: absolute;
+                       right: 79%;
+                       text-align: right;
+                      }
+
+    .fnanchor         { vertical-align: baseline;
+                        font-size: 80%;
+                        position: relative;
+                        top: -.4em;
+                      }
+
+    .poem             {margin-left:10%;
+                       margin-right:10%;
+                       text-align: left;
+                       font-size: 90%;}
+
+    .poem br          {display: none;}
+
+    .poem .stanza     {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;}
+
+    .poem span.i0     {display: block;
+                       margin-left: 0em;
+                       padding-left: 3em;
+                       text-indent: -3em;
+                      }
+
+    .poem span.i1     {display: block;
+                       margin-left: 1em;
+                       padding-left: 3em;
+                       text-indent: -3em;
+                      }
+
+    </style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Nuts and Nutcrackers, by Charles James Lever
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Nuts and Nutcrackers
+
+Author: Charles James Lever
+
+Illustrator: Phiz.
+
+Release Date: March 18, 2010 [EBook #31685]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NUTS AND NUTCRACKERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">
+<img src="images/illo001.jpg" width="450" height="648" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h1><a name="NUTS_AND_NUTCRACKERS" id="NUTS_AND_NUTCRACKERS"></a>NUTS AND NUTCRACKERS.</h1>
+
+<hr class="title1" />
+
+<div class="tpage">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza" style="margin-bottom: 0em">
+<span class="i0">“The world’s my filbert which with my crackers I will open.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="sig"><span class="smcap">Shakspeare.</span></p>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza" style="margin-bottom: 0em">
+<span class="i0">“The priest calls the lawyer a cheat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the lawyer beknaves the divine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the statesman, because he’s so great,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thinks his trade’s as honest as mine.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="sig"><span class="smcap">Beggar’s Opera.</span></p>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza" style="margin-bottom: 0em">
+<span class="i0">“Hard texts are <i>nuts</i> (I will not call them cheaters,)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose shells do keep their kernels from the eaters;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Open the shells, and you shall have the meat:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They here are brought for you to crack and eat.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="sig"><span class="smcap">John Bunyan.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="title2" />
+
+<p class="ill">ILLUSTRATED BY “PHIZ.”</p>
+
+<hr class="title3" />
+
+<p class="edition">Second Edition.</p>
+
+<p class="publisher"><big>LONDON:</big><br />
+<span class="smcap">Wm. S. ORR AND Co., PATERNOSTER ROW;</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">WILLIAM CURRY, Jun., AND Co., DUBLIN.</span><br />
+
+<small>MDCCCXLV.</small></p>
+
+<p class="publisher">LONDON:<br />
+BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<table summary="contents">
+<tr><td class="lal">&nbsp;</td><td class="ral"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#NUTS_AND_NUTCRACKERS">AN OPENING NUT</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#NUTS_AND_NUTCRACKERS">vii</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#Page_1">A NUT FOR MEN OF GENIUS</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_CORONERS">A NUT FOR CORONERS</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_CORONERS">15</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_TOURISTS">A NUT FOR “TOURISTS”</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_TOURISTS">19</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_LEGAL_FUNCTIONARIES">A NUT FOR LEGAL FUNCTIONARIES</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_LEGAL_FUNCTIONARIES">22</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_ENDURING_AFFECTION">A NUT FOR “ENDURING AFFECTION”</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_31">31</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_THE_POLICE_AND_SIR_PETER">A NUT FOR THE POLICE AND SIR PETER</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_THE_BUDGET">A NUT FOR THE BUDGET</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_44">44</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_REPEAL">A NUT FOR REPEAL</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_49">49</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_NATIONAL_PRIDE">A NUT FOR NATIONAL PRIDE</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_NATIONAL_PRIDE">55</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_DIPLOMATISTS">A NUT FOR DIPLOMATISTS</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_64">64</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#Page_71">A NUT FOR FOREIGN TRAVEL</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_71">71</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#Page_77">A NUT FOR DOMESTIC HAPPINESS</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_77">77</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_LADIES_BOUNTIFUL">A NUT FOR LADIES BOUNTIFUL</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_82">82</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_THE_PRIESTS">A NUT FOR THE PRIESTS</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_85">85</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_LEARNED_SOCIETIES">A NUT FOR LEARNED SOCIETIES</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_LEARNED_SOCIETIES">87</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_THE_LAWYERS">A NUT FOR THE LAWYERS</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_92">92</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_THE_IRISH">A NUT FOR THE IRISH</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_99">99</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_VICEREGAL_PRIVILEGES">A NUT FOR VICEREGAL PRIVILEGES</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_102">102</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#RICH_AND_POOR_POUR_ET_CONTRE">RICH AND POOR—POUR ET CONTRE</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_109">109</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_ST_PATRICKS_NIGHT">A NUT FOR ST. PATRICK’S NIGHT</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_114">114</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_GENTLEMAN_JOCKS">A NUT FOR “GENTLEMAN JOCKS”</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_119">119</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_YOUNGER_SONS">A NUT FOR YOUNGER SONS</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_YOUNGER_SONS">123</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_THE_PENAL_CODE">A NUT FOR THE PENAL CODE</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_128">128</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_THE_OLD">A NUT FOR THE OLD</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_THE_OLD">131</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_THE_ART_UNION">A NUT FOR THE ART UNION</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_THE_ART_UNION">133</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#Page_137">A NUT FOR THE KINGSTOWN RAILWAY</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_137">137</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_THE_DOCTORS">A NUT FOR THE DOCTORS</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_141">141</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_THE_ARCHITECTS">A NUT FOR THE ARCHITECTS</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_THE_ARCHITECTS">145</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_A_NEW_COLONY">A NUT FOR A NEW COLONY</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_148">148</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_SWEET_NUT_FOR_THE_YANKEES">A “SWEET” NUT FOR THE YANKEES</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#A_SWEET_NUT_FOR_THE_YANKEES">153</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#Page_157">A NUT FOR THE SEASON—JULLIEN’S QUADRILLES</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_157">157</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_ALL_IRELAND">A NUT FOR “ALL IRELAND”</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_ALL_IRELAND">163</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_A_NEW_COMPANY">A NUT FOR “A NEW COMPANY”</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_168">168</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#Page_175">A NUT FOR “THE POLITICAL ECONOMISTS”</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_175">175</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_GRAND_DUKES">A NUT FOR “GRAND DUKES”</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_180">180</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_THE_EAST_INDIA_DIRECTORS">A NUT FOR THE EAST INDIA DIRECTORS</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_183">183</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_FILBERT_FOR_SIR_ROBERT_PEEL">A FILBERT FOR SIR ROBERT PEEL</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#A_FILBERT_FOR_SIR_ROBERT_PEEL">185</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#THE_INCOME_TAX">“THE INCOME TAX”</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#THE_INCOME_TAX">186</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_THE_BELGES">A NUT FOR THE “BELGES”</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_THE_BELGES">189</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_WORKHOUSE_CHAPLAINS">A NUT FOR WORKHOUSE CHAPLAINS</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_WORKHOUSE_CHAPLAINS">192</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_THE_HOUSE">A NUT FOR THE “HOUSE”</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_THE_HOUSE">197</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_LAW_REFORM">A NUT FOR “LAW REFORM”</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_200">200</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_CLIMBING_BOYS">A NUT FOR “CLIMBING BOYS”</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_203">203</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_THE_SUBDIVISION_OF_LABOUR">A NUT FOR “THE SUBDIVISION OF LABOUR”</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_THE_SUBDIVISION_OF_LABOUR">206</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_A_NEW_VERDICT">A NUT FOR A “NEW VERDICT”</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_A_NEW_VERDICT">212</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_THE_REAL_LIBERATOR">A NUT FOR THE REAL “LIBERATOR”</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_216">216</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_HER_MAJESTYS_SERVANTS">A NUT FOR “HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS”</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_HER_MAJESTYS_SERVANTS">221</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#Page_225">A NUT FOR THE LANDLORD AND TENANT COMMISSION</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_225">225</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="lal"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_THE_HUMANE_SOCIETY">A NUT FOR THE HUMANE SOCIETY</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#A_NUT_FOR_THE_HUMANE_SOCIETY">228</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/illo006.jpg" width="400" height="424" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2>A NUT FOR MEN OF GENIUS.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p class="newchapter"><span class="firstword"><span class="dropcap">I</span>f</span> Providence, instead of a vagabond, had made me a
+justice of the peace, there is no species of penalty I
+would not have enforced against a class of offenders, upon
+whom it is the perverted taste of the day to bestow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>
+wealth, praise, honour, and reputation; in a word, upon
+that portion of the writers for our periodical literature
+whose pastime it is by high-flown and exaggerated pictures
+of society, places, and amusements, to mislead the
+too credulous and believing world; who, in the search
+for information and instruction, are but reaping a barren
+harvest of deceit and illusion.</p>
+
+<p>Every one is loud and energetic in his condemnation of
+a bubble speculation; every one is severe upon the dishonest
+features of bankruptcy, and the demerits of un-trusty
+guardianship; but while the law visits these with
+its pains and penalties, and while heavy inflictions follow
+on those breaches of trust, which affect our pocket, yet
+can he “walk scatheless,” with port erect and visage high
+who, for mere amusement—for the passing pleasure of the
+moment—or, baser still, for certain pounds per sheet, can,
+present us with the air-drawn daggers of a dyspeptic imagination
+for the real woes of life, or paint the most common-place
+and tiresome subjects with colours so vivid and so
+glowing as to persuade the unwary reader that a paradise
+of pleasure and enjoyment, hitherto unknown, is open
+before him. The treadmill and the ducking-stool, “<i>me
+judice</i>,” would no longer be tenanted by rambling gipsies
+or convivial rioters, but would display to the admiring
+gaze of an assembled multitude the aristocratic features of
+Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, the dark whiskers of D’Israeli,
+the long and graceful proportions of Hamilton Maxwell,
+or the portly paunch and melo-dramatic frown of that
+right pleasant fellow, Henry Addison himself.</p>
+
+<p>You cannot open a newspaper without meeting some
+narrative of what, in the phrase of the day, is denominated
+an “attempted imposition.” Count Skryznyzk, with black<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>
+moustachoes and a beard to match, after being the
+lion of Lord Dudley Stuart’s parties, and the delight of a
+certain set of people in the West-end—who, when they
+give a tea-party, call it a <i>soirée</i>, and deem it necessary to
+have either a Hindoo or a Hottentot, a Pole, or a Piano-player,
+to interest their guests—was lately brought up
+before Sir Peter Laurie, charged by 964 with obtaining
+money under false pretences, and sentenced to three
+months’ imprisonment and hard labour at the treadmill.</p>
+
+<p>The charge looks a grave one, good reader, and perhaps
+already some notion is trotting through your head about
+forgery or embezzlement; you think of widows rendered
+desolate, or orphans defrauded; you lament over the
+hard-earned pittance of persevering industry lost to its
+possessor; and, in your heart, you acknowledge that there
+may have been some cause for the partition of Poland,
+and that the Emperor of the Russias, like another
+monarch, may not be half so black as he is painted. But
+spare your honest indignation; our unpronounceable friend
+did none of these. No; the head and front of his
+offending was simply exciting the sympathies of a feeling
+world for his own deep wrongs; for the fate of his father,
+beheaded in the Grand Place at Warsaw; for his four
+brothers, doomed never to see the sun in the dark mines
+of Tobolsk; for his beautiful sister, reared in the lap of
+luxury and wealth, wandering houseless and an outcast
+around the palaces of St. Petersburg, wearying heaven
+itself with cries for mercy on her banished brethren; and
+last of all, for himself—he, who at the battle of Pultowa
+led heaven-knows how many and how terrific charges of
+cavalry,—whose breast was a galaxy of orders only outnumbered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>
+by his wounds—that he should be an exile,
+without friends, and without home! In a word, by a
+beautiful and highly-wrought narrative, that drew tears
+from the lady and ten shillings from the gentleman of the
+house, he became amenable to our law as a swindler
+and an impostor, simply because his narrative was
+a fiction.</p>
+
+<p>In the name of all justice, in the name of truth, of
+honesty, and fair dealing, I ask you, is this right? or, if
+the treadmill be the fit reward for such powers as his,
+what shall we say, what shall we do, with all the popular
+writers of the day? How many of Bulwer’s stories are
+facts? What truth is there in James? Is that beautiful
+creation of Dickens, “Poor Nell,” a real or a fictitious
+character? And is the offence, after all, merely in the
+manner, and not the matter, of the transgression? Is it
+that, instead of coming before the world printed, puffed,
+and hot-pressed by the gentlemen of the Row, he ventured
+to edite himself, and, instead of the trade, make his
+tongue the medium of publication? And yet, if speech
+be the crime, what say you to Macready, and with what
+punishment are you prepared to visit him who makes
+your heart-strings vibrate to the sorrows of <i>Virginius</i>, or
+thrills your very blood with the malignant vengeance of
+<i>Iago</i>? Is what is permissible in Covent Garden, criminal
+in the city? or, stranger still, is there a punishment at
+the one place, and praise at the other? Or is it the
+costume, the foot-lights, the orange-peel, and the sawdust—are
+they the terms of the immunity? Alas, and alas!
+I believe they are.</p>
+
+<p>Burke said, “The age of chivalry is o’er;” and I believe
+the age of poetry has gone with it; and if Homer himself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>
+were to chant an Iliad down Fleet Street, I’d wager a
+crown that 964 would take him up for a ballad-singer.</p>
+
+<p>But a late case occurs to me. A countryman of mine,
+one Bernard Cavanagh, doubtless, a gentleman of very
+good connections, announced some time ago that he had
+adopted a new system of diet, which was neither more
+nor less than going without any food. Now, Mr. Cavanagh
+was a stout gentleman, comely and plump to look at,
+who conversed pleasantly on the common topics of the
+day, and seemed, on the whole, to enjoy life pretty much
+like other people. He was to be seen for a shilling—children
+half-price; and although Englishmen have read
+of our starving countrymen for the last century and a-half,
+yet their curiosity to see one, to look at him, to prod him
+with their umbrellas, punch him with their knuckles, and
+otherwise test his vitality, was such, that they seemed
+just as much alive as though the phenomenon was new to
+them. The consequence was, Mr. Cavanagh, whose cook
+was on board wages, and whose establishment was of the
+least expensive character, began to wax rich. Several
+large towns and cities, in different parts of the empire,
+requested him to visit them; and Joe Hume suggested
+that the corporation of London should offer him ten
+thousand pounds for his secret, merely for the use of the
+livery. In fact, Cavanagh was now the cry, and as
+Barney appeared to grow fat on fasting, his popularity
+knew no bounds. Unfortunately, however, ambition, the
+bane of so many other great men, numbered him also
+among its victims. Had he been content with London as
+the sphere of his triumphs and teetotalism, there is no
+saying how long he might have gone on starving with
+satisfaction. Whether it is that the people are less<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>
+observant there, or more accustomed to see similar
+exhibitions, I cannot tell; but true it is they paid their
+shillings, felt his ribs, walked home, and pronounced
+Barney a most exemplary Irishman. But not content
+with the capital, he must make a tour in the provinces,
+and accordingly went starring it about through Leeds,
+Birmingham, Manchester, and all the other manufacturing
+towns, as if in mockery of the poor people who did not
+know the secret how to live without food.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Cavanagh was now living—if life it can be called—in
+one of the best hotels, when, actuated by that spirit
+of inquiry that characterises the age, a respectable lady,
+who kept a boarding-house, paid him a visit, to ascertain,
+if possible, how far his system might be made applicable
+to her guests, who, whatever their afflictions, laboured
+under no such symptoms as his.</p>
+
+<p>She was pleased with Barney,—she patted him with
+her hand; he was round, and plump, and fat, much more
+so, indeed, than many of her daily dinner-party; and
+had, withal, that kind of joyous, rollicking, devil-may-care
+look, that seems to bespeak good condition;—but
+this the poor lady, of course, did not know to be an inherent
+property in Pat, however poor his situation.</p>
+
+<p>After an interview of an hour long she took her leave,
+not exhibiting the usual satisfaction of other visitors, but
+with a dubious look and meditative expression, that
+betokened a mind not made up, and a heart not at ease;
+she was clearly not content, perhaps the abortive effort to
+extract a confession from Mr. Cavanagh might be the
+cause, or perhaps she felt like many respectable people
+whose curiosity is only the advanced guard to their
+repentance, and who never think that in any exhibition<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>
+they get the worth of their money. This might be the
+case, for as fasting is a negative process, there is really
+little to see in the performer. Had it been the man that
+eats a sheep; “<i>à la bonne heure!</i>” you have something
+for your money there: and I can even sympathize with
+the French gentleman who follows Van Amburgh to this
+day, in the agreeable hope, to use his own words, of
+“assisting at the <i>soirée</i>, when the lions shall eat Mr. Van
+Amburgh.” This, if not laudable is at least intelligible.
+But to return, the lady went her way, not indeed on
+hospitable thoughts intent, but turning over in her mind
+various theories about abstinence, and only wishing she
+had the whole of the Cavanagh family for boarders at a
+guinea a-week.</p>
+
+<p>Late in the evening of the same day this estimable
+lady, whose inquiries into the properties of gastric juice,
+if not as scientific, were to the full as enthusiastic as those
+of Bostock or Tiedeman himself, was returning from an
+early tea, through an unfrequented suburb of Manchester,
+when suddenly her eye fell upon Bernard Cavanagh,
+seated in a little shop—a dish of sausages and a plate of
+ham before him, while a frothing cup of porter ornamented
+his right hand. It was true, he wore a patch above his
+eye, a large beard, and various other disguises, but they
+served him not: she knew him at once. The result is
+soon told: the police were informed; Mr. Cavanagh was
+captured; the lady gave her testimony in a crowded
+court, and he who lately was rolling on the wheel of
+fortune, was now condemned to foot it on a very different
+wheel, and all for no other cause than that he could
+not live without food.</p>
+
+<p>The magistrate, who was eloquent on the occasion,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>
+called him an impostor; designating by this odious
+epithet, a highly-wrought and well-conceived work of
+imagination. Unhappy Defoe, your Robinson Crusoe
+might have cost you a voyage across the seas; your man
+Friday might have been a black Monday to you had you
+lived in our days. 964 is a severer critic than <i>The
+Quarterly</i>, and his judgment more irrevocable.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">
+<img src="images/illo014.jpg" width="450" height="530" alt="The Man of Genius" title="" />
+<span class="caption">The Man of Genius</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>We have never heard of any one who, discovering the
+fictitious character of a novel he had believed as a fact,
+waited on the publisher with a modest request that his
+money might be returned to him, being obtained under
+false pretences; much less of his applying to his worship
+for a warrant against G.&nbsp;P.&nbsp;R. James, Esq., or Harrison
+Ainsworth, for certain imaginary woes and unreal sorrows
+depicted in their writings: yet the conduct of the lady
+towards Mr. Cavanagh was exactly of this nature. How
+did his appetite do her any possible disservice? what
+sins against her soul were contained in his sausages? and
+yet she must appeal to the justice as an injured woman:
+Cavanagh had imposed upon her—she was wronged because
+he was hungry. All his narrative, beautifully constructed
+and artfully put together, went for nothing; his
+look, his manner, his entertaining anecdotes, his fascinating
+conversation, his time—from ten in the morning till
+eight in the evening—went all for nothing: this really is
+too bad. Do we ask of every author to be the hero he
+describes? Is Bulwer, Pelham, and Paul Clifford, Eugene
+Aram, and the Lady of Lyons? Is James, Mary of Burgundy,
+Darnley, the Gipsy, and Corse de Leon? Is
+Dickens, Sam Weller, Quilp, and Barnaby Rudge?—to
+what absurdities will this lead us! and yet Bernard
+Cavanagh was no more guilty than any of these gentlemen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+He was, if I may so express it, a pictorial—an
+ideal representation of a man that fasted: he narrated all
+the sensations want of food suggests; its dreamy debility,
+its languid stupor, its painful suffering, its stage of struggle
+and suspense, ending in a victory, where the mind, the
+conqueror over the baser nature, asserts its proud and
+glorious supremacy in the triumph of volition; and for
+this beautiful creation of his brain he is sent to the treadmill,
+as though, instead of a poet, he had been a pickpocket.</p>
+
+<p>If Bulwer be a baronet; if Dickens’ bed-room be
+papered with bank-debentures; then do I proclaim it
+loudly before the world, Bernard Cavanagh is an injured
+man: you are either absurd in one case, or unjust in the
+other; take your choice. Ship off Sir Edward to the
+colonies; send James to Swan River; let Lady Blessington
+card wool, or Mrs. Norton pound oyster-shells; or
+else we call upon you, give Mr. Cavanagh freedom of the
+guild; call him the author of “The Hungry One;” let
+him be courted and <i>fêted</i>—you may ask him to dinner
+with an easy conscience, and invite him to tea without
+remorse. Let a Whig-radical borough solicit him to
+represent it; place him at the right hand of Lord John;
+let his picture be exhibited in the print-shops, and let the
+cut of his coat and the tie of his cravat be so much in
+vogue, that bang-ups <i>à la</i> Barney shall be the only things
+seen in Bond-street: one course or the other you must
+take. If the mountain will not go to Mahomet, Mahomet
+must go to the mountain: or in other words, if Bulwer
+descend not to Barney, Barney must mount up to Bulwer.
+It is absurd, it is worse than absurd, to pretend that he
+who so thoroughly sympathises with his hero, as to embody<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+him in his own thoughts and acts, his look, his dress,
+and his demeanour, that he, I say, who so penetrated with
+the impersonation of a part, finds the pen too weak, and
+the press too slow, to picture forth his vivid creations,
+should be less an object of praise, of honour, and distinction,
+than the indolent denizen of some drawing-room,
+who, in slippered ease, dictates his shadowy and imperfect
+conceptions—visions of what he never felt, dreamy representations
+of unreality.</p>
+
+<p>“The poet,” as the word implies, is the maker or the
+creator; and however little of the higher attributes of
+what the world esteems as poetry the character would
+seem to possess, he who invents a personage, the conformity
+of whose traits to the rule of life is acknowledged
+for its truth, he, I say, is a poet. Thus, there is poetry in
+Sancho Panza, Falstaff, Dugald Dalgetty, and a hundred
+other similar impersonations; and why not in Bernard
+Cavanagh?</p>
+
+<p>Look for a moment at the effects of your system. The
+Caraccis, we are told, spent their boyish years drawing
+rude figures with chalk on the doors and even the walls
+of the palaces of Rome: here the first germs of their early
+talent displayed themselves; and in those bold conceptions
+of youthful genius were seen the first dawnings of a
+power that gave glory to the age they lived in. Had Sir
+Peter Laurie been their cotemporary, had 964 been loose
+in those days, they would have been treated with a trip
+to the mill, and their taste for design cultivated by the
+low diet of a penitentiary. You know not what budding
+genius you have nipped with this abominable system: you
+think not of the early indications of mind and intellect
+you may be consigning to prison: or is it after all, that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+matter-of-fact spirit of the age has sapped the very vitals
+of our law-code, and that in your utilitarian zeal you have
+doomed to death all that bears the stamp of imagination?
+if this be indeed your object, have a good heart, encourage
+964, and you’ll not leave a novelist in the land.</p>
+
+<p>Good reader, I ask your pardon for all this honest indignation;
+I know it is in vain: I cannot reform our jurisprudence;
+and our laws, like the Belgian revolution, must
+be regarded “<i>comme un fait accompli</i>;” in other words,
+what can’t be cured must be endured. Let us leave then
+our friend the Pole to perform his penance; let us say
+adieu to Barney, who is at this moment occupying a suite
+of apartments in the Penitentiary, and let us turn to the
+reverse of the medal, I mean to those who would wile us
+away by false promises and flattering speeches to entertain
+such views of life as are not only impossible but inconsistent,
+thus rendering our path here devoid of interest and
+of pleasure, while compared with the extravagant creations
+of their own erring fancies. Yes, princes may be trusted,
+but put not your faith in periodicals. Let no pictorial
+representations of Alpine scenery, under the auspices of
+Colburn or Bentley, seduce you from the comforts of your
+hearth and home: let no enthusiastic accounts of military
+greatness, no peninsular pleasures, no charms of campaigning
+life, induce you to change your garb of country gentleman
+for the livery of the Horse-Guards,—“making the
+green one red.”</p>
+
+<p>Be not mystified by Maxwell, nor lured by Lorrequer;
+let no panegyrics of pipe-clay and the brevet seduce you
+from the peaceful path in life; let not Marryat mar your
+happiness by the glories of those who dwell in the deep
+waters; let not Wilson persuade you that the “Lights<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+and Shadows of Scottish Life” have any reference to that
+romantic people, who betake themselves to their native
+mountains with a little oatmeal for food and a little
+sulphur for friction; do not believe one syllable about the
+girls of the west; trust not in the representations of their
+blue eyes, nor of their trim ankles peering beneath a jupe
+of scarlet—we can vouch it is true, for the red petticoat,
+but the rest is apocryphal. Fly, we warn you, from
+Summers in Germany, Evenings in Brittany, Weeks on
+the Rhine; away with tours, guide-books, and all the
+John Murrayisms of travels. A plague upon Egypt! travellers
+have a proverbial liberty of conscience, and the
+farther they go, the more does it seem to stretch; not that
+near home matters are much better, for our “Wild Sports”
+in Achill are as romantic as those in Africa, and the
+Complete Angler is a complete humbug.</p>
+
+<p>There is no faith—no principle in any of these men.
+The grave writer, the stern moralist, the uncompromising
+advocate of the inflexible rule of right, is a dandy with
+essenced locks, loose trousers, and looser morals, who
+breakfasts at four in the afternoon, and spends his evenings
+among the side scenes of the opera; the merry writer
+of whims and oddities, who shakes his puns about like
+pepper from a pepper-castor, is a misanthropic, melancholy
+gentleman, of mournful look and unhappy aspect:
+the advocate of field-sports, of all the joyous excitement
+of the hunting-field, and the bold dangers of the chase, is
+an asthmatic sexagenarian, with care in his heart and
+gout in his ankles; and lastly, he who lives but in the
+horrors of a charnel-house, whose gloomy mind finds no
+pleasure save in the dark and dismal pictures of crime
+and suffering, of lingering agony, or cruel death, is a fat,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
+round, portly, comely gentleman, with a laugh like
+Falstaff, and a face whose every lineament and feature
+seems to exhale the merriment of a jocose and happy
+temperament. I speak not of the softer sex, many of
+whose productions would seem to have but little sympathy
+with themselves; but once for all, I would ask you what
+reliance, what faith can you place in any of them? Is it
+to the denizen of a coal mine you apply for information
+about the Nassau balloon? Do you refer a disputed
+point in dress to an Englishman, in climate to a Laplander,
+in politeness to a Frenchman, or in hospitality to
+a Belgian? or do you not rather feel that these are not
+exactly their attributes, and that you are moving the
+equity for a case at common law? exactly in the same
+way, and for the same reason, we repeat it, put not your
+faith in periodicals, nor in the writers thereof.</p>
+
+<p>How ridiculous would it appear if the surgeon-general
+were to open a pleading, or charge a jury in the Queen’s
+Bench, while the solicitor-general was engaged in taking
+up the femoral artery! What would you say if the
+Archbishop of Canterbury were to preside over the artillery-practice
+at Woolwich, while the Commander of the
+Forces delivered a charge to the clergy of the diocese?
+How would you look if Justice Pennefather were to speak
+at a repeal meeting, and Daniel O’Connell to conduct himself
+like a loyal and discreet citizen? Would you not at
+once say the whole world is in masquerade? and would you
+not be justified in the remark? And yet this it is which
+is exactly taking place before your eyes in the wide world
+of letters. The illiterate and unreflecting man of under-bred
+habits and degenerate tastes will write nothing but
+a philosophic novel; the denizen of the Fleet, or the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+Queen’s Bench, publishes an ascent of Mont Blanc, with
+a glowing description of the delights of liberty; the nobleman
+writes slang; the starving author, with broken boots
+and patched continuations, will not indite a name undignified
+by a title; and after all this, will you venture to
+tell me that these men are not indictable by the statute
+for obtaining money under false pretences?</p>
+
+<p>I have run myself out of breath; and now, if you will
+allow me a few moments, I will tell you what, perhaps, I
+ought to have done earlier in this article, namely, its object.</p>
+
+<p>It is a remarkable feature in the complex and difficult
+machinery of our society, that while crime and the law
+code keep steadily on the increase, moving in parallel
+lines one beside the other, certain prejudices, popular
+fallacies—nuts, as we have called them at the head of this
+paper—should still disgrace our social system; and that,
+however justice may be administered in our courts of law,
+in the private judicature of our own dwellings we observe
+an especial system of jurisprudence, marked by injustice
+and by wrong. To endeavour to depict some instances of
+this, I have set about my present undertaking. To
+disabuse the public mind as to the error, that what is
+punishable in one can be praiseworthy in another; and
+what is excellent in the court can be execrable in the
+city. Such is my object, such my hope. Under this title
+I shall endeavour to touch upon the undue estimation in
+which we hold certain people and places—the unfair
+depreciation of certain sects and callings. Not confining
+myself to home, I shall take the habits of my countrymen
+on the Continent, whether in their search for climate,
+economy, education, or enjoyment; and, as far as my
+ability lies, hold the mirror up to nature, while I extend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+the war-cry of my distinguished countrymen, not asking
+“justice for Ireland” alone, but “justice for the whole
+human race.” For the gaoler as for the guardsman, for
+the steward of the Holyhead as for him of the household;
+from the Munster king-at-arms to the monarch of the
+Cannibal Island—“<i>nihil à me alienum puto</i>;” from the
+priest to the plenipotentiary; from Mr. Arkins to Abd-el-Kader:
+my sympathy extends to all.</p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_CORONERS" id="A_NUT_FOR_CORONERS"></a>A NUT FOR CORONERS.</h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo022.jpg" width="200" height="180" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em"><span class="smcap">I had</span> nearly attained to man’s
+estate before I understood
+the nature of a coroner. I
+remember, when a child, to
+have seen a coloured print
+from a well-known picture
+of the day, representing the
+night-mare. It was a horrible
+representation of a
+goblin shape of hideous aspect,
+that sat cowering upon the bosom of a sleeping figure,
+on whose white features a look of painful suffering was
+depicted, while the clenched hands and drawn-up feet
+seemed to struggle with convulsive agony. Heaven knows
+how or when the thought occurred to me, but I clearly
+recollect my impression that this goblin was a coroner.
+Some confused notion about sitting on a corpse as one of
+his attributes had, doubtless, suggested the idea; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+certainly nothing contributed to increase the horror of
+suicide in my eyes so much as the reflection, that the grim
+demon already mentioned had some function to discharge
+on the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>When, after the lapse of years, I heard that the eloquent
+and gifted member for Finsbury was a being of this
+order, although I knew by that time the injustice of my
+original prejudices, yet, I confess I could not look at him
+in the house, without a thought of my childish fancies,
+and an endeavour to trace in his comely features some
+faint resemblance to the figure of the night-mare.</p>
+
+<p>This strange impression of my infancy recurred strongly
+to my mind a few days since, on reading a newspaper
+account of a sudden death.—The case was simply that of
+a gentleman who, in the bosom of his family, became
+suddenly seized with illness, and after a few hours expired.
+What was their surprise! what their horror! to find, that
+no sooner was the circumstance known, than the house
+was surrounded by a mob, policemen were stationed at
+the doors, and twelve of the great unwashed, with a
+coroner at their head, forced their entry into the house of
+mourning, to deliberate on the cause of death. I can
+perfectly understand the value of this practice in cases
+where either suspicion has attached, or where the circumstances
+of the decease, as to time and place, would indicate
+a violent death; but where a person, surrounded by his
+children, living in all the quiet enjoyment of an easy and
+undisturbed existence, drops off by some one of the ills
+that flesh is heir to, only a little more rapidly than his
+neighbour at next door, why this should be a case for a
+coroner and his gang, I cannot, for the life of me, conceive.
+In the instance I allude to, the family offered the fullest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+information: they explained that the deceased had been
+liable for years to an infirmity likely to terminate in this
+way. The physician who attended him corroborated the
+statement; and, in fact, it was clear the case was one of
+those almost every-day occurrences where the thread of life
+is snapped, not unravelled. This, however, did not satisfy
+the coroner, who had, as he expressed it, a “duty to
+perform,” and, who, certainly had five guineas for his fee:
+he was a “medical coroner,” too, and therefore he would
+examine for himself. Thus, in the midst of the affliction
+and bereavement of a desolate family, the frightful
+detail of an inquest, with all its attendant train of harrowing
+and heart-rending inquiries, is carried on, simply
+because it is permissible by the law, and the coroner may
+enter where the king cannot.</p>
+
+<p>We are taught in the litany to pray against sudden
+death; but up to this moment I never knew it was illegal.
+Dreadful afflictions as apoplexy and aneurism are,
+it remained for our present civilisation to make them
+punishable by a statute. The march of intellect, not satisfied
+with directing us in life, must go a step farther and
+teach us how to die. Fashionable diseases the world has
+been long acquainted with, but an “illegal inflammation,”
+and a “criminal hemorrhage” have been reserved for the
+enlightened age we live in.</p>
+
+<p>Newspapers will no longer inform us, in the habitual
+phrase, that Mr. Simpkins died suddenly at his house at
+Hampstead; but, under the head of “Shocking outrage,”
+we shall read, “that after a long life of great respectability
+and the exhibition of many virtues, this unfortunate
+gentleman, it is hoped in a moment of mental alienation,
+went off with a disease of the heart. The affliction of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+surviving relatives at this frightful act may be conceived,
+but cannot be described. His effects, according to the
+statute, have been confiscated to the crown, and a deodand
+of fifty shillings awarded on the apothecary who
+attended him. It is hoped, that the universal execration
+which attends cases of this nature may deter others from
+the same course; and, we confess, our observations
+are directed with a painful, but we trust, a powerful interest
+to certain elderly gentlemen in the neighbourhood
+of Islington.” <i>Verb. sat.</i></p>
+
+<p>Under these sad circumstances it behoves us to look a
+little about, and provide against such a contingency. It
+is then earnestly recommended to heads of families, that
+when registering the birth of a child, they should also include
+some probable or possible malady of which he may,
+could, would, should, or ought to die, in the course of
+time. This will show, by incontestable evidence, that the
+event was at least anticipated, and being done at the
+earliest period of life, no reproach can possibly lie for
+want of premeditation. The register might run thus:—</p>
+
+<p>Giles Tims, son of Thomas and Mary Tims, born on the
+9th of June, Kent street, Southwark—dropsy, typhus, or
+gout in the stomach.</p>
+
+<p>It by no means follows, that he must wait for one or other
+of these maladies to carry him off. Not at all; he may
+range at will through the whole practice of physic, and adopt
+his choice. The registry only goes to show, that he does
+not mean to sneak out of the world in any under-bred
+way, nor bolt out of life with the abrupt precipitation of
+a Frenchman after a dinner party. I have merely thrown
+out this hint here as a warning to my many friends, and
+shall now proceed to other and more pleasing topics.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_TOURISTS" id="A_NUT_FOR_TOURISTS"></a>A NUT FOR “TOURISTS.”</h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Among</span> the many incongruities of that composite piece
+of architecture, called John Bull, there is nothing more
+striking than the contrast between his thorough nationality
+and his unbounded admiration for foreigners. Now,
+although we may not entirely sympathize with, we can
+understand and appreciate this feature of his character,
+and see how he gratifies his very pride itself, in the attentions
+and civilities he bestows upon strangers. The feeling
+is intelligible too, because Frenchmen, Germans, and
+even Italians, notwithstanding the many points of disparity
+between us, have always certain qualities well worthy of
+respect, if not of imitation. France has a great literature,
+a name glorious in history, a people abounding in intelligence,
+skill, and invention; in fact, all the attributes that
+make up a great nation. Germany has many of these,
+and though she lack the brilliant fancy, the sparkling wit
+of her neighbour, has still a compensating fund in the rich
+resources of her judgment, and the profound depths of her
+scholarship. Indeed, every continental country has its
+lesson for our benefit, and we would do well to cultivate
+the acquaintance of strangers, not only to disseminate
+more just views of ourselves and our institutions, but also
+for the adoption of such customs as seem worthy of imitation,
+and such habits as may suit our condition in life;
+while such is the case as regards those countries high in
+the scale of civilisation, we would, by no means, extend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+the rule to others less happily constituted, less benignly
+gifted. The Carinthian boor with his garment of sheep-wool,
+or the Laplander with his snow shoes and his hood
+of deerskin, may be both very natural objects of curiosity,
+but by no means subjects of imitation. This point will
+doubtless be conceded at once; and now, will any one tell
+me for what cause, under what pretence, and with what
+pretext are we civil to the Yankees?—not for their
+politeness, not for their literature, not for any fascination
+of their manner, nor any charm of their address, not for
+any historic association, not for any halo that the glorious
+past has thrown around the common-place monotony of the
+present, still less for any romantic curiosity as to their
+lives and habits—for in this respect all other savage
+nations far surpass them. What then is, or what can be
+the cause?</p>
+
+<p>Of all the lions that caprice and the whimsical absurdity
+of a second-rate set in fashion ever courted and entertained,
+never had any one less pretensions to the civility
+he received than the author of ‘Pencillings by the Way’—poor
+in thought, still poorer in expression, without a
+spark of wit, without a gleam of imagination—a fourth-rate
+looking man, and a fifth-rate talker, he continued to
+receive the homage we were wont to bestow upon a Scott,
+and even charily extended to a Dickens. His writings
+the very slip-slop of “commerage,” the tittle-tattle of a
+Sunday paper, dressed up in the cant of Kentucky; the
+very titles, the contemptible affectation of unredeemed
+twaddle, ‘Pencillings by the Way!’ ‘Letters from under
+a Bridge!’ Good lack! how the latter name is suggestive
+of eaves-dropping and listening; and how involuntarily
+we call to mind those chance expressions of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+partners in the dance, or his companions at the table,
+faithfully recorded for the edification of the free-born
+Americans, who, while they ridicule our institutions,
+endeavour to pantomime our manners.</p>
+
+<p>For many years past a number of persons have driven
+a thriving trade in a singular branch of commerce, no less
+than buying up cast court dresses and second-hand uniforms
+for exportation to the colonies. The negroes, it is
+said, are far prouder of figuring in the tattered and tarnished
+fragments of former greatness, than of wearing the
+less gaudy, but more useful garb, befitting their condition.
+So it would seem our trans-Atlantic friends prefer importing
+through their agents, for that purpose, the abandoned
+finery of courtly gossip, to the more useful but less pretentious
+apparel, of common-place information. Mr. Willis
+was invaluable for this purpose; he told his friends every
+thing that he heard, and he heard every thing that he
+could; and, like mercy, he enjoyed a duplicate of blessings—for
+while he was delighted in by his own countrymen,
+he was dined by ours. He scattered his autographs,
+as Feargus O’Connor did franks; he smiled; he ogled;
+he read his own poetry, and went the whole lion with all
+his might; and yet, in the midst of this, a rival starts up
+equally desirous of court secrets, and fifty times as enterprising
+in their search; he risks his liberty, perhaps his
+life, in the pursuit, and what is his reward? I need only
+tell you his name, and you are answered—I mean the boy
+Jones; not under a bridge, but under a sofa; not in
+Almacks, obtaining it at second-hand, but in Buckingham
+Palace—into the very apartment of the Queen—the adventurous
+youth has dared to insinuate himself. No lady
+however sends her album to him for some memento of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+genius. His temple is not defrauded of its curls to grace
+a locket or a medallion; and his reward, instead of a
+supper at Lady Blessington’s, is a voyage to Swan River.
+For my part, I prefer the boy Jones: I like his singleness
+of purpose: I admire his steady perseverance; still, however,
+he had the misfortune to be born in England—his
+father lived near Wapping, and he was ineligible for a lion.</p>
+
+<p>To what other reason than his English growth can be
+attributed the different treatment he has experienced at
+the hands of the world. The similarity between the two
+characters is most striking. Willis had a craving appetite
+for court gossip, and the tittle-tattle of a palace: so had
+the boy Jones. Willis established himself as a listener
+in society: so did the boy Jones. Willis obtruded himself
+into places, and among people where he had no possible
+pretension to be seen: so did the boy Jones. Willis
+wrote letters from under a bridge: the boy Jones eat
+mutton chops under a sofa.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_LEGAL_FUNCTIONARIES" id="A_NUT_FOR_LEGAL_FUNCTIONARIES"></a>A NUT FOR LEGAL FUNCTIONARIES.</h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> pet profession of England is the bar, and I see
+many reasons why this should be the case. Our law of
+primogeniture necessitates the existence of certain provisions
+for younger children independently of the pittance
+bestowed on them by their families. The army and the
+navy, the church and the bar, form then the only avenues
+to fortune for the highly born; and one or other of these
+four roads must be adopted by him who would carve<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+out his own career. The bar, for many reasons, is the favourite—at
+least among those who place reliance in their
+intellect. Its estimation is high. It is not incompatible
+but actually favourable to the pursuits of parliament. Its
+rewards are manifold and great; and while there is a sufficiency
+of private ease and personal retirement in its
+practice, there is also enough of publicity for the most
+ambitiously-minded seeker of the world’s applause and
+the world’s admiration. Were we only to look back upon
+our history, we should find perhaps that the profession of
+the law would include almost two-thirds of our very
+greatest men. Astute thinkers, deep politicians, eloquent
+debaters, profound scholars, men of wit, as well as men
+of wisdom, have abounded in its ranks, and there is
+every reason why it should be, as I have called it, the
+pet profession.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">
+<img src="images/illo030.jpg" width="450" height="679" alt="Legal Functionaries." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Legal Functionaries.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Having conceded so much, may I now be permitted to
+take a nearer view of those men so highly distinguished:
+and for this purpose let me turn my reader’s attention to
+the practice of a criminal trial. The first duty of a good
+citizen, it will not be disputed, is, as far as in him lies, to
+promote obedience to the law, to repress crime, and bring
+outrage to punishment. No walk in life—no professional
+career—no uniform of scarlet or of black—no freemasonry
+of craft or calling can absolve him from this allegiance to
+his country. Yet, what do we see? The wretch stained
+with crime—polluted with iniquity—for which, perhaps,
+the statute-book contains neither name nor indictment—whose
+trembling lips are eager to avow that guilt which,
+by confessing, he hopes may alleviate the penalty—this
+man, I say, is checked in his intentions—he is warned
+not, by any chance expression, to hazard a conviction of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+his crime, and told in the language of the law not to
+criminate himself. But the matter stops not here—justice
+is an inveterate gambler—she is not satisfied when
+her antagonist throws his card upon the table confessing
+that he has not a trump nor a trick in his hand—no, like
+the most accomplished swindler of Baden or Boulogne,
+she assumes a smile of easy and courteous benignity, and
+says, pooh, pooh! nonsense, my dear friend; you don’t
+know what may turn up; your cards are better than you
+think; don’t be faint-hearted; don’t you see you have
+the knave of trumps, <i>i.&nbsp;e.</i>, the cleverest lawyer for your
+defender; a thousand things may happen; I may revoke,
+that is, the indictment may break down; there are innumerable
+chances in your favour, so pluck up your courage
+and play the game out.</p>
+
+<p>He takes the advice, and however faint-hearted before,
+he now assumes a look of stern courage, or dogged indifference,
+and resolves to play for the stake. He remembers,
+however, that he is no adept in the game, and he addresses
+himself in consequence to some astute and subtle gambler,
+to whom he commits his cards and his chances. The
+trepidation or the indifference that he manifested before,
+now gradually gives way; and however hopeless he had
+deemed his case at first, he now begins to think that all is
+not lost. The very way his friend, the lawyer, shuffles
+and cuts the cards, imposes on his credulity and suggests
+a hope. He sees at once that he is a practised hand, and
+almost unconsciously he becomes deeply interested in the
+changes and vacillations of the game he believed could
+have presented but one aspect of fortune.</p>
+
+<p>But the prisoner is not my object: I turn rather to the
+lawyer. Here then do we not see the accomplished gentleman—the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+finished scholar—the man of refinement and of
+learning, of character and station—standing forth the very
+embodiment of the individual in the dock? possessed of
+all his secrets—animated by the same hopes—penetrated
+by the same fears—he endeavours by all the subtle ingenuity,
+with which craft and habit have gifted him, to
+confound the testimony—to disparage the truth—to pervert
+the inferences of all the witnesses. In fact, he
+employs all the stratagems of his calling, all the ingenuity
+of his mind, all the subtlety of his wit for the one end—that
+the man he believes in his own heart guilty, may, on
+the oaths of twelve honest men, be pronounced innocent.</p>
+
+<p>From the opening of the trial to its close, this mental
+gladiator is an object of wonder and dread. Scarcely a
+quality of the human mind is not exhibited by him in the
+brilliant panorama of his intellect. At first, the patient
+perusal of a complex and wordy indictment occupies him
+exclusively: he then proceeds to cross-examine the witnesses—flattering
+this one—brow-beating that—suggesting—insinuating—amplifying,
+or retrenching, as the evidence
+would seem to favour or be adverse to his client. He is
+alternately confident and doubtful, headlong and hesitating—now
+hurried away on the full tide of his eloquence
+he expatiates in beautiful generalities on the glorious
+institution of trial by jury, and apostrophizes justice; or
+now, with broken utterance and plaintive voice, he supplicates
+the jury to be patient, and be careful in the decision
+they may come to. He implores them to remember
+that when they leave that court, and return to the happy
+comforts of their home, conscience will follow them, and
+the everlasting question crave for answer within them—were
+they sure of this man’s guilt? He teaches them how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+fallacious are all human tests; he magnifies the slightest
+discrepancy of evidence into a broad and sweeping contradiction;
+and while, with a prophetic menace, he
+pictures forth the undying remorse that pursues him who
+sheds innocent blood, he dismisses them with an affecting
+picture of mental agony so great—of suffering so heart-rending,
+that, as they retire to the jury-room, there is not
+a man of the twelve that has not more or less of a <i>personal</i>
+interest in the acquittal of the prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>However bad, however depraved the human mind, it
+still leans to mercy: the power to dispose of another
+man’s life is generally sufficient for the most malignant
+spirit in its thirst for vengeance. What then are the feelings
+of twelve calm, and perhaps, benevolent men, at a
+moment like this? The last words of the advocate have
+thrown a new element into the whole case, for independent
+of their verdict upon the prisoner comes now the
+direct appeal to their own hearts. How will they feel
+when they reflect on this hereafter? I do not wish to
+pursue this further. It is enough for my present purpose
+that, by the ingenuity of the lawyer, criminals have
+escaped, do escape, and are escaping, the just sentence on
+their crimes. What then is the result? the advocate, who
+up to this moment has maintained a familiar, even a
+friendly, intimacy with his client in the dock, now shrinks
+from the very contamination of his look. He cannot bear
+that the blood-stained fingers should grasp the hem of his
+garment, and he turns with a sense of shame from the
+expressions of a gratitude that criminate him in his own
+heart. However, this is but a passing sensation; he
+divests himself of his wig and gown, and overwhelmed
+with congratulations for his brilliant success, he springs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+into his carriage and goes home to dress for dinner—for
+on that day he is engaged to the Chancellor, the
+Bishop of London, or some other great and revered
+functionary—the guardian of the church, or the custodian
+of conscience.</p>
+
+<p>Now, there is only one thing in all this I would wish
+to bring strikingly before the mind of my readers, and that
+is, that the lawyer, throughout the entire proceeding, was
+a free and a willing agent. There was neither legal nor
+moral compulsion to urge him on. No; it was no intrepid
+defence against the tyranny of a government or the usurpation
+of power—it was the assertion of no broad and
+immutable principle of truth or justice—it was simply a
+matter of legal acumen and persuasive eloquence, to the
+amount of fifty pounds sterling.</p>
+
+<p>This being admitted, let me now proceed to consider
+another functionary, and observe how far the rule of right
+is consulted in the treatment <i>he</i> meets with—I mean the
+hangman. You start, good reader, and your gesture of
+impatience denotes the very proposition I would come to.
+I need scarcely remind you, that in our country this
+individual has a kind of prerogative of detestation. All
+other ranks and conditions of men may find a sympathy,
+or at least a pity, somewhere, but for him there is none.
+No one is sufficiently debased to be his companion,—no
+one so low as to be his associate! Like a being of another
+sphere, he appears but at some frightful moments of life,
+and then only for a few seconds. For the rest he drags
+on existence unseen and unheard of, his very name a
+thing to tremble at. Yet this man, in the duties of his
+calling, has neither will nor choice. The stern agent of
+the law, he has but one course to follow; his path, a narrow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+one, has no turning to the right or to the left, and, save
+that his ministry is more proximate, is less accessory to
+the death of the criminal than he who signs the warrant
+for execution. In fact, he but answers the responses of
+the law, and in the loud amen of his calling, he only consummates
+its recorded assertion. How then can you
+reconcile yourself to the fact, that while you overwhelm
+the advocate who converts right into wrong and wrong
+into right, who shrouds the guilty man, and conceals the
+murderer, with honour, and praise, and rank, and riches,
+and who does this for a brief marked fifty pounds, yet
+have nothing but abhorrence and detestation for the impassive
+agent whose fee is but one. One can help what
+he does—the other cannot. One is an amateur—the other
+practices in spite of himself. One employs every energy
+of his mind and every faculty of his intellect—the other
+only devotes the ingenuity of his fingers. One strains
+every nerve to let loose a criminal upon the world—the
+other but closes the grave over guilt and crime!</p>
+
+<p>The king’s counsel is courted. His society sought for.
+He is held in high esteem, and while his present career is
+a brilliant one in the vista before him, his eyes are fixed
+upon the ermine. Jack Ketch, on the other hand, is
+shunned. His companionship avoided, and the only futurity
+he can look to, is a life of ignominy, and after it an
+unknown grave. Let him be a man of fascinating manners,
+highly gifted, and agreeable; let him be able to
+recount with the most melting pathos the anecdotes and
+incidents of his professional career, throwing light upon
+the history of his own period—such as none but himself
+could throw;—let him speak of the various characters
+that have <i>passed through his hands</i>, and so to say, “dropped<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+off before him”—yet the prejudice of the world is an
+obstacle not to be overcome; his calling is in disrepute,
+and no personal efforts of his own, no individual pre-eminence
+he may arrive at in his walk, will ever redeem it.
+Other men’s estimation increases as they distinguish themselves
+in life; each fresh display of their abilities, each
+new occasion for the exercise of their powers, is hailed
+with renewed favour and increasing flattery; not so he,—every
+time he appears on his peculiar stage, the disgust
+and detestation is but augmented,—<i>vires acquirit eundo</i>,—his
+countenance, as it becomes known, is a signal for the
+yelling execrations of a mob, and the very dexterity with
+which he performs his functions, is made matter of loathing
+and horror. Were his duties such as might be carried
+on in secret, he might do good by stealth and blush to find
+it fame; but no, his attributes demand the noon-day and
+the multitude—the tragedy he performs in, must be played
+before tens of thousands, by whom his every look is
+scowled at, his every gesture scrutinized. But to conclude,—this
+man is a necessity of our social system. We want
+him—we require him, and we can’t do without him.
+Much of the machinery of a trial might be dispensed with
+or retrenched. His office, however, has nothing superfluous.
+He is part of the machinery of our civilisation,
+and on what principle do we hunt him down like a wild
+beast to his lair?</p>
+
+<p>Men of rank and title are daily to be found in association,
+and even intimacy with black legs and bruisers,
+grooms, jockeys, and swindlers; yet we never heard that
+even the Whigs paid any attention to a hangman, nor is
+his name to be found even in the list of a Radical viceroy’s
+levee. However, we do not despair. Many prejudices<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+of this nature have already given way, and many absurd
+notions have been knocked on the head by a wag of great
+Daniel’s tail. And if our friend of Newgate, who is
+certainly anti-union in his functions, will only cry out for
+Repeal, the justice that is entreated for all Ireland may
+include him in the general distribution of its favours.
+Poor Theodore Hook used to say, that marriage was like
+hanging, there being only the difference of an aspirate
+between halter and altar.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo039.jpg" width="200" height="187" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_ENDURING_AFFECTION" id="A_NUT_FOR_ENDURING_AFFECTION"></a>A NUT FOR “ENDURING AFFECTION.”<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo040.jpg" width="200" height="217" alt="M" title="M" />
+</div>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em; padding-top: 0.5em"><span class="smcap">y</span> dear reader, if it does not
+insult your understanding by
+the self-evidence of the query,
+will you allow me to ask you
+a question—which of the two
+is more culpable, the man
+who, finding himself in a path
+of dereliction, arrests himself
+in his downward career, and,
+by a wonderful effort of self-restraint,
+stops dead short, and will suffer no inducement,
+no seduction, to lead him one step further; or he, who,
+floating down the stream of his own vicious passions,
+takes the flood-tide of iniquity, and, indifferent to every
+consequence, deaf to all remonstrance, seeks but the indulgence
+of his own egotistical pleasure with a stern determination
+to pursue it to the last? Of course you will
+say, that he who repents is better than he who persists;
+there is hope for the one, there is none for the other.
+Yet would you believe it, our common law asserts directly
+the reverse, pronouncing the culpability of the former as
+meriting heavy punishment, while the latter is not assailable
+even by implication.</p>
+
+<p>That I may make myself more clear, I shall give an
+instance of my meaning. Scarcely a week passes over
+without a trial for breach of promise of marriage. Sometimes
+the gay Lothario, to use the phrase of the newspapers,
+is nineteen, sometimes ninety. In either case<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+his conduct is a frightful tissue of perjured vows and
+base deception. His innumerable letters breathing all
+the tenderness of affectionate solicitude, intended but
+for the eyes of her he loves, are read in open court;
+attested copies are shown to the judge, or handed up to
+the jury-box. The course of his true love is traced from
+the bubbling fountain of first acquaintance to the broad
+river of his passionate devotion. Its rapids and its whirlpools,
+its placid lakes, its frothy torrents, its windings
+and its turnings, its ebbs and flows, are discussed, detailed,
+and descanted on with all the hacknied precision
+of the craft, as though his heart was a bill of exchange,
+or the current of his affection a disputed mill-stream.
+And what, after all, is this man’s crime? knowing
+that love is the great humanizer of our race, and feeling
+probably how much he stands in need of some civilizing
+process, he attaches himself to some lovely and attractive
+girl, who, in the reciprocity of her affection, is herself
+benefited in a degree equal to him. If the soft solicitude
+of the tender passion, if its ennobling self-respect, if its
+purifying influence on the heart, be good for the man, how
+much more so is it for the woman. If <i>he</i> be taught to
+feel how the refined enjoyments of an attractive girl’s
+mind are superior to the base and degenerate pursuits of
+every-day pleasure, how much more will <i>she</i> learn to
+prize and cultivate those gifts which form the charm of
+her nature, and breathe an incense of fascination around
+her steps. Here is a compact where both parties benefit,
+but that they may do so to the fullest extent, it is necessary
+that no self-interest, no mean prospect of individual
+advantage, should interfere: all must be pure and confiding.
+Love-making should not be like a game of <i>écarté</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+with a black leg, where you must not rise from the table,
+till you are ruined. No! it should rather resemble a
+party at picquet with your pretty cousin, when the
+moment either party is tired, you may throw down the
+cards and abandon the game.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo042.jpg" width="200" height="190" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>This, then, is the case of the man; he either discovers
+that on further acquaintance the qualities he believed in
+were not so palpable as he thought, or, if there, marred in
+their exercise by opposing and antagonist forces, of whose
+existence he knew not, he thinks he detects discrepancies
+of temperament, disparities of taste; he foresees that in
+the channel where he looked for deep water there are so
+many rocks, and shoals, and quicksands, that he fears the
+bark of conjugal happiness may be shipwrecked upon
+them; and, like a prudent mariner, he resolves to lighten
+the craft by “throwing over the lady.” Had this man
+married with all these impending suspicions on his mind,
+there is little doubt he would have made a most execrable
+husband; not to mention the danger that his wife should
+not be all amiable as she ought. He stops short—that is,
+he explains in one, perhaps in a series of letters, the
+reasons of his new course.
+He expects in return the
+admiration and esteem of
+her, for whose happiness he
+is legislating, as well as for
+his own; and oh, base ingratitude!
+he receives a letter
+from her attorney. The
+gentlemen of the long robe—newspaper
+again—are in
+ecstasies. Like devils on the arrival of a new soul, they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+brighten up, rub their hands, and congratulate each other
+on a glorious case. The damages are laid at five thousand
+pounds; and, as the lady is pretty, and can be seen from
+the jury-box, being fathers themselves, they award every
+sixpence of the money.</p>
+
+<p>I can picture to myself the feeling of the defendant at
+such a moment as this. As he stands alone in conscious
+honesty, ruminating on his fate—alone, I say, for, like
+Mahomet’s coffin, he has no resting-place; laughed at by
+the men, sneered at by the women, mulcted of perhaps
+half his fortune, merely because for the last three years
+of his life he represented himself in every amiable and
+attractive trait that can grace and adorn human nature.
+Who would wonder, if, like the man in the farce, he
+would register a vow never to do a good-natured thing
+again as long as he lives; or what respect can he have for
+a government or a country, where the church tells him to
+love his neighbour, and the chief justice makes him pay
+five thousand for his obedience.</p>
+
+<p>I now come to the other case, and I shall be very brief
+in my observations. I mean that of him, who equally
+fond of flirting as the former, has yet a lively fear of an
+action at law. Love-making with him is a necessity of
+his existence—he is an Irishman, perhaps, and it is as
+indispensable to his temperament as train-oil to a Russian.
+He likes sporting, he likes billiards, he likes his club, and
+he likes the ladies; but he has just as much intention of
+turning a huntsman at the one, or a marker at the other,
+as he has of matrimony. He knows life is a chequered
+table, and that there could be no game if all the squares
+were of one colour. He alternates, therefore, between
+love and sporting, between cards and courtship, and as the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+pursuit is a pleasant one, he resolves never to give up.
+He waxes old, therefore, with young habits, adapting his
+tastes to his time of life; he does not kneel so often at
+forty as he did at twenty, but he ogles the more, and is
+twice as good-tempered. Not perhaps as ready to fight
+for the lady, but ten times more disposed to flatter her.
+She may love him, or she may not; she may receive him
+as of old, or she may marry another. What matters it to
+him? All his care is that <i>he</i> shouldn’t change. All his
+anxiety is, to let the rupture, if there must be one, proceed
+from <i>her</i> side. He knows in his heart the penalty of
+breach of promise, but he also knows that the Chancellor
+can issue no injunction compelling a man to marry, and
+that in the courts of love the bills are payable at
+convenience.</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, are the two cases, which, in conformity with
+the world’s opinion, I have dignified with every possible
+term of horror and reproach. In the one, the measure of
+iniquity is but half filled; in the other, the cup is overflowing
+at the brim. For the lesser offence, the law
+awards damages and defamation: for the greater, society
+pronounces an eulogy upon the enduring fidelity of the
+man thus faithful to a first love.</p>
+
+<p>If a person about to buy a horse should, on trying him
+for an hour or two, discover that his temper did not suit
+him, or that his paces were not pleasant, and should in
+consequence restore him to the owner: and if another, on
+the same errand, should come day after day for weeks, or
+months, or even years, cantering him about over the
+pavement, and scouring over the whole country; his
+answer being, when asked if he intended to purchase,
+that he liked the horse exceedingly, but that he hadn’t<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+got a stable, or a saddle, or a curb-chain, or, in fact, some
+one or other of the little necessaries of horse gear; but that
+when he had, that was exactly the animal to suit him—he
+never was better carried in his life. Which of these
+two, do you esteem the more honest and more honourable?</p>
+
+<p>When you make up your mind, please also to make the
+application.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo045.jpg" width="200" height="184" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_THE_POLICE_AND_SIR_PETER" id="A_NUT_FOR_THE_POLICE_AND_SIR_PETER"></a>A NUT FOR THE POLICE AND SIR PETER.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo046.jpg" width="200" height="214" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em"><span class="smcap">When</span> the Belgians, by their most
+insane revolution, separated
+from the Dutch, they assumed
+for their national motto the
+phrase “<i>L’union fait la
+force</i>.” It is difficult to say
+whether their rebellion towards
+the sovereign, or this
+happy employment of a bull,
+it was, that so completely
+captivated our illustrious countryman, Dan, and excited
+so warmly his sympathies for that beer-drinking
+population. After all, why should one quarrel with
+them? Nations, like individuals, have their coats-of-arms,
+their heraldic insignia, their blazons, and their garters,
+frequently containing the sharpest sarcasm and most
+poignant satire upon those who bear them; and in this
+respect Belgium is only as ridiculous as the attorney who
+assumed for his motto “<i>Fiat justitia</i>.” Time was when
+the chivalrous line of our own garter, “<i>Honi soit qui mal
+y pense</i>,” brought with it, its bright associations of kingly
+courtesy and maiden bashfulness: but what sympathy
+can such a sentiment find in these degenerate days of
+railroads and rack-rents, canals, collieries, and chain-bridges?
+No, were we now to select an inscription,
+much rather would we take it from the prevailing passion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+of the age, and write beneath the arms of our land the
+emphatic phrase, “Push along, keep moving.”</p>
+
+<p>If Englishmen have failed to exhibit in machinery that
+triumphant El Dorado called perpetual motion, in revenge
+for their failure, they resolved to exemplify it in themselves.
+The whole nation, from John o’ Groat to Land’s
+End, from Westport to Dover, are playing cross-corners.
+Every body and every thing is on the move. A dwelling-house,
+like an umbrella, is only a thing used on an emergency;
+and the inhabitants of Great Britain pass their
+lives amid the smoke of steam-boats, or the din and thunder
+of the Grand-Junction. From the highest to the lowest,
+from the peer to the peasant, from the lord of the
+treasury to the Irish haymaker, it is one universal
+“<i>chassée croissée</i>.” Not only is this fashionable—for we
+are told by the newspapers how the Queen walks daily
+with Prince Albert on “the slopes”—but stranger still, locomotion
+is a law of the land, and standing still is a statutable
+offence. The hackney coachman, with wearied
+horses, blown and broken-winded, dares not breathe his
+jaded beasts by a momentary pull-up, for the implacable
+policeman has his eye upon him, and he must simulate a
+trot, though his pace but resemble a stage procession,
+where the legs are lifted without progressing, and some
+fifty Roman soldiers, in Wellington boots, are seen vainly
+endeavouring to push forward. The foot-passenger is no
+better off—tired perhaps with walking or attracted by the
+fascinations of a print-shop, he stops for an instant: alas,
+that luxury may cost him dear, and for the momentary
+pleasure he may yet have to perform a quick step on the
+mill. “Move on, sir. Keep moving, if you please,” sayeth
+the gentleman in blue; and there is something in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
+manner that won’t be denied. It is useless to explain
+that you have nowhere particular to go to, that you are
+an idler and a lounger. The confession is a fatal one;
+and however respectable your appearance, the idea of
+shoplifting is at once associated with your pursuits. Into
+what inconsistencies do we fall while multiplying our
+laws, for while we insist upon progression, we announce a
+penalty for vagrancy. The first principle of the British
+constitution, however, is “keep moving,” and “I would
+recommend you to go with the tide.”</p>
+
+<p>Thank heaven, I have reached to man’s estate—although
+with a heavy heart I acknowledge it is the only estate I
+have or ever shall attain to; for if I were a child I don’t
+think I should close my eyes at night from the fear of one
+frightful and terrific image. As it is, I am by no means
+over courageous, and it requires all the energy I can summon
+to combat my terrors. You ask me, in all likelihood,
+what this fearful thing can be? Is it the plague or the
+cholera? is it the dread of poverty and the new poor-law?
+is it that I may be impressed as a seaman, or mistaken for
+a Yankee? or is it some unknown and visionary terror,
+unseen, unheard of, but foreshadowed by a diseased
+imagination; No; nothing of the kind. It is a palpable,
+sentient, existent thing—neither more nor less than the
+worshipful Sir Peter Laurie.</p>
+
+<p>Every newspaper you take up announces that Sir Peter,
+with a hearty contempt for the brevity of the fifty folio
+volumes that contain the laws of our land, in the plenitude
+of his power and the fulness of his imagination, keeps
+adding to the number; so that if length of years be only
+accorded to that amiable individual in proportion to his
+merits, we shall find at length that not only will every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+contingency of our lives be provided for by the legislature,
+but that some standard for personal appearance will also
+be adopted, to which we must conform as rigidly as to
+our oath of allegiance.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo049.jpg" width="200" height="195" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>A few days ago a miserable creature, a tailor we believe,
+some decimal fraction of humanity, was brought up before
+Sir Peter on a trifling charge of some kind or other. I
+forget his offence, but whatever it was, the penalty annexed
+to it was but a fine of half-a-crown. The prisoner,
+however, who behaved with propriety and decorum, happened
+to have long black hair, which he wore somewhat
+“<i>en jeune France</i>” upon his
+neck and shoulders; his locks,
+if not ambrosial, were tastefully
+curled, and bespoke the
+fostering hand of care and attention.
+The Rhadamanthus
+of the police-office, however,
+liked them not: whether it
+was that he wore a Brutus
+himself, or that his learned
+cranium had resisted all the efficacy of Macassar, I cannot
+say; but certain it is, that the tailor’s ringlets gave him
+the greatest offence, and he apostrophised the wearer in
+the most solemn manner:</p>
+
+<p>“I have sat,” said he, “for ——,” as I quote from
+memory I sha’n’t say how many, “years upon the bench,
+and I never yet met an honest man with long hair. The
+worst feature in your case is your ringlets. There is something
+so disgusting to me in the odious and abominable
+vice you have indulged in, that I feel myself warranted
+in applying to you the heaviest penalty of the law.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>The miserable man, we are told, fell upon his knees,
+confessed his delinquency, and, being shorn of his locks
+in the presence of a crowded court, his fine was remitted,
+and he was liberated.</p>
+
+<p>Now, perhaps, you will suppose that all this is a mere
+matter of invention. On the faith of an honest man I
+assure you it is not. I have retrenched considerably the
+pathetic eloquence of the magistrate, and I have left altogether
+untouched the poor tailor’s struggle between pride
+and poverty—whether, on the one hand, to suffer the loss
+of his <i>half</i>-crown, or, on the other, to submit to the desecration
+of his <i>entire</i> head. We hear a great deal about a
+law for the rich, and another for the poor; and certainly
+in this case I am disposed to think the complaint might
+not seem without foundation. Suppose for a moment that
+the prisoner in this case had been the Honourable Augustus
+Somebody, who appeared before his worship fashionably
+attired, and with hair, beard, and moustache far surpassing
+in extravagance the poor tailor’s; should we then
+have heard this beautiful apostrophe to “the croppies,” this
+thundering denunciation of ringlets? I half fear not. And
+yet, under what pretext does a magistrate address to one
+man, the insulting language he would not dare apply to
+another? Or let us suppose the rule of justice to be
+inflexible, and look at the result. What havoc would Sir
+Peter make among the Guards? ay, even in the household
+of her Majesty how many delinquents would he find?
+what a scene would not the clubs present, on the police
+authorities dropping suddenly down amongst them with
+rule and line to determine the statute length of their
+whiskers, or the legal cut of their eye-brows? Happy
+King of Hanover, were you still amongst us, not even the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+Alliance would insure your mustachoes. As for Lord
+Ellenborough, it is now clear enough why he accepted the
+government of India, and made such haste to get out of
+the country.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo051.jpg" width="200" height="200" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>Now we will suppose that as Sir Peter Laurie’s antipathy
+is long hair, Sir Frederick Roe may also have his
+dislikes. It is but fair, you will allow, that the privileges
+of the bench should be equal. Well, for argument’s sake,
+I will imagine that Sir Frederick Roe has not the same
+horror of long hair as his learned brother, but has the
+most unconquerable aversion
+to long noses. What are we
+to do here? Heaven help
+half our acquaintance if this
+should strike him! What is
+to be done with Lord Allen
+if he beat a watchman! In
+what a position will he
+stand if he fracture a lamp?
+One’s hair may be cut to
+any length,—it may be even shaved clean off; but
+your nose.—And then a few weeks,—a few months at
+farthest, and your hair has grown again: but your nose,
+like your reputation, can only stand one assault. This is
+really a serious view of the subject; and it is a somewhat
+hard thing that the face you have shown to your acquaintances
+for years past, with pleasure to yourself and satisfaction
+to them, should be pronounced illegal, or curtailed
+in its proportions. They have a practice in banks if a
+forged note be presented for payment, to mark it in a
+peculiar manner before restoring it to the owner. This
+is technically called “raddling.” Something similar, I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
+suppose, will be adopted at the police-office, and in case of
+refusal to conform your features to the rule of Roe, you will
+be raddled by an officer appointed for the purpose, and sent
+forth upon the world the mere counterfeit of humanity.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo052.jpg" width="200" height="216" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>What a glorious thing it would be for this great country,
+if, having equalized throughout the kingdom the
+weights, the measures, the miles, and the currency, we
+should, at length attain to an equalization in appearance.
+The “facial angle” will then have its application in
+reality, and, instead of the tiresome detail of an Old
+Bailey trial, we shall hear a judge sum up on the externals
+of a prisoner, merely directing the attention of the
+jury to the atrocious irregularity of his teeth, or the assassin-like
+sharpness of his under-jaw. Honour to you, Sir
+Peter, should this great improvement grow out of your
+innovation; and proud may the country well be, that
+acknowledges you among its lawgivers!</p>
+
+
+<p>Let men no longer indulge in that absurd fiction
+which represents justice as blind. On the contrary,
+with an eye like Canova’s, and a glance quick, sharp,
+and penetrating as Flaxman’s, she traces every lineament
+and every feature; and
+Landseer will confess himself
+vanquished by Laurie. “The
+pictorial school of judicial
+investigation” will now become
+fashionable, and if
+Sir Peter’s practice be but
+transmitted, surgeons will not
+be the only professional men
+who will commence their
+education with the barbers.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_THE_BUDGET" id="A_NUT_FOR_THE_BUDGET"></a>A NUT FOR THE BUDGET.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo053.jpg" width="200" height="182" alt="I" title="I" />
+</div>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em"><span class="smcap">remember</span> once coming into
+Matlock, on the top of the
+“Peveril of the Peak,” when
+the coachman who drove
+our four spanking thorough-breds
+contrived, in something
+less than five minutes,
+to excite his whole team to
+the very top of their temper,
+lifting the wheelers almost
+off the ground with his heavy lash, and, thrashing his
+leaders till they smoked with passion, he brought them
+up to the inn door trembling with rage, and snorting with
+anger. What the devil is all this for, thought I. He
+guessed at once what was passing in my mind, and, with
+a knowing touch of his elbow, whispered:—</p>
+
+<p>“There’s a new coachman a-going to try ’em, and I’ll
+leave him a precious legacy.”</p>
+
+<p>This is precisely what the Whigs did in their surrender
+of power to the Tories. They, indeed, left them a
+precious legacy:—without an ally abroad, with discontent
+and starvation at home, distant and expensive wars,
+depressed trade, and bankrupt speculation, form some
+portion of the valuable heritage they bequeathed to their
+heirs in power. The most sanguine saw matter of difficulty,
+and the greater number of men were tempted to
+despair at the prospects of the Conservative party; for,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+however happily all other questions may have terminated,
+they still see, in the corn-law, a point whose subtle
+difficulty would seem inaccessible to legislation. Ah!
+could the two great parties, that divide the state, only lay
+their heads together for a short time, and carry out that
+beautiful principle that Scribe announces in one of his
+vaudevilles:—</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Que le blé se vend chèr, et le pain bon marché.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And why, after all, should not the collective wisdom
+of England be able to equal in ingenuity the conceptions
+of a farce-writer? Meanwhile, it is plain that political
+dissensions, and the rivalries of party, will prevent that
+mutual good understanding which might prove so beneficial
+to all. Reconciliations are but flimsy things at best; and
+whether the attempt be made to conciliate two rival
+churches, two opposite factions, or two separate interests
+of any kind whatever, it is usually a failure. It, therefore,
+becomes the duty of every good subject, and, <i>à fortiori</i>,
+of every good Conservative, to bestir himself at the
+present moment, and see what can be done to retrieve
+the sinking fortune of the state. Taxation, like flogging
+in the army, never comes on the right part of the back.
+Sometimes too high, sometimes too low. There is no
+knowing where to lay it on. Besides that, we have by
+this time got such a general raw all over us, there isn’t
+a square inch of sound flesh that presents itself for a new
+infliction. Since the first French Revolution, the ingenuity
+of man has been tortured on the subject of finance;
+and had Dionysius lived in our days, instead of offering a
+bounty for the discovery of a new pleasure, he would
+have proposed a reward to the man who devised a new tax.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Without entering at any length into this subject, the
+consideration of which would lead me into all the details
+of our every-day habits, I pass on at once to the question
+which has induced this inquiry, while I proclaim to the
+world loudly, fearlessly, and resolutely, “Eureka!”—I’ve
+found it. Yes, my fellow-countrymen, I have found
+a remedy to supply the deficient income of the nation, not
+only without imposing a new tax, or inflicting a new
+burden upon the suffering community, but also without
+injuring vested rights, or thwarting the activity of commercial
+enterprise. I neither mulct cotton or corn; I
+meddle not with parson or publican, nor do I make any
+portion of the state, by its own privations, support the
+well-being of the rest. On the contrary, the only individual
+concerned in my plan, will not be alone benefited
+in a pecuniary point of view, but the best feelings of the
+heart will be cultivated and strengthened, and the love
+of home, so characteristically English, fostered in their
+bosoms. I could almost grow eloquent upon the benefits
+of my discovery; but I fear, that were I to give way to
+this impulse, I should become so fascinated with myself,
+I could scarcely turn to the less seductive path of simple
+explanation. Therefore, ere it be too late, let me open
+my mind and unfold my system:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“What great effects from little causes spring.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Any one who ever heard of Sir Isaac Newton and his
+apple will acknowledge this, and something of the same
+kind led me to the very remarkable fact I am about to
+speak of.</p>
+
+<p>One of the Bonaparte family—as well as I remember,
+Jerome—was one night playing whist at the same table<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+with Talleyrand, and having dropped a crown piece upon
+the floor, he interrupted the game, and deranged the
+whole party to search for his money. Not a little
+provoked by a meanness which he saw excited the ridicule
+of many persons about, Talleyrand deliberately folded up
+a bank-note which lay before him, and, lighting it at the
+candle, begged, with much courtesy, that he might be
+permitted to assist in the search. This story, which is
+authentic, would seem an admirable parody on a portion
+of our criminal law. A poor man robs the community, or
+some member of it (for that comes to the same thing) to
+the amount of one penny. He is arrested by a policeman,
+whose salary is perhaps half-a-crown a-day, and conveyed
+to a police-office, that cost at least five hundred pounds
+to build it. Here are found three or four more officials,
+all salaried—all fed, and clothed by the State. In due
+course of time he is brought up before a magistrate, also
+well paid, by whom the affair is investigated, and by him
+he is afterwards transmitted to the sessions, where a new
+army of stipendiaries all await him. But his journey is
+not ended. Convicted of his offence, he is sentenced to
+seven years’ transportation to one of the most remote
+quarters of the globe. To convey him thither the government
+have provided a ship and a crew, a supercargo and
+a surgeon; and, to sum up in one word, before he has
+commenced the expiation of his crime, that penny has
+cost the country something about three hundred pounds.
+Is not this, I ask you, very like Talleyrand and the
+Prince?—the only difference being, that we perform in
+sober earnest, what he merely exhibited in sarcasm.</p>
+
+<p>Now, my plan is, and I prefer to develop it in a single
+word, instead of weakening its force by circumlocution.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+In lieu of letting a poor man be reduced to his theft of
+one penny—give him two pence. <i>He</i> will be a gainer by
+double the amount—not to speak of the inappreciable
+value of his honesty—and <i>you</i> the richer by 71,998 pence,
+under your present system expended upon policemen,
+magistrates, judges, gaolers, turnkeys, and transports.
+Examine for a moment the benefits of this system. Look
+at the incalculable advantages it presents—the enormous
+revenue, the pecuniary profit, and the patriotism, all preserved
+to the State, not to mention the additional pleasure
+of disseminating happiness while you transport men’s
+hearts, not their bodies.</p>
+
+<p>Here is a plan based upon the soundest philanthropy,
+the most rigid economy, and the strictest common sense.
+Instead of training up a race of men in some distant
+quarter of the globe, who may yet turn your bitterest
+enemies, you will preserve to the country so many true-born
+Britons, bound to you by a debt of gratitude. Upon
+what ground—on what pretext—can you oppose the
+system? Do you openly confess that you prefer vice to
+poverty, and punishment to prevention? Or is it your
+pleasure to manufacture roguery for exportation, as the
+French do politeness, and the Irish linen?</p>
+
+<p>I offer the suggestion generously, freely, and spontaneously.
+If the heads of the government choose to
+profit by the hint, I only ask in return, that when the
+Chancellor of the Exchequer announces in his place the
+immense reduction of expenditure, that he will also give
+notice of a motion for a bill to reward me by a government
+appointment. I am not particular as to where, or what:
+I only bargain against being Secretary for Ireland, or Chief
+Justice at Cape Coast Castle.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_REPEAL" id="A_NUT_FOR_REPEAL"></a>A NUT FOR REPEAL.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">When</span> the cholera first broke out in France, a worthy
+prefect in a district of the south published an edict to the
+people, recommending them by all means to eat well-cooked
+and nutritious food, and drink nothing but <i>vin de
+Bourdeaux</i>, Anglice, claret. The advice was excellent,
+and I take it upon me to say, would have found very few
+opponents in fact, as it certainly did in principle. When
+the world, however, began to consider that <i>filets de bœuf
+à la Marengo</i>, and “<i>dindes truffées</i>,” washed down with
+<i>Chateau Lafitte</i> or <i>Larose</i>, were not exactly within the
+reach of every class of the community, they deemed the
+prefect’s counsel more humane than practicable, and as
+they do at every thing in France when the tide of public
+opinion changes, they laughed at him heartily, and wrote
+pasquinades upon his folly. At the same time the ridicule
+was unjust, the advice was good, sound, and based on true
+principles, the only mistake was, the difficulty of its practice.
+Had he recommended as an antiseptic to disease,
+that the people should play short whist, wear red night-caps,
+or pelt stones at each other, there might have been
+good ground for the disfavour he fell into; such acts,
+however practicable and easy of execution, having manifestly
+no tendency to avert the cholera. Now this is
+precisely the state of matters in Ireland at this moment:
+distress prevails more or less in every province and in
+every county. The people want employment, and they
+want food. Had you recommended them to eat strawberries<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+and cream in the morning, to drink lemonade
+during the day, take a little chicken salad for dinner,
+with a light bread pudding and a glass of negus afterwards,
+avoiding all stimulant and exciting food—for your
+Irishman is a feverish subject—you might be laughed at
+perhaps for your dietary, but certes it would bear, and
+bear strongly too, upon the case in question. But what
+do you do in reality? The local papers teem with cases
+of distress: families are starving; the poor, unhoused and
+unfed, are seen upon the road sides exposed to every
+vicissitude of the season, surrounded by children who cry
+in vain for bread. What, I ask, is the measure of relief
+you propose? not a public subscription; no general outburst
+of national charity—no public work upon a grand
+scale to give employment to the idle, food to the hungry,
+health to the sick, and hope to all. None of these. Your
+panacea is the Repeal of the Union; you purpose to substitute
+for those amiable jobbers in College-green, who call
+themselves Directors of the Bank of Ireland, another set
+of jobbers infinitely more pernicious and really dishonest,
+who will call themselves Directors of Ireland itself; you
+talk of the advantage to the country, and particularly of
+the immense benefits that must accrue to the capital.
+Let us examine them a little.</p>
+
+<p>Dublin, you say, will be a flourishing city, inhabited by
+lords and ladies: wealth, rank, and influence will dwell
+in its houses and parade its streets. The glare of lamps,
+the crash of carriages, all the pride, pomp, and circumstances
+of fashion, will flow back upon the long-deserted
+land, and Paris and London will find a rival to compete
+with them, in this small city of the west. Would that
+this were so; would that it could be! This, however, is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
+the extent of what you promise yourselves: you may
+ring the changes as you please, but the “refrain” of your
+song is, that Dublin shall “have its own again.” Well, for
+argument’s sake, I say, be it so. The now silenced squares
+shall wake to the echoes of thundering equipages, peers
+and prelates shall again inhabit the dwellings long since
+the residence of hotel-keepers, or still worse, those little
+democracies of social life, called boarding-houses. Your
+theatre shall be crowded, your shops frequented, and every
+advantage of wealth diffused through all the channels of
+society, shall be yours. As far as Dublin is concerned, I
+say—for, mark me, I keep you to this original point, in
+the land of your promise you have strictly limited the
+diffusion of your blessings by the boundary of the Circular
+road; even the people at Ringsend and Ballybough
+bridge are not to be included, unless a special bill be
+brought in for their benefit. Still the picture is a brilliant
+one: it would be a fine thing to see all the pomp and
+ceremony of proud popery walk the land at noon-day,
+with its saints in gold, and its relics in silver; for of
+course this is included in the plan. Prosperous Ireland
+must be Catholic Ireland, and even Spain and Belgium
+will hide their diminished heads when compared with the
+gorgeous homage rendered to popery at home. The “gentlemen
+of Liffey-street chapel,” far better-looking fellows
+than any foreign priest you’ll meet with from Trolhatten
+to Tivoli, will walk about <i>in pontificalibus</i>; and all the
+exciting enthusiasm that Romanism so artfully diffuses
+through every feature of life, will introduce itself among
+a people who have all the warm temper and hot blood of
+the south, with the stern determination and headlong
+impulse of the north of Europe. By all of which I mean<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+to say, that in points of strong popery, Dublin will beat
+the world, and that before a year of such prosperity
+be past, she will have the finest altars, the fattest priests,
+and the longest catalogue of miracles in Europe. Lord
+Shrewsbury need not then go to the Tyrol for an “estatica,”
+he’ll find one nearer home worth twice the money. The
+shin-bone of St. Januarius, that jumped out of a wooden
+box in a hackney coach, because a gentleman swore, will
+be nothing to the scenes we’ll witness; and if St. Patrick
+should sport his tibia at an evening party of Daniel O’Connell’s,
+it would not in the least surprise me. These are
+great blessings, and I am fully sensible of them. Now
+let me pass on to another, which perhaps I have kept last
+as it is the chief of all, or as the late Lord Castlereagh
+would have said, the “fundamental feature upon which
+my argument hinges.”</p>
+
+<p>A very common topic of Irish eloquence is, to lament
+over the enormous exportation of cattle, fowl, and fish,
+that continually goes forward from Ireland into England.
+I acknowledge the justness of the complaint—I see its
+force, and appreciate its value. It is exactly as though a
+grocer should exclaim against his misery, in being compelled
+to part with his high-flavoured bohea, his sparkling
+lump sugar, and his Smyrna figs, or our publisher his
+books, for the base lucre of gain. It is humiliating, I confess;
+and I can well see how a warm-hearted and intelligent
+creature, who feels the hardship of an export trade
+in matters of food, must suffer when the principle is
+extended to a matter of genius; for, not content with our
+mutton from Meath, our salmon from Limerick, and our
+chickens from Carlow; but the Saxon must even be
+gratified with the soul-stirring eloquence of the Great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+Liberator himself, with only the trouble of going near
+St. Stephen’s to hear him. I say near—for among the
+other tyrannies of the land, he is compelled to shout loud
+enough to be heard in all the adjacent streets. Now this
+is too bad. Take our prog—take even our poteen, if you
+will; but leave us our Penates; this theft, which embodies
+the antithesis of Shakspeare, is not only “trash,”
+but “naught enriches them, and makes us poor indeed.”</p>
+
+<p>Repeal the union, and you remedy this. You’ll have
+him at home with you—not masquerading about in the
+disguise of a gentleman—not restricted by the habits of
+cultivated and civilised life—not tamed down into the
+semblance and mockery of good conduct—no longer the
+chained-up animal of the menagerie, but the roaring,
+rampant lion, roaming at large in his native forest—not
+performing antics before some political Van Amburgh—not
+opening his huge jaws, as though he would devour the
+Whigs, and shutting them again at the command of his
+keeper—but howling in all the freedom of his passion,
+and lashing his brawny sides with his vigorous “tail.”
+Haydn, the composer, had an enormous appetite; to
+gratify which, when dining at a tavern, he ordered a
+dinner for three. The waiter delayed in serving, as he
+said the company hadn’t yet arrived, but Haydn told
+him to bring it up at once, remarking, as he patted
+complacently his paunch, “I am de compagnie myself.”
+Such will you have the case in your domestic parliament—Dan
+will be the company himself. No longer fighting
+in the ranks of opposition, or among the supporters of a
+government—no more the mere character of a piece, he
+will then be the Jack Johnson of the political world,
+taking the money at the door—in which he has had some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+practice already—he will speak the prologue, lead the
+orchestra, prompt the performers, and announce a repetition
+of the farce every night of the week for his own benefit.
+Only think what he is in England with his “forty thieves”
+at his back, and imagine what he will be in Ireland without
+one honest man to oppose him. He will indeed then
+be well worth seeing, and if Ireland had no other attraction,
+foreigners might visit us for a look at the Liberator.</p>
+
+<p>He is a droll fellow, is Dan, and there is a strong dash
+of native humour in his notion of repeal. What strange
+scenes, to be sure, it would conjure up. Only think for
+a moment of the absentee lord, an exiled peer, coming
+back to Dublin after an absence of half his lifetime, vainly
+endeavouring to seem pleased with his condition, and
+appear happy with his home. Like an insolvent debtor
+affecting to joke with the jailer, watch him simulating so
+much as he can of habits he has long forgotten, while his
+ignorance of his country is such, that he cannot direct
+his coachman to a street in the capital. What a ludicrous
+view of life would this open to our view! While all
+these men, who have been satisfied hitherto to send their
+sympathies from Switzerland, and their best wishes for
+Ireland by an ambassador’s bag, should now come back to
+writhe beneath the scourge of a demagogue, and the
+tyranny of a man who wields irresponsible power.</p>
+
+<p>All Ireland would present the features of a general
+election—every one would be fascinating, courteous,
+affable, and dishonest. The unpopular debater in England
+might have his windows smashed. With us, it would be
+his neck would be broken. The excitement of the people
+will be felt within the Parliament; and then, fostered by
+all the rancour of party hate, will be returned to them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+with interest. The measure discussed out of doors by the
+Liberator, will find no one hardy enough to oppose it
+within the House, and the opinions of the Corn Exchange
+will be the programme for a committee. A notice of a
+motion will issue from Merrion-square, and not from a
+seat in Parliament; and wherever he moves through the
+country, great Daniel, like a snail, will carry “his house”
+on his back. “Rob me the Exchequer, Hal!” will be the
+cry of the priesthood, and no men are better deserving of
+their hire; and thus, wielding every implement of power,
+if Ireland be not happy, he can only have himself to
+blame for it.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo064.jpg" width="200" height="210" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_NATIONAL_PRIDE" id="A_NUT_FOR_NATIONAL_PRIDE"></a>A NUT FOR NATIONAL PRIDE.</h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">National</span> Pride must be a strong feeling, and one
+of the very few sentiments which are not exhausted by
+the drain upon them; and it is a strange thing, how
+the very fact upon which one man plumes himself, another
+would regard as a terrible reproach. A thorough John<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+Bull, as he would call himself, thinks he has summed up,
+in those few emphatic words, a brief description of all that
+is excellent in humanity. And as he throws out his
+chest, and sticks his hand with energy in his breeches
+pocket, seems to say, “I am not one of your frog-eating
+fellows, half-monkey, half-tiger, but a true Briton.” The
+Frenchman, as he proclaims his nation, saying, “<i>Je suis
+F-r-r-r-rançais</i>,” would indicate that he is a very
+different order of being, from his blunt untutored neighbour,
+“<i>outre mer</i>;” and so on to the end of the chapter.
+Germans, Italians, and Spaniards, and even Americans,
+think there is some magic in the name of their fatherland—some
+inherent nobility in the soil: and it was only
+lately I read in a French paper an eloquent appeal from a
+general to his soldiers, which concluded by his telling them,
+to remember, that they were “Mexicans.” I devoutly
+trust that they understood the meaning of his phrase, and
+were able, without difficulty, to call to mind the bright
+prerogative alluded to; for upon my conscience, as an
+honest man, it would puzzle me sorely to say what
+constitutes a Mexican.</p>
+
+<p>But the absurdity goes further still: for, not satisfied
+with the bounties of Providence in making us what we
+are, we must indulge a rancorous disposition towards our
+neighbours for their less-favoured destiny. “He behaved
+like a Turk,” is an every-day phrase to indicate a full
+measure of moral baseness and turpidity. A Frenchman’s
+abuse can go no further than calling a man a Chinese, and
+when he says, “<i>tu es un Pekin</i>,” a duel is generally the
+consequence. I doubt not that the Turks and the Chinese
+make use of retributive justice, and treat us no better
+than we behave to them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Civilisation would seem rather to have fostered than
+opposed this prejudice. In the feudal ages, the strength
+of a brawny right arm, the strong hand that could wield a
+mace, the firm seat in a saddle, were the qualities most in
+request; and were physical strength more estimated than
+the gifts of a higher order, the fine distinctions of national
+character either did not exist, or were not attended to.
+Now, however, the tournament is not held on a cloth of
+gold, but on a broad sheet of paper; the arms are not the
+lance and the dagger, but the printing-press. No longer
+a herald in all the splendour of his tabard proclaims the
+lists, but a fashionable publisher, through the medium of
+the morning papers, whose cry for largess is to the full as
+loud. The result is, nations are better known to each
+other, and, by the unhappy law of humanity, are consequently
+less esteemed. What signifies the dislike our
+ancestors bore the French at Cressy or Agincourt compared
+to the feeling we entertain for them after nigh
+thirty years of peace? Then, indeed, it was the strong
+rivalry between two manly natures: now, the accumulated
+hate of ages is sharpened and embittered by a thousand
+petty jealousies that have their origin in politics, military
+glory, society, or literature; and we detest each other like
+quarterly reviewers. The Frenchman visits England as
+a Whig commissioner would a Tory institution—only
+anxious to discover abuses and defects—with an obliquity
+of vision that sees everything distorted, or a fecundity of
+imagination that can conjure up the ills he seeks for. He
+finds us rude, inhospitable, and illiterate; our habits are
+vulgar, our tastes depraved; our House of Commons is a
+riotous mob of under-bred debaters; our army an aristocratic
+<i>lounge</i>, where merit has no chance against money;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+and our literature—God wot!—a plagiarism from the
+French. The Englishman is nearly as complimentary.
+The coarseness of French habits is to him a theme of
+eternal reprobation; the insolence of the men, the indelicacy
+of the women, the immorality of all, overwhelm
+him with shame and disgust: the Chamber of Deputies he
+despises, as a contemptible parody on a representative
+body, and a speech from the tribune a most absurd
+substitute for the freedom of unpremeditated eloquence:
+the army he discovers to be officered by men, to whom the
+new police are accomplished gentlemen; and, in fact, he
+sums up by thinking that if we had no other competitors
+in the race of civilisation than the French, our supremacy
+on land, is to the full as safe, as our sovereignty over the
+ocean. Here lie two countries, separated by a slip of sea
+not much broader than an American river, who have gone
+on for ages repeating these and similar puerilities, without
+the most remote prospect of mutual explanation and
+mutual good-will.</p>
+
+<p>“I hate prejudice, I hate the French,” said poor Charles
+Matthews, in one of his inimitable representations, and
+really the expression was no bad summary of an Englishman’s
+faith. On the other hand, to hate and detest the
+English is the <i>sine quâ non</i> of French nationality, and to
+concede to them any rank in literature, morals, or military
+greatness, is to derogate from the claims of his own
+country. Now the question is, are the reproaches on
+either side absolutely just? They are not. Secondly, if
+they be unfair, how comes it that two people pre-eminently
+gifted with intelligence and information, should not have
+come to a better understanding, and that many a long
+year ago? Simply from this plain fact, that the opinions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+of the press have weighed against those of individuals, and
+that the published satires on both sides have had a greater
+currency and a greater credit than the calm judgment of
+the few. The leading journals in Paris and in London
+have pelted each other mercilessly for many a year. One
+might forgive this, were the attacks suggested by such
+topics as stimulate and strengthen national feeling; but
+no, the controversy extends to every thing, and, worse
+than all, is carried on with more bitterness of spirit, than
+depth of information. The reviewer “par excellence”
+of our own country makes a yearly incursion into French
+literature, as an Indian would do into his hunting-ground.
+Resolved to carry death and carnage on every side, he
+arms himself for the chase, and whets his appetite for
+slaughter by the last “<i>bonne bouche</i>” of the day. We
+then have some half introductory pages of eloquent
+exordium on the evil tendency of French literature, and
+the contamination of those unsettled opinions in politics,
+religion, and morals, so copiously spread through the
+pages of every French writer. The revolution of 1797
+is adduced for the hundredth time as the origin of these
+evils; and all the crime and bloodshed of that frightful
+period is denounced as but the first step of the iniquity
+which has reached its pinnacle, in the novels of Paul de
+Kock. To believe the reviewer, French literature consists
+in the productions of this writer, the works of George
+Sand, Balzac, Frédéric Soulié, and a few others of equal
+note and mark. According to him, intrigue, seduction,
+and adultery, are the staple of French romance: the whole
+interest of every novel turning on the undiscovered turpitude
+of domestic life; and the great rivalry between
+writers, being, to try which can invent a new future of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+depravity and a new fashion of sin. Were this true, it
+were indeed a sad picture of national degradation; was it
+the fact that such books, and such there are in abundance,
+composed the light literature of the day—were to be
+found in every drawing-room—to be seen in every hand—to
+be read with interest and discussed with eagerness—to
+have that wide-spread circulation which must ever
+carry with it a strong influence upon the habits of those
+who read. Were all this so, I say it would be, indeed, a
+deplorable evidence of the low standard of civilisation
+among the French. What is the fact, however? Simply
+that these books have but a limited circulation, and that,
+only among an inferior class of readers. The <i>modiste</i> and
+the <i>grisette</i> are, doubtless, well read in the mysteries of
+Paul de Kock and Madame du Deffant; but in the cultivated
+classes of the capital, such books have no more currency
+than the scandalous memoirs of our own country
+have in the drawing-rooms of Grosvenor-square or St.
+James’s. Balzac has, it is true, a wide-spread reputation;
+but many of his books are no less marked by a powerful
+interest than a touching appeal to the fine feelings of our
+nature. Alfred de Vigny, Eugéne Sue, Victor Hugo, Leon
+Gozlan, Paul de Muset, Alexandre Dumas, and a host of
+others, are all popular, and, with the exception of a few
+works, unexceptionable on every ground of morality; but
+these, after all, are but the skirmishers before the army.
+What shall we say of Guizot, Thiers, Augustin Thierry,
+Toqueville, Mignet, and many more, whose contributions
+to history have formed an era in the literature of the age?</p>
+
+<p>The strictures of the reviewers are not very unlike the
+opinions of the French prisoner, who maintained that in
+England every one eat with his knife, and the ladies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+drank gin, which important and veracious facts he himself
+ascertained, while residing in that fashionable quarter of
+the town called St. Martin’s-lane. This sweeping mode of
+argument, <i>à particulari</i>, is fatal when applied to nations.
+Even the Americans have suffered in the hands of Mrs.
+Trollope and others; and gin twist, bowie knives, tobacco
+chewing, and many similarly amiable habits, are not universal.
+Once for all, then, be it known, there is no more
+fallacious way of forming an opinion regarding France
+and Frenchmen, than through the pages of our periodical
+press, except by a <i>short</i> residence in Paris—I say short,
+for if a little learning be a dangerous thing, a little travelling
+is more so; and it requires long experience of the
+world, and daily habit of observation, to enable any man
+to detect in the ordinary routine of life the finer and more
+distinctive traits that have escaped his neighbour; besides,
+however palpable and self-evident the proposition,
+it demands both tact and time to see that no general standard
+of taste can be erected for all nations, and, that to
+judge of others by your own prejudices and habits, is
+both unfair and absurd. To give an instance. No English
+traveller has commented on the French Chamber of
+Deputies, without expending much eloquence and a great
+deal of honest indignation on the practice of speaking
+from a tribune, written orations being in their opinion a
+ludicrous travestie on the freedom of debate. Now what
+is the fact; in the whole French Chamber there are not
+ten, there are not five men who could address the house
+extempore; not from any deficiency of ability—not from
+any want of information, logical force, and fluency—the
+names of Thiers, Guizot, Lamartine, Dupin, Arago,
+&amp;c. &amp;c. are quite sufficient to demonstrate this—but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+simply from the intricacy and difficulty of the French language.
+A worthy alderman gets up, as the phrase is, and
+addresses a speech of some three quarters of an hour to
+the collective wisdom of the livery; and although he
+may be frequently interrupted by thunders of applause,
+he is never checked for any solecisms in his grammar: he
+may drive a coach and six through Lindley Murray; he
+may inflict heaven knows how many fractures on poor
+Priscian’s head, yet to criticise him on so mean a score
+as that of mere diction, would not be thought of for a
+moment. Not so in France: the language is one of equivoque
+and subtlety; the misplacement of a particle, the
+change of a gender, the employment of any phrase but
+the exact one, might be at any moment fatal to the sense
+of the speaker, and would inevitably be so to his success.
+It was not very long since, that a worthy deputy interrupted
+M. Thiers by alleging the non-sequitur of some
+assertion, “<i>Vous n’est pas consequent</i>,” cried the indignant
+member, using a phrase not only a vulgarism in itself,
+but inapplicable at the time. A roar of laughter followed
+his interruption. In all the journals of the next day, he
+was styled the deputy <i>consequent</i>; and when he returned
+to his constituency the ridicule attached to his blunder
+still traced his steps, and finally lost him his election.</p>
+
+<p>“Thank God I am a Briton,” said Nelson; a phrase,
+doubtless, many more of us will re-echo with equal energy;
+but while we are expressing our gratitude let our thankfulness
+extend to this gratifying fact, that the liberty of
+our laws is even surpassed by the licence of our language.
+No obscure recess of our tongue is so deep that we cannot
+by <i>habeas corpus</i> right bring up a long-forgotten phrase,
+and provided the speaker have a meaning and be able to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+convey it to the minds of his hearers, we are seldom disposed
+to be critical on the manner, if the matter be there.
+Besides this, there are styles of eloquence so imbued with
+the spirit of certain eras in French history, that the discussion
+of any subject of ancient or modern days, will
+always have its own peculiar character of diction. Thus,
+there is the rounded period and flowing sententiousness
+of Louis XIV., the more polished but less forcible phraseology
+of the regency itself, succeeded by the epigrammatic
+taste and pointed brevity introduced by Voltaire.
+The empire left its impress on the language, and all the
+literature of the period wore the <i>esprit soldatesque</i>; and
+so on down to the very days of the barricades, each changing
+phase of political life had its appropriate expression.
+To assume these with effect, was not of course the gift of
+every man, and yet to have erred in their adoption, would
+have been palpable to all; here then is one important
+difference between us, and on this subject alone I might
+cite at least twenty more. The excitable Frenchman
+scarcely uses any action while speaking, and that, of the
+most simple and subdued kind. The phlegmatic Englishman
+stamps and gesticulates with all the energy of a madman.
+We esteem humour; they prefer wit: we like the
+long consecutive chain of proof that leads us step by step
+to inevitable conviction; they like better some brief but
+happy illustration that, dispensing with the tedium of
+argument, presents a question at one glance before them.
+They have that general knowledge of their country and
+its changes, that an illustration from the past is ever an
+effective weapon of the orator; while with us the force
+would be entirely lost from the necessity of recounting
+the incident to which reference was made.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_DIPLOMATISTS" id="A_NUT_FOR_DIPLOMATISTS"></a>A NUT FOR DIPLOMATISTS.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Man</span> is the most imitative of all animals: nothing
+can surpass the facility he possesses of simulating his
+neighbour; and I question much if the press, in all the
+plentitude of its power, has done as much for the spread of
+good or evil, as the spirit of mimicry so inherent in mankind.
+The habits of high life are transmitted through
+every grade of society: and the cheesemonger keeps his
+hunters, and damns his valet, like my lord; while his
+wife rolls in her equipage, and affects the graces of my
+lady. So long as wealth is present, the assumption of the
+tastes and habitudes of a different class, can merely be
+looked upon as one of those outbreaks of vanity in which
+rich but vulgar people have a right, if they like, to
+indulge. Why shouldn’t they have a villa at Twickenham—why
+not a box at the opera—a white bait dinner at
+Blackwall—a yacht at Southampton? They have the
+money to indulge their caprice, and it is no one’s affair
+but their own. They make themselves ridiculous, it is
+true; but the pleasure they experience counterbalances
+the ridicule, and they are the best judges on which side
+lies the profit. Wealth is power: and although the one
+may be squandered, and the other abused, yet in their
+very profusion, there is something that demands a kind
+of reverence from the world; and we have only to look to
+France to see, that when once you abolish an hereditary
+<i>noblesse</i>, your banker is then your great man.</p>
+
+<p>We may smile, if we please, at the absurd pretensions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+of the wealthy alderman and his lady, whose pompous
+mansion and splendid equipage affect a princely grandeur;
+yet, after all, the knowledge that he is worth half a
+million of money, that his name alone can raise the
+credit of a new colony, or call into existence the dormant
+energy of a new region of the globe, will always prevent
+our sarcasm degenerating into contempt. Not so, however,
+when poverty unites itself to these aspirings, you
+feel in a moment that the poor man has nothing to do
+with such vanities; his poverty is a scanty garment, that,
+dispose it as he will, he can never make it hang like a
+toga; and we have no compassion for him, who, while
+hunger gnaws his vitals, affects a sway and dominion his
+state has denied him. Such a line of conduct will often
+be offensive—it will always be absurd—and the only relief
+presented by its display, is in the ludicrous exhibition of
+trick and stratagem by which it is supported. Jeremy
+Diddler, after all, is an amusing person; but the greater
+part of the pleasure he affords us is derived from the fact,
+that, cunning as he is in all his efforts to deceive us, we
+are still more so, for we have found him out.</p>
+
+<p>Were I to characterise the leading feature of the age, I
+should certainly say it is this pretension. Like the monkeys
+at Exeter ’Change, who could never bear to eat out
+of their own dish, but must stretch their paws into that
+of their neighbour, so every man now-a-days wishes to be in
+that place most unsuitable to him by all his tastes, habits,
+and associations, and where once having attained to, his
+life is one of misery and constraint. The hypocrisy of
+simulating manners he is not used to, is not more subversive
+of his self-respect, than his imitation is poor, vulgar,
+and unmeaning.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Curran said that a corporation was, a “thing that had
+neither a body to be kicked, nor a soul to be damned.”
+And, verily, I begin to think that masses of men are even
+more contemptible than individuals. A nation is a great
+household; and if it have not all the <i>prestige</i> of rank,
+wealth, and power, it is a poor and miserable thing.
+England and France, Germany and Russia, are the great
+of the earth; and we look up to them in the political
+world, as in society we do to those whose rank and
+station are the guarantees of their power. Many other
+countries of Europe have also their claims upon us, but
+still smaller in degree. Italy, with all its association of
+classical elegance—Spain, whose history shines with the
+solemn splendour of an illuminated missal, where gold and
+purple are seen blending their hues, scarce dimmed by
+time; but what shall we say of those newly-created
+powers, which springing up like mushroom families, give
+themselves all the airs of true nobility, and endeavour by
+a strange mockery of institutions and customs of their
+greater neighbours, to appear of weight and consequence
+before the world. Look, for instance, to Belgium the
+<i>bourgeois gentilhomme</i> of politics, which, having retired
+from its partnership with Holland, sets up for a gentleman
+on its private means. What can be more ludicrous than
+its attempts at high-life, its senate, its ministry, its diplomacy;
+for strange enough the ridicule of the individual
+can be traced extending to a nation, and when your city
+lady launched into the world, displays upon her mantelpiece
+the visiting cards of her high neighbours, so the first
+act of a new people is, to open a visiting acquaintance
+with their rich neighbours, and for this purpose the first
+thing they do is to establish a corps of diplomacy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now your city knight may have a fat and rosy coachman,
+he may have a tall and portly footman, a grave and
+a respectable butler; but whatever his wealth, whatever
+his pretension, there is one functionary of a great household
+he can never attain to—he can never have a groom
+of the chambers. This, like the “chasseur” abroad, is the
+appendage of but one class, by constant association with
+whom its habits are acquired, its tastes engendered, and
+it would be equally absurd to see the tall Hungarian in
+all the glitter of his hussar costume, behind the caleche of
+a pastrycook, as to hear the low-voiced and courteous
+minion of Devonshire House announce the uncouth, unsyllabled
+names, that come east of St. Dunstan’s.</p>
+
+<p>So, in the same way, your new nations may get up a
+king and a court, a senate, an army, and a ministry, but
+let them not meddle with diplomacy—the moment they
+do this they burn their fingers: your diplomate is like
+your chasseur, and your groom of the chambers; if he be
+not well done, he is a miserable failure. The world has
+so many types to refer to on this head, there can be no
+mistake. Talleyrand, Nesselrode, Metternich, Lord
+Whitworth, and several more, have too long given the
+tone to this peculiar walk to admit of any error concerning
+it; however, your little folk will not be denied the
+pleasures of their great acquaintance. They will have
+their diplomacy, and they will be laughed at: look at
+the Yankees. There is not a country in Europe, there
+is not a state however small, there is not a Coburgism
+with three thousand inhabitants and three companies of
+soldiers, where <i>they</i> haven’t a minister resident with
+plenipotentiary powers extending to every relation political
+and commercial, although all the while the Yankees<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+would be sorely puzzled to point out on the map the
+<i>locale</i> of their illustrious ally, and the Germans no less so
+to find out a reason for their embassy. Happily on this
+score, the very bone and marrow of diplomacy is consulted,
+and secrecy is inviolable; for, as your American
+knows no other tongue save that spoken on the Alleghanies,
+he keeps his own counsel and theirs also.</p>
+
+<p>Have you never in the hall of some large country house,
+cast your eye, on leave-taking, at the strange and motley
+crew of servants awaiting their masters—some well fed
+and handsomely clothed, with that look of reflected importance
+my lord’s gentleman so justly wears; others,
+in graver, but not less respectable raiment, have that quiet
+and observant demeanour so characteristic of a well-managed
+household. While a third class, strikingly
+unlike the other two, wear their livery with an air of
+awkwardness and constraint, blushing at themselves even
+a deeper colour than the scarlet of their breeches. They
+feel themselves in masquerade—they were at the plough
+but yesterday, though they are in powder now. With the
+innate consciousness of their absurdity, they become fidgetty
+and uneasy, and would give the world for “a row” to
+conceal the defaults of their breeding. Just so, your
+petty “diplomate” suffers agony in all the quiet intercourse
+of life. The limited opportunities of small states have
+circumscribed his information. He is not a man of the
+world, nor is he a political character, for he represents
+nothing; nothing, therefore, can save him from oblivion
+or contempt, save some political convulsion where any
+meddler may become prominent; he has thus a bonus
+on disturbance: so long as the company behave discreetly,
+he must stay in his corner, but the moment they smash<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+the lamps and shy the decanters, he emerges from his
+obscurity and becomes as great as his neighbour. For
+my part, I am convinced that the peace and quietness
+of Europe as much depends on the exclusion of such
+persons from the councils of diplomacy, as the happiness
+of every-day life does upon the breeding and good
+manners of our associates.</p>
+
+<p>And what straits, to be sure, are they reduced to, to
+maintain this absurd intercourse, screwing the last shilling
+from the budget to pay a <i>Chargé d’affaires</i>, with an
+embroidered coat, and a decoration in his button-hole.</p>
+
+<p>The most amusing incidents might be culled from such
+histories, if one were but disposed to relate them.</p>
+
+<p>Balzac mentions, in one of his novels, the story of a
+physician who obtained great practice, merely by sending
+throughout Paris a gaudily-dressed footman, who rang at
+every door, as it were, in search of his master; so quick
+were the fellow’s movements, so rapid his transitions, from
+one part of the city to the other, nobody believed that a
+single individual could ever have sufficed for so many
+calls; and thus, the impression was, not only that the
+doctor was greatly sought after, but that his household
+was on a splendid footing. The Emperor of the Brazils
+seems to have read the story, and profited by the hint, for
+while other nations are wasting their thousands in maintaining
+a whole corps of diplomacy, he would appear like
+the doctor to have only one footman, whom he keeps
+moving about Europe without ceasing: thus <i>The Globe</i>
+tells us one day that the Chevalier de L——, the Brazilian
+ambassador, has arrived in London to resume his
+diplomatic functions; <i>The Handelsbad of the Hague</i>
+mentions his departure from the Dutch Court; <i>The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
+Allgemeine Zeitung</i> announces the prospect of his arrival
+at Vienna, and <i>The Moniteur Parisien</i> has a beautiful
+article on the prosperity of their relations with Mexico,
+under the auspices of the indefatigable Chevalier: “<i>non
+regio terræ</i>,” exempt from his labours. Unlike Sir Boyle
+Roche, he has managed to be not only in two, but
+twenty places at once, and I should not be in the least
+surprised to hear of his negotiations for sulphur at
+Naples, at the same moment that he was pelting snowballs
+in Norway. Whether he travels in a balloon or
+on the back of a pelican, he is a wonderful man, and a
+treasure to his government.</p>
+
+<p>The multiplicity of his duties, and the pressing nature
+of his functions, may impart an appearance of haste to
+his manner, but it looks diplomatic to be peremptory, and
+he has no time for trifling.</p>
+
+<p>Truly, Chevalier de L——, thou art a great man—the
+wandering Jew was but a type of thee.</p>
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/illo080.jpg" width="400" height="427" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2>A NUT FOR FOREIGN TRAVEL.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Of</span> all the popular delusions that we labour under in
+England, I scarcely know of one more widely circulated,
+and less founded in fact, than the advantages of foreign
+travel. Far be it from me to undervalue the benefits
+men of education receive by intercourse with strangers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
+and the opportunities of correcting by personal observation
+the impressions already received by study. No one
+sets a higher price on this than I do; no one estimates
+more fully the advantages of tempering one’s nationality
+by the candid comparison of our own institutions with
+those of other countries; no one values more highly the
+unbiassed frame of mind produced by extending the field
+of our observation, and, instead of limiting our experience
+by the details of a book, reading from the wide-spread
+page of human nature itself. So conscious, indeed, am I
+of the importance of this, that I look upon his education
+as but very partial indeed who has not travelled. It is
+not, therefore, against the benefits of seeing the world I
+would inveigh—it is rather against the general application
+of the practice to the whole class of our countrymen and
+countrywomen who swarm on the continent. Unsuited
+by their tastes—unprepared by previous information—deeming
+a passport and a letter of credit all-sufficient for
+their purpose—they set out upon their travels. From
+their ignorance of a foreign language, their journey is one
+of difficulty and embarrassment at every step. They
+understand little of what they see, nothing of what they
+hear. The discomforts of foreign life have no palliation,
+by their being enabled to reason on, and draw inferences
+from them. All the sources of information are hermetically
+sealed against them, and their tour has nothing
+to compensate for its fatigue, and expense, save the
+absurd detail of adventure to which their ignorance has
+exposed them.</p>
+
+<p>It is not my intention to rail in this place against the
+injury done to the moral feeling of our nation, by intimate
+association with the habits of the Continent. Reserving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+this for a more fitting time, I shall merely remark at
+present, that, so far as the habits of virtue are concerned,
+more mischief is done among the middle class of our
+countrymen, than those of a more exalted sphere.</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely does the month of May commence, when the
+whole tide of British population sets in upon the coast of
+France and Flanders. To watch the crowded steamers as
+they arrive in Antwerp, or Boulogne, you would say that
+some great and devastating plague had broken out in London,
+and driven the affrighted inhabitants from their
+homes. Not so, however: they have come abroad for
+pleasure. With a credit on Coutts, and the inestimable
+John Murray for a guide, they have devoted six weeks to
+France, Belgium, and the Rhine, in which ample time
+they are not only to learn two languages, but visit three
+nations, exploring into cookery, customs, scenery, literature,
+and the arts, with the same certainty of success that
+they would pay a visit to Astley’s. Scarcely are they
+launched upon their travels when they unite into parties
+for personal protection and assistance. The “<i>morgue
+Britannique</i>,” so much spoken of by foreigners, they
+appear to have left behind them; and sudden friendships,
+and intimacies, spring up between persons whose only
+feeling in common is that of their own absurd position.
+Away they go sight-seeking in clusters. They visit
+cathedrals, monuments, and galleries; they record in their
+journals the vulgar tirades of a hired <i>commissionaire</i>;
+they eat food they detest, and they lie down to sleep discontented
+and unhappy. The courteous civility of
+foreigners, the theme of so much eulogy in England,
+they now find out to be little more than selfishness, libertinism,
+and impertinence. They see the country from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+the window of a diligence, and society from a place at the
+<i>table d’hôte</i>, and truly both one and the other are but the
+vulgar high roads of life. Their ignorance of the language
+alone protects them from feeling insulted at the impertinences
+directed at themselves and their country; and
+the untutored simplicity of their nature saves them the
+mortification of knowing that the ostentatious politeness
+of some moustached acquaintance is an exhibition got
+up by him for the entertainment of his friends.</p>
+
+<p>Poor John Bull, you have made great sacrifices for this
+tour. You have cut the city, and the counting-house, that
+your wife may become enamoured of dress, and your
+daughter of a dancing-master—that your son may learn to
+play roulette and smoke cigars, and that you yourself
+may ramble some thousand miles over paved roads, without
+an object to amuse, without an incident to attract
+you. While this is a gloomy picture enough, there is
+another side to the medal still worse. John Bull goes
+home generally sick of what he has seen, and much more
+ignorant of the Continent than when he set out. His
+tour, however, has laid in its stock of foreign affectation,
+that renders his home uncomfortable; his daughters pine
+after the flattering familiarities of their whiskered acquaintances
+at Ems, or Wiesbaden; and his sons lose all
+zest for the slow pursuit of competence, by reflecting on
+the more decisive changes of fortune, that await on <i>rouge
+et noir</i>. Yet even this is not the worst. What I deplore
+most of all, is the false and erroneous notions continental
+nations procure of our country, and its habits,
+from such specimens as these. The Englishman who,
+seen at home, at the head of his counting-house, or in the
+management of his farm, presents a fine example of those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+national traits we are so justly proud of—honest, frank,
+straightforward in all his dealings, kind and charitable in
+his affections; yet see him abroad, the sphere of his occupations
+exists no longer—there is no exercise for the manly
+habits of his nature: his honesty but exposes him to be
+duped; his frankness degenerates into credulity; the
+unsuspecting openness of his character makes him the
+butt of every artful knave he meets with; and he is
+laughed at from Rotterdam to Rome for qualities which,
+exercised in their fitting sphere, have made England the
+greatest country of the universe. Hence we have the
+tone of disparagement now so universally maintained
+about England, and Englishmen, from one end of the
+Continent to the other. It is not that our country does
+not send forth a number of men well qualified to induce
+different impressions of their nation; but unfortunately,
+such persons move only in that rank of foreign society
+where these prejudices do not exist; and it is among a
+different class, and unhappily a more numerous one also,
+that these undervaluing opinions find currency and belief.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing more offensive than the continual
+appeal made by Frenchmen, Germans, and others, to
+English habits, as seen among this class of our countrymen.
+It is in vain that you explain to them that these
+people are neither among the more educated nor the better
+ranks of our country. They cannot comprehend your
+distinction. The habits of the Continent have produced
+a kind of table-land of good-breeding, upon which all
+men are equals. Thus, if you rarely meet a foreigner
+ignorant of the every-day <i>convenances</i> of the world, you
+still more rarely meet with one unexceptionably well-bred.
+The <i>table d’hôte</i>, like the mess in our army, has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+the effect of introducing a certain amount of decorum
+that is felt through every relation of life; and, although
+the count abroad is immeasurably beneath the gentleman
+at home, here, I must confess, that the foreign cobbler is
+a more civilized person than his type in England. This
+is easily understood: foreign breeding is not the outward
+exhibition of an inward principle—it is not the manifestation
+of a sense of mingled kindness, good taste, and self-respect—it
+is merely the rigid observance of a certain
+code of behaviour that has no reference whatever to any
+thing felt within; it is the mere popery of politeness,
+with its saint-worship, its penances, and its privations.
+An Englishman makes way for you to accommodate your
+passage; a foreigner—a Frenchman I should say—does
+so for an opportunity to flourish his hat or to exhibit an
+attitude. The same spirit pervades every act of both;
+duty in one case, display in the other, are the ruling principles
+of life; and, where persons are so diametrically
+different, there is little likelihood of much mutual understanding
+or mutual esteem. To come back, however, the
+great evil of this universal passion for travelling lies in
+the opportunity afforded to foreigners, of sneering at our
+country, and ridiculing our habits. It is in vain that our
+institutions are models of imitation for the world—in vain
+that our national character stands pre-eminent for good-faith
+and fidelity—in vain the boast that the sun never
+sets upon a territory that girths the very globe itself, so
+long as we send annually our tens of thousands out upon
+the Continent, with no other failing than mere unfitness
+for foreign travel, to bring down upon us the sneer, and
+the ridicule, of every ignorant and unlettered Frenchman,
+or Belgian, they meet with.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/illo086.jpg" width="400" height="431" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2>A NUT FOR DOMESTIC HAPPINESS.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Our</span> law code would, were its injunctions only carried
+out in private life, effect most extraordinary reformations
+in our customs and habits. The most singular innovations
+in our tastes and opinions would spring out of the
+statutes. It was only a few days ago where a man sought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+reparation for the greatest injury one could inflict on
+another, the great argument of the defendant’s counsel
+was based on the circumstance that the plaintiff and his
+wife had not been proved to have lived happily together,
+except on the testimony of their servants. Great stress
+was laid upon this fact by the advocate; and such an
+impression did it make on the minds of the jury, that the
+damages awarded were a mere trifle. Now, only reflect
+for a moment on the absurdity of such a plea, and think
+how many persons there are whose quiet and unobtrusive
+lives are unnoticed beyond the precincts of their own
+door—nay, how many estimable and excellent people
+who live less for the world than for themselves, and
+although, probably for this very reason, but little exposed
+to the casualty in question, would yet deem the injustice
+great that placed them beyond the pale of reparation
+because they had been homely and domestic.</p>
+
+<p>Civilisation and the march of mind are fine things, and
+doubtless it is a great improvement that the criminal is
+better lodged, and fed, in the prison, than the hungry
+labourer in the workhouse. It is an admirable code that
+makes the debt of honour, the perhaps swindled losses of
+the card-table, an imperative obligation, while the money
+due to toiling, working industry, may be evaded or escaped
+from. Still, it is a bold step to invade the privacy of
+domestic life, to subvert the happiness we deem most
+national, and to suggest that the world has no respect for,
+nor the law no belief in, that peaceful course in life,
+which, content with its own blessings, seeks neither the
+gaze of the crowd, nor the stare of fashion. Under the
+present system, a man must appear in society like a candidate
+on the hustings—profuse in protestations of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+happiness and redolent of smiles; he must lead forth his
+wife like a blooming <i>debutante</i>, and, while he presents
+her to his friends, must display, by every endeavour in
+his power, the angelic happiness of their state. The <i>coram
+publico</i> endearments, so much sneered at by certain fastidious
+people, are now imperative; and, however secluded
+your habits, however retiring your tastes, it is absolutely
+necessary you should appear a certain number of times
+every year before the world, to assure that kind-hearted
+and considerate thing, how much conjugal felicity you are
+possessed of.</p>
+
+<p>It is to no purpose that your man-servant and your
+maid-servant, and even the stranger within your gates,
+have seen you in the apparent enjoyment of domestic
+happiness: it is the crowd of a ball-room must testify in
+your favour—it is the pit of a theatre—it is the company
+of a steam-boat, or the party on a railroad, you must
+adduce in evidence. They are the best—they are the
+only judges of what you, in the ignorance of your heart,
+have believed a secret for your own bosom.</p>
+
+<p>Your conduct within-doors is of little moment, so that
+your bearing without satisfy the world. What a delightful
+picture of universal happiness will England then present
+to the foreigner who visits our salons! With what
+ecstasy will he contemplate the angelic felicity of conjugal
+life! Instead of the indignant coldness of a husband,
+offended by some casual levity of his wife, he will
+now redouble his attentions, and take an opportunity of
+calling the company to witness that they live together
+like turtle-doves. He knows not how soon, if he mix
+much in fashionable life, their testimony may avail him;
+and the loving smile he throws his spouse across the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+supper-table is worth three thousand pounds before any
+jury in Middlesex.</p>
+
+<p>Romance writers will now lose one stronghold of sentiment.
+Love in a cottage will possess as little respect
+as it ever did attraction for the world. The pier at
+Brighton, a Gravesend steamer, Hyde Park on a Sunday,
+will be the appropriate spheres for the interchange of conjugal
+vows. No absurd notions of solitude will then hold
+sway. Alas! how little prophetic spirit is there in
+poetry! But a few years ago, and one of our sirens of
+song said,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“When should lovers breathe their vows?<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">When should ladies hear them?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the dew is on the boughs—<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">When none else is near them.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">Not a word of it! The appropriate place is amid the
+glitter of jewels, the glare of lamps, the crush of fashion,
+and the din of conversation. The private boxes of the
+opera are even too secluded, and your happiness is no more
+genuine, until recognised by society, than is an exchequer
+bill with the mere signature of Lord Monteagle.</p>
+
+<p>The benefits of this system will be great. No longer
+will men be reduced to the cultivation of those meeker
+virtues that grace and adorn life; no more will they
+study those accomplishments that make home happy and
+their hearth cheerful. A winter at Paris and a box at
+the Varietés will be more to the purpose. Scribe’s farces
+will teach them more important lessons, and they will
+obtain an instructive example in the last line of a vaudeville,
+where an injured husband presents himself at the fall of
+the curtain, and, as he bows to the audience, embraces<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
+both his wife and her lover, exclaiming, “<i>Maintenant je
+suis heureux—ma femme—mon meilleur ami!</i>” He then
+may snap his fingers at Charles Phillips and Adolphus:
+he has not only proved his affection to his wife, but his
+confidence in his friend. Let him lay the damages at ten
+thousand, and, with a counsel that can cry, he’ll get every
+shilling of the money.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/illo090.jpg" width="400" height="425" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_LADIES_BOUNTIFUL" id="A_NUT_FOR_LADIES_BOUNTIFUL"></a>A NUT FOR LADIES BOUNTIFUL.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Jean Jacques</span> tells us, that when his wife died every
+farmer in the neighbourhood offered to console him by
+one of their daughters; but that a few weeks afterwards
+his cow having shared the same fate, no one ever thought
+of replacing his loss by the offer of another; thereby
+proving the different value people set upon their cows and
+children—this seems absurd enough, but is it a bit more
+so, than what is every day taking place in professional
+life? How many parsons are there who would not lend
+you five pounds, would willingly lend you their pulpit,
+and the commonest courtesy from a hospital surgeon is,
+to present his visitor with a knife and entreat him to
+carve a patient. He has never seen the individual before,
+he doesn’t know whether he be short-sighted, or nervous,
+or ignorant, or rash, all he thinks of, is doing the honours of
+the institution; and although like a hostess, who sees the
+best dish at her table mangled by an unskilful carver, he
+suffers in secret, yet is she far too well-bred to evince her
+displeasure, but blandly smiles at her friend, and says
+“No matter, pray go on.” This, doubtless, is highly conducive
+to science; and as medicine is declared to be a
+science of experiment, great results occasionally arise from
+the practice. Now that I am talking of doctors—what a
+strange set they are, and what a singular position do they
+hold in society; admitted to the fullest confidence of the
+world, yet by a strange perversion, while they are the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
+depositaries of secrets that hold together the whole fabric
+of society, their influence is neither fully recognised, nor
+their power acknowledged. The doctor is now what the
+monk once was, with this additional advantage, that from
+the nature of his studies and the research of his art, he
+reads more deeply in the human heart, and penetrates
+into its most inmost recesses. For him, life has little romance;
+the grosser agency of the body re-acting ever on
+the operations of the mind, destroy many a poetic daydream
+and many a high-wrought illusion. To him alone
+does a man speak “<i>son dernier mot</i>:” while to the lawyer
+the leanings of self-respect will make him always impart
+a favourable view of his case. To the physician he will
+be candid, and even more than candid—yes, these are the
+men who, watching the secret workings of human passion,
+can trace the progress of mankind in virtue and in vice;
+while ministering to the body they are exploring the
+mind, and yet, scarcely is the hour of danger passed,
+scarcely the shadow of fear dissipated, when they fall
+back to their humble position in life, bearing with them
+but little gratitude, and, strange to say, no fear!</p>
+
+<p>The world expects them to be learned, well-bred, kind,
+considerate, and attentive, patient to their querulousness,
+and enduring under their caprice; and, after all this, the
+humbug of homœopathy, the preposterous absurdity of the
+water cure, or the more reprehensible mischief of Mesmerism,
+will find more favour in their sight than the highest
+order of ability accompanied by great natural advantages.</p>
+
+<p>Every man—and still more, every woman—imagine
+themselves to be doctors. The taste for physic, like that
+for politics, is born with us, and nothing seems easier
+than to repair the injuries of the constitution, whether of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+the state or the individual. Who has not seen, over and
+over again, physicians of the first eminence put aside, that
+the nostrum of some ignorant pretender, or the suggestion
+of some twaddling old woman, should be, as it is termed,
+tried? No one is too stupid, no one too old, no one too
+ignorant, too obstinate, or too silly, not to be superior to
+Brodie and Chambers, Crampton and Marsh; and where
+science, with anxious eye and cautious hand, would
+scarcely venture to interfere, heroic ignorance would dash
+boldly forward and cut the Gordian difficulty by snapping
+the thread of life. How comes it that these old ladies, of
+either sex, never meddle with the law? Is the game beneath
+them, where the stake is only property, and not
+life? or is there less difficulty in the knowledge of an art
+whose principles rest on so many branches of science,
+than in a study founded on the basis of precedent?
+Would to heaven the “Ladies Bountiful” would take to
+the quarter-sessions and the assizes, in lieu of the infirmaries
+and dispensaries, and make Blackstone their aid-de-camp—<i>vice</i>
+Buchan retired.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo093.jpg" width="200" height="214" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_THE_PRIESTS" id="A_NUT_FOR_THE_PRIESTS"></a>A NUT FOR THE PRIESTS.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo094.jpg" width="200" height="217" alt="T" title="T" />
+</div>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em; padding-top: 0.5em"><span class="smcap">here</span> would be no going through
+this world if one had not an
+India-rubber conscience, and
+one could no more exist in
+life without what watch-makers
+call accommodation, in the
+machinery of one’s heart, than
+a blue-bottle fly could grow
+fat in the shop of an apothecary.
+Every man’s conscience has, like Janus, two faces—one
+looks most plausibly to the world, with a smile of
+courteous benevolence, the other with a droll leer seems
+to say, I think we are doing them. In fact, not only
+would the world be impossible, and its business impracticable,
+but society itself would be a bear-garden without
+hypocrisy.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the professional classes have a kind of licence on
+this subject; just as a poet is permitted to invent sunsets,
+and a painter to improvise clouds and cataracts, so a
+lawyer dilates upon the virtues or attractions of his client,
+and a physician will weep you good round substantial
+tears, at a guinea a drop, for the woes of his patient; but
+the church, I certainly thought, was exempt from this
+practice. A paragraph in a morning paper, however, disabused
+my ignorance in the most remarkable manner.
+The Roman Catholic hierarchy have unanimously decided
+that all persons following the profession of the stage, are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+to be considered without the pale of the church, they are
+neither to be baptized nor confirmed, married nor buried;
+they may get a name in the streets, and a wife there also,
+but the church will neither bless the one, nor confirm the
+other; in fact, the sock and the buskin are proclaimed in
+opposition to Christianity, and Madame Lafarge is not a
+bit more culpable than Robert Macaire. A few days
+since, one of the most fashionable churches in Paris was
+crowded to suffocation by the attraction of high mass,
+celebrated with the assistance of the whole opera choir,
+with Duprez at their head. The sum contributed by the
+faithful was enormous, and the music of Mozart was heard
+to great effect through the vaulted aisles of Notre Dame,
+yet the very morning after, not an individual of the choir
+could receive the benediction of the church—the <i>rationale</i>
+of all which is, that the Dean of Notre Dame, like the
+Director of the Odeon, likes a good house and a heavy
+benefit. He gets the most attractive company he can
+secure, and although he makes no scruple to say they are
+the most disreputable acquaintances, still they fill the
+benches, and it will be time enough to damn them when
+the performance is over!</p>
+
+<p>Whenever the respectable Whigs are attacked for their
+alliance with O’Connell, they make the same reply the
+priest would probably do in this circumstance—How can
+we help it? We want a mob; if he sings, we have it—we
+know his character as well as you; so only let us fill
+our pockets, and then —— I do not blame them in the
+least, if the popery of their politics has palled upon the
+appetite; if they can work no more miracles of reform
+and revolution, I do not see how they can help calling in
+aid from without.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Dan, however, will not consent, like Duprez, to be damned
+when he is done with; he insists on a share of the profits,
+and, moreover, to be treated with some respect too. He
+knows he is the star of the company, and can make his
+own terms; and, even now, when the house is broken up,
+and the manager beggared, and the actors dismissed, like
+Matthews, he can get up a representation all to himself,
+and make a handsome thing of it besides.</p>
+
+<p>If one could see it brought about something in the
+fashion of Sancho’s government of Barrataria, I should
+certainly like to see O’Connell on the throne of Ireland
+for about twenty-four hours, and to salute King Dan, <i>par
+la grace de diable</i>, king of Erin, just for the joke’s sake!</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_LEARNED_SOCIETIES" id="A_NUT_FOR_LEARNED_SOCIETIES"></a>A NUT FOR LEARNED SOCIETIES.</h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo096.jpg" width="200" height="222" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em"><span class="smcap">We</span> laugh at the middle ages
+for their trials by ordeal,
+their jousts, their tournaments,
+their fat monasteries, and their
+meagre people; but I am
+strongly disposed to think,
+that before a century pass
+over, posterity will give us as
+broad a grin for our learned
+societies. Of all the features
+that characterise the age, I know of none so pre-eminently
+ridiculous, as nine-tenths of these associations would
+prove; supported by great names, aided by large sums,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+with a fine house, a library and a librarian, they do the
+honours of science pretty much as the yeomen of the guard
+do those of a court on a levee day, and they bear
+about the same relation to literature and art, that do
+the excellent functionaries I have mentioned, to the proceedings
+around the throne.</p>
+
+<p>An old gentleman, hipped by celibacy, and too sour
+for society, has contracted a habit of looking out of his
+window every morning, to observe the weather: he sees
+a cloud very like a whale, or he fancies that when the
+wind blows in a particular direction, and it happens to
+rain at the same time, that the drops fall in a peculiarly
+slanting manner. He notes down the facts for a month
+or two, and then establishes a meteorological society, of
+which he is the perpetual president, with a grant from
+Parliament to extend its utility. Another takes to old
+volumes on a book-stall; and becoming, as most men are
+who have little knowledge of life, fascinated with his
+own discoveries, thinks he has ascertained some curious
+details of ancient history, and communicating his results
+to others as stupid and old as himself, they dub themselves
+antiquarians, or archæologists, and obtain a grant also.</p>
+
+<p>Now, one half of these societies are neither more nor
+less than most impertinent sarcasms on the land we live
+in. The man who sets himself down deliberately to
+chronicle the clouds in our atmosphere, and jot down the
+rainy days in our calendar, is, to my thinking, performing
+about as grateful a task, as though he were to count the
+carbuncles on his friend’s nose. We have, it is true, a
+most abominable climate: the sun rarely shows himself,
+and, when he does, it is through a tattered garment of
+clouds, dim and disagreeable; but why throw it in our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
+teeth? and, still more, why pay a body of men to publish
+the slander? Then again, as to history, all the world
+knows that since the Flood the Irish have never done any
+thing else than make love, illicit whiskey, and beat each
+other. What nonsense, then, to talk about the ancient
+cultivation of the land, of its high rank in literature, and
+its excellence in art. A stone bishop, with a nose like a
+negro, and a crosier like a garden-rake, are the only
+evidences of our ancestors’ taste in sculpture; and some
+doggrel verses in Irish, explaining how King Phelim
+O’Toole cheated a brother monarch out of his small-clothes,
+are about the extent of our historic treasures.
+But, for argument’s sake, suppose it otherwise; imagine
+for a moment that our ancestors were all that Sir William
+Betham and Mr. Petrie would make them—I do not know
+how other people may feel, but I myself deem it no
+pleasant reflection to think of <i>their</i> times and look at <i>our
+own</i>. What! we were poets and painters, architects,
+historians, and musicians! What have we now among
+us to represent these great and mighty gifts? I am
+afraid, except our Big Beggarman, we have not a single
+living celebrity; and is this a comfortable reflection, is
+this a pleasing thought, that while, fourteen hundred
+years ago, some Irish Raphael and some Galway Grisi
+were the delight of our illustrious ancestors—that while
+the splendour of King Malachi, with his collar of gold,
+astonished the ladies in the neighbourhood of Trim—we
+have nothing to boast of, save Dan for Lord Mayor, and
+Burton Bindon’s oysters? Once more, I say, if what
+these people tell us be facts, they are the most unpalatable
+facts could be told to a nation; and I see no manner of
+propriety or good-breeding in replying to a gipsy who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+begs for a penny, by the information, that “his ancestors
+built the Pyramids.”</p>
+
+<p>Again, if our days are dark, our nights are worse; and
+what, in Heaven’s name, have we to do with an observatory
+and a telescope as long as the <i>Great Western</i>?
+The planets are the most expensive vagabonds to the
+Budget, and the fixed stars are a fixed imposition. Were
+I Chancellor of the Exchequer, I’d pension the Moon,
+and give the Great Bear a sum of money as compensation.
+Do not tell me of the distresses of the people, arising from
+cotton, or corn, China, or Chartists—it is our scientific
+institutions are eating into the national resources. There
+is not an egg-saucepan of antiquity that does not cost the
+country a plum, and every wag of a comet’s tail may be
+set down at half-a-million. I warrant me the people in
+the Moon take us a deuced deal more easily, and give
+themselves very little trouble to make out the size of
+Ireland’s eye or the height of Croaghpatrick. No, no;
+let the Chancellor of the Exchequer come down with a
+slapping measure of retrenchment, and make a clear stage
+of all of them. Every man with money to buy a cotton
+umbrella is his own meteorologist; and a pocket telescope,
+price eight-and-fourpence, is long enough, in all conscience,
+for any man in a climate like ours; or, if such a
+course seem too peremptory, call on these people for
+their bill, and let there be a stated sum for each item.
+At Dolly’s chop-house, you know to the exact farthing
+how much your beefsteak and glass of ale will cost you;
+and if you wish, in addition, a slice of Stilton with
+your XX, you consult your pocket before you speak. Let
+not the nation be treated worse than the individual: let
+us first look about us, and see if a year of prosperity and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
+cheap potatoes will permit us the indulgence of obtaining
+a new luminary or an old chronicle; then, when we know
+the cost, we may calculate with safety. Suppose a fixed
+star, for instance, be set down at ten pounds; a planet
+at five; Saturn has so many belts, I would not give more
+than half-a-crown for a new one; and, as for an eclipse
+of the sun, I had rather propose a reward for the man
+who could tell us when we could see him palpably.</p>
+
+<p>For the present I merely throw out these suggestions in
+a brief, incomplete manner, intending, however, to return
+to the subject on another occasion.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo100.jpg" width="200" height="178" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_THE_LAWYERS" id="A_NUT_FOR_THE_LAWYERS"></a>A NUT FOR THE LAWYERS.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo101.jpg" width="200" height="219" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em; padding-top: 0.5em"><span class="smcap">uthors</span> have long got the credit
+of being the most accomplished
+persons going—thoroughly conversant
+not only with the features
+of every walk and class
+in life, but also with their
+intimate sentiments, habits of
+thought, and modes of expression.
+Now, I have long been
+of opinion, that in all these
+respects, lawyers are infinitely their superiors. The
+author chooses his characters as you choose your dish, or
+your wine at dinner—he takes what suits, and leaves
+what is not available to his purpose. He then fashions
+them to his hand—finishing off this portrait, sketching
+that one—now bringing certain figures into strong light,
+anon throwing them into shadow: they are his creatures,
+who must obey him while living, and even die at his
+command. Now, the lawyer is called on for all the narrative
+and descriptive powers of his art, at a moment’s
+notice, without time for reading or preparation; and worse
+than all, his business frequently lies among the very
+arts and callings his taste is most repugnant to. One day
+he is to be found creeping, with a tortoise slowness
+through all the wearisome intricacy of an equity case—the
+next he is borne along in a torrent of indignant eloquence,
+in defence of some Orange processionist or some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>
+Ribbon associate: now he describes, with the gravity of
+a landscape gardener, the tortuous windings of a mill-stream;
+now expatiating in Lytton Bulwerisms over the
+desolate hearth and broken fortunes of some deserted
+husband. In one court he attempts to prove that the
+elderly gentleman whose life was insured for a thousand
+at the Phœnix, was instrumental to his own decease, for
+not eating Cayenne with his oysters; in another, he shows,
+with palpable clearness, that being stabbed in the body,
+and having the head fractured, is a venial offence, and
+merely the result of “political excitement” in a high-spirited
+and warm-hearted people.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo103a.jpg" width="200" height="183" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<p>These are all clever efforts, and demand consummate
+powers, at the hand of him who makes them; but what
+are they to that deep and critical research with which he
+seems, instinctively, to sound the depths of every scientific
+walk in life, and every learned profession. Hear him in
+a lunacy case—listen to the deep and subtle distinctions
+he draws between the symptoms of mere eccentricity and
+erring intellect—remark how insignificant the physician
+appears in the case, who has made these things the study
+of a life long—hear how the barrister confounds him with
+a hail-storm of technicals—talking of the pineal gland as
+if it was an officer of the court, and of atrophy of the
+cerebral lobes, as if he was speaking of an attorney’s
+clerk. Listen to him in a trial of supposed death by
+poison; what a triumph he has there, particularly if he
+be a junior barrister—how he walks undismayed among
+all the tests for arsenic—how little he cares for Marsh’s
+apparatus and Scheele’s discoveries—hydro-sulphates,
+peroxydes, iodurates, and proto-chlorides are familiar to
+him as household words. You would swear that he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+nursed at a glass retort, and sipped his first milk
+through a blow-pipe. Like a child who thumps the
+keys of a pianoforte, and imagines himself a Liszt or
+Moschelles, so does your
+barrister revel amid the
+phraseology of a difficult
+science—pelting the witnesses
+with his insane
+blunders, and assuring the
+jury that their astonishment
+means ignorance. Nothing
+in anatomy is too deep—nothing
+in chemistry too
+subtle—no fact in botany too obscure—no point in metaphysics
+too difficult. Like Dogberry, these things are to him
+but the gift of God; and he knows them at his birth. Truly,
+the chancellor is a powerful magician; and the mystic
+words by which he calls a gentleman to the bar, must
+have some potent spell within them. The youth you
+remember as if it were yesterday, the lounger at evening
+parties, or the chaperon of
+riding damsels to the Phœnix,
+comes forth now a man of
+deep and consummate acquirement—he
+whose chemistry
+went no further than the
+composition of a “tumbler
+of punch,” can now perform
+the most difficult experiments
+of Orfila or Davy, or explain
+the causes of failure in a test
+that has puzzled the scientific world for half a century. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+knows the precise monetary value of a deserted maiden’s
+affections—he can tell you the exact sum, in bank notes,
+that a widow will be knocked down for, when her heart has
+been subject to but a feint
+attack of Cupid. With what
+consummate skill, too, he can
+show that an indictment is
+invalid, when stabbing is inserted
+for cutting; and when
+the crown prosecutor has been
+deficient in his descriptive
+anatomy, what a glorious field
+for display is opened to him.
+Then, to be sure, what
+droll fellows they are!—how they do quiz the witness as
+he sits trembling on the table—what funny allusions to
+his habits of life—his age—his station—turning the whole
+battery of their powers of ridicule against him—ready, if
+he venture to retort, to throw themselves on the protection
+of the court. And truly, if a little Latin suffice for
+a priest, a little wit goes very far in a law court. A joke
+is a universal blessing: the judge, who, after all, is only
+“an old lawyer,” loves it from habit: the jury, generally
+speaking, are seldom in such good company, and they
+laugh from complaisance; and the bar joins in the mirth,
+on that great reciprocity principle, which enables them
+to bear each other’s dulness, and dine together afterwards.
+People are insane enough to talk of absenteeism as one
+of the evils of Ireland, and regret that we have no
+resident aristocracy among us—rather let us rejoice that
+we have them not, so long as the lawyers prove their
+legitimate successors.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo103b.jpg" width="200" height="215" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>How delightful in a land where civilization has still
+some little progress before it, and where the state of
+crime is not quite satisfactory—to know that we have
+those amongst us who know all things, feel all things,
+explain all things, and reconcile all things—who can
+throw such a Claude Lorraine light over right and wrong,
+that they are both mellowed into a sweet and hallowed
+softness, delightful to gaze on. How the secret of this
+universal acquirement is accomplished I know not—perhaps
+it is the wig.</p>
+
+<p>What set me first on this train of thought, was a trial
+I lately read, where a cross action was sustained for
+damage at sea—the owners of the brig Durham against
+the Aurora, a foreign vessel, and <i>vice versâ</i>, for the result
+of a collision at noon, on the 14th of October. It
+appeared that both vessels had taken shelter in the
+Humber from stress of weather, nearly at the same time—that
+the Durham, which preceded the Prussian vessel,
+“clewed up her top-sails, and dropped her anchor <i>rather</i>
+suddenly; and the Aurora being in the rear, the vessels
+came in collision.” The question, therefore, was, whether
+the Durham came to anchor too precipitately, and in
+an unseamanlike manner; or, in other words, whether,
+when the “Durham clewed up top-sails and let go her
+anchor, the Aurora should not have luffed up, or got
+sternway on her,” &amp;c. Nothing could possibly be more
+instructive, nor anything scarcely more amusing, than
+the lucid arguments employed by the counsel on both
+sides. The learned Thebans, that would have been sick
+in a ferry-boat, spoke as if they had circumnavigated the
+globe. Stay-sails, braces, top-gallants, clews, and capstans
+they hurled at each other like <i>bon bons</i> at a carnival;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+and this naval engagement lasted from daylight to dark.
+Once only, when the judge “made it noon,” for a little
+refection, did they cease conflict, to renew the strife
+afterwards with more deadly daring, till at last so confused
+were the witnesses—the plaintiff, defendant, and
+all, that they half wished, they had gone to the bottom,
+before they thought of settling the differences in the
+Admiralty Court. This was no common occasion for
+the display of these powers so peculiarly the instinctive
+gift of the bar, and certainly they used it with all the
+enthusiasm of a <i>bonne bouche</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo104.jpg" width="200" height="220" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>How I trembled for the Aurora, when an elderly gentleman,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+with a wart on his nose, assured the court that
+the Durham had her top-sail backed ten minutes before
+the anchor fell; and then, how I feared again for the
+Durham, as a thin man in spectacles worked the Prussian
+about in a double-reefed mainsail, and stood round in
+stays so beautifully. I thought myself at sea, so graphic
+was the whole description—the waves splashed and
+foamed around the bulwarks, and broke in spray upon
+the deck—the wind rattled amid the rigging—the bulkheads
+creaked, and the good ship heaved heavily in the
+trough of the sea, like a mighty monster in his agony.
+But my heart quailed not—I knew that Dr. Lushington
+was at the helm, and Dr. Haggard had the look-out
+a-head—I felt that Dr. Robinson stood by the lee braces,
+and Dr. Addison waited, hatchet in hand, to cut away the
+mainmast. These were comforting reflections, till I was
+once more enabled to believe myself in her Majesty’s
+High Court of Admiralty.</p>
+
+<p>Alas! ye Coopers—ye Marryats—ye Chamiers—ye
+historians of storm and sea-fight, how inferior are your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+triumphs compared with the descriptive eloquence of a
+law court. Who can pourtray the broken heart of
+blighted affection, like Charles Phillips in a breach of
+promise? What was Scott compared to Scarlett?—how
+inferior is Dickens to Counsellor O’Driscoll?—here
+are the men, who, without the trickery of trade, ungilt,
+unlettered, and unillustrated, can move the world to
+laughter and to tears. They ask no aid from Colburn,
+nor from Cruikshank—they need not “Brown” nor Longman.
+Heaven-born warriors, doctors, chemists, and
+anatomists—deep in every art, learned in every science—mankind
+is to them an open book, which they read at
+will, and con over at leisure—happy country, where we
+have you in abundance, and where your talents are so
+available, that they can be had for asking.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo107.jpg" width="200" height="213" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_THE_IRISH" id="A_NUT_FOR_THE_IRISH"></a>A NUT FOR THE IRISH.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>AN IRISH ENCORE.</h3>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo108.jpg" width="200" height="214" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em"><span class="smcap">We</span> certainly are a very
+original people, and contrive
+to do everything after a way
+of our own! Not content
+with cementing our friendships
+by fighting, and making
+the death of a relative the
+occasion of a merry evening,
+we even convert the habits
+we borrow from other lands
+into something essentially different from their original
+intention, and infuse into them a spirit quite national.</p>
+
+<p>The echo which, when asked “How d’ye do, Paddy
+Blake?” replied, “Mighty well, thank you,” could only
+have been an Irish echo. Any other country would have
+sulkily responded, “Blake—ake—ake—ake,” in <i>diminuendo</i>
+to the end of the chapter. But there is a courtesy,
+an attention, a native politeness on our side of the channel,
+it is in vain to seek elsewhere. A very strong
+instance in point occurs in a morning paper before me,
+and one so delightfully characteristic of our habits and
+customs, it would be unpardonable to pass it without
+commemoration. At an evening concert at the Rotundo,
+we are informed that Mr. Knight—I believe his name is—enchanted
+his audience by the charming manner he sung
+“Molly Astore.” Three distinct rounds of applause
+followed, and an encore that actually shook the
+building, and may—though we are not informed of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+circumstance—have produced very remarkable effects in
+the adjacent institution; upon which Mr. Knight, with his
+habitual courtesy, came forward and sang—what, think
+ye, good reader? Of course you will say, “Molly Astore,”
+the song he was encored for. Alas! for your ignorance;—that
+might do very well in Liverpool or Manchester, at
+Bath, Bristol, or Birmingham—the poor benighted Saxons
+there might like to get what they asked so eagerly for;
+but we are men of very different mould, and not
+accustomed to the jog-trot subserviency of such common-sense
+notions; and accordingly, Mr. Knight sang “The
+Soldier Tired”—a piece of politeness on his part that
+actually convulsed the house with acclamations; and so
+on to the end of the entertainment, “the gentleman, when
+encored, invariably sang a new song”—I quote the paper
+<i>verbatim</i>—“which testimony of his anxiety to meet the
+wishes of the audience afforded universal satisfaction.”</p>
+
+<p>Now, I ask—and I ask it in all the tranquillity of
+triumph—show me the country on a map where such a
+studied piece of courteous civility could have been
+practised, or which, if attempted, could have been so
+thoroughly, so instantaneously appreciated. And what an
+insight does it give us into some of the most difficult
+features of our national character. May not this Irish
+encore explain the success with which Mr. O’Connell
+consoles our “poverty” by attacks on the clergy, and
+relieves our years of scarcity by creating forty-shilling
+freeholders. We ask for bread; and he tells us we are a
+great people—we beg for work, and he replies, that
+we must have repeal of the union—we complain of
+our poverty, and his remedy is—subscribe to the rent.
+Your heavy-headed Englishman—your clod-hopper from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
+Yorkshire—or your boor from Northumberland, would
+never understand this, if you gave him a life-long to con
+over it. Norfolk pudding to his gross and sensual nature
+would seem better than the new registration bill; and
+he’d rather hear the simmering music of the boiled beef for
+his dinner, than all the rabid ruffianism of a repeal meeting.</p>
+
+<p>But to come back to ourselves. What bold and ample
+views of life do our free-and-easy habits disclose to us,
+not to speak of the very servant at table, who will often
+help you to soup, when you ask for sherry, and give you
+preserves, when you beg for pepper. What amiable
+cross-purposes are we always playing at—not bigotedly
+adhering to our own narrow notions, and following out our
+own petty views of life, but eagerly doing what we have
+no concern in, and meritoriously performing for our friends,
+what they had been well pleased, we’d have let alone.</p>
+
+<p>This amiable waywardness—this pleasing uncertainty
+of purpose—characterises our very climate; and the day
+that breaks in sunshine becomes stormy at noon, calm
+towards evening, and blows a hurricane all night. So
+the Irishman that quits his home brimful of philanthropy
+is not unlikely to rob a church before his return. But so
+it is, there is nobody like us in any respect. We commemorate
+the advent of a sovereign by erecting a testimonial
+to the last spot he stood on at his departure; and
+we are enthusiastic in our gratitude when, having asked for
+one favour, we receive something as unlike it as possible.</p>
+
+<p>Our friends at the other side are beginning to legislate
+for us in the true spirit of our prejudices; and when we
+have complained of “a beggared proprietary and a ruined
+gentry,” they have bolstered up our weakness with the
+new poor law. So much for an Irish encore.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_VICEREGAL_PRIVILEGES" id="A_NUT_FOR_VICEREGAL_PRIVILEGES"></a>A NUT FOR VICEREGAL PRIVILEGES.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">The</span> sixth of Anne, chap. seventeen, makes it unlawful to
+keep gaming-houses in any part of the city except the ‘Castle,’
+and prohibits any game being played even there except during the
+residence of the Lord Lieutenant. This act is still on the statute
+book.”—<i>Dublin Paper.</i></p></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">One</span> might puzzle himself for a very long time for
+an explanation of this strange <i>morceau</i> of legislation,
+without any hope of arriving at a shadow of a reason
+for it.</p>
+
+<p>That gaming should be suppressed by a government is
+in no wise unnatural; nor should we feel any surprise at
+our legislature having been a century in advance of
+France, in the due restriction of this demoralizing practice.
+But that the exercise of a vice should be limited to
+the highest offices of the state is, indeed, singular, and
+demands no little reflection on our part to investigate the
+cause.</p>
+
+<p>Had the functions of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland been
+of that drowsy, tiresome, uninteresting nature, that it
+was only deemed fair by the legislature to afford him
+some amusing pastime to distract his “<i>ennui</i>” and dispel
+his melancholy, there might seem to have been then
+some reason for this extraordinary enactment. On the
+contrary, however, every one knows that from the
+remotest times to the present, every viceroy of Ireland<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+has had quite enough on his hands. Some have been
+saving money to pay off old mortgages, others were farming
+the Phœnix; some took to the King Cambyses’ vein,
+like poor dear Lord Normanby—raked up all the old properties
+and faded finery of the Castle, and with such
+material as they could collect, made a kind of Drury-lane
+representation of a court. And very lately, and with an
+originality so truly characteristic of true genius, Lord
+Ebrington struck out a line of his own, and slept away
+his time with such a persevering intensity of purpose,
+that “the least wide-awake” persons of his government
+became actually ashamed of themselves. But to go back.
+What, I would ask, was the intention of this act? I know
+you give it up. Well, now, I have made the matter the
+subject of long and serious thought, and I think I have
+discovered it.</p>
+
+<p>Have you ever read, in the laws of the smaller German
+states, the singular rules and regulations regarding the
+gaming-table? If so, you will have found how the
+entire property of the “<i>rouge et noir</i>” and “<i>roulette</i>” is
+vested in certain individuals in return for very considerable
+sums of money, paid by them to the government, for
+the privilege of robbing the public. These honourable
+and estimable people farm out iniquity as you would do
+your demesne, selling the cheatable features of mankind,
+like the new corn law, on the principle of “a general
+average.” The government of these states, finding—no
+uncommon thing in Germany—a deficiency in their exchequer,
+have hit upon this ready method of supplying
+the gap, by a system which has all the regularity of a tax,
+with the advantage of a voluntary contribution. These
+little kingdoms, therefore, of some half-dozen miles in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
+circumference, are nothing more than <i>rouge et noir</i> tables,
+where the grand duke performs the part of croupier, and
+gathers in the gold. Now, I am convinced that something
+of this kind was intended by our lawgivers in the
+act of parliament to which I have alluded, and that its
+programme might run thus—that “as the office of Lord
+Lieutenant in Ireland is one of great responsibility, high
+trust, and necessarily demanding profuse expenditure;
+and that, as it may so happen that the same should, in
+the course of events, be filled by some Whig-Radical
+viceroy of great pretension and little property; and that
+as the ordinary sum for maintaining his dignity may be
+deemed insufficient, we hereby give him the exclusive
+liberty and privilege of all games of chance, skill, or
+address, in the kingdom of Ireland, whether the same
+may be chicken-hazard, blind hookey, head and tail, &amp;c.—thimble-rigging
+was only known later—to be enjoyed
+by himself only, or by persons deputed by him; such
+privilege in nowise to extend to the lords justices, but
+only to exist during the actual residence and presence of
+the Lord Lieutenant himself.”—<i>See the Act.</i></p>
+
+<p>I cannot but admire the admirable tact that dictated
+this portion of legislation; at the same time, it does seem
+a little hard that the chancellor, the archbishop, and the
+other high functionaries, who administer the law in the
+absence of the viceroy, should not have been permitted
+the small privilege of a little unlimited loo, or even
+beggar-my-neighbour, particularly as the latter game is
+the popular one in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>There would seem, too, something like an appreciation
+of our national character in the spirit of this law, which,
+unhappily for England, and Ireland, too, has not always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+dictated her enactments concerning us. It is well known
+that we hate and abhor anything in the shape of a legal
+debt. Few Irishmen will refuse you the loan of five
+pounds; still fewer can persuade themselves to pay five
+shillings. The kingdom of Galway has long been celebrated
+for its enlightened notions on this subject, showing
+how much more conducive it is to personal independence
+and domestic economy, to spend five hundred pounds in
+resisting a claim, than to satisfy it by the payment of
+twenty. Accordingly, had any direct taxation of considerable
+amount been proposed for the support of viceregal
+dignity, the chances are—much as we like show and
+glitter, ardently as we admire all that gives us the
+semblance of a state—we should have buttoned up our
+pockets, and upon the principle of those economical little
+tracts, that teach us to do so much for ourselves, every
+man would have resolved to be “his own Lord Lieutenant;”
+coming, however, in the shape of an indirect
+taxation, a voluntary contribution to be withheld at
+pleasure, the thing was unobjectionable.</p>
+
+<p>You might not like cards, still less the company—a
+very possible circumstance, the latter, in some times we
+wot of not long since—Well, then, you saved your cash
+and your character by staying at home; on the other
+hand, it was a comfort to know that you could have your
+rubber of “shorts” or your game at <i>écarté</i>, while at the
+same time you were contributing to the maintenance of
+the crown, and discharging the <i>devoirs</i> of a loyal subject.
+It is useless, however, to speculate upon an obsolete
+institution; the law has fallen into disuse, and the more
+is the pity. How one would like to have seen Lord
+Normanby, with that one curl of infantine simplicity that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+played upon his forehead, with that eternal leer of self-satisfied
+loveliness that rested on his features, playing
+banker at <i>rouge et noir</i>, or calling the throws at hazard.
+I am not quite so sure that the concern would have been
+so profitable as picturesque. The principal frequenters
+of his court were “York too;” Lord Plunket was a
+“downy cove;” and if Anthony Blaek took the box,
+most assuredly “I’d back the caster.” Now and then,
+to be sure, a stray, misguided country gentleman—a kind
+of “wet Tory”—used to be found at that court; just as
+one sees some respectable matronly woman at Ems or
+Baden, seated in a happy unconsciousness that all the
+company about her are rogues and swindlers, so <i>he</i> might
+afford some good sport, and assist to replenish the
+famished exchequer. Generally speaking, however, the
+play would not have kept the tables; and his lordship
+would have been <i>in</i> for the wax-lights, without the
+slightest chance of return.</p>
+
+<p>As for his successor, “patience” would have been his
+only game; and indeed it was one he had to practise whilst
+he remained amongst us. Better days have now come: let
+us, therefore, inquire if a slight modification of the act
+might not be effected with benefit, and an amendment,
+somewhat thus, be introduced into the bill:—“That the
+words ‘Lord Mayor’ be substituted for the words ‘Lord
+Lieutenant;’ and that all the privileges, rights, immunities,
+&amp;c., aforesaid, be enjoyed by him to his sole use and
+benefit; and also that, in place of the word ‘Castle,’ the
+word ‘Mansion-house’ stand part of this bill”—thus
+reserving to his lordship all monopoly in games of chance
+and address, without in anywise interfering with such
+practices of the like nature exercised by him elsewhere,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+and always permitted and conceded by whatever government
+in power.</p>
+
+<p>Here, my dear countrymen, is no common suggestion.
+I am no prophet, like Sir Harcourt Lees; but still I
+venture to predict, that this system once legalised at the
+Mayoralty, the tribute is totally unnecessary. The little
+town of Spa, with scarce 10,000 inhabitants, pays the
+Belgian government 200,000 francs per annum for the
+liberty: what would Dublin—a city so populous and so
+idle? only think of the tail!—how admirably they could
+employ their little talent as “bonnets,” and the various
+other functionaries so essential to the well-being of a
+gambling-house; and, lastly, think of great Dan
+himself, with his burly look, seated in civic dignity
+at the green cloth, with a rake instead of a mace before
+him, calling out, “Make your game, gentlemen, make
+your game”—“Never venture, never win”—“Faint
+heart,” &amp;c., &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>How suitable would the eloquence that has now grown
+tiresome, even at the Corn Exchange, be at the head of a
+gaming-table; and how well would the Liberator conduct
+a business whose motto is so admirably expressed by the
+phrase, “Heads, <i>I</i> win; tails, <i>you</i> lose.” Besides, after
+all, nothing could form so efficient a bond of union
+between the two contending parties in the country as
+some little mutual territory of wickedness, where both
+might forget their virtues and their grievances together.
+Here you’d soon have the violent party-man of either
+side, oblivious of everything but his chance of gain; and
+what an energy would it give to the great Daniel to think
+that, while filling his pockets, he was also spoiling the
+Egyptians! Instead, therefore, of making the poor man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+contribute his penny, and the ragged man two-pence,
+you’d have the Rent supplied without the trouble of
+collection; and all from the affluent and the easy, or at
+least the idle, portion of the community.</p>
+
+<p>This is the second time I have thrown out a suggestion—and
+all for nothing, remember—on the subject of
+afinance; and little reflection will show that both my
+schemes are undeniable in their benefits. Here you have
+one of the most expensive pleasures a poor country has
+ever ventured to afford itself—a hired agitator, pensioned,
+without any burden on the productive industry of the
+land; and he himself, so far from having anything to
+complain of, will find that his revenue is more than
+quadrupled.</p>
+
+<p>Look at the question, besides, in another point of view,
+and see what possible advantages may arise from it.
+Nothing is so admirable an antidote to all political
+excitement as gambling: where it flourishes, men become
+so inextricably involved in its fascinations and attractions
+that they forget everything else. Now, was ever a
+country so urgently in want of a little repose as ours?
+and would it not be well to purchase it, and pension off
+our great disturbers, at any price whatever? Cards are
+better than carding any day; short whist is an admirable
+substitute for insurrection; and the rattle of a dice-box
+is surely as pleasant music as the ruffian shout for
+repeal.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="RICH_AND_POOR_POUR_ET_CONTRE" id="RICH_AND_POOR_POUR_ET_CONTRE"></a>RICH AND POOR—POUR ET CONTRE.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo118.jpg" width="200" height="209" alt="If" title="If" />
+</div>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em; padding-top: 0.5em">I was a king upon a throne
+this minute, an’ I wanted to
+have a smoke for myself by
+the fireside—why, if I was to
+do my best, what could I
+smoke but one pen’orth of
+tobacco, in the night, after
+all?—but can’t I have that
+just as asy?</p>
+
+<p>“If I was to have a bed
+with down feathers, what could I do but sleep there?—and
+sure I can do that in the settle-bed above.”</p>
+
+<p>Such is the very just and philosophical reflection of
+one of Griffin’s most amusing characters, in his inimitable
+story of “The Collegians”—a reflection that naturally
+sets us a thinking, that if riches and wealth cannot really
+increase a man’s capacity for enjoyment with the enjoyments
+themselves, their pursuit is, after all, but a poor
+and barren object of even worldly happiness.</p>
+
+<p>As it is perfectly evident that, so far as mere sensual
+gratifications are concerned, the peer and the peasant
+stand pretty much on a level, let us inquire for a moment
+in what the great superiority consists which exalts and
+elevates one above the other? Now, without entering
+upon that wild field for speculation that power (and what
+power equals that conferred by wealth?) confers, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>
+train of ennobling sentiment suggested by extended views
+of philanthropy and benevolence—for, in this respect, it
+is perfectly possible the poor man has as amiable a thrill
+at his heart in sharing his potato with a wandering
+beggar, as the rich one has in contributing his thousand
+pounds’ donation to some great national charity—let us
+turn rather to the consideration of those more tangible
+differences that leave their impress upon character, and
+mould men’s minds into a fashion so perfectly and
+thoroughly distinct.</p>
+
+<p>To our thinking, then, the great superiority wealth
+confers lies in the seclusion the rich man lives in from all
+the grosser agency of every-day life—its make-shifts, its
+contrivances, its continued warfare of petty provision and
+continual care, its unceasing effort to seem what it is
+not, and to appear to the world in a garb, and after a
+manner, to which it has no just pretension. The rich
+man knows nothing of all this: life, to him, rolls on in
+measured tread; and the world, albeit the changes of
+season and politics may affect him, has nothing to call
+forth any unusual effort of his temper or his intellect;
+his life, like his drawing-room, is arranged for him; he
+never sees it otherwise than in trim order; with an
+internal consciousness that people must be engaged in
+providing for his comforts at seasons when he is in bed or
+asleep, or otherwise occupied, he gives himself no farther
+trouble about them; and, in the monotony of his pleasures,
+attains to a tranquillity of mind the most enviable
+and most happy.</p>
+
+<p>Hence that perfect composure so conspicuous in the
+higher ranks, among whom wealth is so generally diffused—hence
+that delightful simplicity of manner, so captivating<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+from its total absence of pretension and affectation—hence
+that unbroken serenity that no chances or
+disappointments would seem to interfere with; the
+knowledge that he is of far too much consequence to be
+neglected or forgotten, supports him on every occasion,
+and teaches that, when anything happens to his inconvenience
+or discomfort, that it could not but be
+unavoidable.</p>
+
+<p>Not so the poor man: his poverty is a shoe that
+pinches every hour of the twenty-four; he may bear up
+from habit, from philosophy, against his restricted means of
+enjoyment; he may accustom himself to limited and narrow
+bounds of pleasure; he may teach himself that, when
+wetting his lips with the cup of happiness, that he is not
+to drink to his liking of it: but what he cannot acquire
+is that total absence of all forethought for the minor cares
+of life, its provisions for the future, its changes and
+contingencies—hence he does not possess that easy and
+tranquil temperament so captivating to all within its
+influence; he has none of the careless <i>abandon</i> of happiness,
+because even when happy he feels how short-lived
+must be his pleasure, and what a price he must pay for
+it. The thought of the future poisons the present, just as
+the dark cloud that gathers round the mountain-top
+makes the sunlight upon the plain seem cold and sickly.</p>
+
+<p>All the poor man’s pleasures have taken such time
+and care in their preparation that they have lost their
+freshness ere they are tasted. The cook has sipped so
+frequently at the pottage, he will not eat of it when at
+table. The poor man sees life “<i>en papillotes</i>” before he
+sees it “dressed.” The rich man sees it only in the
+resplendent blaze of its beauty, glowing with all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
+attraction that art can lend it, and wearing smiles put on
+for his own enjoyment. But if such be the case, and if
+the rich man, from the very circumstance of his position,
+imbibe habits and acquire a temperament possessing such
+charm and fascination, does he surrender nothing for all
+this? Alas! and alas! how many of the charities of life
+lie buried in the still waters of his apathetic nature!
+How many of the warm feelings of his heart are chilled
+for ever, for want of ground for their exercise! How can
+he sympathise who has never suffered? how can he console
+who has never grieved? There is nothing healthy in
+the placid mirror of that glassy lake; uncurled by a
+breeze, unruffled by a breath of passion, it wants the
+wholesome agitation of the breaking wave—the health-giving,
+bracing power of the conflicting element that stirs
+the heart within, and nerves it for a noble effort.</p>
+
+<p>All that he has of good within him is cramped by <i>convenance</i>
+and fashion; for he who never feared the chance
+of fortune, trembles, with a coward’s dread, before the
+sneer of the world. The poor man, however, only appeals
+to this test on a very different score. The “world” may
+prescribe to him the fashion of his hat, or the colour of
+his coat—it may dictate the <i>locale</i> of his residence, and
+the style of his household, and he may, so far as in him
+lies, comply with a tyranny so absurd; but with the free
+sentiments of his nature—his honest pride, his feeling
+sympathy—with the open current of his warm affection
+he suffers no interference: of this no man shall be the
+arbiter. If, then, the shoals and quicksands of the world
+deprive him of that tranquil guise and placid look—the
+enviable gift of richer men—he has, in requital, the unrestricted
+use of those greater gifts that God has given<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+him, untrammelled by man’s opinion, uncurbed by the
+control of “the world.”</p>
+
+<p>Each supports a tyranny after his own kind:—</p>
+
+<p>The rich man—above the dictates of fashion—subjects
+the thoughts of his mind and the meditations of his heart
+to the world’s rule.</p>
+
+<p>The poor man—below it—keeps these for his prerogative,
+and has no slavery save in form.</p>
+
+<p>Happy the man who, amid all the seductions of wealth,
+and all the blandishments of fortune, can keep his heart
+and mind in the healthy exercise of its warm affections
+and its generous impulses. But still happier he, whose
+wealth, the native purity of his heart—can limit his
+desires to his means, and untrammelled by ambition,
+undeterred by fear of failure, treads the lowly but peaceful
+path in life, neither aspiring to be great, nor fearing
+to be humble.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/illo123.jpg" width="400" height="424" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_ST_PATRICKS_NIGHT" id="A_NUT_FOR_ST_PATRICKS_NIGHT"></a>A NUT FOR ST. PATRICK’S NIGHT.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">There</span> is no cant offends me more than the oft-repeated
+criticisms on the changed condition of Ireland. How very
+much worse or how very much better we have become
+since this ministry, or that measure—what a deplorable
+falling off!—what a gratifying prospect! how poor! how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+prosperous! &amp;c. &amp;c. Now, we are exactly what and
+where we used to be: not a whit wiser nor better, poorer
+nor prouder. The union, the relief bill, the reform and
+corporation acts, have passed over us, like the summer
+breeze upon the calm water of a lake, ruffling the surface
+for a moment, but leaving all still and stagnant as before.
+Making new laws for the use of a people who would not
+obey the old ones, is much like the policy of altering the
+collar or the cuffs of a coat for a savage, who insists all the
+while on going naked. However, it amuses the gentlemen
+of St. Stephen’s; and, I’m sure I’m not the man to quarrel
+with innocent pleasures.</p>
+
+<p>To me, looking back, as my Lord Brougham would say,
+from the period of a long life, I cannot perceive even the
+slightest difference in the appearance of the land, or the
+looks of its inhabitants. Dublin is the same dirty, ill-cared-for,
+broken-windowed, tumble-down concern it used
+to be—the country the same untilled, weed-grown, unfenced
+thing I remember it fifty years ago—the society
+pretty much the same mixture of shrewd lawyers, suave
+doctors, raw subalterns, and fat, old, greasy country gentlemen,
+waiting in town for remittances to carry them on
+to Cheltenham—that paradise of Paddies, and elysium of
+Galway <i>belles</i>. Our table-talk the old story, of who was
+killed last in Tipperary or Limerick, with the accustomed
+seasoning of the oft-repeated alibi that figures at every
+assizes, and is successful with every jury. These pleasant
+topics, tinted with the party colour of the speaker’s politics,
+form the staple of conversation; and, “barring the
+wit,” we are pretty much what our fathers were some
+half century earlier. Father Mathew, to be sure, has innovated
+somewhat on our ancient prejudices; but I find<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+that what are called “the upper classes” are far too cultivated
+and too well-informed to follow a priest. A few
+weeks ago, I had a striking illustration of this fact brought
+before me, which I am disposed to quote the more willingly
+as it also serves to display the admirable constancy
+with which we adhere to our old and time-honoured
+habits. The morning of St. Patrick’s day was celebrated
+in Dublin by an immense procession of teetotallers, who,
+with white banners, and whiter cheeks, paraded the city,
+evidencing in their cleanly but care-worn countenances,
+the benefits of temperance. On the same evening a gentleman—so
+speak the morning papers—got immoderately
+drunk at the ball in the Castle, and was carried out in a
+state of insensibility. Now, it is not for the sake of contrast
+I have mentioned this fact—my present speculation
+has another and very different object, and is simply this:—How
+comes it, that since time out of mind the same
+event has recurred on the anniversary of St. Patrick at
+the Irish court? When I was a boy I remember well
+“the gentleman who became so awfully drunk,” &amp;c.
+Every administration, from the Duke of Rutland downwards,
+has had its drunken gentleman on “St. Patrick’s
+night.” Where do they keep him all the year long?—what
+do they do with him?—are questions I continually
+am asking myself. Under what name and designation
+does he figure in the pension list? for of course I am not
+silly enough to suppose that a well-ordered government
+would depend on chance for functionaries like these. One
+might as well suppose they would calculate on some one
+improvising Sir William Betham, or extemporaneously
+performing “God save the Queen,” on the state trumpet,
+in lieu of that amiable individual who distends his loyal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+cheeks on our great anniversaries. No, no. I am well
+aware he is a member of the household, or at least in the
+pay of the government. When the pope converts his
+Jew on Holy Thursday, the Catholic church have had
+ample time for preparation: the cardinals are on the
+look-out for weeks before, to catch one for his holiness—a
+good respectable hirsute Israelite, with a strong Judas
+expression to magnify the miracle. But then the Jew is
+passive in the affair, and has only to be converted patiently—whereas
+“the gentleman” has an active duty to
+discharge; he must imbibe sherry, iced punch, and champagne,
+at such a rate that he can be able to shock the
+company, before the rooms thin, with his intemperate
+excess. Besides, to give the devil—the pope, I mean—his
+Jew, they snare a fresh one every Easter. Now, I am
+fully persuaded that, at our Irish court, the same gentleman
+has performed the part for upwards of fifty years.</p>
+
+<p>At the ancient banquets it was always looked upon as
+a triumph of Amphitryonism when a guest or two died
+the day after of indigestion, from over eating. Now, is it
+not possible that our classic origin may have imparted to
+us the trait I am speaking of, and that “the gentleman”
+is retained as typical of our exceeding hilarity and consummate
+conviviality—an evidence to the “great unasked”
+that the festivities within doors are conducted on
+a scale of boundless profusion and extravagance—that
+the fountains from which honour flows, run also with
+champagne, and that punch and the peerage are to be
+seen bubbling from the same source.</p>
+
+<p>It is a sad thing to think that the gifted man, who has
+served his country so faithfully in this capacity for so
+long a period, must now be stricken in years. Time and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+rum must be telling upon him; and yet, what should we
+do were we to lose him?</p>
+
+<p>In the chapel of Maria Zell, in Styria, there is a portly
+figure of St. Somebody, with more consonants than I find
+it prudent to venture on from mere memory; the priest
+is rolling his eyes very benignly on the frequenters of the
+chapel, as they pass by the shrine he resides in. The
+story goes, that when the saint ceases winking, some great
+calamity will occur to the commune and its inhabitants.
+Now, the last time I saw him, he was in great vigour,
+ogled away with his accustomed energy, and even, I
+thought—perhaps it was a suspicion on my part—had
+actually strained his eyeballs into something like a squint,
+from actual eagerness to oblige his votaries—a circumstance
+happily of the less moment in our days, as a gifted
+countryman of ours could have remedied the defect in no
+time. But to return; my theory is, that when we lose
+our tipsy friend it’s all up with us; “Birnam wood will
+then have come to Dunsinane;” and what misfortunes
+may befal us, Sir Harcourt Lees may foresee, but I confess
+myself totally unable to predicate.</p>
+
+<p>Were I the viceroy, I’d not sleep another night in the
+island. I’d pack up the regalia, send for Anthony Blake
+to take charge of the country, and start for Liverpool in
+the mail-packet.</p>
+
+<p>Happily, however, such an event may be still distant;
+and although the Austrians have but one Metternich, we
+may find a successor to our “Knight of St. Patrick.”</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">
+<img src="images/illo129.jpg" width="450" height="580" alt="Gentlemen Jocks." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Gentlemen Jocks.</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_GENTLEMAN_JOCKS" id="A_NUT_FOR_GENTLEMAN_JOCKS"></a>A NUT FOR “GENTLEMAN JOCKS.”<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">“The</span> Honourable Fitzroy Shuffleton,” I quote <i>The
+Morning Post</i>, “who rode Bees-wing, came in a winner
+amid deafening cheers. Never was a race better contested;
+and although, when passing the distance-post,
+the Langar colt seemed to have the best of it, yet such
+was Mr. Shuffleton’s tact and jockeyship, that he shot
+a-head in advance of his adversary, and came in first.”
+I omit the passages descriptive of the peculiar cleverness
+displayed by this gifted gentleman. I omit also that
+glorious outbreak of newspaper eloquence, in which the
+delight of his friends is expressed—the tears of joy from
+his sisters—the cambric handkerchiefs that floated in the
+air—the innumerable and reiterated cries of “Well done!—he’s
+a trump!—the right sort!” &amp;c. &amp;c., so profusely
+employed by the crowd, because I am fully satisfied with
+what general approbation such proofs of ability are
+witnessed.</p>
+
+<p>We are a great nation, and nowhere is our greatness
+more conspicuous than in the education of our youth.
+The young Frenchman seems to fulfil his destiny, when,
+having drawn on a pair of the most tight-fitting kid gloves,
+of that precise shade of colour so approved of by Madame
+Laffarge, he saunters forth on the Boulevard de Gand, or
+lounges in the <i>coulisse</i> of the opera.</p>
+
+<p>The German, whose contempt not only extends to glove-leather,
+but clean hands, betakes himself early in life to
+the way he should go, and from which, to do him justice,
+he never shows any inclination to depart. A meerschaum<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>
+some three feet long, and a tobacco bag like a school-boy’s
+satchel, supply his wants in life. The dreamy visions of
+the unreal woes, and the still more unreal greatness of his
+country, form the pabulum for his thoughts; and he has
+no other ambition, for some half dozen years of his life,
+than to boast his utter indifference to kings and clean water.</p>
+
+<p>Now, we manage matters somewhat better. Our young
+men, from the very outset of their career, are admirable
+jockeys; and if by any fatality, like the dreadful revolution
+of France, our nobles should be compelled to emigrate
+from their native land, instead of teaching mathematics
+and music, the small sword and quadrilles, we shall have
+the satisfaction of knowing that we supply stable-boys to
+the whole of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever other people may say or think, I put a great
+value on this equestrian taste. I speak not here of
+the manly nature of horse exercise—of the noble and
+vigorous pursuits of the hunting field. No; I direct my
+observations solely to the heroes of Ascot and Epsom—of
+Doncaster and Goodwood. I only speak of those whose
+pleasure it is to read no book save the Racing Calendar,
+and frequent no lounge but Tattersall’s; who esteem
+the stripes of a racing-jacket more honourable than the
+ribbon of the Bath, and look to a well-timed “hustle” or
+“a shake” as the climax of human ability. These are
+fine fellows, and I prize them. But if it be not only
+praiseworthy, but pleasant, to ride for the Duke’s cup at
+Goodwood, or the Corinthian’s at the Curragh, why not
+extend the sphere of the utility, and become as amiable
+in private as they are conspicuous in public life?</p>
+
+<p>We have seen them in silk jackets of various hues,
+with leathers and tops of most accurate fitting, turn out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>
+amid the pelting of a most pitiless storm, to ride some
+three miles of spongy turf, at the hazard of their necks,
+and the almost certainty of a rheumatic fever; and why,
+donning the same or some similar costume, will they not
+perform the office of postillion, when their fathers, or
+mayhap, some venerated aunt, is returning by the north
+road to an antiquated mansion in Yorkshire? The pace,
+to be sure, is not so fast—but it compensates in safety
+what it loses in speed—the assemblage around is not so
+numerous, or the excitement so great; but filial tenderness
+is a nobler motive than the acclamations of a mob.
+In fact, the parallel presents all the advantages on one
+side: and the jockey is as inferior to the postillion as the
+fitful glare of an <i>ignis-fatuus</i> is to the steady brilliancy
+of a gas-lamp.</p>
+
+<p>An Englishman has a natural pride in the navy of his
+country—our wooden walls are a glorious boast; but,
+perhaps, after all, there is nothing more captivating in the
+whole detail of the service, than the fact that even the
+highest and the noblest in the land has no royal road to its
+promotion, but, beginning at the very humblest step, he
+must work his way through every grade and every rank,
+like his comrades around him. Many there are now living
+who remember Prince William, as he was called—late
+William the Fourth, of glorious memory—sitting in the
+stern seats of a gig, his worn jacket and weather-beaten
+hat attesting that even the son of a king had no immunity
+from the hardships of the sea. This is a proud thought
+for Englishmen, and well suited to gratify their inherent
+loyalty and their sturdy independence. Now, might we
+not advantageously extend the influence of such examples,
+by the suggestion I have thrown out above? If a foreigner<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+be now struck by hearing, as he walks through the dockyard
+at Plymouth, that the little middy who touches his
+hat with such obsequious politeness, is the Marquis of
+——, or the Earl of ——, with some fifty thousand
+per annum, how much more astonished will he be on
+learning that he owes the rapidity with which he traversed
+the last stage to his having been driven by Lord Wilton—or
+that the lengthy proportions, so dexterously gathered
+up in the saddle, belong to an ex-ambassador from St.
+Petersburgh. How surprised would he feel, too, that
+instead of the low habits and coarse tastes he would look
+for in that condition in life, he would now see elegant and
+accomplished gentlemen, sipping a glass of curaçoa at the
+end of a stage; or, mayhap, offering a pinch of snuff from
+a box worth five hundred guineas. What a fascinating conception
+would he form of our country from such examples
+as this! and how insensibly would not only the polished
+taste and the high-bred depravity of the better classes be
+disseminated through the country; but, by an admirable
+reciprocity, the coarsest vices of the lowest would be
+introduced among the highest in the land. The race-course
+has done much for this, but the road would do far
+more. Slang is now but the language of the <i>élite</i>—it
+would then become the vulgar tongue; and, in fact, there
+is no predicting the amount of national benefit likely to
+arise from an amalgamation of all ranks in society, where
+the bond of union is so honourable in its nature. Cultivate,
+then, ye youth of England—ye scions of the Tudors
+and the Plantagenets—with all the blood of all the Howards
+in your veins—cultivate the race-course—study the
+stable—read the Racing Calendar. What are the precepts
+of Bacon or the learning of Boyle compared to the pedigree<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+of Grey Momus, or the reason that Tramp “is wrong?”
+“A dark horse” is a far more interesting subject of inquiry
+than an eclipse of the moon, and a judge of pace a
+much more exalted individual than a judge of assize.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_YOUNGER_SONS" id="A_NUT_FOR_YOUNGER_SONS"></a>A NUT FOR YOUNGER SONS.</h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo134.jpg" width="200" height="206" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em"><span class="smcap">Douglas Jerrold,</span> in his
+amusing book, “Cakes and
+Ale,” quotes an exquisite
+essay written to prove the
+sufficiency of thirty pounds
+a-year for all a man’s daily
+wants and comforts—allowing
+at least five shillings a
+quarter for the conversion of
+the Jews—and in which every
+outlay is so nicely calculated, that it must be wilful
+eccentricity if the pauper gentleman, at the end of the
+year, either owes a shilling or has one. To say the least
+of it, this is close shaving; and, as I detest experimental
+philosophy, I’d rather not try it. At the same time, in
+this age of general glut, when all professions are overstocked—when
+you might pave the Strand with parsons’
+skulls, and thatch your barn with the surplus of the
+college of physicians; when there are neither waste lands
+to till and give us ague and typhus, nor war to thin us—what
+are we to do? The subdivision of labour in every
+walk in life has been carried to its utmost limits: if it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+takes nine tailors to make a man, it takes nine men to
+make a needle. Even in the learned professions, as they
+are called, this system is carried out; and as you have a
+lawyer for equity, another for the Common Pleas, a third
+for the Old Bailey, &amp;c., so your doctor, now-a-days, has
+split up his art, and one man takes charge of your teeth,
+another has the eye department, another the ear, a fourth
+looks after your corns; so that, in fact, the complex
+machinery of your structure strikes you as admirably
+adapted to give employment to an ingenious and anxious
+population, who, until our present civilization, never
+dreamed of morselling out mankind for their benefit.</p>
+
+<p>As to commerce, our late experiences have chiefly
+pointed to the pleasure of trading with nations who
+will not pay their debts,—like the Yankees. There is,
+then, little encouragement in that quarter. What then
+remains I scarcely know. The United Services are
+pleasant, but poor things by way of a provision for life.
+Coach-driving, that admirable refuge for the destitute, has
+been smashed by the railroads; and there is a kind of
+prejudice against a man of family sweeping the crossings.
+For my own part, I lean to something dignified and
+respectable—something that does not compromise “the
+cloth,” and which, without being absolutely a sinecure,
+never exacts any undue or extraordinary exertion,—driving
+a hearse, for instance: even this, however, is
+greatly run upon; and the cholera, at its departure, threw
+very many out of employment. However, the question
+is, what can a man of small means do with his son?
+Short whist is a very snug thing—if a man have natural
+gifts,—that happy conformation of the fingers, that ample
+range of vision, that takes in everything around. But I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+must not suppose these by any means general—and I
+legislate for the mass. The turf has also the same
+difficulties,—so has toad-eating; indeed these three walks
+might be included among the learned professions.</p>
+
+<p>As to railroads, I’m sick of hearing of them for the
+last three years. Every family in the empire has at least
+one civil engineer within its precincts; and I’m confident,
+if their sides were as hard as their skulls, you
+could make sleepers for the whole Grand Junction by
+merely decimating the unemployed.</p>
+
+<p>Tax-collecting does, to be sure, offer some little
+prospect; but that won’t last. Indeed, the very working
+of the process will limit the advantages of this opening,—gradually
+converting all the payers into paupers. Now
+I have meditated long and anxiously on the subject, conversing
+with others whose opportunities of knowing the
+world were considerable, but never could I find that
+ingenuity opened any new path, without its being so
+instantaneously overstocked that competition alone denied
+every chance of success.</p>
+
+<p>One man of original genius I did, indeed, come upon,
+and his career had been eminently successful. He was a
+Belgian physician, who, having in vain attempted all the
+ordinary modes of obtaining practice, collected together
+the little residue of his fortune, and sailed for Barbadoes,
+where he struck out for himself the following
+singularly new and original plan:—He purchased all the
+disabled, sick, and ailing negroes that he could find;
+every poor fellow whose case seemed past hope, but yet
+to his critical eye was still curable, these he bought up;
+they were, of course, dead bargains. The masters were
+delighted to get rid of them—they were actually “eating<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
+their heads off;” but the doctor knew, that though they
+looked somewhat “groggy,” still there was a “go” in
+them yet.</p>
+
+<p>By care, skill, and good management, they recovered
+under his hands, and frequently were re-sold to the
+original proprietor, who was totally unconscious that the
+sleek and shining nigger before him had been the poor,
+decrepid, sickly creature of some weeks before.</p>
+
+<p>The humanity of this proceeding is self-evident: a
+word need not be said more on that subject. But it was
+no less profitable than merciful. The originator of the
+plan retired from business with a large fortune, amassed,
+too, in an inconceivably short space of time. The
+shrewdest proprietor of a fast coach never could throw a
+more critical eye over a new wheeler or a broken-down
+leader, than did he on the object of his professional skill;
+detecting at a glance the extent of his ailments, and
+calculating, with a Babbage-like accuracy, the cost of
+keep, physic, and attendance, and setting them off, in his
+mind, against the probable price of the sound man. What
+consummate skill was here! Not merely, like Brodie or
+Crampton, anticipating the possible recovery of the
+patient, but estimating the extent of the restoration—the
+time it would take—ay, the very number of basins of
+chicken-broth and barley-gruel that he would devour, <i>ad
+interim</i>. This was the cleverest physician I ever knew.
+The present altered condition of West Indian property
+has, however, closed this opening to fortune, in which,
+after all, nothing short of first-rate ability could have
+ensured success.</p>
+
+<p>I have just read over the preceding “nut” to my old
+friend, Mr. Synnet, of Mulloglass, whose deep knowledge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
+of the world makes him no mean critic on such a subject.
+His words are these:—</p>
+
+<p>“There is some truth in what you remark—the world
+is too full of us. There is, however, a very nice walk in
+life much neglected.”</p>
+
+<p>“And what may that be?” said I, eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>“The mortgagee,” replied he, sententiously.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t perfectly comprehend.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, well! what I mean is this: suppose, now, you
+have only a couple of thousand pounds to leave your son—maybe,
+you have not more than a single thousand—now,
+my advice is, not to squander your fortune in any
+such absurdity as a learned profession, a commission in
+the Line, or any other miserable existence, but just look
+about you, in the west of Ireland, for the fellow that has
+the best house, the best cellar, the best cook, and the best
+stable. He is sure to want money, and will be delighted
+to get a loan. Lend it to him: make hard terms, of course.
+For this—as you are never to be paid—the obligation of
+your forbearance will be the greater. Now, mark me,
+from the day the deed is signed, you have snug quarters
+in Galway, not only in your friend’s house, but among all
+his relations—Blakes, Burkes, Bodkins, Kirwans, &amp;c., to
+no end; you have the run of the whole concern—the best
+of living, great drink, and hunting in abundance. You
+must talk of the loan now and then, just to jog their
+memory; but be always ‘too much the gentleman’ to
+ask for your money; and it will even go hard, but from
+sheer popularity, they will make you member for the
+county. This is the only new thing, in the way of a
+career, I know of, and I have great pleasure in throwing
+out the suggestion for the benefit of younger sons.”</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_THE_PENAL_CODE" id="A_NUT_FOR_THE_PENAL_CODE"></a>A NUT FOR THE PENAL CODE.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> has often struck me that the monotony of occupation
+is a heavier infliction than the monotony of reflection.
+The same dull round of duty, which while it demands a
+certain amount of labour, excludes all opportunity of
+thought, making man no better than the piston of a
+steam-engine, is a very frightful and debasing process.
+Whereas, however much there may be of suffering in
+solitude, our minds are not imprisoned; our thoughts,
+unchained and unfettered, stroll far away to pleasant
+pasturages; we cross the broad blue sea, and tread the
+ferny mountain-side, and live once more the sunny hours
+of boyhood; or we build up in imagination a peaceful and
+happy future.</p>
+
+<p>That the power of fancy and the play of genius are not
+interrupted by the still solitude of the prison, I need only
+quote Cervantes, whose immortal work was accomplished
+during the tedious hours of a captivity, unrelieved by one
+office of friendship, uncheered by one solitary ray of hope.</p>
+
+<p>Taking this view of the matter, it will be at once perceived
+how much more severe a penalty solitary confinement
+must be, to the man of narrow mind and limited
+resources of thought, than to him of cultivated understanding
+and wider range of mental exercise. In the one case,
+it is a punishment of the most terrific kind—and nothing
+can equal that awful lethargy of the soul, that wraps a man
+as in a garment, shrouding him from the bright world
+without, and leaving him nought save the darkness of his
+gloomy nature to brood over. In the other, there is something<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+soothing amid all the melancholy of the state, in the
+unbroken soaring of thought, that, lifting man above the
+cares and collisions of daily life, bear him far away to
+the rich paradise of his mind-made treasures—peopling
+space with images of beauty—and leave him to dream
+away existence amid the scenes and features he loved to
+gaze on.</p>
+
+<p>Now, to turn for the moment from this picture, let us
+consider whether our government is wise in this universal
+application of a punishment, which, while it operates so
+severely in one case, may really be regarded as a boon in
+the other.</p>
+
+<p>The healthy peasant, who rises with the sun, and
+breathes the free air of his native hills, may and will feel
+all the infliction of confinement, which, while it chains
+his limbs, stagnates his faculties. Not so the sedentary
+and solitary man of letters. Your cell becomes <i>his</i> study:
+the window may be somewhat narrower—the lattice, that
+was wont to open to the climbing honeysuckle, may now
+be barred with its iron stanchions; but he soon forgets
+this. “His mind to him a palace is,” wherein he dwells
+at peace. Now, to put them on something of a par, I
+have a suggestion to make to the legislature, which I shall
+condense as briefly as possible. Never sentence your
+man of education, whatever his offence, to solitary confinement;
+but condemn him to dine out, in Dublin, for
+seven or fourteen years—or, in murder cases, for the term
+of his natural life. For slight offences, a week’s dinners,
+and a few evening parties might be sufficient—while old
+offenders and bad cases, might be sent to the north side
+of the city.</p>
+
+<p>It may be objected to this—that insanity, which so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+often occurs in the one case, would supervene in the
+other; but I rather think not. My own experience could
+show many elderly people of both sexes, long inured to
+this state, who have only fallen into a sullen and apathetic
+fatuity; but who, bating deafness and a look of dogged
+stupidity, are still reasoning beings—what they once were,
+it is hard to say.</p>
+
+<p>But I take the man who, for some infraction of the
+law, is suddenly carried away from his home and friends—the
+man of mind, of reading, and reflection. Imagine
+him, day after day, beholding the everlasting saddle of
+mutton—the eternal three chickens, with the tongue in
+the midst of them; the same travesty of French cookery
+that pervades the side-dishes—the hot sherry, the sour
+Moselle: think of him, eating out his days through these,
+unchanged, unchangeable—with the same <i>cortège</i> of lawyers
+and lawyers’ wives—doctors, male and female—surgeons,
+subalterns, and, mayhap, attorneys: think of the old
+jokes he has been hearing from childhood still ringing in
+his ears, accompanied by the same laugh which he has
+tracked from its burst in boyhood to its last cackle in
+dotage: behold him, as he sits amid the same young
+ladies, in pink and blue, and the same elderly ones, in
+scarlet and purple; see him, as he watches every sign
+and pass-word that have marked these dinners for the
+long term of his sentence, and say if his punishment be
+not indeed severe.</p>
+
+<p>Then think how edifying the very example of his suffering,
+as, with pale cheek and lustreless eye—silent, sad,
+and lonely—he sits there! How powerfully such a warning
+must speak to others, who, from accident or misfortune,
+may be momentarily thrown in his society.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The suggestion, I own, will demand a much more ample
+detail, and considerable modification. Among other
+precautions, for instance, more than one convict should
+not be admitted to any table, lest they might fraternize
+together, and become independent of the company in
+mutual intercourse, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>These may all, however, be carefully considered hereafter:
+the principle is the only thing I would insist on
+for the present, and now leave the matter in the hands of
+our rulers.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_THE_OLD" id="A_NUT_FOR_THE_OLD"></a>A NUT FOR THE OLD.</h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Of</span> all the virtues which grace and adorn the inhabitants
+of these islands, I know of none which can in anywise
+be compared with the deep and profound veneration
+we show to old age. Not content with paying it that
+deference and respect so essentially its due, we go even
+further, and by a courteous adulation would impose upon
+it the notion, that years have not detracted from the gifts
+which were so conspicuous in youth, and that the winter
+of life is as full of promise and performance, as the most
+budding hours of spring-time.</p>
+
+<p>Walk through the halls of Greenwich and Chelsea—or,
+if the excursion be too far for you, as a Dubliner, stroll
+down to the Old Man’s Hospital, and cast your eyes on
+those venerable “fogies,” as they are sometimes irreverently
+called, and look with what a critical and studious
+politeness the state has invested every detail of their
+daily life. Not fed, housed, or clothed like the “debris<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>”
+of humanity, to whom the mere necessaries of existence
+were meted out, but actually a species of flattering illusion
+is woven around them. They are dressed in a uniform;
+wear a strange, quaint military costume; are
+officered and inspected like soldiers; mount guard;
+answer roll-call, and mess as of yore.</p>
+
+<p>They are permitted, from time to time, to clean and
+burnish pieces of ordnance, old, time-worn, and useless
+as themselves, and are marched certain short and suitable
+distances to and from their dining-hall, with all the
+“pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war.” I like
+all this. There is something of good and kindly feeling
+in perpetuating the delusion that has lasted for so many
+years of life, and making the very resting-place of their
+meritorious services recall to them the details of those
+duties, for the performance of which they have reaped
+their country’s gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>The same amiable feeling, the same grateful spirit of
+respect, would seem, from time to time, to actuate the
+different governments that wield our destinies, in their
+promotions to the upper house.</p>
+
+<p>Some old, feeble, partizan of the ministry, who has
+worn himself to a skeleton by late sittings; dried, like a
+potted herring, by committee labour; hoarse with fifty
+years’ cheering of his party, and deaf from the cries of
+“divide” and “adjourn” that have been ringing in his
+ears for the last cycle of his existence, is selected for promotion
+to the peerage. He was eloquent in his day, too,
+perhaps; but that day is gone by. His speech upon a
+great question was once a momentous event, but now his
+vote is mumbled in tones scarce audible.—Gratefully
+mindful of his “has been,” his party provide him with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>
+an asylum, where the residue of his days may be passed
+in peace and pleasantness.</p>
+
+<p>Careful not to break the spell that has bound him to
+life, they surround him with some semblance of his former
+state, suited in all respects to his age, his decrepitude,
+and his debility; they pour water upon the leaves of his
+politics, and give him a weak and pleasant beverage, that
+can never irritate his nerves, nor destroy his slumbers.
+Some insignificant bills—some unimportant appeals—some
+stray fragments that fall from the tables of sturdier
+politicians, are his daily diet; and he dozes away the
+remainder of life, happy and contented in the simple and
+beautiful delusion that he is legislating and ruling—just
+as warrantable the while, as his compeer of Chelsea, in
+deeming his mock parades the forced marches of the
+Peninsula, and his Sunday guards the dispositions for a
+Toulouse or a Waterloo.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_THE_ART_UNION" id="A_NUT_FOR_THE_ART_UNION"></a>A NUT FOR THE ART UNION.</h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> battle between the “big and little-endians” in
+Gulliver, was nothing to the fight between the Destructives
+and Conservatives of the Irish Art Union. A few
+months since the former party deciding that the engraved
+plate of Mr. Burton’s picture should be broken up; the
+latter protesting against the Vandalism of destroying a
+first-rate work of art, and preventing the full triumph of
+the artist’s genius, in the circulation of a print so creditable
+to himself and to his country.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The great argument of the Destructives was this:—We
+are the devoted friends of art—we love it—we glory
+in it—we cherish it: yea, we even give a guinea a-year
+a-piece for the encouragement of a society established for
+its protection and promotion;—this society pledging themselves
+that we shall have in return—what think ye?—the
+immortal honour of raising a school of painting in our
+native country?—the conscientious sense of a high-souled
+patriotism?—the prospect of future estimation at the
+hands of a posterity who are to benefit by our labours?
+Not at all: nothing of all this. We are far too great
+materialists for such shadowy pleasures; we are to receive
+a plate, whose value is in the direct ratio of its rarity,
+“which shall certainly be of more than the amount of
+our subscription,” and, maybe, of five times that sum.
+The fewer the copies issued, the rarer (<i>i.&nbsp;e.</i>, the dearer)
+each impression. We are the friends of art—therefore,
+we say, smash the copper-plate, destroy every vestige of
+the graver’s art, we are supplied, and heaven knows to
+what price these engravings may not subsequently rise!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">
+<img src="images/illo146.jpg" width="450" height="575" alt="“This is a Rembrandt.”" title="" />
+<span class="caption">“This is a Rembrandt.”</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Now, I like these people. There is something bold,
+something masterly, something decided, in their coming
+forward and fighting the battle on its true grounds. There
+is no absurd affectation about the circulation of a clever
+picture disseminating in remote and scarce-visited districts
+the knowledge of a great man and a great work;
+there is no prosy nonsense about encouraging the genius
+of our own country, and showing with pride to her
+prouder sister, that we are not unworthy to contend in
+the race with her. Nothing of this.—They resolve
+themselves, by an open and candid admission, into a
+committee of printsellers, and they cry with one voice—“No<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>
+free trade in ‘The Blind Girl’—no sliding scale—no
+fixed duty—nothing save absolute, actual prohibition!”
+It is with pride I confess myself of this party: perish
+art! down with painting! to the ground with every effort
+of native genius! but keep up the price of our engraving,
+which, with the rapid development of Mr. Burton’s
+talent, may yet reach ten, nay, twenty guineas for an
+impression. But in the midst of my enthusiasm, a still
+small voice of fear is whispering ever:—Mayhap this
+gifted man may live to eclipse the triumphs of his youthful
+genius: it may be, that, as he advances in life, his
+talents, matured by study and cultivation, may ascend
+to still higher flights, and this, his early work, be merely
+the beacon-light that attracted men in the outset of his
+career, and only be esteemed as the first throes of his
+intellect. What is to be done in this case? It is true
+we have suppressed “The Blind Girl;” we have smashed
+<i>that</i> plate; but how shall we prevent him from prosecuting
+those studies that already are leading him to the
+first rank of his profession? Disgust at our treatment
+may do much; but yet, his mission may suggest higher
+thoughts than are assailable by us and our measures. I
+fear, now, that but one course is open; and it is with
+sorrow I confess, that, however indisposed to the shedding
+of blood, however unsuited by my nature and habits to
+murderous deeds, I see nothing for us but—to smash
+Mr. Burton.</p>
+
+<p>By accepting this suggestion, not only will the engravings,
+but the picture itself, attain an increased value. If
+dead men are not novelists, neither are they painters;
+and Mr. Burton, it is expected, will prove no exception
+to the rule. Get rid of him, then, at once, and by all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+means. Let this resolution be brought forward at the
+next general meeting, by any leader of the Destructive
+party, and I pledge myself to second and defend it, by
+every argument, used with such force and eloquence for
+the destruction of the copper-plate. I am sure the talented
+gentleman himself will, when he is put in possession of
+our motives, offer no opposition to so natural a desire
+on our part, but will afford every facility in his power for
+being, as the war-cry of the party has it, “broken up and
+destroyed.”</p>
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/illo150.jpg" width="400" height="375" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2>A NUT FOR THE KINGSTOWN RAILWAY.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">If</span> the wise Calif who studied mankind by sitting on
+the bridge at Bagdad, had lived in our country, and in
+our times, he doubtless would have become a subscriber
+to the Kingstown railway. There, for the moderate sum
+of some ten or twelve pounds per annum, he might have
+indulged his peculiar vein, while wafted pleasantly through
+the air, and obtained a greater insight into character and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+individuality, inasmuch as the objects of his investigation
+would be all sitting shots, at least for half an hour.
+Segur’s “Quâtre Ages de la Vie” never marked out
+mankind like the half-hour trains. To the uninitiated
+and careless observer, the company would appear a mixed
+and heterogeneous mass of old and young, of both sexes—some
+sickly, some sulky, some solemn, and some shy.
+Classification of them would be deemed impossible. Not
+so, however; for, as to the ignorant the section of a
+mountain would only present some confused heap of stone
+and gravel, clay and marl; to the geologist, strata of
+divers kinds, layers of various ages, would appear, all
+indicative of features, and teeming with interests, of
+which the other knew nothing: so, to the studious observer,
+this seeming commixture of men, this tangled web
+of humanity, unravels itself before him, and he reads
+them with pleasure and with profit.</p>
+
+<p>So thoroughly distinctive are the classes, as marked out
+by the hour of the day, that very little experience would
+enable the student to pronounce upon the travellers—while
+so striking are the features of each class, that
+“given one second-class traveller, to find out the contents
+of a train,” would be the simplest problem in algebra.
+As for myself, I never work the equation: the same
+instinct that enabled Cuvier, when looking at a broken
+molar tooth, to pronounce upon the habits, the size, the
+mode of life and private opinions of some antediluvian
+mammoth, enables me at a glance to say—“This is the
+apothecaries’ train—here we are with the Sandycoves.”</p>
+
+<p>You are an early riser—some pleasant proverb about
+getting a worm for breakfast, instilled into you in childhood,
+doubtless inciting you: and you hasten down to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+station, just in time to be too late for the eight o’clock
+train to Dublin. This is provoking; inasmuch as no
+scrutiny has ever enabled any traveller to pry into the
+habits and peculiarities of the early voyager. Well, you
+lounge about till the half-after, and then the <i>conveniency</i>
+snorts by, whisks round at the end, takes a breathing
+canter alone for a few hundred yards, and comes back
+with a grunt, to resume its old drudgery. A general
+scramble for places ensues—doors bang—windows are
+shut and opened—a bell rings—and, snort! snort! ugh,
+ugh, away you go. Now—would you believe it?—every
+man about you, whatever be his age, his size, his features,
+or complexion, has a little dirty blue bag upon his knees,
+filled with something. They all know each other—grin,
+smile, smirk, but don’t shake hands—a polite reciprocity—as
+they are none of the cleanest: cut little dry jokes
+about places and people unknown, and mix strange phrases
+here and there through the dialogue, about “<i>demurrers</i>
+and <i>declarations</i>, traversing <i>in prox</i> and <i>quo warranto</i>.”
+You perceive it at once—it is very dreadful; but they
+are all attorneys. The ways of Providence are, however,
+inscrutable; and you arrive in safety in Dublin.</p>
+
+<p>Now, I am not about to take you back; for at this hour
+of the morning you have nothing to reward your curiosity.
+But, with your leave, we’ll start from Kingstown again
+at nine. Here comes a fresh, jovial-looking set of fellows.
+They have bushy whiskers, and geraniums in the button-hole
+of their coats. They are traders of various sorts—men
+of sugar, soap, and sassafras—Macintoshes, molasses,
+mouse-traps—train-oil and tabinets. They have, however,
+half an acre of agricultural absurdity, divided into
+meadow and tillage, near the harbour, and they talk<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+bucolic all the way. Blindfold them all, and set them
+loose, and you will catch them groping their way down
+Dame-street in half an hour.</p>
+
+<p>9½.—The housekeepers’ train. Fat, middle-aged women,
+with cotton umbrellas—black stockings with blue <i>fuz</i> on
+them; meek-looking men, officiating as husbands, and an
+occasional small child, in plaid and the small-pox.</p>
+
+<p>10.—The lawyers’ train. Fierce-looking, dictatorial,
+categorical faces look out of the window at the weather,
+with the stern glance they are accustomed to bestow on
+the jury, and stare at the sun in the face, as though to
+say—“None of your prevarication with <i>me</i>; answer me,
+on your oath, is it to rain or not?”</p>
+
+<p>10½.—The return of the doctors. They have been out
+on a morning beat, and are going home merry or mournful,
+as the case may be. Generally the former, as the sad
+ones take to the third class. These are jocose, droll dogs;
+the restraint of physic over, they unbend, and chat pleasantly,
+unless there happen to be a sickly gentleman
+present, when the instinct of the craft is too strong for
+them; and they talk of their wonderful cures of Mr.
+Popkins’s knee, or Mr. Murphy’s elbow, in a manner very
+edifying.</p>
+
+<p>11.—The men of wit and pleasure. These are, I
+confess, difficult of detection; but the external signs are
+very flash waistcoats, and guard-chains, black canes, black
+whiskers, and strong Dublin accents. A stray governess
+or two will be found in this train. They travel in pairs,
+and speak a singular tongue, which a native of Paris
+might suppose to be Irish.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_THE_DOCTORS" id="A_NUT_FOR_THE_DOCTORS"></a>A NUT FOR THE DOCTORS.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo154.jpg" width="200" height="184" alt="S" title="S" />
+</div>
+
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em"><span class="smcap">hould</span> you ask, Who is the
+greatest tyrant of modern
+days? Mr. O’Connell will
+tell you—Nicholas, or Espartero.
+An Irish Whig
+member will reply, Dan
+himself. An <i>attaché</i> at an
+embassy would say, Lord
+Palmerston,—“’Tis Cupid
+ever makes us slaves!” A French <i>deputé</i> of the Thiers
+party will swear it is Louis Philippe. Count D’Orsay
+will say, his tailor. But I will tell you it is none of
+these: the most pitiless autocrat of the nineteenth
+century is—the President of the College of Physicians.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the unlimited powers possessed by irresponsible
+man, I know of nothing at all equal to his, who, <i>mero
+motu</i>, of his own free will and caprice, can at any moment
+call a meeting of the dread body at whose head he stands,
+assemble the highest dignitaries of the land—archbishops
+and bishops, chancellors, chief barons, and chief remembrancers—to
+listen to the minute anatomy of a periwinkle’s
+mustachios, or some singular provision in the physiology
+of a crab’s breeches-pocket: all of whom, <i>luto non obstante</i>,
+must leave their peaceful homes and warm hearths to
+“assist” at a meeting in which, nine cases out of ten,
+they take as much interest as a Laplander does in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+health of the Grand Lama; or Mehemet Ali in the proceedings
+of Father Mathew.</p>
+
+<p>By nine o’clock the curtain rises, displaying a goodly
+mob of medical celebrities: the old ones characterised by
+the astute look and searching glance, long and shrewd
+practice in the world’s little failings ever confers; the
+young ones, anxious, wide awake, and fidgetty, not quite
+satisfied with what services they may be called on to
+render in candle-snuffing and crucible work; while between
+both is your transition M.D.—your medical tadpole,
+with some practice and more pretension, his game being
+to separate from the great unfeed, and rub his shoulders
+among the “dons” of the art, from whose rich board
+certain crumbs are ever falling, in the shape of country
+jaunts, small operations, and smaller consultings. Through
+these promiscuously walk the “<i>gros bonnets</i>” of the church
+and the bar, with now and then—if the scene be Ireland—a
+humane Viceroy, and a sleepy commander of the forces.
+Round the room are glass cases filled with what at first
+blush you might be tempted to believe were the <i>ci-devant</i>
+professors of the college, embalmed, or in spirits; but on
+nearer inspection you detect to be a legion of apes,
+monkeys, and ourangoutangs, standing or sitting in grotesque
+attitudes. Among them, pleasingly diversified, you
+discover murderers’ heads, parricides’ busts in plaster,
+bicephalous babies, and shapeless monsters with two rows
+of teeth. Here you are regaled with refreshments “with
+what appetite you may,” and chat away the time, until the
+tinkle of a small bell announces the approach of the lecture.</p>
+
+<p>For the most part, this is a good, drowsy, sleep-disposing
+affair of an hour long, written to show, that from some
+peculiarity lately discovered in the cerebral vessels, man’s<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
+natural attitude was to stand on his head; or that, from
+chemical analysis just invented, it was clear, if we live to
+the age of four hundred years and upwards, part of our
+duodenum will be coated with a delicate aponeurosis of
+sheet iron.</p>
+
+<p>Now, with propositions of this kind I never find fault.
+I am satisfied to play my part as a biped in this breathing
+world, and to go out of it too, without any rivalry with
+Methuselah. But I’ll tell you with what I am by
+no means satisfied,—nor shall I ever feel satisfied—nor
+do I entertain any sentiment within a thousand
+miles of gratitude to the man who tells me, that food—beef
+and mutton, veal, lamb, &amp;c.—are nothing but
+gas and glue. The wretch who found out the animalculæ
+in clean water was bad enough. There are simple-minded
+people who actually take this as a beverage: what
+must be their feelings now, if they reflect on the myriads
+of small things like lobsters; with claws and tails, all
+fighting and swallowing each other, that are disporting in
+their stomachs? But only think of him who converts
+your cutlet into charcoal, and your steak into starch! It
+may stick to your ribs after that, to be sure; but will it
+not stick harder to your conscience? With what pleasure
+do you help yourself to your haunch, when the conviction
+is staring you in the face, that what seems venison is but
+adipose matter and azote? That you are only making a
+great Nassau balloon of yourself when you are dreaming
+of hard condition, and preparing yourself for the fossil
+state when blowing the froth off your porter.</p>
+
+<p>Of latter years the great object of science would appear
+to be an earnest desire to disenchant us from all the
+agreeable and pleasant dreams we have formed of life, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
+to make man insignificant without making him humble.
+Thus, one class of philosophers labour hard to prove that
+manhood is but monkeyhood—that a slight adaptation of
+the tail to the customs of civilized life has enabled us to
+be seated; while the invention of looking-glasses, bear’s
+grease, cold cream, and macassar, have cultivated our
+looks into the present fashion.</p>
+
+<p>Another, having felt over our skulls, gravely asserts,
+“There is a <i>vis à tergo</i> of wickedness implanted in us,
+that must find vent in murder and bloodshed.” While
+the magnetic folk would make us believe that we are
+merely a kind of ambulating electric-machine, to be
+charged at will by the first M. Lafontaine we meet with,
+and mayhap explode from over-pressure.</p>
+
+<p>While such liberties are taken with us without, the
+case is worse within. Our circulation is a hydraulic
+problem; our stomach is a mill—a brewing vat—a tanner’s
+yard—a crucible, or a retort. You yourself, in all
+the resplendent glory of your braided frock, and your
+decoration of the Guelph, are nothing but an aggregate of
+mechanical and chemical inventions, as often going wrong
+as right; and your wife, in the pride of her Parisian
+bonnet, and robe <i>à la Victorine</i>, is only gelatine and
+adipose substance, phosphate of lime, and a little arsenic.</p>
+
+<p>Now, let me ask, what remains to us of life, if we are
+to be robbed of every fascination and charm of existence
+in this fashion? And again—has medical science so
+exhausted all the details of practical benefit to mankind,
+that it is justified in these far-west explorations into the
+realms of soaring fancy, or the gloomy depths of chemical
+analysis? Hydrophobia, consumption, and tetanus are
+not so curable that we can afford to waste our sympathies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>
+on chimpanzees: nor is this world so pleasant that we
+must deny ourselves the advantage of all its illusions, and
+throw away the garment in which Nature has clothed her
+nakedness. No, no. There was sound philosophy in
+Peter, in the “Tale of a Tub,” who assured his guests that
+whatever their frail senses might think to the contrary,
+the hard crusts were excellent and tender mutton; but I
+see neither rhyme nor reason in convincing us, that amid
+all the triumphs of turtle and white bait, Ardennes ham
+and <i>pâté de Strasbourg</i>, our food is merely coke and glue,
+roach, lime, starch, and magnesia.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo158.jpg" width="200" height="191" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_THE_ARCHITECTS" id="A_NUT_FOR_THE_ARCHITECTS"></a>A NUT FOR THE ARCHITECTS.</h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">God</span> made the country,” said the poet: but in my
+heart I believe he might have added—“The devil made
+architects.” Few cities—I scarcely know of one—can
+boast of such environs as Dublin. The scenery, diversified
+in its character, possesses attraction for almost every
+taste: the woody glade—the romantic river—the wild
+and barren mountain—the cultivated valley—the waving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+upland—the bold and rocky coast, broken with promontory
+and island—are all to be found, even within a few
+miles of the capital; while, in addition, the nature of our
+climate confers a verdure and a freshness unequalled,
+imparting a depth and colour to the landscape equal to the
+beauty of its outline.</p>
+
+<p>Whether you travel inland or coastwise, the country
+presents a succession of sites for building, there being no
+style of house for which a suitable spot cannot readily be
+found; and yet, with all this, the perverse taste of man
+has contrived, by incongruous and ill-conceived architecture,
+to mar almost every point of view, and destroy
+every picturesque feature of the landscape.</p>
+
+<p>The liberty of the subject is a bright and glorious prerogative;
+and nowhere should its exercise be more freely
+conceded than in those arrangements an individual makes
+for his own domestic comfort, and the happiness of his home.</p>
+
+<p>That one man likes a room in which three people form
+a crowd, and that another prefers an apartment spacious
+as Exeter Hall, is a matter of individual taste, with which
+the world has nothing whatever to do. Your neighbour
+in the valley may like a cottage not larger than a sugar-hogshead,
+with rats for company and beetles for bed-fellows;
+your friend on the hill-side may build himself
+an imaginary castle, with armour for furniture, and antique
+weapons for ornaments;—with all this you have no concern—no
+more than with his banker’s book, or the
+thoughts of his bosom: but should the one or the other,
+either by a thing like a piggery, or an incongruous mass
+like a jail, destroy all the beauty and mar all the effect of
+the scenery for miles round, far beyond the precincts of
+his own small tenure—should he outrage all the principles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+of taste, and violate every sentiment of landscape beauty,
+by some poor and contemptible, or some pretentious and
+vulgar edifice—then, do I say, you are really aggrieved;
+and against such a man you have a just and equitable
+complaint, as one interfering with the natural pleasures
+and just enjoyments to which, as a free citizen of a free
+state, you have an indubitable, undeniable right.</p>
+
+<p>That waving, undulating meadow, hemmed in with its
+dark woods, and mirrored in the fair stream that flows
+peacefully beneath it, was never, surely, intended to be
+disfigured with a square house like a salt-box, and a
+verandah like a register-grate: the far-stretching line of
+yellow coast that you see yonder, where the calm sea
+is sleeping, land-locked by those jutting headlands, was
+never meant to be pock-marked with those vile bathing
+lodges, with green baize draperies drying before them.</p>
+
+<p>Was that bold and granite-sided mountain made thus to
+be hewed out into parterres for polyanthuses, and stable-lanes
+for Cockneys’ carmen?—or is the margin of our
+glorious bay, the deep frame-work of the bright picture,
+to be carved into little terraces, with some half-dozen
+slated cabins, or a row of stiff-looking, Leeson-street-like
+houses, with brass knockers and a balcony? Forbid it,
+heaven! We have a board of wide and inconvenient
+streets, who watch over all the irregularities of municipal
+architecture, and a man is no more permitted to violate
+the laws of good taste, than he is suffered to transgress
+those of good morals. Why not have a similar body to
+protect the fairer part of the created globe? Is Pill-lane
+more sacred than Bray-head? Has Copper-alley stronger
+claims than the Glen-of-the-Downs? Is the Cross-poddle
+more classic ground than Poolaphuca?</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_A_NEW_COLONY" id="A_NUT_FOR_A_NEW_COLONY"></a>A NUT FOR A NEW COLONY.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">If</span> you happen to pass by Dodd’s auction-room, on any
+Wednesday, towards the hour of three in the afternoon,
+the chances are about seven to one that you hear a sharp,
+smart voice articulating, somewhat in this fashion:—“A
+very handsome tea-service, ladies. What shall I say for
+this remarkably neat pattern? One tea-pot, one sugar-bowl,
+one slop-basin, and twelve cups and saucers.—Show
+them round, Tim,” &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>Now it is with no intention of directing the public eye
+to the “willow pattern,” that I have alluded to this circumstance.
+It is simply, because that thereby hangs an
+association, and I have never heard the eloquent expatiator
+on china, without thinking of the Belgian navy, which
+consists of—“One gun-boat, one pinnace, one pilot, one
+commodore, and twelve little sailors.” Unquestionably,
+there never was a cheaper piece of national extravagance
+than this, nor do I believe that any public functionary
+enjoys a more tranquil and undisturbed existence than the
+worthy “<i>ministre de la marine</i>,” whose duty it is to preside
+over the fleet I have mentioned. Once, and once only
+do I remember that his quiet life was shaken by the rude
+assault of political events: it was when the imposing
+force under his sway undertook a voyage of discovery
+some miles down the Scheldt, which they did alike to the
+surprise and admiration of the whole land.</p>
+
+<p>After a day’s peaceful drifting with the river’s current,
+they reached the fort of Lillo, where, <i>more majorum</i>, as
+night was falling, they prudently dropped anchor, having<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+a due sense of the danger that might accrue “from running
+down a continent in the dark.” There was, besides,
+a feeling of high-souled pride in anchoring within sight,
+under the guns, as it were, of the Dutch fort—the insolent
+Dutch, whom they, with some aid from France—as the
+Irishman said of his marriage, for love, and a trifle of
+money—had driven from their country; and, although
+the fog rendered everything invisible, and the guns were
+spiked, still the act of courage was not disparaged; and
+they fell to, and sang the Brabançon, and drank Flemish
+beer till bed-time.</p>
+
+<p>Happy and patriotic souls! little did you know, that
+amid your dreams of national greatness, some half-dozen
+imps of Dutch middies were painting out the magnificent
+tricolor streaks that adorned your good craft, and making
+the whole one mass of dirty black.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the case, however; and when day broke, those
+brilliant emblems of Belgian independence had vanished,
+and in their place a murky line of pitch now stood.</p>
+
+<p>Homeward they bent their course, sadder and wiser
+men; and, to their credit be it spoken, having told their
+sorrows to their sage minister, they have lived a life of
+happy retirement, and never strayed beyond the peaceful
+limits of the Antwerp basin.</p>
+
+<p>Far be from me the unworthy object of drawing
+before the public gaze the blissful and unpretending
+service, that shuns the noontide glitter of the world’s
+applause, and better loves the quiet solitude of their
+own unobtrusive waters; and had they thus remained,
+nothing would have tempted me to draw them from their
+obscurity. But alas! national ambition has visited even
+the seclusion of this service. Not content with coasting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>
+voyages, some twelve miles down their muddy river—not
+satisfied with lording it over fishing smacks and herring
+wherries, this great people have resolved on becoming a
+maritime power in blue water, and running a race of
+rivalry with England, France, and Russia; and to it they
+have set in right earnest.</p>
+
+<p>They began by purchasing a steam-vessel, which
+happens to turn out on such a scale of size, as to be
+inadmissible into any harbour they possess. By dint of
+labour, time, cost, and great outlay, they succeeded, after
+four months, in getting her into dock. But alas! if it
+took that time to admit her, it takes six months to let her
+out again; and, when out, what are they to do with her?</p>
+
+<p>When Admiral Dalrymple turned farmer, he mentions
+in one of his letters, the sufferings his unhappy ignorance
+of all agricultural pursuits involved him in, and feelingly
+tells us: “I have given ten pounds for a dunghill, and
+would now willingly give any man twenty, to tell me
+what to do with it.” This was exactly the case with the
+Belgians. They had bought a steam-ship, they put coals
+in her, and a crew; and then, for the life and soul of
+them, they did not know what to do with them.</p>
+
+<p>They desired an export trade—a <i>débouché</i> for their
+Namur cutlery and Verviers’ frieze. But where could they
+go? They had no colonies. Holland had, to be sure:
+but then, they had quarrelled with Holland, and there
+was no use repining. “What can’t be cured,” &amp;c.
+Besides, if they had lost a colony, they had gained a
+cardinal; and if they had no merchantmen, they had at
+least high-mass; and if they were excluded from Batavia,
+why they had free access to the “Abbé Boon.”</p>
+
+<p>There were, however, some impracticable people engaged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
+in traffic, who would not listen to these great
+advantages, and who were obstinate enough to suppose
+that the country was as prosperous when it had a market
+for its productions, as it was when it had none. And
+although the priests, who have multiplied some hundredfold
+since the revolution, were willing “to consume” to
+any extent, yet, unhappily, they were not as profitable
+customers as their <i>ci-devant</i> friends beyond sea.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing then remained but to have a colony, and after
+much consideration, long thought, and anxious deliberation,
+it was announced to the chamber that the Belgians
+had a colony, and that the colony was called “Guatemala.”</p>
+
+<p>When Sancho Panza appealed to Don Quixote, to
+realise his promised dream of greatness, you may remember,
+he always asked for an island: “Make me governor
+of an island!” There was something defined, accurate,
+and tangible, as it were, in the sea-girt possession, that
+suggested to the honest squire’s mind the idea of perfect,
+independent rule. And in the same way, the Belgians
+desired to have an island.</p>
+
+<p>Some few, less imaginative, suspected, however, that an
+island must always have its limit to importation quicker
+attained than a continent, and they preferred some vast,
+unexplored tract, like India, or Central America, where
+the consumption of corduroy and cast-iron might have an
+unexhausted traffic for centuries.</p>
+
+<p>Now, it is a difficult condition to find out that spot on
+a map which should realise both expectations. Happily,
+however, M. Van de Weyer had to deal with a kind and
+confiding people, whose knowledge of geography is about
+equal to a blind man’s appreciation of scarlet or sky-blue.
+Not only, therefore, did he represent to one party, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+newly-acquired possession as an island, and to the other
+as a vast continent, but he actually shifted its <i>locale</i> about
+the globe, from the tropics to the north-pole, with such
+admirable dexterity, that not only is all cavil silenced
+about its commercial advantages, but its very climate has an
+advocate in every taste, and an admirer in every household.
+Steam-engines, therefore, are fabricated; cannon are cast;
+railroads are in preparation; broadcloth is weaving; flax
+is growing; lace is in progress, all through the kingdom,
+for the new colony of Guatemala,—whose only inhabitants
+are little grateful for the profound solicitude they are exciting,
+inasmuch as, being but rats and sea-gulls, their
+modes of living and thinking give them a happy indifference
+about steam-travelling, and the use of fine linen.</p>
+
+<p>No matter;—the country is prospering—shares are
+rising—speculations are rife—loans are effected every day
+in the week, and M. Van de Weyer sleeps in the peaceful
+composure of a man who knows in his heart, that even if
+they get their unwieldy craft to sea, there is not a man
+in the kingdom who could, by any ingenuity, discover the
+whereabout of the far-famed Guatemala.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo165.jpg" width="200" height="209" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_SWEET_NUT_FOR_THE_YANKEES" id="A_SWEET_NUT_FOR_THE_YANKEES"></a>A “SWEET” NUT FOR THE YANKEES.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Lord Chesterfield</span> once remarked that a thoroughly
+vulgar man could not speak the most common-place word,
+nor perform the most ordinary act, without imparting to
+the one and the other a portion of his own inborn vulgarity.
+And exactly so is it with the Yankees; not a
+question can arise, no matter how great its importance,
+nor how trivial its bearings, upon which, the moment they
+express an opinion, they do not completely invest with
+their own native coarseness, insolence, and vulgarity.
+The boundary question was made a matter of violent
+invective and ruffian abuse; the right of search was
+treated with the same powers of ribaldry towards England;
+and now we have these amiable and enlightened citizens
+defending the wholesale piracy of British authors, not on
+the plausible but unjust pretext of the benefit to be derived
+from an extended acquaintance with English literature;
+but, only conceive! because, if “English authors were
+invested with any control over the republication of their
+own books, it would be no longer possible for American
+editors to alter and adapt them as they do now to the
+American taste.” However incredible this may seem,
+the passage formed part of a document actually submitted
+to congress, and favourably received by that body. This
+is not the place for me to dwell on the unprincipled
+usurpation by which men who have contributed nothing
+to the production of a work, assume the power of reaping
+its benefits, and profiting by its success. The wholesale
+robbery of English authors has been of late well and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+ably exposed. The gifted and accomplished author of
+“Darnley” and “The Gipsy” has devoted his time and
+his talents to the subject; and although the world at large
+have few sympathies with the wrongs of those who live
+to please them, yet the day is not distant when the rights
+of a large and influential body, who stamp the age with
+the image of their own minds, can be no longer neglected,
+and the security of literary property must become at least
+as great as of mining scrip, or the shares in a railroad.</p>
+
+<p>My present business is with the Yankee declaration,
+that English authors to be readable in America must be
+passed through the ordeal of re-writing. I scarcely think
+that the annals of impertinence and ignorance could equal
+this. What! is it seriously meant that Scott and Byron,
+Wordsworth, Southey, Rogers, Bulwer, James, Dickens,
+and a host of others, must be converted into the garbage
+of St. Giles, or the fœtid slang of Wapping, before they
+can pass muster before an American public? Must the
+book reek of “gin twist,” “cock tail,” and fifty other
+abominations, ere it reach an American drawing-room?
+Must the “bowie-knife and the whittling-stick” mark its
+pages; and the coarse jest of some tobacco-chewing, wild-cat-whipping
+penny-a-liner disfigure and sully the passages
+impressed with the glowing brilliancy of Scott, or the
+impetuous torrent of Byron’s genius? Is this a true
+picture of America? Is her reading public indeed
+degraded to this pass? I certainly have few sympathies
+with brother Jonathan. I like not his spirit of boastful
+insolence, his rude speech, or his uncultivated habits;
+but I confess I am unwilling to credit this. I hesitate to
+believe in such an amount of intellectual depravity as can
+turn from the cultivated writings of Scott and Bulwer to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
+revel in the coarseness and vulgarity of a Yankee editor,
+vamping up his stolen wares with oaths from the far west,
+or vapid jests from life in the Prairies. Again, what shall
+I say of those who follow this traffic? Is it not enough
+to steal that which is not theirs, to possess themselves of
+what they have no right or claim to? Must they mangle
+the corpse when they have extinguished life? Must they,
+while they cheat the author of his gain, rob him also of his
+fair fame? “He who steals my purse steals trash,” but
+how shall I characterise that extent of baseness that dares
+to step in between an author and his reputation—inserting
+between him and posterity their own illiterate degeneracy
+and insufferable stupidity?</p>
+
+<p>Would not the ghost of Sir Walter shudder in his grave
+at the thought of the fair creations of his mind—Jeanie
+Deans and Rebecca—Yankeefied into women of Long
+Island, or damsels from Connecticut? Is Childe Harold
+to be a Kentucky-man? and are the vivid pictures of life
+Bulwer’s novels abound in, to be converted into the prison-discipline
+school of manners, that prevail in New York
+and Boston, where, as Hamilton remarks, “the men are
+about as like gentlemen, as are our new police?” What
+should we say of the person who having stolen a Rembrandt
+or a Vandyke from its owner, would seek to
+legalise his theft by daubing over the picture with his
+own colours—obliterating every trace of the great master,
+and exulting that every stroke of his brush defaced some
+touch of genius, and that beneath the savage vandalism
+of his act, every lineament of the artist was obliterated?
+I ask you, would not mere robbery be a virtue beside
+such a deed as this? Who could compare the sinful
+promptings to which want and starvation give birth to, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+the ruffian profligacy of such barbarity? And now, when
+I tell you, that not content with this, not satisfied to
+desecrate the work, the wretch goes a step farther and
+stabs its author—what shall I say of him now, who, when
+he had defaced the picture, marred every effect, distorted
+all drawing, and rendered the whole a chaotic mass of
+indistinguishable nonsense, goes forth to the world, and
+announces, “This is a Rembrandt, this is a Vandyke:
+ay, look at it and wonder: but with all its faults, and all
+its demerits, it is cried up above our native artists; it has
+got the seal of the old world’s approval upon it, and in
+vain we of younger origin shall dare to dissent from its
+judgments.” Now, once more, I say, can you show the
+equal of this moral turpitude? and such I pledge myself
+is the conduct of your transatlantic pirates with respect
+to British literature. Mr. Dickens, no mean authority,
+asserts that in the same sheet in which they boast the
+sale of many thousand copies of an English reprint, they
+coarsely attack the author of that very book, and heap
+scurrility and slander on his head.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, such is the fact; not satisfied with robbery, they
+murder reputation also. And then we find them expatiating
+in most moving terms over the superiority of their
+own neglected genius!</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_THE_SEASON_JULLIENS" id="A_NUT_FOR_THE_SEASON_JULLIENS"></a>A NUT FOR THE SEASON—JULLIEN’S
+QUADRILLES.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo170.jpg" width="200" height="214" alt="A" title="A" />
+</div>
+
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em"><span class="smcap">very</span> curious paper might be
+made by any one who, after
+an absence of some years from
+Ireland, should chronicle his
+new impressions of the country,
+and compare them with
+his old ones. The changes
+time works everywhere, even
+in a brief space, are remarkable,
+but particularly so in a
+land where everything is in a state of transition—where
+the violence with which all subjects are treated, the
+excited tone people are wont to assume on every topic,
+are continually producing their effects on society—dismembering
+old alliances—begetting new combinations.
+Such is the case with us here; and every year evidences
+by the strange anomalies it presents in politics, parties,
+public feeling, and private habits, how little chance
+there is for a prophet to make a character by his predictions
+regarding Ireland. He would, indeed, be a
+skilful chemist who would attempt the analysis of our
+complex nature; but far greater and more gifted must he
+be, who, from any consideration of the elements, would
+venture to pronounce on the probable results of their
+action and re-action, and declare what we shall be some
+twenty years hence.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, for a good Irish “Rip van Winkle,” who would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
+at least let us look on the two pictures—what we were,
+and what we are. He should be a Clare man—none
+others have the same shrewd insight into character, the
+same intuitive knowledge of life; none others detect, like
+them, the flaws and fractures in human nature. There
+may be more mathematical genius in Cork, and more
+classic lore in Kerry; there may be, I know there is,
+a more astute and patient pains-taking spirit of calculation
+in the northern counties; but for the man who is
+only to have one rapid glance at the game, and say how it
+fares—to throw a quick <i>coup-d’œil</i> on the board, and
+declare the winner, Clare for ever!</p>
+
+<p>Were I a lawgiver, I would admit any attorney to
+practise who should produce sufficient evidence of his
+having served half the usual time of apprenticeship in
+Ennis. The Pontine marshes are not so prolific of fever,
+as the air of that country of ready-witted intelligence and
+smartness; and now, ere I return from my digression, let
+me solemnly declare, that, for the opinion here expressed,
+I have not received any money or moneys, nor do I expect
+to receive such, or any place, pension, or other reward,
+from Tom Steele or any one else concerned.</p>
+
+<p>Well, we have not got this same western “Rip van
+Winkle,” nor do I think we are likely to do so, for this
+simple reason, that if he were a Clare man, he’d never
+have been caught “napping;” so, now, let us look about
+us and see if, on the very surface of events, we shall not
+find something to our purpose. But where to begin, that’s
+the question: no clue is left to the absentee of a few years
+by which to guide his path. He may look in vain even
+for the old landmarks which he remembered in boyhood;
+for somehow he finds them all in masquerade.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+The goodly King William he had left in all the effulgence
+of his Orange livery, is now a cross between a river-god
+and one of Dan’s footmen. Let him turn to the Mansion-house
+to revive his memory of the glorious hip, hip,
+hurra’s he has shouted in the exuberance of his loyalty,
+and straightway he comes plump against Lord Mayor
+O’Connell, proceeding in state to Marlborough-street
+chapel. He asks who are these plump gentlemen with
+light blue silk collars, and well-rounded calves, whose
+haughty bearing seems to awe the beholders, and he is
+told that he knew them of old, as wearing dusky black
+coats and leather shorts; pleasant fellows in those days,
+and well versed in punch and polemics. The hackney-coaches
+have been cut down into covered cars, and the
+“bulky” watchmen reduced to new police. Let him
+turn which way he will—let it be his pleasure to hear
+the popular preacher, the eloquent lawyer, or the scientific
+lecturer, and if his memory be only as accurate as
+his hearing, he will confess “time’s changes;” and when
+he learns who are deemed the fashionable entertainers of
+the day—at whose boards sit lords and baronets most
+frequently, he will exclaim with the poet—</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Pritchard’s genteel, and Garrick’s six feet high.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Well, well, it’s bad philosophy, and bad temper, too,
+to quarrel with what is; nowhere is the wisdom of Providence
+more seen than in the universal law, by which
+everything has its place somewhere; the gnarled and
+bent sapling that would be rejected by the builder, is
+exactly the piece adapted for the knee timber of a frigate;
+the jagged, ill-formed rock that would ill suit the polished
+portico, is invaluable in a rustic arch; and, perhaps, on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
+the same principle, dull lawyers make excellent judges,
+and the people who cannot speak within the limits of
+Lindley Murray, are admirable public writers and excellent
+critics; and as Doctor Pangloss was a good man
+“because he knew what wickedness was,” so nothing
+contributes to the detection of faults in others, like the
+daily practice of their commission by ourselves; and
+never can any man predict failure to another with such
+eloquence and impressiveness, as when he himself has
+experienced what it is to “be damned.”</p>
+
+<p>Here I am in another digression, and sorry am I not to
+follow it out further; but for the present I must not—so
+now, to try back: I will suppose my absentee friend to
+have passed his “day in town,” amazed and surprised
+at the various changes about him; I will not bewilder
+him with any glance at our politics, nor puzzle him with
+that game of cross corners by which every one seems to
+have changed his place; nor attempt any explanation of
+the mysterious doctrine by which the party which affects
+the strongest attachment to the sovereign should exult in
+any defeat to her armies; nor how the supporters of the
+government contribute to its stability, by rabid attacks on
+its members, and absurd comparisons of their own fitness
+for affairs, with the heads of our best and wisest. These
+things he must have remembered long ago, and with
+respect to them, we are pretty much as we were; but
+I will introduce him to an evening party—a society where
+the <i>élite</i> of Dublin are assembled; where, amid the glare
+of wax lights, and the more brilliant blaze of beauty, our
+fairest women and most gifted and exalted men are met
+together for enjoyment. At first blush there will appear
+to him to have been no alteration nor change here. Even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
+the very faces he will remember are the same he saw
+a dozen years ago: some pursy gentlemen with bald foreheads
+or grey whiskers who danced before, are now grown
+whisters; a few of the ladies, who then figured in the
+quadrille, have assumed the turban, and occupy an ottoman;
+the gay, laughing, light-hearted youth he formerly
+hobnobbed with at supper, is become a rising barrister,
+and has got up a look of learned pre-occupation, much
+more imposing to his sister than to Sir Edward Sugden;
+the wild, reckless collegeman, whose name was a talisman
+in the “Shades,” is now a soft-voiced young physician,
+vibrating in his imitation of the two great leaders in his
+art, and alternately assuming the “Epic or the Lake”
+school of physic. All this may amuse, but cannot amaze
+him: such is the natural current of events, and he ought
+to be prepared for it. The evening wears on, however;
+the frigid politeness and ceremonious distance which we
+have for some years back been borrowing from our neighbours,
+and which seem to suit our warmer natures pretty
+much as a suit of plate armour would a <i>danseuse</i> in a
+ballet—this begins to wear off, and melt away before the
+genial heat of Irish temperament; “the mirth and fun
+grow fast and furious;” and a new dance is called for.
+What, then, is the amazement, shall I say the horror,
+of our friend to hear the band strike up a tune which he
+only remembered as associated with everything base, low,
+and disgraceful; which, in the days of his “libertine
+youth,” he only heard at riotous carousals and roistering
+festivals; whose every bar is associated with words—ay,
+there’s the rub—which, in his maturer years, he blushes
+to have listened to! he stares about him in wonderment;
+for a moment he forgets that the young lady who dances<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+with such evident enjoyment of the air, is ignorant of its
+history; he watches her sparkling eye and animated
+gesture, without remembering that <i>she</i> knows nothing of
+the associations at which her partner is, perhaps, smirking;
+he sees her <i>vis-à-vis</i> exchanging looks with his friend,
+that denote <i>their</i> estimation of the music; and in very
+truth, so puzzled is he, he begins to distrust his senses.
+The air ceases, and is succeeded by another no less known,
+no less steeped in the same class of associations, and so to
+the conclusion. These remembrances of past wickedness
+go on “crescendo,” till the <i>finale</i> caps the whole with a
+melody, to which even the restraints of society are scarcely
+able to prevent a humming accompaniment of concurring
+voices, and—these are the Irish Quadrilles! What can
+account for this? What special pleading will find an
+argument in its favour? When Wesley objected to all
+the good music being given to the devil, he only excused
+his adoption of certain airs which, in their popular form,
+had never been connected with religious words and
+feelings; and in his selection of them, was rigidly mindful
+to take such only as in their character became easily convertible
+to his purpose: he never enlisted those to which,
+by an unhappy destiny, vulgarising and indelicate associations
+have been so connected as to become inseparably
+identified; and although the object is widely different,
+I cannot see how, for the purposes of social enjoyment,
+we should have diverged from his example. If we wished
+a set of Irish quadrilles, how many good and suitable airs
+had we not ready at our hands? Is not our national
+music proverbially rich, and in the very character of
+music that would suit us? Are there not airs in hundreds,
+whose very names are linked with pleasing and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
+poetic memories, admirably adapted to the purpose?
+Why commit the choice, as in this case, to a foreigner
+who knew nothing of them, nor of us? And why permit
+him to introduce into our drawing-rooms, through the
+means of a quadrille band, a class of reminiscences which
+suggest levity in young men, and shame in old ones?
+No, no; if the Irish quadrilles are to be fashionable, let
+it be in those classic precincts where their merits are
+best appreciated, and let Monsieur Jullien’s popularity
+be great in Barrack-street!</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_ALL_IRELAND" id="A_NUT_FOR_ALL_IRELAND"></a>A NUT FOR “ALL IRELAND.”</h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">From</span> Carrickfergus to Cape Clear, the whole island is
+on the “<i>qui vive</i>” as to whether her gracious majesty the
+queen will vouchsafe to visit us in the ensuing summer.
+The hospitable and magnificent reception which awaited
+her in Scotland has given a more than ordinary impulse
+to every plan by which we might evince our loyalty, and
+exhibit ourselves to our sovereign in a point of view not
+less favourable than our worthy neighbours across the sea.</p>
+
+<p>At first blush, nothing would seem more easy to accomplish
+than this. A very cursory glance at Mr. O’Connell’s
+speeches will convince any one that a land more favourably
+endowed by nature, or blessed with a finer peasantry,
+never existed: with features of picturesque beauty dividing
+the attention of the traveller, with the fertility of the
+soil; and, in fact, presenting such a panorama of loveliness,
+peace, plenty, and tranquillity, that a very natural
+doubt might occur to Sir Robert Peel’s mind in recommending<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
+this excursion to her majesty, lest the charms
+of such an Arcadia should supersede the more homely
+attractions of England, and “our ladye the queene”
+preferring the lodge in the Phœnix to the ancient towers
+of Windsor, fix her residence amongst us, and thus at
+once repeal the Union.</p>
+
+<p>It were difficult to say if some vision of this kind did
+not float across the exalted imagination of the illustrious
+Daniel, amid that shower of fortune’s favours such a visit
+would inevitably bring down—baronetcies, knighthood,
+deputy-lieutenancies would rain upon the land, and a
+general epidemic of feasting and festivity raise every
+heart in the island, and nearly break Father Mathew’s.</p>
+
+<p>If the Scotch be warm in their attachment, our affections
+stand at a white heat; if they be enthusiastic, we
+can go clean mad; and for that one bepraised individual
+who boasted he would never wash the hand which had
+the honour to touch that of the queen, we could produce a
+round ten thousand whose loyalty, looking both ways,
+would enable them, under such circumstances, to claim
+superiority, as they had never washed theirs since the
+hour of their birth.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding all these elements of hospitality, a
+more mature consideration of the question would show
+how very difficult it would be to compete successfully with
+the visit to Scotland. Clanship, the remains of feudalism,
+and historical associations, whose dark colours have
+been brought out into glowing brightness under the magic
+pencil of Scott—national costume and national customs—the
+wild sports of the wilder regions—all conspired to
+give a peculiar interest to this royal progress; and from
+the lordly Baron of Breadalbane to the kilted Highlander<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
+upon the hills, there was something of ancient splendour
+and by-gone homeliness mixed up together that may well
+have evoked the exclamation of our queen, who, standing
+on the terrace at Drummond, and gazing on the scene
+below her, uttered—“<span class="smcap">How grand!</span>”</p>
+
+<p>Now, unfortunately in many, if not in all these advantages,
+we have no participation. Clanship is unknown
+amongst us,—only one Irishman has a tail, and even that
+is as ragged an appendage as need be. Our national
+costume is nakedness; and of our national customs, we
+may answer as the sailor did, who, being asked what he
+had to say in his defence against a charge of stealing a
+quadrant, sagely replied—“Your worship, it’s a damn’d
+ugly business, and the less that’s said about it the better.”</p>
+
+<p>Two doubts press upon us—who is to receive her
+Majesty; and how are they to do it? They who have large
+houses generally happen to have small fortunes, and among
+the few who have adequate means, there is scarcely
+one who could accommodate one half of the royal suite.
+In Scotland, everything worthy of being seen lies in a
+ring-fence. The Highlands comprise all that is remarkable
+in the country; and thus the tour of them presents a
+quick succession of picturesque beauty without the interval
+of even half a day’s journey devoid of interest. Now,
+how many weary miles must her Majesty travel in Ireland
+from one remarkable spot to another—what scenes of
+misery and want must she wade through from the south
+to the west. Would any charms of scenery—would any
+warmth of hospitality—repay her for the anguish such
+misery must inflict upon her, as her eye would range
+over the wild tract of country where want and disease
+seem to have fixed their dwelling, and where the only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
+edifice that rises above the mud-cabin of the way-side
+presents the red brick front of a union poor-house?
+These, however, are sad topics—what are we to do with
+the Prince? His Royal Highness loves sporting: we have
+scarcely a pheasant—we have not one capercailzie in
+the island; but then we have our national pastimes. If
+we cannot turn out a stag to amuse him, why we can
+enlarge a tithe-proctor; and, instead of coming home
+proud that he has bagged a roe, he shall exult in having
+brought down a rector. How poor and insignificant
+would any <i>battue</i> be in comparison with a good midnight
+burning—how contemptible the pursuit of rabbits and
+hares, when compared with a “tithe affray,” or the last
+collision with the military in Tipperary. I have said
+that the Scotch have a national costume; but if <i>semi</i>-nakedness
+be a charm in them, what shall be said of us,
+who go the “whole hog?” The details of their ancient
+dress—their tartan, their kilt, their philabeg, that offered
+so much interest to the royal suite—how shall they vie
+with the million-coloured patches of an Irishman’s garment?
+or what bonnet that ever flaunted in the breeze is
+fit to compare with the easy jauntiness of Paddy’s
+<i>caubeen</i>, through which, in lieu of a feather, a lock of his
+hair is floating?</p>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Nor clasp nor nodding plume was there;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But for feather he wore one lock of hair.”<br /></span>
+<span style="padding-left: 15em"><i>Marmion.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>Then, again, how will the watch-fires that blazed upon
+the mountains pale before the glare of a burning haggard;
+and what cheer that ever rose from Highland throats will
+vie with the wild yell of ten thousand Black-feet on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
+march of a midnight marauding? No, no; it is quite
+clear the Scotch have no chance with us. Her Majesty
+may not have all her expectations fulfilled by a visit to
+Ireland; but most assuredly a “touch of our quality”
+will show her many things no near country could present,
+and the probability is, she will neither have time nor
+leisure for a trip to New Zealand.</p>
+
+<p>Everything that indicates nationality will then have its
+reward. Grave dignitaries of the Church will practise
+the bagpipes, and prothonotaries will refresh their jig-dancing;
+whatever is Irish, will be <i>la vogue</i>; and, instead
+of reading that her Majesty wore a shawl of the Gordon
+tartan, manufactured at Paisley, we shall find that the
+Queen appeared in a novel pattern of rags, devised at
+Mud Island; while his Royal Highness will compliment
+the mildness of our climate by adopting our national
+dress. What a day for Ireland that will be!—we shall
+indeed be “great, glorious, and free;” and if the evening
+only concludes with the Irish Quadrilles, I have little
+doubt that her Majesty will repeat her exclamation of
+“How grand!” as she beholds the members of the
+royal suite moving gracefully to the air of “Stonybatter.”</p>
+
+<p>Let us, then, begin in time. Let there be an order of
+council to preserve all the parsons, agents, tithe-proctors,
+and landlords till June; let there be no more shooting in
+Tipperary for the rest of the season; let us “burke”
+Father Mathew, and endeavour to make our heads for the
+approaching festivities; and what between the new poor-law
+and the tariff, I think we shall be by that time in as
+picturesque a state of poverty as the most critical stickler
+for nationality would desire.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_A_NEW_COMPANY" id="A_NUT_FOR_A_NEW_COMPANY"></a>A NUT FOR “A NEW COMPANY.”<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">By</span> no one circumstance in our social condition is a
+foreigner more struck than by the fact that there is not a
+want, an ailing, an incapacity for which British philanthropy
+has not supplied its remedy of some sort or other.
+A very cursory glance at the advertising columns of the
+<i>Times</i> will be all-sufficient to establish this assertion.
+Mental and bodily infirmities, pecuniary difficulties,
+family afflictions, natural defects, have all their separate
+<i>corps</i> of comforters; and there is no suffering condition in
+life that has not a benevolent paragraph specially addressed
+to its consolation. To the “afflicted with gout;”
+to “all with corns and bunions;” to “the friends of a
+nervous invalid”—who is, by the bye, invariably a vicious
+madman; to “the childless;” to “those about to marry.”
+Such are the headings of various little crumbs of comfort
+by which the active philanthropy of England sustains its
+reputation, and fills its pocket. From tooth-powder to
+tea-trays—from spring-mattrasses to fictitious mineral
+waters—from French blacking to the Widow Welch’s
+Pills—all have their separate votaries; and it would be
+difficult to conceive any real or imaginary want unsupplied
+in this prolific age of contrivance.</p>
+
+<p>A gentleman might descend from the moon, like our
+clever friend, “The Commissioner,” and, by a little attention
+to these plausible paragraphs, become as thoroughly
+John Bull in all his habits and observances as though he
+were born within St. Pancras. “A widow lady with two
+daughters would take a gentleman to board, where all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
+the advantages and comforts of a private family might be
+found, within ten minutes’ walk from Greenwich. Unexceptionable
+references will be given and expected on
+either side.” Here, without a moment’s delay, he might
+be domiciled in an English family; here he might retire
+from all the cares and troubles of life, enjoying the
+tranquil pleasures of the widow’s society, with no other
+risk or danger, save that of falling in love with one or
+both of the fair daughters, who have “a taste for music,”
+and “speak French.”</p>
+
+<p>It is said that few countries offer less resources to the
+stranger than England; which I stoutly deny, and assert
+that no land has set up so many sign-posts by which to
+guide the traveller—so many directions by which to
+advise his course. With us there is no risk of doing
+anything inappropriate, or incompatible with your station,
+if you will only suffer yourself to be borne along on the
+current. Your tailor knows not only the precise shade of
+colour which suits your complexion, but, as if by intuition,
+he divines the exact cut that suits your condition in life.
+Your coachmaker, in the same way, augurs from the tone
+of your voice, and the <i>contour</i> of your features, the shade
+of colour for your carriage; and should you, by any misfortune,
+happen to be knighted, the Herald’s-office deduce,
+from the very consonants of your name, the <i>quantum</i> of
+emblazonry they can bestow on you, and from how far
+back among the burglars and highwaymen of antiquity
+they can venture to trace you. Should you, however, still
+more unfortunately, through any ignorance of etiquette, or
+any inattention to those minor forms of breeding with
+which every native is conversant, offer umbrage, however
+slight and unintentional, to those dread functionaries, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+“new police;” were you by chance to gaze longer into a
+jeweller’s window than is deemed decorous; were you to
+fall into any reverie which should induce you to slacken
+your pace, perchance to hum a tune, and thus be brought
+before the awful “Sir Peter,” charged by “G 743” with
+having impeded the passengers—collected a crowd—being
+of suspicious appearance, and having refused “to tell who
+your friends were”—the odds are strongly against you
+that you perform a hornpipe upon the treadmill, or be
+employed in that very elegant chemical analysis, which
+consists in the extraction of magnesia from oyster-shells.</p>
+
+<p>Now, let any man consider for a moment what a large,
+interesting, and annually-increasing portion of our population
+there is, who, from certain peculiarities attending
+their early condition, have never been blessed with relatives
+or kindred—who, having no available father and
+mother, have consequently no uncles, aunts, or cousins,
+nor any good friends. Here the law presses with a fearful
+severity upon the suffering and the afflicted, not upon
+the guilty and offending. The state has provided no possible
+contingencies by which such persons are to escape.
+A man can no more create a paternity than he can make
+a new planet. I have already said that with wealth at
+his disposal, ancestry and forefathers are easily procured.
+He can have them of any age, of any country, of any
+condition in life—churchmen or laymen—dignitaries of
+the law or violators of it;—’tis all one, they are made to
+order. But let him be in ever such urgent want of a near
+relative; let it be a kind and affectionate father, an
+attached and doting mother, that he stands in need of—he
+may study <i>The Times</i> and <i>The Herald</i>—he may read
+<i>The Chronicle</i> and <i>The Globe</i>, in vain! No benevolent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+society has directed its philanthropy in this channel; and
+not even a cross-grained uncle or a penurious aunt can be
+had for love or money.</p>
+
+<p>Now this subject presents itself in two distinct views—one
+as regards its humanity, the other its expediency.
+As the latter, in the year of our Lord, 1844, would seem
+to offer a stronger claim on our attention, let us examine
+it first. Consider them how you will, these people form
+the most dangerous class of our population—these are the
+“waifs and strays” of mankind. Like snags and sawyers
+in the Mississippi, having no voyage to perform in
+life, their whole aim and destiny seems to be the shipwreck
+of others. With one end embedded in the mud of
+uncertain parentage, with the other they keep bobbing
+above the waves of life; but let them rise ever so high,
+they feel they cannot be extricated.</p>
+
+<p>If rich, their happiness is crossed by their sense of
+isolation; for them there are no plum-pudding festivals
+at Christmas, no family goose-devourings at Michaelmas.
+They have none of those hundred little ties and torments
+which weary and diversify life. They have acres, but
+they have no uncles—they have gardens and graperies,
+but they cannot raise a grandfather—they may have a
+future, but they have scarcely a present; and they have
+no past.</p>
+
+<p>Should they be poor, their solitary state suggests recklessness
+and vice. It is the restraint of early years that
+begets submission to the law later on, and he who has
+not learned the lesson of obedience when a child, is not
+an apt scholar when he becomes a man. This, however,
+is a part of the moral and humane consideration of the
+question, and like most other humane considerations, involves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+expense. With that we have nothing to do; our
+present business is with the rich; for their comfort and
+convenience our hint is intended, and our object to supply,
+on the shortest notice, and the most reasonable terms,
+such relatives of either sex as the applicant shall stand in
+need of.</p>
+
+<p>Let there be, therefore, established a new joint stock
+company to be called the “<span class="smcap">Grand United Ancestral,
+Kindred, and Blood Relation Society</span>”—capital any
+number of pounds sterling. Actuaries—Messrs. Oliver
+Twist and Jacob Faithful.</p>
+
+<p>Only think of the benefits of such a company! Reflect
+upon the numbers who leave their homes every morning
+without parentage, and who might now possess any
+amount of relatives they desire before night. Every one
+knows that a respectable livelihood is made by a set of
+persons whose occupation it is to become bails at the different
+police offices, for any class of offence, and to any
+amount. They exercise their calling somewhat like bill-brokers,
+taking special pains always to secure themselves
+against loss, and make a trifle of money, while displaying
+an unbounded philanthropy. Here then is a class of
+persons most appropriate for our purpose: fathers, uncles,
+first cousins, even grandfathers, might be made out of
+these at a moment’s notice. What affecting scenes, too,
+might be got up at Bow-street, under such circumstances,
+of penitent sons, and pardoning parents, of unforgiving
+uncles and imploring nephews. How would the eloquence
+of the worshipful bench revel, on such occasions, for its
+display. What admonitions would it not pour forth,
+what warnings, what commiseration, and what condolings.
+Then what a satisfaction to the culprit to know that all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>
+these things were managed by a respectable company,
+who were “responsible in every case for the good conduct
+of its servants.” No extortion permitted—no bribery
+allowed; a regular rate of charges being printed,
+which every individual was bound, like a cab-man, to
+show if required.</p>
+
+<p>So much for a father, if respectable; so much more, if
+professional; or in private life, increased premium. An
+angry parent, we’ll say two and sixpence; sorrowful,
+three shillings; “deeply afflicted and bound to weep,”
+five shillings.</p>
+
+<p>A widowed mother, in good weeds, one and sixpence;
+do, do, in a cab, half a crown; and so on.</p>
+
+<p>How many are there besides who, not actually in the
+condition we speak of, would be delighted to avail themselves
+of the benefits of this institution. How many
+moving in the society of the west end, with a father a
+tobacconist or a cheesemonger in the city, would gladly
+pay well for a fashionable parent supposed to live upon
+his estate in Yorkshire, or entertaining, as the <i>Morning
+Post</i> has it, a “distinguished party at his shooting lodge
+in the Highlands.” What a luxury, when dining his
+friends at the Clarendon, to be able to talk of his “Old
+Governor” hunting his hounds twice a week, while, at
+the same moment, the real individual was engaged in the
+manufacture of soap and short sixes. What happiness
+to recommend the game-pie, when the grouse was sent by
+his Uncle, while he felt that the only individual who
+stood in that capacity respecting him, had three gilt balls
+over his door, and was more conversant with duplicates
+than double barrels.</p>
+
+<p>But why pursue a theme whose benefits are self-evident,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+and come home to every bosom in the vast community.
+It is one of “the wants of our age,” and we
+hope ere long to see the “fathers” as much respected in
+Clerkenwell or College-street, as ever they were in Clongowes
+or Maynooth.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo187.jpg" width="200" height="213" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px; margin-top: 1em">
+<img src="images/illo188.jpg" width="400" height="356" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2>A NUT FOR “POLITICAL ECONOMISTS.”<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">This</span> is the age of political economists and their
+nostrums. Every newspaper teems with projects for the
+amelioration of our working classes, and the land is full
+of farming societies, temperance unions, and a hundred
+other Peter Purcellisms, to improve its social condition;
+the charge to make us</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Great, glorious, and free,”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">remaining with that estimable and irreproachable individual
+who tumbles in Lower Abbey-street.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Frenchman’s horse would, it is said, have inevitably
+finished his education, and accomplished the
+faculty of existing without food, had he only survived
+another twenty-four hours. Now, the condition of Ireland
+is not very dissimilar, and I only hope that we may
+have sufficient tenacity of life to outlive the numerous
+schemes for our prosperity and advancement.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing, indeed, can be more singular than the manner
+of every endeavour to benefit his country. We are poor—every
+man of us is only struggling; therefore, we are
+recommended to build expensive poorhouses, and fill them
+with some of ourselves. We have scarcely wherewithal
+to meet the ordinary demands of life, and straightway are
+told to subscribe to various new societies—repeal funds—agricultural
+clubs—O’Connell tributes—and Mathew
+testimonials. This, to any short-sighted person, might
+appear a very novel mode of filling our own pockets.
+There are one-idea’d people in the world, who can only
+take up the impression which, at first blush, any subject
+suggests; they, I say, might fancy that a continued
+system of donation, unattended by anything like receipt,
+is not exactly the surest element of individual prosperity.
+I hope to be able to controvert this plausible, but shallow
+theory, and to show—and what a happy thing it is for us—to
+show that, not only is our poverty the source of our
+greatest prosperity, but that if by any accident we should
+become rich, we must inevitably be ruined; and to
+begin—</p>
+
+<p>Absenteeism is agreed on all hands to be the bane of
+Ireland. No one, whatever be his party prejudices, will
+venture to deny this. The high-principled and well-informed
+country gentleman professes this opinion in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>
+common with the illiterate and rabid follower of O’Connell;
+I need not, therefore, insist further on a proposition
+so universally acknowledged. To proceed—of all people,
+none are so naturally absentees as the Irish; in fact, it
+would seem that one great feature of our patriotism
+consists in the desire to display, in other lands, the ardent
+attachment we bear our own. How can we tell Frenchmen,
+Italians, Germans, Russians, Swedes, and Swiss,
+how devoted we are to the country of our birth, if we
+do not go abroad to do so? How can we shed tears as
+exiles, unless we become so? How can we rail about the
+wrongs of Ireland and English tyranny, if we do not go
+among people, who, being perfectly ignorant of both, may
+chance to believe us? These are the patriotic arguments
+for absenteeism; then come others, which may be classed
+under the head of “expediency reasons,” such as debts,
+duns, outlawries, &amp;c. Thirdly, the temptations of the
+Continent, which, to a certain class of our countrymen,
+are of the very strongest description—Corn Exchange
+politics, vulgar associates, an air of bully, and a voice of
+brogue, will not form such obstacles to success in Paris,
+as in Dublin. A man can scarcely introduce an Irish
+provincialism into his French, and he would be a clever
+fellow who could accomplish a bull under a twelvemonth.
+These, then, form the social reasons; and from a short
+revision of all three, it will be seen that they include a
+very large proportion of the land—Mr. O’Connell talks of
+them as seven millions.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/illo191.jpg" width="400" height="430" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>It being now proved, I hope, to my reader’s satisfaction,
+that the bent of an Irishman is to go abroad, let us briefly
+inquire, what is it that ever prevents him so doing? The
+answer is an easy one. When Paddy was told by his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+priest that whenever he went into a public-house to
+drink, his guardian angel stood weeping at the door, his
+ready reply was, “that if he had a tester he’d have been
+in too;” so it is exactly with absenteeism; it is only
+poverty that checks it. The man with five pounds in his
+pocket starts to spend it in England; make it <i>ten</i>, and he
+goes to Paris; <i>fifteen</i>, and he’s up the Rhine; <i>twenty</i>, and
+Constantinople is not far enough for him! Whereas, if
+the sum of his wealth had been a matter of shillings, he’d
+have been satisfied with a trip to Kingstown, a chop at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>
+Jude’s, a place in the pit, and a penny to the repeal fund;
+all of which would redound to his patriotism, and the
+“prosperity of Ireland.”</p>
+
+<p>The same line of argument applies to every feature of
+expense. If we patronise “Irish manufacture,” it is
+because we cannot afford English. If we like Dublin
+society, it is upon the same principle; and, in fact, the
+cheap pleasures of home, form the sheet-anchor of our
+patriotism, and we are only “guardian angels,” because
+“we haven’t a tester.”</p>
+
+<p>Away then with any flimsy endeavours to introduce
+English capital or Scotch industry. Let us persevere in
+our present habits of mutual dislike, attack, and recrimination;
+let us interfere with the projects of English
+civilisation, and forward, by every means in our power,
+the enlightened doctrines of popery, and the patriotic
+pastime of parson-shooting, for even in sporting we dispense
+with a “game license;” let no influx of wealth
+offer to us the seduction of quitting home, and never let
+us feel with our national poet that “Ireland is a beautiful
+country to live out of.”</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo192.jpg" width="200" height="191" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_GRAND_DUKES" id="A_NUT_FOR_GRAND_DUKES"></a>A NUT FOR “GRAND DUKES.”<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo193.jpg" width="200" height="219" alt="G" title="G" />
+</div>
+
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em"><span class="smcap">od</span> help me but I have always
+looked upon a “grand duke”
+pretty much in the same
+light that I have regarded the
+“Great Lama,” that is to
+say, a very singular and curious
+object of worship in its
+native country. How any
+thing totally destitute of
+sovereign attributes could
+ever be an idol, either for religious or political adoration,
+is somewhat singular, and after much pains and reflections
+on the subject, I came to the opinion, that German
+princes were valued by their subjects pretty much on the
+principle the Indians select their idols, and knowing men
+admire thorough-bred Scotch terriers—viz., not their
+beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the cant this most canting age abounds in,
+nothing is more repulsive and disgusting than the absurd
+laudation which travellers pour forth concerning these
+people, by the very ludicrous blunder of comparing a
+foreign aristocracy with our own. Now, what is a
+German grand duke? Picture to yourself a very corpulent,
+moustached, and befrogged individual, who has a
+territory about the size of the Phœnix Park, and a city as
+big and as flourishing as the Blackrock; the expenses of
+his civil list are defrayed by a chalybeate spring, and
+the budget of his army by the license of a gambling-house,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>
+and then read the following passage from “Howitt’s
+Life in Germany,” which, with that admirable appreciation
+of excellence so eminently their characteristic, the
+newspapers have been copying this week past—</p>
+
+<p>“You may sometimes see a grand duke come into
+a country inn, call for his glass of ale, drink it, pay for
+it, and go away as unceremoniously as yourself. The
+consequence of this easy familiarity is, that princes are
+everywhere popular, and the daily occurrence of their
+presence amongst the people, prevents that absurd crush
+and stare at them, which prevails in more luxurious and
+exclusive countries.”</p>
+
+<p>That princes do go into country inns, call for ale, and
+drink it, I firmly believe; a circumstance, however, which
+I put the less value upon, inasmuch as the inn is pretty
+much like the prince’s own house, the ale very like what
+he has at home, and the innkeeper as near as possible, in
+breeding, manner, and appearance, his equal. That he
+<i>pays</i> for the drink, which our author takes pains to
+mention, excites all my admiration; but I confess I have
+no words to express my pleasure on reading that “he
+goes away again,” and, as Mr. Howitt has it, “as unceremoniously
+as yourself,” neither stopping to crack the
+landlord’s crown, smash the pewter, break the till, nor
+even put a star in the looking-glass over the fire-place, a
+condescension on his part which leads to the fact, that
+“princes are everywhere popular.”</p>
+
+<p>Now, considering that Mr. Howitt is a Quaker, it is
+somewhat remarkable the high estimate he entertains of
+this “grand ducal” forbearance. What he expected his
+highness to have done when he had finished his drink, I
+am as much at a loss to conjecture, as what trait we are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+called upon to admire in the entire circumstance; when
+the German prince went into the inn, and knocking three
+times with a copper kreutzer on the counter, called for his
+choppin of beer, he was exactly acting up to the ordinary
+habits of his station, as when the Duke of Northumberland,
+on his arriving with four carriages at the “Clarendon,”
+occupied a complete suite of apartments, and
+partook of a most sumptuous dinner. Neither more nor
+less. His Grace of Alnwick might as well be lauded
+for his ducal urbanity as the German prince for his, each
+was fulfilling his destiny in his own way, and there was
+not anything a whit more worthy of admiration in the
+one case, than in the other.</p>
+
+<p>But three hundred pounds per annum, even in a cheap
+country, afford few luxuries; and if the Germans are
+indifferent to cholic, there might be, after all, something
+praiseworthy in the beer-drinking, and here I leave it.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo195.jpg" width="200" height="214" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_THE_EAST_INDIA_DIRECTORS" id="A_NUT_FOR_THE_EAST_INDIA_DIRECTORS"></a>A NUT FOR THE EAST INDIA DIRECTORS.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo196.jpg" width="200" height="256" alt="W" title="W" />
+</div>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em"><span class="smcap">hen</span> the East India Directors
+recalled Lord Ellenborough,
+and replaced him by Sir
+Henry Harding, the impression
+upon the public mind
+was, as was natural it should
+be, that the course of policy
+adopted by the former, was
+such as met not their approval,
+and should not be persisted
+in by his successor.</p>
+
+<p>To supersede one man by
+another, that he might perform the very same acts in the
+same way, would be something too ludicrous and absurd.
+When John Bull chassées the Tories, and takes to the
+Whigs, it is because he has had enough of Peel, and wants
+to try a stage with Lord John, who handles the ribbons
+differently, and drives another sort of a team; a piebald
+set of screws they are, to be sure, but they can go the pace
+when they are at it; and, as the road generally lies downhill,
+they get along right merrily. But John would never
+think of a change, if the pace were to be always the same.
+No; he’d just put up with the set he had, and take his
+chance. Not so your India Directors. They are quite
+satisfied with everything; all is right, orderly, and proper;
+but still they would rather that another man were at the
+head of affairs, to do exactly what had been done before.
+“What are you doing, Peter?”—“Nothing, sir.” “And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+you, Jem, what are you about?”—“Helping Peter, sir.”
+That is precisely the case, and Sir Henry is gone out
+to help Lord Ellenborough.</p>
+
+<p>Such a line of proceeding is doubtless singular enough,
+and many sensible people there are, who cannot comprehend
+the object and intention of the wise Directors;
+while, by the press, severe imputations have been thrown
+upon their consistency and intelligence, and some have
+gone so far as to call their conduct unparalleled.</p>
+
+<p>This, however, is unjust. The Old Almanack, as Lord
+Brougham would call it, has registered a not inapplicable
+precedent; and, in the anxious hope of being remembered
+by the “Old Lady,” I hasten to mention it:—</p>
+
+<p>When Louis XIV. grew tired of Madame la Vallière,
+and desired to replace her by another in his favour, he
+committed the difficult task of explanation on the subject,
+to his faithful friend and confessor, Bossuet. The worthy
+Bishop undertook his delicate mission with diffidence;
+but he executed it with tact. The gentle La Vallière
+wept bitterly; she knew nothing of the misfortune that
+menaced her. She believed that her star still stood in
+the ascendant, and fancied (like Lord Ellenborough)
+that her blandishments were never more acknowledged.
+“Whence, then, this change?” cried she, in the agony
+of her grief. “How have I offended him?”</p>
+
+<p>“You mistake me, my daughter,” said Mons. de
+Méaux. “His Majesty is most tenderly attached to
+you; but religious scruples—qualms of conscience—have
+come upon him. ‘C’est par la peur du diable,’ that
+he consents to this separation.”</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">
+<img src="images/illo199.jpg" width="450" height="569" alt="Honorable Members." title="" />
+<span class="caption">Honorable Members.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Poor Louise dried her tears; the case was bad enough,
+but there was one consolation—it was religion, and not a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>
+rival, had cost her a lover; and so she began her preparations
+for departure with a heart somewhat less heavy.
+On the day, however, of her leave-taking, a carriage,
+splashed and travel-stained, arrived at the “petite porte”
+of the Palace; and as instantaneously ran the rumour
+through the household that his Majesty’s new mistress
+had arrived: and true it was, Madame de Maintenon had
+taken her place beside the fauteuil of the King.</p>
+
+<p>“So, Mons. de Bossuet,” said La Vallière, as he
+handed her to her carriage—“so, then, his Majesty has
+exiled me, ‘par la peur du diable.’”</p>
+
+<p>The Bishop bowed in tacit submission and acquiescence.</p>
+
+<p>“In that case,” resumed she, “c’est par complaisance
+au diable, that he accepts Madame de Maintenon.”</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_FILBERT_FOR_SIR_ROBERT_PEEL" id="A_FILBERT_FOR_SIR_ROBERT_PEEL"></a>A FILBERT FOR SIR ROBERT PEEL.</h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo200.jpg" width="200" height="260" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em"><span class="smcap">Sir Robert Peel</span> was
+never more triumphant than
+when, in the last session of
+Parliament, he rebuked his
+followers for a casual defection
+in the support of Government,
+by asking them what
+they had to complain of.
+Are <i>we</i> not on the Treasury
+benches? said the Right
+Honourable Baronet. Do not
+my friend Graham and myself
+guide and direct you?—do we not distribute the patronage<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
+and the honours of the government,—take the pay—and
+rule the kingdom—what more would you have? Ungrateful
+bucolics, you know not what you want! The apostrophe
+was bold, but not original. I remember hearing of a
+West country farmer having ridden a long day’s journey
+on a poor, ill-fed hack, which, as evening drew near,
+showed many symptoms of a fatal knock-up. The rider
+himself was well tired, too, and stopped at an ale-house
+for a moment’s refreshment, while he left the jaded beast
+standing at the door. As he remounted his saddle, a few
+minutes after, he seized his reins briskly, flourished his
+whip (both like Sir Robert), and exclaimed:—“I’ve had
+two glasses of spirits.—Let us see if you won’t go after
+that.”</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo201.jpg" width="200" height="146" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_INCOME_TAX" id="THE_INCOME_TAX"></a>“THE INCOME TAX.”</h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Among</span> the many singular objections which have been
+made to the new property tax, I find Mr. C. Buller stating
+in the House, that his greatest dislike to the project lay
+in the exceedingly small amount of the impost.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“My wound is great because it is so small,”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">might have been the text of the honourable and learned
+gentleman’s oration. After setting forth most eloquently<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>
+the varied distresses of the country—its accumulating
+debt and heavy taxation—he turns the whole weight of
+his honest indignation against the new imposition, because,
+forsooth, it is so “little burdensome, and will inflict so
+slight an additional load upon the tax-payer.” There is
+an attempt at argument, however, on the subject, which
+is somewhat amusing; for he continues not only to lament
+the smallness of the new tax, but the “slight necessity that
+exists” even for that. Had we some great national loss
+to make up, the deficiency of which rendered a call on
+the united people necessary, then, quoth he, how happily
+we should stand forward in support of the Constitution.
+In fact, he deplores, in the most moving terms, that ill off
+as the country is, yet it is not one-half so bad as it might
+be, or as he should like to see it. Ah! had we only some
+disastrous Continental war, devastating our commerce—ruining
+our Colonies, and eating into the very heart of our
+national resources—how gladly I should pay this Income
+Tax; but to remedy a curable evil—to restore, by prompt
+and energetic measures, the growing disease of the State—is
+a poor, pettifogging practice, that has neither heroism
+nor fame to recommend it. I remember hearing that at
+one of those excellent institutions, so appropriately denominated
+Magdalen Asylums, a poor, but innocent girl,
+presented herself for admission, pleading her lonely and
+deserted condition, as a plea for her reception. The
+patroness, an amiable and excellent person—but somewhat
+of the complexion of the honourable and learned Member
+for Liskeard—asked at once, whether she had resolved on
+a total reformation of her mode of life. The other replied,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>
+that her habits had been always chaste and virtuous, and
+that her character had been invariably above reproach.
+“Ah, in that case,” rejoined the lady, “we can’t admit
+you; this institution is expressly for the reception of
+penitents. If you could only qualify for a week or so,
+there is no objection to your admission.”</p>
+
+<p>Is not this exactly Mr. Buller’s proposition? “Let us
+have the Whigs back for a few years longer; let us
+return to our admirable foreign policy; and when we have
+successfully embroiled ourselves with America, lost
+Canada, been beaten in China, driven out of our Eastern
+possessions, and provoked a war with France, then I’m
+your man for an Income Tax; lay it on only heavily; let
+the nation, already bowed down under the heavy burden
+of its calamities, receive in addition the gracious boon of
+enormous taxation.” Homœopathy teaches us that nothing
+is so curative in its agency, as the very cause of our present
+suffering, or something as analogous to it as possible;
+and, like Hahnemann, Mr. Buller administers what the
+vulgar call “a hair of the dog that bit us,” as the most
+sovereign remedy for all our evils.</p>
+
+<p>The country is like a sick man with a whitlow, for the
+cure of which his physician prescribes a slight, but clearly
+necessary, operation. Another medical Dr. Buller is,
+however, standing by. He at once insinuates his veto;
+remarks upon the trivial nature of the disease—the unpainful
+character of the remedy; “but wait,” adds he—“wait
+till the inflammation extends higher; have patience
+till the hand becomes swollen and the arm affected; and
+then, when your agony is beyond endurance, and your life
+endangered, then we’ll amputate the limb high up, and
+mayhap you may recover, after all.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>”</p>
+
+<p>As for me, it is the only occasion I’m aware of, where
+a successful comparison can be instituted between honour
+and the Whigs; for assuredly neither have “any skill in
+surgery.”</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_THE_BELGES" id="A_NUT_FOR_THE_BELGES"></a>A NUT FOR THE “BELGES.”</h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo204.jpg" width="200" height="131" alt="E" title="E" />
+</div>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em"><span class="smcap">very</span> one knows that men
+in masses, whether the
+same be called boards,
+committees, aggregate,
+or repeal meetings, will
+be capable of atrocities
+and iniquities, to which,
+as individuals, their natures would be firmly repugnant.
+The irresponsibility of a number is felt by every member,
+and Curran was not far wrong when he said, a “corporation
+was a thing that had neither a body to be kicked, nor
+a soul to be damned.”</p>
+
+<p>It is, indeed, a melancholy fact, that nations partake
+much more frequently of the bad than the good features
+of the individuals composing them, and it requires no
+small amount of virtue to flavour the great caldron of
+a people, and make its incense rise gratefully to heaven.
+For this reason, we are ever ready to accept with enthusiasm
+anything like a national tribute to high principle
+and honour. Such glorious bursts are a source of pride to
+human nature itself, and we hail with acclamation these
+evidences of exalted feeling, which make men “come
+nearer to the gods.” The greater the sacrifice to selfish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+interests and prejudices, the more do we prize the effort.
+Think for a moment what a sensation of surprise and
+admiration, wonderment, awe, and approbation it would
+excite throughout Europe, if, by the next arrival from
+Boston, came the news that “the Americans had determined
+to pay their debts!” That at some great congress
+of the States, resolutions were carried to the effect, “that
+roguery and cheating will occasionally lower a people in
+the estimation of others, and that the indulgences of such
+national practices may be, in the end, prejudicial to
+national honour;” “that honesty, if not the best, may be
+good policy, even in a go-a-head state of society;” “that
+smart men, however a source of well-founded pride to a
+people, are now and then inconvenient from the very
+excess of their smartness;” “that seeing these things,
+and feeling all the unhappy results which mistrust and
+suspicion by foreign countries must bring upon their commerce,
+they have determined to pay something in the
+pound, and go a-head once more.” I am sure that such
+an announcement would be hailed with illuminations from
+Hamburg to Leghorn. American citizens would be cheered
+wherever they were found; pumpkin pie would figure at
+royal tables, and twist and cocktail be handed round with
+the coffee; our exquisites would take to chewing and its
+consequences; and our belles, banishing Rossini and
+Donizetti, would make the air vocal with the sweet sounds
+of Yankee Doodle. One cannot at a moment contemplate
+what excesses our enthusiasm might not carry us to; and
+I should not wonder in the least if some great publisher
+of respectable standing might not start a pirated reprint of
+the <i>New York Herald</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Let me now go back and explain, if my excitement will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>
+permit me, how I have been led into such extravagant
+imaginings. I have already remarked, that nations seldom
+gave evidence of noble bursts of feeling; still more rarely,
+I regret to say, do they evince any sorrow for past misconduct—any
+penitence for by-gone evil.</p>
+
+<p>This would be, indeed, the severest ordeal of a people’s
+greatness; this, the brightest evidence of national purity.
+Happy am I to say such an instance is before us; proud
+am I to be the man to direct public attention to the fact.
+The following paragraph I copy verbatim from the <i>Times</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“On the 18th of June, the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo,
+a black flag was hoisted by the Belgians at the top of the monument
+erected on the field where the battle was fought.”</p></div>
+
+<p>A black flag, the emblem of mourning, the device of
+sorrow and regret, waves over the field of Waterloo! Not
+placed there by vanquished France, whose legions fought
+with all their chivalry; not hoisted by the proud Gaul, on
+the plain where, in defeat, he bit the dust; but in penitence
+of heart, in deep sorrow and contrition, by the
+Belgians who ran—by the people who fled—by the soldiers
+who broke their ranks and escaped in terror.</p>
+
+<p>What a noble self-abasement is this; how beautifully
+touching such an instance of a people’s sorrow, and how
+affecting to think, that while in the halls of Apsley House
+the heroes were met together to commemorate the glorious
+day when they so nobly sustained their country’s honour,
+another nation should be in sackcloth and ashes, in all
+the trappings of woe, mourning over the era of their
+shame, and sorrowing over their degradation. Oh, if a
+great people in all the majesty of their power, in all their
+might of intellect, strength, and riches, be an object of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
+solemn awe and wonder, what shall we say of one whose
+virtues partake of the humble features of every-day life,
+whose sacrifice is the tearful offering of their own regrets?</p>
+
+<p>Mr. O’Connell may declaim, and pronounce his eight
+millions the finest peasantry in the world—he may extol
+their virtues from Cork to Carrickfergus—he may ring
+the changes over their loyalty, their bravery, and their
+patriotism; but when eulogising the men who assure him
+“they are ready to die for their country,” let him blush
+to think of the people who can “cry” for theirs.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_WORKHOUSE_CHAPLAINS" id="A_NUT_FOR_WORKHOUSE_CHAPLAINS"></a>A NUT FOR WORKHOUSE CHAPLAINS.</h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 180px;">
+<img src="images/illo207.jpg" width="180" height="251" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em"><span class="smcap">The</span> bane and antidote of England
+is her immense manufacturing
+power—the faculty that
+enables her to inundate the
+whole habitable globe with the
+products of her industry, is at
+once the source of her prosperity
+and poverty—her millionnaire
+mill-owners and her
+impoverished thousands. Never
+was the skill of machinery
+pushed to the same wonderful
+extent—never the results of mechanical invention so
+astoundingly developed. Men are but the presiding
+genii over the wonder-working slaves of their creative
+powers, and the child, is the volition that gives impulse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
+to the giant force of a mighty engine. Subdivision of
+labour, carried to an extent almost incredible, has facilitated
+despatch, and induced a higher degree of excellence
+in every branch of mechanism—human ingenuity
+is racked, chemical analysis investigated, mathematical
+research explored—and all, that Mr. Binns, of Birmingham,
+may make thirteen minikin pins—while Mr. Sims,
+of Stockport, has been making but twelve. Let him but
+succeed in this, and straightway his income is quadrupled—his
+eldest son is member for a manufacturing borough,
+his second is a cornet in the Life Guards—his daughter,
+with a fortune of one hundred thousand pounds, is
+married to the heir of a marquisate—and his wife, soaring
+above the murky atmosphere of the factory, breathes the
+purer air of western London, and advertises her <i>soirées</i>
+in the <i>Morning Post</i>. The pursuit of wealth is now the
+grand characteristic of our age and country; and the
+headlong race of money-getting seems the great feature
+of the day. To this end the thundering steamer ploughs
+the white-crested wave of the broad Atlantic—to this end
+the clattering locomotive darts through the air at sixty
+miles the hour—for this, the thousand hammers of the
+foundry, the ten thousand wheels of the factory are at
+work—and man, toiling like a galley-slave, scarce takes
+time to breathe in his mad career, as with straining
+eyeballs and outstretched hands, he follows in the pursuit
+of lucre.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/illo209.jpg" width="400" height="418" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>Now, men are imitative creatures; and strange enough,
+too, they are oftentimes disposed from the indulgence of
+the faculty to copy things, and adapt them to purposes
+very foreign to their original destination. This manufacturing
+speed, this steeple-chase of printed calico and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+Paisley wear, is all very well while it is limited to the
+districts where it began. That two hundred and seventy
+thousand white cotton night-caps, with a blue tassel on
+every one of them, can be made in twenty-four hours at
+Messrs. Twist and Tredlem’s factory, is a very gratifying
+fact, particularly to all who indulge in ornamental head-gear—but
+we see no reason for carrying this dispatch into
+the Court of Chancery, and insisting that every nod of
+the woolsack is to decide a suit at law. Yet have the
+lawyer and the physician both adopted the impetuous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
+practices of the manufacturing world, and Haste, red
+haste! is now the cry.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Brougham’s Chancery practice was only to be
+equalled by one of Lord Waterford’s steeple-chases. He
+took all before him in a fly—he rode straight, plenty of
+neck, baulked nothing—up leap or down leap, sunk fence
+or double ditch, post and rail, or quickset, stone wall, or
+clay bank, all one to him—go it he would. Others might
+deny his judgment; he wanted to get over the ground,
+and <i>that</i> he did do.</p>
+
+<p>The West-end physician, in the same way, visits his
+fifty patients daily, walks his hospital, delivers a lecture
+to old ladies about some “curious provision” of nature
+in the palm of the human hand (for fee-taking); and
+devoting something like three minutes and twelve
+seconds to each sick man’s case, pockets some twenty
+thousand per annum by his dispatch.</p>
+
+<p>Speed is now the <i>El Dorado</i>. Jelly is advertised to be
+made in a minute, butter in five, soup seasoned and
+salted in three seconds of time. Even the Quakers—bless
+their quiet hearts!—couldn’t escape the contagion,
+and actually began to walk and talk with some faint
+resemblance to ordinary mortals. The church alone
+maintained the even tenor of its way, and moved not
+in the wild career of the whirlwind world about it.
+Such was my gratulation, when my eye fell upon the
+following passage of the <i>Times</i>. Need I say with
+what a heavy heart I read it? It is Mr. Rushton who
+speaks:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“In the month of December, 1841, he heard that a man had
+been found dead in the streets of Liverpool; that all the property
+he possessed had been taken from his person, and that an attempt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+to trace his identity had been made in vain. He was taken to the
+usual repository for the dead, where an inquest had been held upon
+him, and from the ‘dead house,’ as it was called, he was removed
+to the workhouse burial-ground. The man who drove the hearse
+on the occasion was very old, and not very capable of giving
+evidence. His attendant was an idiot. It had been represented
+to Mr. Hodgson and himself that the dead man had been taken in
+the clothes in which he died and put into a coffin which was too
+small for him; that a shroud was put over him; that the lid of
+the coffin would not go down; and that he was taken from the
+dead-house and buried in the parochial ground, no funeral rites
+having been performed on the occasion. It had also been communicated
+to Mr. Hodgson and himself that, after two days, the
+clergyman who was instructed to perform those rites over the
+paupers, came and performed one service for the dead over all the
+paupers who had been buried in the intermediate time.”</p></div>
+
+<p>Now, without stopping to criticise the workhouse equipage,
+which appears to be driven by a man too old to
+speak, with an idiot for his companion; nor even to
+advert to the scant ceremony of burying a man in his
+daily dress, and in a coffin that would not close on him—what
+shall we say of the “patent parson power” that
+buries paupers in detachments, and reads the service over
+platoons of dead? The reverend chaplain feeling the
+uncertainty of human life, and knowing how frail is our
+tie to existence, waits in the perfect conviction of a large
+party before he condescends to appear. Knowing that
+dead men tell no tales, he surmises also that they don’t
+run away, and so he says to himself—these people are
+not pressed for time, they’ll be here when I come again—it
+is a sickly season, and we’ll have a field-day on
+Saturday. Cheap soup for the poor, says Mrs. Fry.
+Cheap justice, says O’Connell. Cheap clothing, says a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+tailor who makes new clothes from old, with a machine
+called a devil—but cheap burial is the boast of the
+Liverpool chaplain, and he is the most original among
+them.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_THE_HOUSE" id="A_NUT_FOR_THE_HOUSE"></a>A NUT FOR THE “HOUSE.”</h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">I have</span> long been of opinion that a man may attain to
+a very respectable knowledge of Chinese ceremonies and
+etiquette before he can learn one half the usages of the
+honourable house. Seldom does a debate go forward
+without some absurd interruption taking place in a mere
+matter of form. Now it is a cry of “Order, order,” to
+some gentleman who is subsequently discovered not to
+have been in the least disorderly, but whom the attack
+has so completely dumfounded, that he loses his speech
+and his self-possession, and sits down in confusion, to be
+sneered at in the morning papers, and hooted by his constituents
+when he goes home.</p>
+
+<p>Now some gifted scion of aristocracy makes an essay
+in braying and cock-crowing, both permitted by privilege,
+and overwhelms the speaker with the uproar. Now it
+is that intolerable nuisance, old Hume, shouting out
+“divide,” or “adjourn;” or it is Colonel Sibthorpe who
+counts the house. These ridiculous privileges of members
+to interfere with the current of public business
+because they may be sleepy or stupid themselves, are
+really intolerable, besides being so numerous that the
+first dozen years of a parliamentary life will scarcely
+teach a man a tithe of them. But of all these “rules<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>
+of the house,” the most unjust and tyrannical is that
+which compels a man to put up with any impertinence
+because he has already spoken. It would seem as if
+each honourable member “went down” with a single
+ball cartridge in his pouch, which, when fired, the best
+thing he could do was to go home and wait for another
+distribution of ammunition; for by remaining he only
+ran the risk of being riddled without any power to
+return the fire.</p>
+
+<p>A case of this kind happened a few evenings since:—A
+Mr. Blewitt—I suppose the composer—made a very
+absurd motion, the object of which was to inquire
+“What office the Duke of Wellington held in the present
+government, and whether he was or was not a
+member of the cabinet.” Without referring the learned
+gentleman to a certain erudite volume called the Yearly
+Almanack and Directory, Sir Robert Peel proceeded to
+explain the duke’s position. He eulogised, as who would
+not? his grace’s sagacity and his wisdom; the importance
+of his public services, and the great value the ministers,
+his <i>confrères</i>, set upon a judgment which, in a long life,
+had so seldom been found mistaken; and then he concluded
+by quoting from one of the duke’s recent replies
+to some secretary or other who addressed him on a
+matter foreign to his department—“That he was one of
+the few men in the present day who did not meddle in
+affairs over which they have no control.” “A piece of
+counsel,” quoth Sir Robert, “I would strenuously advise
+the honourable member to apply to his own case.”</p>
+
+<p>Now we have already said that we think Blewitt—though
+an admirable musician—seems to be a very silly
+man. Still, if he really did not know what the duke<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
+represented in her Majesty’s government—if he really
+were ignorant of what functions he exercised, the information
+might have been bestowed upon him without a
+retort like this. In the first place, his query, if a foolish,
+was at least a civil one; and in the second, it was his duty
+to understand a matter of this nature: it therefore came
+under his control, and Sir Robert’s application of the
+quotation was perfectly uncalled-for. Well; what followed?
+Mr. Blewitt rose in wrath to reply, when the
+house called out, “Spoke, spoke!” and Blewitt was
+muzzled; the moral of which is simply this—you ask a
+question in the house, and the individual addressed has a
+right to insult you, you having no power of rejoinder,
+under the etiquette of “spoke.” Any flippancy may
+overturn a man at this rate; and the words “loud
+laughter,” printed in italics in the <i>Chronicle</i>, is sure to
+renew the emotion at every breakfast table the morning
+after.</p>
+
+<p>Now I am sorry for Blewitt, and think he was badly
+treated.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_LAW_REFORM" id="A_NUT_FOR_LAW_REFORM"></a>A NUT FOR “LAW REFORM.”<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 180px;">
+<img src="images/illo215.jpg" width="180" height="230" alt="O" title="O" />
+</div>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em"><span class="smcap">f</span> all the institutions of England
+there is scarcely one more
+lauded, and more misunderstood,
+than trial by jury. At
+first blush, nothing can seem
+fairer and less objectionable
+than the unbiassed decision
+of twelve honest men, sworn
+to do justice. They hear
+patiently the evidence on
+both sides; and in addition
+to the light derivable from
+their own intelligence, they have the directing charge of
+the judge, who tells them wherein the question for their
+decision lies, what are the circumstances of which they
+are to take cognizance, and by what features of the case
+their verdict is to be guided. Yet look at the working
+of this much-boasted privilege. One jury brings in a
+verdict so contrary to all reason and justice, that they
+are sent back to reconsider it by the judge; another,
+more refractory still, won’t come to any decision at all,
+and get carted to the verge of the county for their pains;
+and a third, improving on all former modes of proceeding,
+has adopted a newer and certainly most impartial manner
+of deciding a legal question. “Court of Common Pleas,
+London, July 6.—The Chief Justice (Tindal) asked the
+ground of objection, and ten of the jurymen answered
+that in the last case one of their colleagues had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>
+suggested that the verdict should be decided by tossing
+up!” Here is certainly a very important suggestion,
+and one which, recognising justice as a blind goddess, is
+strictly in conformity with the impersonation. Nothing
+could possibly be farther removed from the dangers of
+undue influence than decisions obtained in this manner.
+Not only are all the prejudices and party bearings of
+individual jurors avoided, but an honest and manly oblivion
+of all the evidence which might bias men if left to
+the guidance of their poor and erring faculties, is thus
+secured. It is human to err, says the poet moralist; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+so the jurymen in question discovered, and would therefore
+rather refer a knotty question to another deity than
+Justice, whom men call Fortune. How much would
+it simplify our complex and gnarled code, the introduction
+of this system? In the next place, juries need
+not be any longer empannelled, the judge could “sky the
+copper” himself. The only question would be, to have
+a fair halfpenny. See with what rapidity the much-cavilled
+court would dispatch public business! I think I
+see our handsome Chief of the Common Pleas at home
+here, with his knowing eye watching the vibrations of
+the coin, and calling out in his sonorous tone, “Head—the
+plaintiff has it. Call another case.” I peep into the
+Court of Chancery, and behold Sir Edward twirling the
+penny with more cautious fingers, and then with his
+sharp look and sharper voice, say, “Tail! Take a rule
+for the defendant.”</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/illo216.jpg" width="400" height="432" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>No longer shall we hear objections as to the sufficiency
+of legal knowledge possessed by those in the judgment-seat.
+There will be no petty likings for this, and dislikings
+for that court; no changes of venue; no challenges
+of the jury; even Lord Brougham himself, of whom Sir
+Edward remarked, “What a pity it was he did not know
+a little law, for then he would have known a little of
+everything”—even he might be a chancellor once more.
+What a power of patronage it would give each succeeding
+ministry to know that capacity was of no consequence;
+and that the barrister of six years’ standing could turn
+his penny as well as the leader in Chancery. Public
+business need never be delayed a moment; and if the
+Chief Baron were occupied in chamber, the crier of the
+court could perform his functions till he came back again.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_CLIMBING_BOYS" id="A_NUT_FOR_CLIMBING_BOYS"></a>A NUT FOR “CLIMBING BOYS.”<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo218.jpg" width="200" height="138" alt="O" title="O" />
+</div>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em"><span class="smcap">ne</span> man may lead a horse
+to the water, but ten
+cannot make him drink,
+sayeth the adage; and so
+it might be said, any one
+might devise an act of
+parliament—but who can
+explain all its intentions
+and provisions—define its powers—and illustrate its
+meanings? One clause will occasionally vitiate another;
+one section completely contradict the preceding one; the
+very objects of the legislature are often so pared away in
+committee, that a mere shadowy outline remains of what
+the original framer intended; and were it not for the bold
+hand of executive justice, the whole might be inoperative.
+The judge, happily, supplies the deficiency of the lawmaker—and
+the thing were perfect, if judges were not,
+like doctors, given to differ—and thus, occasionally, disseminate
+somewhat opposite notions of the statutes of
+the land.</p>
+
+<p>Such being the case, it will not be deemed impertinent
+of one, who desires to conform in all respects to the law,
+to ask, from time to time, of our rulers and governors,
+certain questions, the answers to which, should he happily
+receive them, will be regarded by him as though written
+on tables of brass.</p>
+
+<p>Now, in a late session of parliament, some humane<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
+member brought in a bill to interdict the sweeping of
+chimneys by all persons small enough for the purpose,
+and ingeniously suggested supplying their place by others,
+whose size would have inevitably condemned them to
+perish in a flue. Never had philanthropist a greater share
+of popularity. Little sweeps sang his praises along the
+streets—penny periodicals had verses in his honour—the
+“song of the soot” was set to music—and people, in the
+frenzy of their enthusiasm, so far forgot their chimneys,
+that scarcely a street in town had not, at least, one fire
+every night in the week. Meanwhile, the tender sweeplings
+had lost their occupation, they had pronounced their
+farewell to the brush—what was to become of them?
+Alas, the legislature had not thought of that point; for,
+they were not influential enough to claim compensation.
+I grieve to think, but there is too much reason to fear,
+that many of them betook themselves to the ancient vocation
+of pickpockets. Yes, as Dr. Watts has it—</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Satan finds some mischief still<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For idle hands to do.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em">The divisional police-offices were filled each morning with
+small “suttees”—whose researches after handkerchiefs
+and snuff-boxes were of the most active kind; while their
+full-grown brethren, first impacted in a funnel of ten
+inches by eight, were cursing the Commons, and consigning
+to all manner of misfortune the benevolent framer of
+the bill.</p>
+
+<p>Now, I cannot help asking myself, was this the intention
+of the legislature—did they really mean that big
+people should try to penetrate where little ones were not
+small enough to pass?—or was it some piece of conciliation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>
+to the climbing boys, that they should see their
+masters grilled and wasted, in revenge for “the disabilities
+they had so long laboured under?” This point of
+great difficulty—and after much thought and deliberation,
+I have come to one solution of the whole question, and I
+only hope it may prove the right one. It is this. The
+bill is a parable—the climbing boy, and the full-grown
+sweep—and the chimney, and the householder, and the
+machine, are mere types which I would interpret thus:—the
+householder is John Bull, a good-natured, easy fellow,
+liking his ease, and studying his comfort—caring for his
+dinner, and detesting smoke above all things; he wishes
+to have his house neat and orderly, neither confusion nor
+disturbance—but his great dread is fire; the very thought
+of it sets him a-trembling all over. Now, for years past,
+he has remarked that the small sweeps, who mount so
+glibly to the top of the flue, rarely do anything but make
+a noise—they scream and shout for ten minutes, or so,
+and then come down, with their eyes red, and their noses
+bloody, and cry themselves sick, till they get bread-and-butter.
+John is worried and fretted at all this; he remembers
+the time a good-sized sweep used to go up and rake
+down all the soot in no time. These were the old Tory
+ministers, who took such wise and safe precautions against
+fire, that an insurance-office was never needed. “Not
+so now,” quoth John; “’od! rabbit it, they’ve got their
+climbing boys, who are always bleating and bawling, for
+the neighbourhood to look at them—and yet, devil a bit
+of good they do the whole time.”</p>
+
+<p>And now, who are these? you would ask. I’ll tell you—the
+“Climbing Boys” are the Howicks, and the Clements—the
+Smith O’Briens and the D’Israelis, and a host<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>
+of others, scraping their way upwards, through soot and
+smoke, that they may put out their heads in high places,
+and cry “’weep! ’weep!” and well may they—they’ve
+had a dirty journey—and black enough their hands are, I
+warrant you, before they got there.</p>
+
+<p>To get rid of these, without offending them, John brings
+in his philanthropic bill, making it penal to employ them,
+or to have any other than the old legitimate sweeps, that
+know every turn of the flue, and have gone up and down
+any time these twenty years. No new machine for him—no
+Whig contrivance, to scrape the bricks and burn the
+house—but the responsible full-grown sweeps—who, if the
+passage be narrow, have strength to force their way, and
+take good care not to get dust in their eyes in the process.</p>
+
+<p>Such is my interpretation of the bill, and I only trust
+a discerning public may agree with me.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_THE_SUBDIVISION_OF_LABOUR" id="A_NUT_FOR_THE_SUBDIVISION_OF_LABOUR"></a>A NUT FOR “THE SUBDIVISION OF LABOUR.”</h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">I forget</span> the place, and the occasion also, but I have a
+kind of misty recollection of having once, in these nutting
+excursions of mine, been excessively eloquent on the subject
+of the advantages derivable from division of labour.</p>
+
+<p>Not a walk or condition in life is there to which it has
+not penetrated; and while natural talents have become
+cultivated from finding their most congenial sphere of
+operation, immense results have accrued in every art
+and science where a higher degree of perfection has been
+thus attained. Your doctor and your lawyer now-a-days
+select the precise portion of your person or property they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>
+intend to operate on. The oculist and the aurist, and the
+odontalgist and the pedicurist, all are suggestive of various
+local sufferings, by which they bound their skill; and so,
+the equity lawyer and the common-law lawyer, the special
+pleader and the bar orator, have subdivided knavery,
+without diminishing its amount. Even in literature,
+there are the heavy men who “do” the politics, and the
+quiet men who do the statistics, and the rough-and-ready
+men, who are a kind of servants-of-all-work, and so on.
+In universities, there is the science man and the classical
+man, the man of simple equations and the man of spondees.
+Painting has its bright colourists and its more
+sombre-loving artists, and so on—the great camps of
+party would seem to have given the impulse to every
+condition of life, and “speciality” is the order of the day.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner is a new discovery made, no matter whether
+in the skies above, or the dark bowels of the earth, than
+an opportunity of disagreement is sure to arise. Two,
+mayhap three, gentlemen, profess diversity of opinion;
+followers are never lacking, let any one be fool enough to
+turn leader—and straightway there comes out a new sect,
+with a Greek name for a title.</p>
+
+<p>It is only the other day, men began to find out that
+primitive rocks, and basalt, ochre, and sandstone, had
+lived a long time, and must surely know something of
+antiquity—if they only could tell it. The stones, from
+that hour, had an unhappy time of it—men went about in
+gangs with hammers and crowbars, shivering this and
+shattering that—picking holes in respectable old rocks,
+that never had a word said against them, and peeping into
+“quarts,”<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> like a policeman.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Query “quartz.”—<i>Devil.</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span></p></div>
+
+<p>Men must be quarrelsome, you’d say, if they could fight
+about paving-stones—but so they did. One set would
+have it that the world was all cinders, and another set
+insisted it was only slack—and so, they called themselves
+Plutonians and Neptunians, and made great converts to
+their respective opinions.</p>
+
+<p>Gulliver tells us of “Big-endians” and “Little-endians,”
+who hated each other like poison; and thus it is, our
+social condition is like a row in an Irish fair, where one
+strikes somebody, and nobody thinks the other right.</p>
+
+<p>Oh! for the happy days of heretofore, when the two
+kings of Brentford smelled at one nosegay. It couldn’t
+happen now, I promise you.</p>
+
+<p>One of their majesties would have insisted on the petals,
+and the other been equally imperative regarding the stamina:
+they’d have pushed their claims with all the weight
+of their influence, and there would have been soon little
+vestige of a nosegay between them.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 250px;">
+<img src="images/illo223.jpg" width="250" height="204" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>But to come
+back, for all this
+is digression. The
+subdivision of
+labour, with all
+its advantages,
+has its reverse to
+the medal. You
+are ill, for
+instance. You
+have been dining
+with the Lord
+Mayor, and hip-hipping to the health of her Majesty’s
+ministers; or drinking, mayhap, nine times nine to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>
+independence of Poland, or civil and religious liberty all
+over the globe—or any other fiction of large dinners.
+You go home, with your head aching from bad wine, bad
+speeches, and bad music; your wife sees you look excessively
+flushed; your eyes have got an odd kind of expression,
+far too much of the white being visible; a half shut-up
+look, like a pastry-cook’s shop on Sunday; there are evident
+signs, from blackness of the lips, that in your English
+ardour for the navy you have made a “port-hole” of your
+mouth; in fact, you have a species of semi-apoplectic
+threatening, that bodes ill for the insurance company.</p>
+
+<p>A doctor is sent for—he lives near, and comes at once—with
+a glance he recognises your state, and suggests the
+immediate remedy—the lancet.</p>
+
+<p>“Fetch a basin,” says somebody, with more presence
+of mind than the rest.</p>
+
+<p>“Not so fast,” quoth the medico. “I am a pure
+physician—I don’t bleed: that’s the surgeon’s affair. I
+should be delighted to save the gentleman’s life—but we
+have a bye-law against it in the college. Nothing could
+give me more pleasure than to cure you, if it wasn’t for
+the charter. What a pity it is! I’m sure I wish, with
+all my heart, the cook would take courage to open a vein,
+or even give you a bloody nose with the cleaver.”</p>
+
+<p>Do you think I exaggerate here? Try the experiment—I
+only ask that.</p>
+
+<p>Sending for the surgeon does not solve the difficulty;
+he may be a man who cuts corns and cataracts—who only
+operates for strabismus, or makes new noses for Peninsular
+heroes. In fact, if you don’t hit the right number—and
+it’s a large lottery—you may go out of the world without
+even the benefit of physic.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This great system, however, does not end with human
+life. The coroners—resolved not to be behind their age—have
+made a great movement, and shown themselves
+men worthy of the enlightened era they live in. Read
+this:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“On Friday morning last, a man named Patrick Knowlan, a
+private in the 3rd Buffs, was discovered lying dead close beneath
+the platform of a wharf at the bottom of Holborn-lane, Chatham.
+It would appear that deceased had mistaken his way, and fallen
+from the wharf, which is used for landing coals from the river, a
+depth of about eight feet, upon the muddy beach below, which was
+then strewn with refuse coal. There was a large and severe wound
+upon the left temple, and a piece of coal was sticking in the left
+cheek, close below the eye. The whole left side of the face was
+much contracted. He had evidently, from the state of his clothes,
+been covered with water, which overflows this spot at the period of
+spring tides. Although nothing certain is known, it is generally
+supposed that he mistook Holborn-lane for the West-lane, which
+leads to the barracks, and that walking forward in the darkness he
+fell from the wharf. Mr. Lewis, the coroner for the city of
+Rochester, claims jurisdiction over all bodies found in the water at
+this spot; and as the unfortunate man had evidently been immersed,
+he thought this a proper case for the exercise of his office, and
+accordingly summoned a jury to sit upon the body at ten o’clock
+on Friday morning—but on his going to view the deceased, he found
+that it was at the King’s Arms, Chatham, in the hands of Bines,
+the Chatham constable, as the representative of Mr. Hinde, one of
+the coroners for the eastern division of the county of Kent, who
+refused to give up the key of the room, but allowed Mr. Lewis and
+his jury to view the body. They then returned to the Nag’s Head,
+Rochester, and having heard the evidence of John Shepherd, a
+fisherman, who deposed that a carter, going on to the beach for
+coals, at half-past seven o’clock on Friday morning, found the body
+as already described, the jury returned a verdict of ‘Found dead.’
+Mr. Hinde, the county coroner, held another inquest upon the
+deceased, at the King’s Arms; and after taking the evidence of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>
+William Whittingham, the carter who found the body, and Frederick
+Collins, a corporal of the 3rd Buffs, who stated that he saw
+the deceased on the evening preceding his death, and he was then
+sober, the jury returned a verdict of ‘Accidental death;’ each of
+the coroners issued a warrant for the interment of the body. The
+disputed jurisdiction, it is believed, will now be submitted to the
+decision of a higher court, in order to settle what is here considered
+a <i>vexata quæstio</i>.”—<i>Maidstone Journal.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>Is not this perfect? Only think of land coroners and
+water coroners—imagine the law defining the jurisdiction
+of the Tellurian as far forth into the sea as he could sit on
+a corpse without danger, and the Neptunian ruling the
+waves beyond in absolute sway—conceive the “solidist”
+revelling in all the accidents that befall life upon the
+world’s highways, and the “fluidist” seeking his prey like
+a pearl diver, five fathoms low, beneath “the deep, deep
+sea.” What a rivalry theirs, who divide the elements
+between them, and have nature’s everlasting boundaries
+to define the limits of their empire.</p>
+
+<p>I hope to see the time when these great functionaries of
+law shall be provided with a suitable costume. I should
+glory to think of Mr. Hinde accoutred in emblems suggestive
+of earth and its habits—a wreath of oak leaves
+round his brows; and to behold Mr. Lewis in a garment
+of marine plants and sea shells sit upon his corpse, with a
+trident in his right hand. What a comfort for the man
+about to take French leave of life, that he could know
+precisely the individual he should benefit, and be able to
+go “by land” or “water,” as his taste inclined him.</p>
+
+<p>I have no time here to dwell upon the admirable distinctions
+of the two verdicts given in the case I allude to.
+When the great change I suggest is fully carried out, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>
+difficulty of a verdict will at once be avoided, for the jury,
+like boys at play, will only have to cry out at each case—“wet
+or dry.”</p>
+
+<p>There would be probably too much expense incurred in
+poor localities by maintaining two officials; and I should
+suggest, in such cases, an amphibious coroner—a kind of
+merman, who should enjoy a double jurisdiction, and, as
+they say of half-bred pointers, be able “to take the water
+when required.”</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_A_NEW_VERDICT" id="A_NUT_FOR_A_NEW_VERDICT"></a>A NUT FOR A “NEW VERDICT.”</h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Money-getting</span> and cotton-spinning have left us little
+time for fun of any kind in England—no one has a moment
+to spare, let him be ever so droll, and a joke seems now
+to be esteemed a <i>bonâ fide</i> expenditure; and as “a pin a
+day” is said to be “a groat a year,” there is no calculating
+what an inroad any manner of pleasantry might not make
+into a man’s income. Book-writers have ceased to be
+laughter-moving—the stage has given it up altogether,
+except now and then in a new tragedy—society prefers
+gravity to gaiety—and, in fact, the spirit of comic fun and
+drollery would seem to have died out in the land—if it
+were not for that inimitable institution called trial by jury.
+Bless their honest hearts! jurymen do indeed relieve the
+drab-coloured look of every-day life—they come out in
+strong colour from the sombre tints of common-place
+events and people. Queer dogs! nothing can damp the
+warm ardour of their comic vein—all the solemnity of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>
+court of justice—the look of the bar and the bench—the
+voice of the crier—the blue bags of briefs—the “terrible
+show,” has no effect on their minds—“ruat cœlum,” they
+will have their joke.</p>
+
+<p>It is in vain for the judge, let him be ever so rigid in
+his charge, to tell them that their province is simply with
+certain facts, on which they have to pronounce an opinion
+of yea or nay. They must be jurymen, and “something
+more.” It’s not every day Mr. Sniggins, of Pimlico, is
+called upon to keep company with a chief-justice and
+sergeant learned in the law—Popkins don’t leave his
+shop once a week to discuss Coke upon Littleton with an
+attorney-general. No: the event to them is a great one—there
+they sit, fawned on, and flattered by counsel on
+both sides—called impartial and intelligent, and all that—and
+while every impertinence the law encourages has
+been bandied about the body of the court, <i>they</i> remain to
+be lauded and praised by all parties, for they have a
+verdict in their power, and when it comes—what a thing
+it is!</p>
+
+<p>There is a well-known story of an English nobleman,
+desiring to remain <i>incog.</i> in Calais, telling his negro
+servant—“If any one ask who I am, Sambo, mind you
+say, ‘a Frenchman.’” Sambo carried out the instruction
+by saying—“My massa a Frenchman, and so am I.” This
+anecdote exactly exemplifies a verdict of a jury—it cannot
+stop short at sense, but must, by one fatal plunge, involve
+its decision in absurdity.</p>
+
+<p>Hear what lately happened in the north of Ireland. A
+man was tried and found guilty of murder—the case admitted
+no doubt—the act was a cold-blooded, deliberate
+assassination, committed by a soldier on his sergeant, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>
+the presence of many witnesses. The trial proceeded;
+the facts were proved; and—I quote the local newspaper—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“The jury retired, and were shut up when the judge left the
+court, at half-past seven. At nine, his lordship returned to court,
+when the foreman of the jury intimated that they had agreed. They
+were then called into court, and having answered to their names,
+returned a verdict of guilty, but recommended the prisoner to mercy
+upon account of the close intimacy that existed between the parties
+at the time of the occurrence.”</p></div>
+
+<p>Now, what ever equalled this? When the jury who
+tried Madame Laffarge for the murder of her husband,
+returned a verdict of guilty, with that recommendation to
+mercy which is implied by the words “des circonstances
+attenuantes,” Alphonse Karr pronounced the “extenuating
+circumstances,” to be the fact, that she always mixed
+gum with the arsenic, and never gave him his poison
+“neat.”</p>
+
+<p>But even <i>they</i> never thought of carrying out their
+humanity farther by employing the Belfast plea, that she
+had been “intimate with him” before she killed him. No,
+it was reserved for our canny northerns to find out this
+new secret of criminal jurisprudence, and to show the
+world that there is a deep philosophy in the vulgar expression,
+a blood relation—meaning thereby that degree
+of allianceship which admits of butchery, and makes killing
+no murder; for if intimacy be a ground of mercy, what
+must be friendship, what brotherhood, or paternity?</p>
+
+<p>Were this plea to become general, how cautious would
+men become about their acquaintances—what a dread
+they would entertain of becoming intimate with gentlemen
+from Tipperary!</p>
+
+<p>I scarcely think the Whigs would throw out such lures<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>
+for Dan and his followers, if they could consider these
+consequences; and I doubt much—taking everything into
+consideration, that the “Duke” would see so much of
+Lord Brougham as he has latterly.</p>
+
+<p>“Whom can a man make free with, if not with his
+friends?” saith Figaro; and the Belfast men have studied
+Beaumarchais, and only “carried out his principle,” as
+the Whigs say, when they speak of establishing popery in
+Ireland, to complete the intention of emancipation.</p>
+
+<p>Lawyers must have been prodigiously sick of all the
+usual arguments in defence of prisoners in criminal cases
+many a year ago. One of the cleverest lawyers and the
+cleverest men I ever knew, says he would hang any man
+who was defended on an <i>alibi</i>, and backed by a good character.
+Insanity is worn out; but here comes Belfast to
+the rescue, with its plea of intimacy. Show that your
+client was no common acquaintance—prove clearly habits
+of meeting and dining together—display a degree of friendship
+between the parties that bordered on brotherhood,
+and all is safe. Let your witness satisfy the jury that
+they never had an altercation or angry word in their lives,
+and depend upon it, killing will seem merely a little freak
+of eccentricity, that may be indulged with Norfolk Island,
+but not punished with the gallows.</p>
+
+<p>“Guilty, my lord, but very intimate with the deceased,”
+is a new discovery in law, and will hereafter be known
+as “the Belfast verdict.”</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_THE_REAL_LIBERATOR" id="A_NUT_FOR_THE_REAL_LIBERATOR"></a>A NUT FOR THE REAL “LIBERATOR.”<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo231.jpg" width="200" height="163" alt="W" title="W" />
+</div>
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0em"><span class="smcap">hen</span> Solomon said there
+was nothing new under
+the sun, he never knew
+Lord Normanby. That’s
+a fact, and now to show
+cause.</p>
+
+<p>No attribute of regal,
+and consequently it may
+be inferred of viceregal
+personages, have met
+such universal praise from the world, as the wondrous tact
+they would seem to possess, regarding the most suitable
+modes of flattering the pride and gratifying the passions
+of those they govern.</p>
+
+<p>It happens not unfrequently, that they leave this blessed
+privilege unused, and give themselves slight pains in its
+exercise; but should the time come when its exhibition
+may be deemed fit or necessary, their instinctive appreciation
+is said never to fail them, and they invariably hit
+off the great trait of a people at once.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it may be the elevated standard on which they
+are placed, gives them this wondrous <i>coup-d’œil</i>, and
+enables them to take wider views than mortals less eminently
+situated; perhaps it is some old leaven of privileges
+derivable from right divine. But no matter, the thing is so.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon well knew the temper of Frenchmen in his
+day, and how certain short words, emblematic of their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>
+country’s greatness and glory, could fascinate their minds
+and bend them to his purpose. In Russia, the czar is the
+head of the church, as of the state, and a mere word from
+him to one of his people is a treasure above all price. In
+Holland, a popular monarch taps some forty puncheons of
+schnapps, and makes the people drunk. In Belgium, he
+gets up a high mass, and a procession of virgins. In the
+States, a rabid diatribe against England, and a spice of
+Lynch Law, are clap-trap. But every land has its own
+peculiar leaning—to be gratified by some one concession
+or compliment in preference to every other.</p>
+
+<p>Now, when Lord Normanby came to Ireland, he must
+have been somewhat puzzled by the very multiplicity of
+these expectations. It was a regular “embarras de
+richesses.” There was so much to give, and he so willing
+to give it!</p>
+
+<p>First, there was discouragement to be dealt out against
+Protestants—an easy and a pleasant path; then the priests
+were to be brought into fashion—a somewhat harder task;
+country gentlemen were to be snubbed and affronted; petty
+attorneys were to be petted and promoted; all claimants
+with an “O” to their names were to have something—it
+looked national; men of position and true influence were
+to be pulled down and degraded, and so on. In fact, there
+was a good two years of smart practice in the rupture of
+all the ties of society, and in the overthrow of whatever
+was respectable in the land, before he need cry halt.</p>
+
+<p>Away he went then, cheered by the sweet voices of the
+mob he loved, and quick work he made of it. I need not
+stop to say, how pleasant Dublin became when deserted
+of all who could afford to quit it; nor how peaceful were
+the streets which no one traversed—<i>ubi solitudinem faciunt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>
+pacem appellant</i>. The people, like Oliver, “asked
+for more;” ungrateful people! not content with Father
+Glynn at the viceroy’s table, and the Bishop of “Mesopotamia”
+in the council, they cried, like the horseleech’s
+daughters, “Give! give!”</p>
+
+<p>“What would they have, the spalpeens?” said Pierce
+Mahony; “sure ain’t we destroying the place entirely,
+and nobody will be able to live here after us.”</p>
+
+<p>“What do they want?” quoth Anthony Blake; “can’t
+they have patience? Isn’t the church trembling, and property
+not worth two years’ purchase?”</p>
+
+<p>“Upon my life!” whispered Lord Morpeth, “I can’t
+comprehend them. I fear we have been only but too
+good-natured!—don’t you think so?”</p>
+
+<p>And so they pondered over their difficulties, but never
+a man among them could suggest a remedy for their new
+demand, nor make out a concession which had not been
+already made.</p>
+
+<p>“Did you butter Dan?” said Anthony.</p>
+
+<p>“Ay, and offered him the ‘rolls’ too,” said Sheil.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s no use,” interposed Pierce; “he’s not to be
+caught.”</p>
+
+<p>“Couldn’t ye make Tom Steele Bishop of Cashel?”</p>
+
+<p>“He wouldn’t take it,” groaned the viceroy.</p>
+
+<p>“Is Mr. Arkins a privy councillor?”</p>
+
+<p>“No; but he might if he liked. There’s no use in these
+trifles.”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Eureka</i>, gents, I have it!” cried my lord; “order
+post-horses for me this instant—I have it!”</p>
+
+<p>And so he had, and by that act alone he stamped himself
+as the first man of his party.</p>
+
+<p>Swift philosophised on the satiric touch of building a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>
+madhouse, as the most appropriate charity to Ireland; but
+what would he have said had he heard that the greatest
+favour its rulers could bestow—the most flattering compliment
+to national feeling—was to open the gaols, to let
+loose robbers and housebreakers, highwaymen and cutthroats—to
+return burglars to their afflicted homes, and
+bring back felons to their weeping families. Some sneering
+critic will object to it, as scarcely complimentary to a
+country to say—“these gentlemen are only thieves—murderers;
+they cannot hurt <i>your</i> morals. They were sentenced
+to transportation, but why should we spread vice
+among innocent bushmen, and disseminate wickedness
+through Norfolk Island? Let them loose where they are,
+they know the ways of the place, they’ll not murder the
+‘wrong man;’ depend upon it, too, the rent won’t suffer
+by their remaining.” And so my lord took off the hand-cuffs,
+and filed the fetters; and the bondsmen, albeit not
+all “hereditary,” went free. Who should be called the
+Liberator, I ask, after this? Is it your Daniel, who promises
+year after year, and never performs; or you, my
+lord, who strikes off real chains, not metaphorical ones,
+and liberates real captives, not figurative slaves?</p>
+
+<p>It was, indeed, a “great day for Ireland” when the
+villains got loose; and must have been a strong lesson on
+the score of domestic duty to many a roving blade, who
+preferred spending that evening at home, to venturing out
+after dark. My lord covered himself with laurels, and albeit
+they were gathered, as Lord Wellesley said, in the “Groves
+of Blarney,” they well became the brow they ornamented.</p>
+
+<p>I should scarcely have thought necessary to ring a pæan
+of praise on this great governor, if it were not for a most
+unaccountable attack his magnanimous and stupendous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span>
+mercy, as Tom Steele would call it, has called forth from
+some organ of the press.</p>
+
+<p>This print, calling itself <i>The Cork Constitution</i>, thus
+discourseth:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“Why, of 16 whom he pardoned, and of 41 whose sentences he
+commuted in the gaol of our own city, 13 were re-committed, and
+of these no fewer than 10 were in due time transported. One of
+the latter, Mary Lynch, was subsequently five times committed, and
+at last transported; Jeremiah Twomey, <i>alias</i> Old Lock, was subsequently
+six times committed, and finally transported, while two
+others were twice committed. These are a specimen of the persons
+whom his lordship delighted to honour. Of the whole 57 (who
+were liberated between January, 1835, and April, 1839), there
+were, at the time of their sentences being commuted, or themselves
+discharged, 34 under sentence of transportation, and two under
+sentence of death. In the county gaol, 47 prisoners experienced
+the benefit of viceregal liberality. Of these 18 had been under sentence
+of transportation, 11 of them for life; but how many of them
+it became the duty of the government to introduce a second or third
+time to the notice of the judge, or what was their ultimate destiny,
+we are, unfortunately, not informed. The recorder, we observe,
+passed sentence of transportation yesterday on a fellow named
+Corkery, who had some years ago been similarly sentenced by one
+of the judges, but for whose release his worship was unable to
+account. The explanation, however, is easy. Corkery was one of
+the scoundrels liberated by Lord Normanby, and he has since been
+living on the plunder of the citizens, on whom that vain and
+visionary viceroy so inconsiderately let him loose.”</p></div>
+
+<p>Now I detest figures, and, therefore, I won’t venture to dispute
+the man’s arithmetic about the “ten in due time transported,”
+nor Corkery, nor Mary Lynch, nor any of them.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 200px;">
+<img src="images/illo236.jpg" width="200" height="259" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>I take the facts on his own showing, and I ground upon
+them the most triumphant defence of the calumniated
+viceroy. What was it, I ask, but the very prescience of
+the lord lieutenant we praise in the act? He liberated a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>
+gaol full of ruffians, not to inundate the world with a host
+of felons and vagabonds, but, simply, to give them a kind
+of day-rule.</p>
+
+<p>“Let them loose,” cried my lord; “take the irons off—devil
+a long they’ll be free. Mark my words, that fellow
+will murder some one else before long. Thank you, Mary
+Lynch, it is a real pleasure to me to restore you to liberty;”
+and then, <i>sotto</i>, “you’ll have a voyage out, nevertheless,
+I see that. Open the gates—pass out, gentlemen
+highwaymen. Don’t be afraid, good people of Cork, these
+are infernal ruffians, they’ll all be back again before six
+months. It’s no consequence to me to see you at large,
+for I have the heartfelt conviction that most of you must
+be hanged yet.”</p>
+
+<p>Here is the true defence of
+the viceroy, here the real and
+well-grounded explanation of
+his conduct; and I hope when
+Lord Brougham attacks his
+noble friend—which of course
+he will—that the marquis will
+hurl back on him, with proud
+triumph, this irresistible mark
+of his united foresight and
+benevolence.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_HER_MAJESTYS_SERVANTS" id="A_NUT_FOR_HER_MAJESTYS_SERVANTS"></a>A NUT FOR “HER MAJESTY’S SERVANTS.”<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">If</span> a fair estimate were at any moment to be taken of
+the time employed in the real business of the country, and
+that consumed by public characters in vindicating their
+conduct, recapitulating their good intentions, and glossing
+over their bad acts, it would be found that the former was
+to the latter as the ratio of Falstaff’s bread to the “sack.”</p>
+
+<p>A British House of Commons is in fact nineteen out of
+every twenty hours employed in the pleasant personalities of
+attack and defence. It is something that the “noble baron”
+said last session, or the “right hon. baronet” didn’t say in
+the present one, engrosses all their attention; and the most
+animated debates are about certain expressions of some
+“honourable and learned gentleman,” who always uses his
+words in a sense different from the rest of the nation.</p>
+
+<p>If this satisfies the public and stuffs the newspapers,
+perhaps I should not repine at it; but certainly it is very
+fatiguing and tiresome to any man with a moderately good
+memory to preserve the excellent traditions each ministry
+retains of their own virtues, and how eloquently the opposition
+can hold forth upon the various good things they
+would have done, had they been left quietly on the
+treasury benches. Now how much better and more business-like
+would it be if, instead of leaving these gentlemen
+to dilate and expatiate on their own excellent
+qualities, some public standards were to be established,
+by which at a glance the world at large could decide on
+their merits and examine into their fitness for office at a
+future period. Your butler and your coachman, when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>
+leaving your service, do not present themselves to a new
+master with characters of their own inditing, or if they
+did they would unquestionably require a very rigid
+scrutiny. What would you say if a cook who professes
+herself a perfect treasure of economy and excellence,
+warrants herself sober, amiable, and cleanly—who, without
+other vouchers for her fitness than her own, would
+dilate on her many virtues and accomplishments, and
+demand to be taken into your service because she has
+higher taste for self-panegyric than her rival. Such a
+thing would be preposterous in the kitchen, but it is
+exactly what takes place in parliament, and there is but
+one remedy for it. Let her majesty’s servants, when they
+leave their places, receive written characters, like those
+of less exalted persons. These documents would then be
+on record when the applicants sought other situations,
+and could be referred to with more confidence by the
+nation than if given by the individuals themselves.</p>
+
+<p>How easily would the high-flown sentiments of any of
+the “outs” be tested by a simple comparison with his
+last character—how clearly would pretension be measured
+by what he had done in his last place. No long
+speeches, no four-hour addresses would be required at the
+hustings then. Show us your character, would be the
+cry—why did he leave his mistress? the question.</p>
+
+<p>The petty subterfuges of party would not stand such a
+test as this; all the little miserable explanations—that it
+was a quarrel in the kitchen, that the cook said this and the
+footman said that, would go for nothing. You were turned
+out, and why?—that’s the bone and sinew of the matter.</p>
+
+<p>To little purpose would my Lord John remind his party
+that he was going to do every thing for every body—to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>
+plunder the parsons and pay the priests—to swamp the
+constitution and upset the church—respectable people
+would take time to look at his papers; they would see
+that he was an active little busy man, accustomed to
+do the whole work of a family single-handed; that he
+was in many respects attentive and industrious, but had a
+following of low Irish acquaintances whom he let into the
+house on every occasion, and that then nothing escaped
+them—they smashed the furniture, broke the looking-glasses,
+and kicked up a regular row: for this he was discharged,
+receiving all wages due.</p>
+
+<p>And then, instead of suffering long-winded panegyrics
+from the member for Tiverton, how easily would the
+matter be comprehended in one line—“a good servant,
+lively, and intelligent, but self-sufficient, and apt to take
+airs. Turned off for quarrelling with the French valet
+next door, and causing a difference between the families.”</p>
+
+<p>Then again, how decisively the merits of a certain ex-chancellor
+might be measured in reading—“hired as
+butler, but insisted on cleaning the carriage, and scratched
+the panels; would dress the dinner, and spoiled the soup
+and burned the sauce; never attended to his own duties,
+but spent his time fighting with the other servants, and is
+in fact a most troublesome member of a household. He
+is, however, both smart and intelligent, and is allowed a
+small pension to wait on company days.”</p>
+
+<p>Trust me, this plan, if acted on—and I feel it cannot
+be long neglected—will do more to put pretension on a
+par with desert, than all the adjourned debates that waste
+the sessions; it would save a world of unblushing self-praise
+and laudation, and protect the country from the
+pushing impertinence of a set of turned-off servants.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_THE_LANDLORD_AND_TENANT" id="A_NUT_FOR_THE_LANDLORD_AND_TENANT"></a>A NUT FOR THE LANDLORD AND TENANT
+COMMISSION.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span></h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Every</span> one knows the story of the man who, at the
+penalty of losing his head in the event of failure, promised
+the caliph of Bagdad that he would teach his ass
+to read in the space of ten years, trusting that, ere the
+time elapsed, either the caliph, or the ass, or he himself,
+would die, and the compact be at an end. Now,
+it occurs to me that the wise policy of this shrewd
+charlatan is the very essence of all parliamentary commissions.
+First, there is a grievance—then comes a
+debate—a very warm one occasionally, with plenty of
+invective and accusation on both sides—and then they
+agree to make a drawn game of it, and appoint “a
+Commission.”</p>
+
+<p>Nothing can be more plausible in appearance than
+such a measure; nor could any man, short of Hume
+himself, object to so reasonable a proceeding as a
+patient and searching inquiry into the circumstances
+and bearings of any disputed question. The Commission
+goes to work: if a Tory one, consisting usually of some
+dumb country gentlemen, who like committee work;—if
+Whig, the suckling “barristers of six years’ standing:”
+and at it they go. The newspapers announce that they are
+“sitting to examine witnesses”—a brief correspondence
+appears at intervals, to show that they have a secretary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>
+and a correspondent, a cloud then wraps the whole
+concern in its dark embrace, and not the most prying
+curiosity is ever able afterwards to detect any one fact
+concerning the commission or its labours, nor could you
+hear in any society the slightest allusion ever made to
+their whereabouts.</p>
+
+<p>It is, in fact, the polite mode of interment applied
+to the question at issue—the Commissioners performing
+the solemn duties of undertakers, and not even the most
+reckless resurrectionist being found to disturb the remains.
+Before the report should issue, the Commissioners die off,
+or the question has taken a new form; new interests have
+changed all its bearings; a new ministry is in power, or
+some more interesting matter has occupied the place it
+should fill in public attention; and if the Report was
+even a volume of “Punch,” it might pass undetected.</p>
+
+<p>Now and then, however, a Commission will issue for
+the real object of gleaning facts and conveying information;
+and then the duties are most uncomfortable, and but
+one course is open, which is, to protract the inquiry, like
+the man with the ass, and leave the result to time.</p>
+
+<p>In a country like ours, conflicting interests and opposing
+currents are ever changing the landmarks of party; and
+the commissioners feel that with years something will
+happen to make their labours of little consequence, and
+that they have only to prolong the period, and all is safe.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment, we have what is called a “Landlord
+and Tenant Commission” sitting, or sleeping, as it may be.
+They have to investigate diverse, knotty, and puzzling
+points, about people who want too much for their land,
+and others who prefer paying nothing for it. They are to
+report, in some fashion, respecting the prospects of estated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>
+gentlemen burdened with rent-charges and mortgages, and
+who won’t improve properties they can scarcely live on—and
+a peasantry, who must nominally pay an exaggerated
+rent, depending upon the chance of shooting the agent
+before the gale-day, and thus obtaining easier terms for
+the future.</p>
+
+<p>They are to investigate the capabilities of waste lands,
+while cultivated lands lie waste beside them; they must
+find out why land-owners like money, and tenants hate
+paying it; and why a people hold life very cheap when
+they possess little means to sustain it.</p>
+
+<p>Now these, take them how you will, are not so easy
+of solution as you may think. The landlord, for his
+own sake, would like a thriving, well-to-do, contented
+tenantry; the tenants, for their sakes, would like a fair-dealing,
+reasonable landlord, not over griping and grabbing,
+but satisfied with a suitable value for his property.
+They both have no common share of intelligence and
+acuteness—they have a soil unquestionably fruitful, a
+climate propitious, little taxation, good roads, abundant markets;
+and yet the one is half ruined in his house and the
+other wholly beggared in his hovel—each averring that the
+cause lies in the tithes, the tariff, the poor-rate, or popery,
+the agent or the agitation: in fact, it is something or
+other which one favours and the other opposes—some
+system or sect, some party or measure, which one
+advocates and the other denounces; and no matter
+though its influence should not, in the remotest way, enter
+into the main question, there is a grievance—that’s something;
+and as Sir Lucius says, “it’s a mighty pretty
+quarrel as it stands”—not the less, that certain partizans
+on either side assist in the <i>mêlée</i>, and the House of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>
+Commons or the Association Hall interfere with their
+influence.</p>
+
+<p>If, then, the Commissioners can see their way here,
+they are smart fellows, and no small praise is due to them.
+There are difficulties enough to puzzle long heads; and I
+only hope they may be equal to the task. Meanwhile,
+depopulation goes on briskly—landlords are shot every
+week in Tipperary; and if the report be but delayed for
+some few months longer, a new element will appear in
+the question—for however there may remain some pretenders
+to perpetuity of tenure, the landlords will not be
+there to grant the leases. Let the Commissioners, then,
+keep a look-out a-head—much of the embarrassment of
+the inquiry will be obviated by only biding their time;
+and if they but delay their report till next November,
+there will be but one party to legislate for in the island.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="A_NUT_FOR_THE_HUMANE_SOCIETY" id="A_NUT_FOR_THE_HUMANE_SOCIETY"></a>A NUT FOR THE HUMANE SOCIETY.</h2>
+
+<hr class="ct" />
+
+<p><span class="smcap">If</span> my reader will permit me to refer to my own labours,
+I would wish to remind him of an old “Nut” of mine, in
+which I endeavoured to demonstrate the defective morality
+and economy of our penal code—a system, by which
+the smallest delinquent is made to cost the state several
+hundreds of pounds, for an offence frequently of some few
+pennies in value; and a theft of a loaf is, by the geometrical
+scale of progressive aggrandisement, gradually
+swelled into a most expensive process, in which policemen,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>
+station-houses, inspectors, magistrates, sessions, assizes,
+judges, crown prosecutors, gaols, turnkeys, and transports,
+all figure; and the nation is left to pay the cost of this
+terrible array, for the punishment of a crime the prevention
+of which might, perhaps, have been effected for
+two-pence.</p>
+
+<p>I do not now intend to go over the beaten track of this
+argument; my intention is simply to refer to it, and
+adduce another instance of this strange and short-sighted
+policy, which prefers waiting to acting, and despises
+cheap, though timely interference with evil, and indulges
+in the somewhat late, but more expensive process of
+reparation.</p>
+
+<p>And to begin. Imagine—unhappily you need exercise
+no great stretch of the faculty, the papers teem with too
+many instances—imagine a poor, woe-begone, miserable
+creature, destitute and friendless, without a home, without
+a meal; his tattered clothing displaying through every
+rent the shrunken form and wasted limbs to which hunger
+and want have reduced him. See him as night falls,
+plodding onwards through the crowded thoroughfares of
+the great city; his lack-lustre eye glazed and filmy; his
+pale face and blue lip actually corpse-like in their ghastliness.
+He gazes at the passers-by with the vacant stare
+of idiotcy. Starvation has sapped the very intellect, and
+he is like one in some frightful vision; a vague desire for
+rest—a dreamy belief that death will release him—lives
+in the place of hope; and as he leans over the battlements
+of the tall bridge, the plash of the dark river murmurs
+softly to his ear. His despair has conjured up a thousand
+strange and flitting fancies, and voices seem to call to him
+from the dull stream, and invite him to lie down and be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>
+at peace. Meanwhile the crowd passes on. Men in all
+the worldliness of their hopes and fears, their wishes,
+their expectations, and their dreads, pour by. None
+regard <i>him</i>, who at that moment stands on the very brink
+of an eternity, whither his thoughts have gone before him.
+As he gazes, his eye is attracted by the star-like spangle
+of lights in the water. It is the reflection of those in the
+house of the Humane Society; and he suddenly remembers
+that there is such an institution; and he bethinks
+him, as well as his poor brain will let him, that some
+benevolent people have called this association by this
+pleasing title, and the very word is a balm to his broken
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>“Humane Society!” Muttering the words, he staggers
+onwards; a feeling too faint for hope still survives; and
+he bends his wearied steps towards the building. It is
+indeed a goodly edifice; Portland stone and granite, massive
+columns and a portico, are all there; and Humanity
+herself is emblematised in the figures which decorate the
+pedestal. The man of misery stands without and looks
+up at this stately pile; the dying embers emit one spark,
+and for a second, hope brightens into a brief flicker. He
+enters the spacious hall, on one side of which a marble
+group is seen representing the “good Samaritan;” the
+appeal comes home to his heart, and he could cry, but
+hunger has dried up his tears.</p>
+
+<p>I will not follow him in his weary pilgrimage among
+the liveried menials of the institution, nor shall I harass
+my reader by the cold sarcasm of those who tell him that
+he has mistaken the object of the association: that their
+care is not with life, but death; that the breathing man,
+alive, but on the verge of dissolution, has no interest for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>
+<i>them</i>; for <i>their</i> humanity waits patiently for his corpse.
+It is true, one pennyworth of bread—a meal your dog
+would turn from—would rescue this man from death and
+self-murder. But what of that—how could such humble,
+unobtrusive charity inhabit a palace? How could it pretend
+to porters and waiting-men, to scores of officials,
+visiting doctors, and physicians in ordinary? By what
+trickery could a royal patron be brought to head the list
+of benefactors to a scheme so unassuming? Where would
+be the stomach-pumps and the galvanic batteries for
+science?—where the newspaper reports of a miraculous
+recovery?—where the magazine records of suspended
+animation?—or where that pride and pomp and circumstance
+of enlightened humanity which calls in chemistry
+to aid charity, and makes electricity the test of benevolence?
+No, no; the hungry man might be fed, and go
+his way unseen, untrumpeted—there would be no need
+of this specious plausibility of humanity which proclaims
+aloud—Go and drown yourself; stand self-accused and
+condemned before your Creator; and if there be but a
+spark of vitality yet remaining, we’ll call you back to
+life again—a starving suicide! No effort shall be spared—messengers
+shall fly in every direction for assistance—the
+most distinguished physician—processes the most
+costly—experiments the most difficult—care unremitting—zeal
+untiring, are all yours. Cordials, the cost of which
+had sustained you in life for weeks long, are now
+poured down your unconscious throat—the limbs that
+knew no other bed than straw, are wrapped in heated
+blankets—the hand stretched out in vain for alms, is
+now rubbed by the jewelled fingers of a west-end
+physician.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Men, men, is this charity?—is the fellow-creature
+nought?—is the corpse everything?—is a penny too
+much to sustain life?—is a hundred pounds too little
+to restore it? Away with your stuccoed walls and
+pillared corridors—support the starving, and you will
+need but little science to reanimate the suicide.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center" style="padding-top: 4em; font-size: 90%">THE END.</p>
+
+<hr class="title2" />
+
+<p class="center" style="font-size: 70%">BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Nuts and Nutcrackers, by Charles James Lever
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NUTS AND NUTCRACKERS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 31685-h.htm or 31685-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/6/8/31685/
+
+Produced by Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo001.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo001.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8108c6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo001.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo006.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo006.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e8a8439
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo006.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo014.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo014.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2bcd5c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo014.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo022.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo022.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbc8e0f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo022.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo030.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo030.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3587a15
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo030.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo039.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo039.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e876dbe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo039.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo040.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo040.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c57581
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo040.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo042.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo042.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b268b84
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo042.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo045.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo045.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8c414de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo045.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo046.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo046.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4092eb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo046.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo049.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo049.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..37dc884
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo049.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo051.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo051.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..384f43b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo051.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo052.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo052.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89c3b75
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo052.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo053.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo053.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..860dcf3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo053.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo064.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo064.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ae676e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo064.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo080.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo080.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8c8d19e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo080.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo086.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo086.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a6572c6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo086.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo090.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo090.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1823fd0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo090.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo093.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo093.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..de4db28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo093.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo094.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo094.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b671716
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo094.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo096.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo096.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eae80d3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo096.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo100.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo100.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85bc5a6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo100.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo101.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo101.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0f063bc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo101.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo103a.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo103a.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e3f9f62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo103a.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo103b.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo103b.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..260ecac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo103b.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo104.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo104.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a2e3587
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo104.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo107.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo107.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84b59a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo107.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo108.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo108.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f01589b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo108.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo118.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo118.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a8aa79f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo118.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo123.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo123.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5bfc361
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo123.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo129.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo129.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f082701
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo129.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo134.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo134.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..75b0d43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo134.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo146.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo146.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..477d31c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo146.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo150.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo150.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01d1b12
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo150.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo154.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo154.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2fd8742
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo154.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo158.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo158.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b1b1d1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo158.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo165.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo165.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..88c5a86
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo165.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo170.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo170.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..61e5a32
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo170.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo187.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo187.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c281f2e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo187.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo188.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo188.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2faef8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo188.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo191.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo191.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0e1f51
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo191.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo192.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo192.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ebc55b9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo192.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo193.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo193.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..485a728
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo193.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo195.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo195.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d1f8069
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo195.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo196.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo196.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87e11f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo196.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo199.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo199.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e45e434
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo199.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo200.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo200.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5202aeb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo200.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo201.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo201.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd25cb3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo201.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo204.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo204.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b776817
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo204.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo207.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo207.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c176b97
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo207.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo209.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo209.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd21cc8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo209.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo215.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo215.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e82994
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo215.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo216.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo216.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c19f6fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo216.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo218.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo218.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..38f5060
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo218.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo223.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo223.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fe5da99
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo223.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo231.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo231.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b07044d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo231.jpg
diff --git a/31685-h/images/illo236.jpg b/31685-h/images/illo236.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dda22d1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685-h/images/illo236.jpg
diff --git a/31685.txt b/31685.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2286be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,6806 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Nuts and Nutcrackers, by Charles James Lever
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Nuts and Nutcrackers
+
+Author: Charles James Lever
+
+Illustrator: Phiz.
+
+Release Date: March 18, 2010 [EBook #31685]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NUTS AND NUTCRACKERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+                            [Illustration]
+
+                         NUTS AND NUTCRACKERS.
+
+
+    "The world's my filbert which with my crackers I will open."
+
+                                      SHAKSPEARE.
+
+
+    "The priest calls the lawyer a cheat,
+      And the lawyer beknaves the divine;
+    And the statesman, because he's so great,
+      Thinks his trade's as honest as mine."
+
+                                      BEGGAR'S OPERA.
+
+
+    "Hard texts are _nuts_ (I will not call them cheaters,)
+    Whose shells do keep their kernels from the eaters;
+    Open the shells, and you shall have the meat:
+    They here are brought for you to crack and eat."
+
+                                      JOHN BUNYAN.
+
+
+                        ILLUSTRATED BY "PHIZ."
+
+                            Second Edition.
+
+                                LONDON:
+                 WM. S. ORR AND CO., PATERNOSTER ROW;
+                 WILLIAM CURRY, JUN., AND CO., DUBLIN.
+
+                               MDCCCXLV.
+
+
+                                LONDON:
+              BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                       PAGE
+
+AN OPENING NUT                                          vii
+
+A NUT FOR MEN OF GENIUS                                   1
+
+A NUT FOR CORONERS                                       15
+
+A NUT FOR "TOURISTS"                                     19
+
+A NUT FOR LEGAL FUNCTIONARIES                            22
+
+A NUT FOR "ENDURING AFFECTION"                           31
+
+A NUT FOR THE POLICE AND SIR PETER                       37
+
+A NUT FOR THE BUDGET                                     44
+
+A NUT FOR REPEAL                                         49
+
+A NUT FOR NATIONAL PRIDE                                 55
+
+A NUT FOR DIPLOMATISTS                                   64
+
+A NUT FOR FOREIGN TRAVEL                                 71
+
+A NUT FOR DOMESTIC HAPPINESS                             77
+
+A NUT FOR LADIES BOUNTIFUL                               82
+
+A NUT FOR THE PRIESTS                                    85
+
+A NUT FOR LEARNED SOCIETIES                              87
+
+A NUT FOR THE LAWYERS                                    92
+
+A NUT FOR THE IRISH                                      99
+
+A NUT FOR VICEREGAL PRIVILEGES                          102
+
+RICH AND POOR--POUR ET CONTRE                           109
+
+A NUT FOR ST. PATRICK'S NIGHT                           114
+
+A NUT FOR "GENTLEMAN JOCKS"                             119
+
+A NUT FOR YOUNGER SONS                                  123
+
+A NUT FOR THE PENAL CODE                                128
+
+A NUT FOR THE OLD                                       131
+
+A NUT FOR THE ART UNION                                 133
+
+A NUT FOR THE KINGSTOWN RAILWAY                         137
+
+A NUT FOR THE DOCTORS                                   141
+
+A NUT FOR THE ARCHITECTS                                145
+
+A NUT FOR A NEW COLONY                                  148
+
+A "SWEET" NUT FOR THE YANKEES                           153
+
+A NUT FOR THE SEASON--JULLIEN'S QUADRILLES              157
+
+A NUT FOR "ALL IRELAND"                                 163
+
+A NUT FOR "A NEW COMPANY"                               168
+
+A NUT FOR "THE POLITICAL ECONOMISTS"                    175
+
+A NUT FOR "GRAND DUKES"                                 180
+
+A NUT FOR THE EAST INDIA DIRECTORS                      183
+
+A FILBERT FOR SIR ROBERT PEEL                           185
+
+"THE INCOME TAX"                                        186
+
+A NUT FOR THE "BELGES"                                  189
+
+A NUT FOR WORKHOUSE CHAPLAINS                           192
+
+A NUT FOR THE "HOUSE"                                   197
+
+A NUT FOR "LAW REFORM"                                  200
+
+A NUT FOR "CLIMBING BOYS"                               203
+
+A NUT FOR "THE SUBDIVISION OF LABOUR"                   206
+
+A NUT FOR A "NEW VERDICT"                               212
+
+A NUT FOR THE REAL "LIBERATOR"                          216
+
+A NUT FOR "HER MAJESTY'S SERVANTS"                      221
+
+A NUT FOR THE LANDLORD AND TENANT COMMISSION            225
+
+A NUT FOR THE HUMANE SOCIETY                            228
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR MEN OF GENIUS.
+
+
+If Providence, instead of a vagabond, had made me a justice of the
+peace, there is no species of penalty I would not have enforced
+against a class of offenders, upon whom it is the perverted taste of
+the day to bestow wealth, praise, honour, and reputation; in a word,
+upon that portion of the writers for our periodical literature whose
+pastime it is by high-flown and exaggerated pictures of society,
+places, and amusements, to mislead the too credulous and believing
+world; who, in the search for information and instruction, are but
+reaping a barren harvest of deceit and illusion.
+
+Every one is loud and energetic in his condemnation of a bubble
+speculation; every one is severe upon the dishonest features of
+bankruptcy, and the demerits of un-trusty guardianship; but while the
+law visits these with its pains and penalties, and while heavy
+inflictions follow on those breaches of trust, which affect our
+pocket, yet can he "walk scatheless," with port erect and visage high
+who, for mere amusement--for the passing pleasure of the moment--or,
+baser still, for certain pounds per sheet, can, present us with the
+air-drawn daggers of a dyspeptic imagination for the real woes of
+life, or paint the most common-place and tiresome subjects with
+colours so vivid and so glowing as to persuade the unwary reader that
+a paradise of pleasure and enjoyment, hitherto unknown, is open before
+him. The treadmill and the ducking-stool, "_me judice_," would no
+longer be tenanted by rambling gipsies or convivial rioters, but would
+display to the admiring gaze of an assembled multitude the
+aristocratic features of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, the dark whiskers
+of D'Israeli, the long and graceful proportions of Hamilton Maxwell,
+or the portly paunch and melo-dramatic frown of that right pleasant
+fellow, Henry Addison himself.
+
+You cannot open a newspaper without meeting some narrative of what, in
+the phrase of the day, is denominated an "attempted imposition." Count
+Skryznyzk, with black moustachoes and a beard to match, after being
+the lion of Lord Dudley Stuart's parties, and the delight of a certain
+set of people in the West-end--who, when they give a tea-party, call
+it a _soiree_, and deem it necessary to have either a Hindoo or a
+Hottentot, a Pole, or a Piano-player, to interest their guests--was
+lately brought up before Sir Peter Laurie, charged by 964 with
+obtaining money under false pretences, and sentenced to three months'
+imprisonment and hard labour at the treadmill.
+
+The charge looks a grave one, good reader, and perhaps already some
+notion is trotting through your head about forgery or embezzlement;
+you think of widows rendered desolate, or orphans defrauded; you
+lament over the hard-earned pittance of persevering industry lost to
+its possessor; and, in your heart, you acknowledge that there may have
+been some cause for the partition of Poland, and that the Emperor of
+the Russias, like another monarch, may not be half so black as he is
+painted. But spare your honest indignation; our unpronounceable friend
+did none of these. No; the head and front of his offending was simply
+exciting the sympathies of a feeling world for his own deep wrongs;
+for the fate of his father, beheaded in the Grand Place at Warsaw; for
+his four brothers, doomed never to see the sun in the dark mines of
+Tobolsk; for his beautiful sister, reared in the lap of luxury and
+wealth, wandering houseless and an outcast around the palaces of St.
+Petersburg, wearying heaven itself with cries for mercy on her
+banished brethren; and last of all, for himself--he, who at the battle
+of Pultowa led heaven-knows how many and how terrific charges of
+cavalry,--whose breast was a galaxy of orders only outnumbered by his
+wounds--that he should be an exile, without friends, and without home!
+In a word, by a beautiful and highly-wrought narrative, that drew
+tears from the lady and ten shillings from the gentleman of the house,
+he became amenable to our law as a swindler and an impostor, simply
+because his narrative was a fiction.
+
+In the name of all justice, in the name of truth, of honesty, and fair
+dealing, I ask you, is this right? or, if the treadmill be the fit
+reward for such powers as his, what shall we say, what shall we do,
+with all the popular writers of the day? How many of Bulwer's stories
+are facts? What truth is there in James? Is that beautiful creation of
+Dickens, "Poor Nell," a real or a fictitious character? And is the
+offence, after all, merely in the manner, and not the matter, of the
+transgression? Is it that, instead of coming before the world printed,
+puffed, and hot-pressed by the gentlemen of the Row, he ventured to
+edite himself, and, instead of the trade, make his tongue the medium
+of publication? And yet, if speech be the crime, what say you to
+Macready, and with what punishment are you prepared to visit him who
+makes your heart-strings vibrate to the sorrows of _Virginius_, or
+thrills your very blood with the malignant vengeance of _Iago_? Is
+what is permissible in Covent Garden, criminal in the city? or,
+stranger still, is there a punishment at the one place, and praise at
+the other? Or is it the costume, the foot-lights, the orange-peel, and
+the sawdust--are they the terms of the immunity? Alas, and alas! I
+believe they are.
+
+Burke said, "The age of chivalry is o'er;" and I believe the age of
+poetry has gone with it; and if Homer himself were to chant an Iliad
+down Fleet Street, I'd wager a crown that 964 would take him up for a
+ballad-singer.
+
+But a late case occurs to me. A countryman of mine, one Bernard
+Cavanagh, doubtless, a gentleman of very good connections, announced
+some time ago that he had adopted a new system of diet, which was
+neither more nor less than going without any food. Now, Mr. Cavanagh
+was a stout gentleman, comely and plump to look at, who conversed
+pleasantly on the common topics of the day, and seemed, on the whole,
+to enjoy life pretty much like other people. He was to be seen for a
+shilling--children half-price; and although Englishmen have read of
+our starving countrymen for the last century and a-half, yet their
+curiosity to see one, to look at him, to prod him with their
+umbrellas, punch him with their knuckles, and otherwise test his
+vitality, was such, that they seemed just as much alive as though the
+phenomenon was new to them. The consequence was, Mr. Cavanagh, whose
+cook was on board wages, and whose establishment was of the least
+expensive character, began to wax rich. Several large towns and
+cities, in different parts of the empire, requested him to visit them;
+and Joe Hume suggested that the corporation of London should offer him
+ten thousand pounds for his secret, merely for the use of the livery.
+In fact, Cavanagh was now the cry, and as Barney appeared to grow fat
+on fasting, his popularity knew no bounds. Unfortunately, however,
+ambition, the bane of so many other great men, numbered him also among
+its victims. Had he been content with London as the sphere of his
+triumphs and teetotalism, there is no saying how long he might have
+gone on starving with satisfaction. Whether it is that the people are
+less observant there, or more accustomed to see similar exhibitions,
+I cannot tell; but true it is they paid their shillings, felt his
+ribs, walked home, and pronounced Barney a most exemplary Irishman.
+But not content with the capital, he must make a tour in the
+provinces, and accordingly went starring it about through Leeds,
+Birmingham, Manchester, and all the other manufacturing towns, as if
+in mockery of the poor people who did not know the secret how to live
+without food.
+
+Mr. Cavanagh was now living--if life it can be called--in one of the
+best hotels, when, actuated by that spirit of inquiry that
+characterises the age, a respectable lady, who kept a boarding-house,
+paid him a visit, to ascertain, if possible, how far his system might
+be made applicable to her guests, who, whatever their afflictions,
+laboured under no such symptoms as his.
+
+She was pleased with Barney,--she patted him with her hand; he was
+round, and plump, and fat, much more so, indeed, than many of her
+daily dinner-party; and had, withal, that kind of joyous, rollicking,
+devil-may-care look, that seems to bespeak good condition;--but this
+the poor lady, of course, did not know to be an inherent property in
+Pat, however poor his situation.
+
+After an interview of an hour long she took her leave, not exhibiting
+the usual satisfaction of other visitors, but with a dubious look and
+meditative expression, that betokened a mind not made up, and a heart
+not at ease; she was clearly not content, perhaps the abortive effort
+to extract a confession from Mr. Cavanagh might be the cause, or
+perhaps she felt like many respectable people whose curiosity is only
+the advanced guard to their repentance, and who never think that in
+any exhibition they get the worth of their money. This might be the
+case, for as fasting is a negative process, there is really little to
+see in the performer. Had it been the man that eats a sheep; "_a la
+bonne heure!_" you have something for your money there: and I can even
+sympathize with the French gentleman who follows Van Amburgh to this
+day, in the agreeable hope, to use his own words, of "assisting at the
+_soiree_, when the lions shall eat Mr. Van Amburgh." This, if not
+laudable is at least intelligible. But to return, the lady went her
+way, not indeed on hospitable thoughts intent, but turning over in her
+mind various theories about abstinence, and only wishing she had the
+whole of the Cavanagh family for boarders at a guinea a-week.
+
+Late in the evening of the same day this estimable lady, whose
+inquiries into the properties of gastric juice, if not as scientific,
+were to the full as enthusiastic as those of Bostock or Tiedeman
+himself, was returning from an early tea, through an unfrequented
+suburb of Manchester, when suddenly her eye fell upon Bernard
+Cavanagh, seated in a little shop--a dish of sausages and a plate of
+ham before him, while a frothing cup of porter ornamented his right
+hand. It was true, he wore a patch above his eye, a large beard, and
+various other disguises, but they served him not: she knew him at
+once. The result is soon told: the police were informed; Mr. Cavanagh
+was captured; the lady gave her testimony in a crowded court, and he
+who lately was rolling on the wheel of fortune, was now condemned to
+foot it on a very different wheel, and all for no other cause than
+that he could not live without food.
+
+The magistrate, who was eloquent on the occasion, called him an
+impostor; designating by this odious epithet, a highly-wrought and
+well-conceived work of imagination. Unhappy Defoe, your Robinson
+Crusoe might have cost you a voyage across the seas; your man Friday
+might have been a black Monday to you had you lived in our days. 964
+is a severer critic than _The Quarterly_, and his judgment more
+irrevocable.
+
+[Illustration: The Man of Genius.]
+
+We have never heard of any one who, discovering the fictitious
+character of a novel he had believed as a fact, waited on the
+publisher with a modest request that his money might be returned to
+him, being obtained under false pretences; much less of his applying
+to his worship for a warrant against G. P. R. James, Esq., or Harrison
+Ainsworth, for certain imaginary woes and unreal sorrows depicted in
+their writings: yet the conduct of the lady towards Mr. Cavanagh was
+exactly of this nature. How did his appetite do her any possible
+disservice? what sins against her soul were contained in his sausages?
+and yet she must appeal to the justice as an injured woman: Cavanagh
+had imposed upon her--she was wronged because he was hungry. All his
+narrative, beautifully constructed and artfully put together, went for
+nothing; his look, his manner, his entertaining anecdotes, his
+fascinating conversation, his time--from ten in the morning till eight
+in the evening--went all for nothing: this really is too bad. Do we
+ask of every author to be the hero he describes? Is Bulwer, Pelham,
+and Paul Clifford, Eugene Aram, and the Lady of Lyons? Is James, Mary
+of Burgundy, Darnley, the Gipsy, and Corse de Leon? Is Dickens, Sam
+Weller, Quilp, and Barnaby Rudge?--to what absurdities will this lead
+us! and yet Bernard Cavanagh was no more guilty than any of these
+gentlemen. He was, if I may so express it, a pictorial--an ideal
+representation of a man that fasted: he narrated all the sensations
+want of food suggests; its dreamy debility, its languid stupor, its
+painful suffering, its stage of struggle and suspense, ending in a
+victory, where the mind, the conqueror over the baser nature, asserts
+its proud and glorious supremacy in the triumph of volition; and for
+this beautiful creation of his brain he is sent to the treadmill, as
+though, instead of a poet, he had been a pickpocket.
+
+If Bulwer be a baronet; if Dickens' bed-room be papered with
+bank-debentures; then do I proclaim it loudly before the world,
+Bernard Cavanagh is an injured man: you are either absurd in one case,
+or unjust in the other; take your choice. Ship off Sir Edward to the
+colonies; send James to Swan River; let Lady Blessington card wool, or
+Mrs. Norton pound oyster-shells; or else we call upon you, give Mr.
+Cavanagh freedom of the guild; call him the author of "The Hungry
+One;" let him be courted and _feted_--you may ask him to dinner with
+an easy conscience, and invite him to tea without remorse. Let a
+Whig-radical borough solicit him to represent it; place him at the
+right hand of Lord John; let his picture be exhibited in the
+print-shops, and let the cut of his coat and the tie of his cravat be
+so much in vogue, that bang-ups _a la_ Barney shall be the only things
+seen in Bond-street: one course or the other you must take. If the
+mountain will not go to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain: or
+in other words, if Bulwer descend not to Barney, Barney must mount up
+to Bulwer. It is absurd, it is worse than absurd, to pretend that he
+who so thoroughly sympathises with his hero, as to embody him in his
+own thoughts and acts, his look, his dress, and his demeanour, that
+he, I say, who so penetrated with the impersonation of a part, finds
+the pen too weak, and the press too slow, to picture forth his vivid
+creations, should be less an object of praise, of honour, and
+distinction, than the indolent denizen of some drawing-room, who, in
+slippered ease, dictates his shadowy and imperfect conceptions--visions
+of what he never felt, dreamy representations of unreality.
+
+"The poet," as the word implies, is the maker or the creator; and
+however little of the higher attributes of what the world esteems as
+poetry the character would seem to possess, he who invents a
+personage, the conformity of whose traits to the rule of life is
+acknowledged for its truth, he, I say, is a poet. Thus, there is
+poetry in Sancho Panza, Falstaff, Dugald Dalgetty, and a hundred other
+similar impersonations; and why not in Bernard Cavanagh?
+
+Look for a moment at the effects of your system. The Caraccis, we are
+told, spent their boyish years drawing rude figures with chalk on the
+doors and even the walls of the palaces of Rome: here the first germs
+of their early talent displayed themselves; and in those bold
+conceptions of youthful genius were seen the first dawnings of a power
+that gave glory to the age they lived in. Had Sir Peter Laurie been
+their cotemporary, had 964 been loose in those days, they would have
+been treated with a trip to the mill, and their taste for design
+cultivated by the low diet of a penitentiary. You know not what
+budding genius you have nipped with this abominable system: you think
+not of the early indications of mind and intellect you may be
+consigning to prison: or is it after all, that the matter-of-fact
+spirit of the age has sapped the very vitals of our law-code, and that
+in your utilitarian zeal you have doomed to death all that bears the
+stamp of imagination? if this be indeed your object, have a good
+heart, encourage 964, and you'll not leave a novelist in the land.
+
+Good reader, I ask your pardon for all this honest indignation; I know
+it is in vain: I cannot reform our jurisprudence; and our laws, like
+the Belgian revolution, must be regarded "_comme un fait accompli_;"
+in other words, what can't be cured must be endured. Let us leave then
+our friend the Pole to perform his penance; let us say adieu to
+Barney, who is at this moment occupying a suite of apartments in the
+Penitentiary, and let us turn to the reverse of the medal, I mean to
+those who would wile us away by false promises and flattering speeches
+to entertain such views of life as are not only impossible but
+inconsistent, thus rendering our path here devoid of interest and of
+pleasure, while compared with the extravagant creations of their own
+erring fancies. Yes, princes may be trusted, but put not your faith in
+periodicals. Let no pictorial representations of Alpine scenery, under
+the auspices of Colburn or Bentley, seduce you from the comforts of
+your hearth and home: let no enthusiastic accounts of military
+greatness, no peninsular pleasures, no charms of campaigning life,
+induce you to change your garb of country gentleman for the livery of
+the Horse-Guards,--"making the green one red."
+
+Be not mystified by Maxwell, nor lured by Lorrequer; let no panegyrics
+of pipe-clay and the brevet seduce you from the peaceful path in life;
+let not Marryat mar your happiness by the glories of those who dwell
+in the deep waters; let not Wilson persuade you that the "Lights and
+Shadows of Scottish Life" have any reference to that romantic people,
+who betake themselves to their native mountains with a little oatmeal
+for food and a little sulphur for friction; do not believe one
+syllable about the girls of the west; trust not in the representations
+of their blue eyes, nor of their trim ankles peering beneath a jupe of
+scarlet--we can vouch it is true, for the red petticoat, but the rest
+is apocryphal. Fly, we warn you, from Summers in Germany, Evenings in
+Brittany, Weeks on the Rhine; away with tours, guide-books, and all
+the John Murrayisms of travels. A plague upon Egypt! travellers have a
+proverbial liberty of conscience, and the farther they go, the more
+does it seem to stretch; not that near home matters are much better,
+for our "Wild Sports" in Achill are as romantic as those in Africa,
+and the Complete Angler is a complete humbug.
+
+There is no faith--no principle in any of these men. The grave writer,
+the stern moralist, the uncompromising advocate of the inflexible rule
+of right, is a dandy with essenced locks, loose trousers, and looser
+morals, who breakfasts at four in the afternoon, and spends his
+evenings among the side scenes of the opera; the merry writer of whims
+and oddities, who shakes his puns about like pepper from a
+pepper-castor, is a misanthropic, melancholy gentleman, of mournful
+look and unhappy aspect: the advocate of field-sports, of all the
+joyous excitement of the hunting-field, and the bold dangers of the
+chase, is an asthmatic sexagenarian, with care in his heart and gout
+in his ankles; and lastly, he who lives but in the horrors of a
+charnel-house, whose gloomy mind finds no pleasure save in the dark
+and dismal pictures of crime and suffering, of lingering agony, or
+cruel death, is a fat, round, portly, comely gentleman, with a laugh
+like Falstaff, and a face whose every lineament and feature seems to
+exhale the merriment of a jocose and happy temperament. I speak not of
+the softer sex, many of whose productions would seem to have but
+little sympathy with themselves; but once for all, I would ask you
+what reliance, what faith can you place in any of them? Is it to the
+denizen of a coal mine you apply for information about the Nassau
+balloon? Do you refer a disputed point in dress to an Englishman, in
+climate to a Laplander, in politeness to a Frenchman, or in
+hospitality to a Belgian? or do you not rather feel that these are not
+exactly their attributes, and that you are moving the equity for a
+case at common law? exactly in the same way, and for the same reason,
+we repeat it, put not your faith in periodicals, nor in the writers
+thereof.
+
+How ridiculous would it appear if the surgeon-general were to open a
+pleading, or charge a jury in the Queen's Bench, while the
+solicitor-general was engaged in taking up the femoral artery! What
+would you say if the Archbishop of Canterbury were to preside over the
+artillery-practice at Woolwich, while the Commander of the Forces
+delivered a charge to the clergy of the diocese? How would you look if
+Justice Pennefather were to speak at a repeal meeting, and Daniel
+O'Connell to conduct himself like a loyal and discreet citizen? Would
+you not at once say the whole world is in masquerade? and would you
+not be justified in the remark? And yet this it is which is exactly
+taking place before your eyes in the wide world of letters. The
+illiterate and unreflecting man of under-bred habits and degenerate
+tastes will write nothing but a philosophic novel; the denizen of the
+Fleet, or the Queen's Bench, publishes an ascent of Mont Blanc, with
+a glowing description of the delights of liberty; the nobleman writes
+slang; the starving author, with broken boots and patched
+continuations, will not indite a name undignified by a title; and
+after all this, will you venture to tell me that these men are not
+indictable by the statute for obtaining money under false pretences?
+
+I have run myself out of breath; and now, if you will allow me a few
+moments, I will tell you what, perhaps, I ought to have done earlier
+in this article, namely, its object.
+
+It is a remarkable feature in the complex and difficult machinery of
+our society, that while crime and the law code keep steadily on the
+increase, moving in parallel lines one beside the other, certain
+prejudices, popular fallacies--nuts, as we have called them at the
+head of this paper--should still disgrace our social system; and that,
+however justice may be administered in our courts of law, in the
+private judicature of our own dwellings we observe an especial system
+of jurisprudence, marked by injustice and by wrong. To endeavour to
+depict some instances of this, I have set about my present
+undertaking. To disabuse the public mind as to the error, that what is
+punishable in one can be praiseworthy in another; and what is
+excellent in the court can be execrable in the city. Such is my
+object, such my hope. Under this title I shall endeavour to touch upon
+the undue estimation in which we hold certain people and places--the
+unfair depreciation of certain sects and callings. Not confining
+myself to home, I shall take the habits of my countrymen on the
+Continent, whether in their search for climate, economy, education, or
+enjoyment; and, as far as my ability lies, hold the mirror up to
+nature, while I extend the war-cry of my distinguished countrymen,
+not asking "justice for Ireland" alone, but "justice for the whole
+human race." For the gaoler as for the guardsman, for the steward of
+the Holyhead as for him of the household; from the Munster
+king-at-arms to the monarch of the Cannibal Island--"_nihil a me
+alienum puto_;" from the priest to the plenipotentiary; from Mr.
+Arkins to Abd-el-Kader: my sympathy extends to all.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR CORONERS.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+I had nearly attained to man's estate before I understood the nature
+of a coroner. I remember, when a child, to have seen a coloured print
+from a well-known picture of the day, representing the night-mare. It
+was a horrible representation of a goblin shape of hideous aspect,
+that sat cowering upon the bosom of a sleeping figure, on whose white
+features a look of painful suffering was depicted, while the clenched
+hands and drawn-up feet seemed to struggle with convulsive agony.
+Heaven knows how or when the thought occurred to me, but I clearly
+recollect my impression that this goblin was a coroner. Some confused
+notion about sitting on a corpse as one of his attributes had,
+doubtless, suggested the idea; and certainly nothing contributed to
+increase the horror of suicide in my eyes so much as the reflection,
+that the grim demon already mentioned had some function to discharge
+on the occasion.
+
+When, after the lapse of years, I heard that the eloquent and gifted
+member for Finsbury was a being of this order, although I knew by that
+time the injustice of my original prejudices, yet, I confess I could
+not look at him in the house, without a thought of my childish
+fancies, and an endeavour to trace in his comely features some faint
+resemblance to the figure of the night-mare.
+
+This strange impression of my infancy recurred strongly to my mind a
+few days since, on reading a newspaper account of a sudden death.--The
+case was simply that of a gentleman who, in the bosom of his family,
+became suddenly seized with illness, and after a few hours expired.
+What was their surprise! what their horror! to find, that no sooner
+was the circumstance known, than the house was surrounded by a mob,
+policemen were stationed at the doors, and twelve of the great
+unwashed, with a coroner at their head, forced their entry into the
+house of mourning, to deliberate on the cause of death. I can
+perfectly understand the value of this practice in cases where either
+suspicion has attached, or where the circumstances of the decease, as
+to time and place, would indicate a violent death; but where a person,
+surrounded by his children, living in all the quiet enjoyment of an
+easy and undisturbed existence, drops off by some one of the ills that
+flesh is heir to, only a little more rapidly than his neighbour at
+next door, why this should be a case for a coroner and his gang, I
+cannot, for the life of me, conceive. In the instance I allude to, the
+family offered the fullest information: they explained that the
+deceased had been liable for years to an infirmity likely to terminate
+in this way. The physician who attended him corroborated the
+statement; and, in fact, it was clear the case was one of those almost
+every-day occurrences where the thread of life is snapped, not
+unravelled. This, however, did not satisfy the coroner, who had, as he
+expressed it, a "duty to perform," and, who, certainly had five
+guineas for his fee: he was a "medical coroner," too, and therefore he
+would examine for himself. Thus, in the midst of the affliction and
+bereavement of a desolate family, the frightful detail of an inquest,
+with all its attendant train of harrowing and heart-rending inquiries,
+is carried on, simply because it is permissible by the law, and the
+coroner may enter where the king cannot.
+
+We are taught in the litany to pray against sudden death; but up to
+this moment I never knew it was illegal. Dreadful afflictions as
+apoplexy and aneurism are, it remained for our present civilisation to
+make them punishable by a statute. The march of intellect, not
+satisfied with directing us in life, must go a step farther and teach
+us how to die. Fashionable diseases the world has been long acquainted
+with, but an "illegal inflammation," and a "criminal hemorrhage" have
+been reserved for the enlightened age we live in.
+
+Newspapers will no longer inform us, in the habitual phrase, that Mr.
+Simpkins died suddenly at his house at Hampstead; but, under the head
+of "Shocking outrage," we shall read, "that after a long life of great
+respectability and the exhibition of many virtues, this unfortunate
+gentleman, it is hoped in a moment of mental alienation, went off with
+a disease of the heart. The affliction of his surviving relatives at
+this frightful act may be conceived, but cannot be described. His
+effects, according to the statute, have been confiscated to the crown,
+and a deodand of fifty shillings awarded on the apothecary who
+attended him. It is hoped, that the universal execration which attends
+cases of this nature may deter others from the same course; and, we
+confess, our observations are directed with a painful, but we trust, a
+powerful interest to certain elderly gentlemen in the neighbourhood of
+Islington." _Verb. sat._
+
+Under these sad circumstances it behoves us to look a little about,
+and provide against such a contingency. It is then earnestly
+recommended to heads of families, that when registering the birth of a
+child, they should also include some probable or possible malady of
+which he may, could, would, should, or ought to die, in the course of
+time. This will show, by incontestable evidence, that the event was at
+least anticipated, and being done at the earliest period of life, no
+reproach can possibly lie for want of premeditation. The register
+might run thus:--
+
+Giles Tims, son of Thomas and Mary Tims, born on the 9th of June, Kent
+street, Southwark--dropsy, typhus, or gout in the stomach.
+
+It by no means follows, that he must wait for one or other of these
+maladies to carry him off. Not at all; he may range at will through
+the whole practice of physic, and adopt his choice. The registry only
+goes to show, that he does not mean to sneak out of the world in any
+under-bred way, nor bolt out of life with the abrupt precipitation of
+a Frenchman after a dinner party. I have merely thrown out this hint
+here as a warning to my many friends, and shall now proceed to other
+and more pleasing topics.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR "TOURISTS."
+
+
+Among the many incongruities of that composite piece of architecture,
+called John Bull, there is nothing more striking than the contrast
+between his thorough nationality and his unbounded admiration for
+foreigners. Now, although we may not entirely sympathize with, we can
+understand and appreciate this feature of his character, and see how
+he gratifies his very pride itself, in the attentions and civilities
+he bestows upon strangers. The feeling is intelligible too, because
+Frenchmen, Germans, and even Italians, notwithstanding the many points
+of disparity between us, have always certain qualities well worthy of
+respect, if not of imitation. France has a great literature, a name
+glorious in history, a people abounding in intelligence, skill, and
+invention; in fact, all the attributes that make up a great nation.
+Germany has many of these, and though she lack the brilliant fancy,
+the sparkling wit of her neighbour, has still a compensating fund in
+the rich resources of her judgment, and the profound depths of her
+scholarship. Indeed, every continental country has its lesson for our
+benefit, and we would do well to cultivate the acquaintance of
+strangers, not only to disseminate more just views of ourselves and
+our institutions, but also for the adoption of such customs as seem
+worthy of imitation, and such habits as may suit our condition in
+life; while such is the case as regards those countries high in the
+scale of civilisation, we would, by no means, extend the rule to
+others less happily constituted, less benignly gifted. The Carinthian
+boor with his garment of sheep-wool, or the Laplander with his snow
+shoes and his hood of deerskin, may be both very natural objects of
+curiosity, but by no means subjects of imitation. This point will
+doubtless be conceded at once; and now, will any one tell me for what
+cause, under what pretence, and with what pretext are we civil to the
+Yankees?--not for their politeness, not for their literature, not for
+any fascination of their manner, nor any charm of their address, not
+for any historic association, not for any halo that the glorious past
+has thrown around the common-place monotony of the present, still less
+for any romantic curiosity as to their lives and habits--for in this
+respect all other savage nations far surpass them. What then is, or
+what can be the cause?
+
+Of all the lions that caprice and the whimsical absurdity of a
+second-rate set in fashion ever courted and entertained, never had any
+one less pretensions to the civility he received than the author of
+'Pencillings by the Way'--poor in thought, still poorer in expression,
+without a spark of wit, without a gleam of imagination--a fourth-rate
+looking man, and a fifth-rate talker, he continued to receive the
+homage we were wont to bestow upon a Scott, and even charily extended
+to a Dickens. His writings the very slip-slop of "commerage," the
+tittle-tattle of a Sunday paper, dressed up in the cant of Kentucky;
+the very titles, the contemptible affectation of unredeemed twaddle,
+'Pencillings by the Way!' 'Letters from under a Bridge!' Good lack!
+how the latter name is suggestive of eaves-dropping and listening; and
+how involuntarily we call to mind those chance expressions of his
+partners in the dance, or his companions at the table, faithfully
+recorded for the edification of the free-born Americans, who, while
+they ridicule our institutions, endeavour to pantomime our manners.
+
+For many years past a number of persons have driven a thriving trade
+in a singular branch of commerce, no less than buying up cast court
+dresses and second-hand uniforms for exportation to the colonies. The
+negroes, it is said, are far prouder of figuring in the tattered and
+tarnished fragments of former greatness, than of wearing the less
+gaudy, but more useful garb, befitting their condition. So it would
+seem our trans-Atlantic friends prefer importing through their agents,
+for that purpose, the abandoned finery of courtly gossip, to the more
+useful but less pretentious apparel, of common-place information. Mr.
+Willis was invaluable for this purpose; he told his friends every
+thing that he heard, and he heard every thing that he could; and, like
+mercy, he enjoyed a duplicate of blessings--for while he was delighted
+in by his own countrymen, he was dined by ours. He scattered his
+autographs, as Feargus O'Connor did franks; he smiled; he ogled; he
+read his own poetry, and went the whole lion with all his might; and
+yet, in the midst of this, a rival starts up equally desirous of court
+secrets, and fifty times as enterprising in their search; he risks his
+liberty, perhaps his life, in the pursuit, and what is his reward? I
+need only tell you his name, and you are answered--I mean the boy
+Jones; not under a bridge, but under a sofa; not in Almacks, obtaining
+it at second-hand, but in Buckingham Palace--into the very apartment
+of the Queen--the adventurous youth has dared to insinuate himself. No
+lady however sends her album to him for some memento of his genius.
+His temple is not defrauded of its curls to grace a locket or a
+medallion; and his reward, instead of a supper at Lady Blessington's,
+is a voyage to Swan River. For my part, I prefer the boy Jones: I like
+his singleness of purpose: I admire his steady perseverance; still,
+however, he had the misfortune to be born in England--his father lived
+near Wapping, and he was ineligible for a lion.
+
+To what other reason than his English growth can be attributed the
+different treatment he has experienced at the hands of the world. The
+similarity between the two characters is most striking. Willis had a
+craving appetite for court gossip, and the tittle-tattle of a palace:
+so had the boy Jones. Willis established himself as a listener in
+society: so did the boy Jones. Willis obtruded himself into places,
+and among people where he had no possible pretension to be seen: so
+did the boy Jones. Willis wrote letters from under a bridge: the boy
+Jones eat mutton chops under a sofa.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR LEGAL FUNCTIONARIES.
+
+
+The pet profession of England is the bar, and I see many reasons why
+this should be the case. Our law of primogeniture necessitates the
+existence of certain provisions for younger children independently of
+the pittance bestowed on them by their families. The army and the
+navy, the church and the bar, form then the only avenues to fortune
+for the highly born; and one or other of these four roads must be
+adopted by him who would carve out his own career. The bar, for
+many reasons, is the favourite--at least among those who place
+reliance in their intellect. Its estimation is high. It is not
+incompatible but actually favourable to the pursuits of parliament.
+Its rewards are manifold and great; and while there is a sufficiency
+of private ease and personal retirement in its practice, there is also
+enough of publicity for the most ambitiously-minded seeker of the
+world's applause and the world's admiration. Were we only to look back
+upon our history, we should find perhaps that the profession of the
+law would include almost two-thirds of our very greatest men. Astute
+thinkers, deep politicians, eloquent debaters, profound scholars, men
+of wit, as well as men of wisdom, have abounded in its ranks, and
+there is every reason why it should be, as I have called it, the pet
+profession.
+
+[Illustration: Legal Functionaries.]
+
+Having conceded so much, may I now be permitted to take a nearer view
+of those men so highly distinguished: and for this purpose let me turn
+my reader's attention to the practice of a criminal trial. The first
+duty of a good citizen, it will not be disputed, is, as far as in him
+lies, to promote obedience to the law, to repress crime, and bring
+outrage to punishment. No walk in life--no professional career--no
+uniform of scarlet or of black--no freemasonry of craft or calling can
+absolve him from this allegiance to his country. Yet, what do we see?
+The wretch stained with crime--polluted with iniquity--for which,
+perhaps, the statute-book contains neither name nor indictment--whose
+trembling lips are eager to avow that guilt which, by confessing, he
+hopes may alleviate the penalty--this man, I say, is checked in his
+intentions--he is warned not, by any chance expression, to hazard a
+conviction of his crime, and told in the language of the law not to
+criminate himself. But the matter stops not here--justice is an
+inveterate gambler--she is not satisfied when her antagonist throws
+his card upon the table confessing that he has not a trump nor a trick
+in his hand--no, like the most accomplished swindler of Baden or
+Boulogne, she assumes a smile of easy and courteous benignity, and
+says, pooh, pooh! nonsense, my dear friend; you don't know what may
+turn up; your cards are better than you think; don't be faint-hearted;
+don't you see you have the knave of trumps, _i. e._, the cleverest
+lawyer for your defender; a thousand things may happen; I may revoke,
+that is, the indictment may break down; there are innumerable chances
+in your favour, so pluck up your courage and play the game out.
+
+He takes the advice, and however faint-hearted before, he now assumes
+a look of stern courage, or dogged indifference, and resolves to play
+for the stake. He remembers, however, that he is no adept in the game,
+and he addresses himself in consequence to some astute and subtle
+gambler, to whom he commits his cards and his chances. The trepidation
+or the indifference that he manifested before, now gradually gives
+way; and however hopeless he had deemed his case at first, he now
+begins to think that all is not lost. The very way his friend, the
+lawyer, shuffles and cuts the cards, imposes on his credulity and
+suggests a hope. He sees at once that he is a practised hand, and
+almost unconsciously he becomes deeply interested in the changes and
+vacillations of the game he believed could have presented but one
+aspect of fortune.
+
+But the prisoner is not my object: I turn rather to the lawyer. Here
+then do we not see the accomplished gentleman--the finished
+scholar--the man of refinement and of learning, of character and
+station--standing forth the very embodiment of the individual in the
+dock? possessed of all his secrets--animated by the same
+hopes--penetrated by the same fears--he endeavours by all the subtle
+ingenuity, with which craft and habit have gifted him, to confound the
+testimony--to disparage the truth--to pervert the inferences of all
+the witnesses. In fact, he employs all the stratagems of his calling,
+all the ingenuity of his mind, all the subtlety of his wit for the one
+end--that the man he believes in his own heart guilty, may, on the
+oaths of twelve honest men, be pronounced innocent.
+
+From the opening of the trial to its close, this mental gladiator is
+an object of wonder and dread. Scarcely a quality of the human mind is
+not exhibited by him in the brilliant panorama of his intellect. At
+first, the patient perusal of a complex and wordy indictment occupies him
+exclusively: he then proceeds to cross-examine the witnesses--flattering
+this one--brow-beating that--suggesting--insinuating--amplifying, or
+retrenching, as the evidence would seem to favour or be adverse to his
+client. He is alternately confident and doubtful, headlong and
+hesitating--now hurried away on the full tide of his eloquence he
+expatiates in beautiful generalities on the glorious institution of
+trial by jury, and apostrophizes justice; or now, with broken
+utterance and plaintive voice, he supplicates the jury to be patient,
+and be careful in the decision they may come to. He implores them to
+remember that when they leave that court, and return to the happy
+comforts of their home, conscience will follow them, and the
+everlasting question crave for answer within them--were they sure of
+this man's guilt? He teaches them how fallacious are all human tests;
+he magnifies the slightest discrepancy of evidence into a broad and
+sweeping contradiction; and while, with a prophetic menace, he
+pictures forth the undying remorse that pursues him who sheds innocent
+blood, he dismisses them with an affecting picture of mental agony so
+great--of suffering so heart-rending, that, as they retire to the
+jury-room, there is not a man of the twelve that has not more or less
+of a _personal_ interest in the acquittal of the prisoner.
+
+However bad, however depraved the human mind, it still leans to mercy:
+the power to dispose of another man's life is generally sufficient for
+the most malignant spirit in its thirst for vengeance. What then are
+the feelings of twelve calm, and perhaps, benevolent men, at a moment
+like this? The last words of the advocate have thrown a new element
+into the whole case, for independent of their verdict upon the
+prisoner comes now the direct appeal to their own hearts. How will
+they feel when they reflect on this hereafter? I do not wish to pursue
+this further. It is enough for my present purpose that, by the
+ingenuity of the lawyer, criminals have escaped, do escape, and are
+escaping, the just sentence on their crimes. What then is the result?
+the advocate, who up to this moment has maintained a familiar, even a
+friendly, intimacy with his client in the dock, now shrinks from the
+very contamination of his look. He cannot bear that the blood-stained
+fingers should grasp the hem of his garment, and he turns with a sense
+of shame from the expressions of a gratitude that criminate him in his
+own heart. However, this is but a passing sensation; he divests
+himself of his wig and gown, and overwhelmed with congratulations for
+his brilliant success, he springs into his carriage and goes home to
+dress for dinner--for on that day he is engaged to the Chancellor, the
+Bishop of London, or some other great and revered functionary--the
+guardian of the church, or the custodian of conscience.
+
+Now, there is only one thing in all this I would wish to bring
+strikingly before the mind of my readers, and that is, that the
+lawyer, throughout the entire proceeding, was a free and a willing
+agent. There was neither legal nor moral compulsion to urge him on.
+No; it was no intrepid defence against the tyranny of a government or
+the usurpation of power--it was the assertion of no broad and
+immutable principle of truth or justice--it was simply a matter of
+legal acumen and persuasive eloquence, to the amount of fifty pounds
+sterling.
+
+This being admitted, let me now proceed to consider another
+functionary, and observe how far the rule of right is consulted in the
+treatment _he_ meets with--I mean the hangman. You start, good reader,
+and your gesture of impatience denotes the very proposition I would
+come to. I need scarcely remind you, that in our country this
+individual has a kind of prerogative of detestation. All other ranks
+and conditions of men may find a sympathy, or at least a pity,
+somewhere, but for him there is none. No one is sufficiently debased
+to be his companion,--no one so low as to be his associate! Like a
+being of another sphere, he appears but at some frightful moments of
+life, and then only for a few seconds. For the rest he drags on
+existence unseen and unheard of, his very name a thing to tremble at.
+Yet this man, in the duties of his calling, has neither will nor
+choice. The stern agent of the law, he has but one course to follow;
+his path, a narrow one, has no turning to the right or to the left,
+and, save that his ministry is more proximate, is less accessory to
+the death of the criminal than he who signs the warrant for execution.
+In fact, he but answers the responses of the law, and in the loud amen
+of his calling, he only consummates its recorded assertion. How then
+can you reconcile yourself to the fact, that while you overwhelm the
+advocate who converts right into wrong and wrong into right, who
+shrouds the guilty man, and conceals the murderer, with honour, and
+praise, and rank, and riches, and who does this for a brief marked
+fifty pounds, yet have nothing but abhorrence and detestation for the
+impassive agent whose fee is but one. One can help what he does--the
+other cannot. One is an amateur--the other practices in spite of
+himself. One employs every energy of his mind and every faculty of his
+intellect--the other only devotes the ingenuity of his fingers. One
+strains every nerve to let loose a criminal upon the world--the other
+but closes the grave over guilt and crime!
+
+The king's counsel is courted. His society sought for. He is held in
+high esteem, and while his present career is a brilliant one in the
+vista before him, his eyes are fixed upon the ermine. Jack Ketch, on
+the other hand, is shunned. His companionship avoided, and the only
+futurity he can look to, is a life of ignominy, and after it an
+unknown grave. Let him be a man of fascinating manners, highly gifted,
+and agreeable; let him be able to recount with the most melting pathos
+the anecdotes and incidents of his professional career, throwing light
+upon the history of his own period--such as none but himself could
+throw;--let him speak of the various characters that have _passed
+through his hands_, and so to say, "dropped off before him"--yet the
+prejudice of the world is an obstacle not to be overcome; his calling
+is in disrepute, and no personal efforts of his own, no individual
+pre-eminence he may arrive at in his walk, will ever redeem it. Other
+men's estimation increases as they distinguish themselves in life;
+each fresh display of their abilities, each new occasion for the
+exercise of their powers, is hailed with renewed favour and increasing
+flattery; not so he,--every time he appears on his peculiar stage, the
+disgust and detestation is but augmented,--_vires acquirit
+eundo_,--his countenance, as it becomes known, is a signal for the
+yelling execrations of a mob, and the very dexterity with which he
+performs his functions, is made matter of loathing and horror. Were
+his duties such as might be carried on in secret, he might do good by
+stealth and blush to find it fame; but no, his attributes demand the
+noon-day and the multitude--the tragedy he performs in, must be played
+before tens of thousands, by whom his every look is scowled at, his
+every gesture scrutinized. But to conclude,--this man is a necessity
+of our social system. We want him--we require him, and we can't do
+without him. Much of the machinery of a trial might be dispensed with
+or retrenched. His office, however, has nothing superfluous. He is
+part of the machinery of our civilisation, and on what principle do we
+hunt him down like a wild beast to his lair?
+
+Men of rank and title are daily to be found in association, and even
+intimacy with black legs and bruisers, grooms, jockeys, and swindlers;
+yet we never heard that even the Whigs paid any attention to a
+hangman, nor is his name to be found even in the list of a Radical
+viceroy's levee. However, we do not despair. Many prejudices of this
+nature have already given way, and many absurd notions have been
+knocked on the head by a wag of great Daniel's tail. And if our friend
+of Newgate, who is certainly anti-union in his functions, will only
+cry out for Repeal, the justice that is entreated for all Ireland may
+include him in the general distribution of its favours. Poor Theodore
+Hook used to say, that marriage was like hanging, there being only the
+difference of an aspirate between halter and altar.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR "ENDURING AFFECTION."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+My dear reader, if it does not insult your understanding by the
+self-evidence of the query, will you allow me to ask you a
+question--which of the two is more culpable, the man who, finding
+himself in a path of dereliction, arrests himself in his downward
+career, and, by a wonderful effort of self-restraint, stops dead
+short, and will suffer no inducement, no seduction, to lead him one
+step further; or he, who, floating down the stream of his own vicious
+passions, takes the flood-tide of iniquity, and, indifferent to every
+consequence, deaf to all remonstrance, seeks but the indulgence of his
+own egotistical pleasure with a stern determination to pursue it to
+the last? Of course you will say, that he who repents is better than
+he who persists; there is hope for the one, there is none for the
+other. Yet would you believe it, our common law asserts directly the
+reverse, pronouncing the culpability of the former as meriting heavy
+punishment, while the latter is not assailable even by implication.
+
+That I may make myself more clear, I shall give an instance of my
+meaning. Scarcely a week passes over without a trial for breach of
+promise of marriage. Sometimes the gay Lothario, to use the phrase of
+the newspapers, is nineteen, sometimes ninety. In either case his
+conduct is a frightful tissue of perjured vows and base deception. His
+innumerable letters breathing all the tenderness of affectionate
+solicitude, intended but for the eyes of her he loves, are read in
+open court; attested copies are shown to the judge, or handed up to
+the jury-box. The course of his true love is traced from the bubbling
+fountain of first acquaintance to the broad river of his passionate
+devotion. Its rapids and its whirlpools, its placid lakes, its frothy
+torrents, its windings and its turnings, its ebbs and flows, are
+discussed, detailed, and descanted on with all the hacknied precision
+of the craft, as though his heart was a bill of exchange, or the
+current of his affection a disputed mill-stream. And what, after all,
+is this man's crime? knowing that love is the great humanizer of our
+race, and feeling probably how much he stands in need of some
+civilizing process, he attaches himself to some lovely and attractive
+girl, who, in the reciprocity of her affection, is herself benefited
+in a degree equal to him. If the soft solicitude of the tender
+passion, if its ennobling self-respect, if its purifying influence on
+the heart, be good for the man, how much more so is it for the woman.
+If _he_ be taught to feel how the refined enjoyments of an attractive
+girl's mind are superior to the base and degenerate pursuits of
+every-day pleasure, how much more will _she_ learn to prize and
+cultivate those gifts which form the charm of her nature, and breathe
+an incense of fascination around her steps. Here is a compact where
+both parties benefit, but that they may do so to the fullest extent,
+it is necessary that no self-interest, no mean prospect of individual
+advantage, should interfere: all must be pure and confiding.
+Love-making should not be like a game of _ecarte_ with a black leg,
+where you must not rise from the table, till you are ruined. No! it
+should rather resemble a party at picquet with your pretty cousin,
+when the moment either party is tired, you may throw down the cards
+and abandon the game.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+This, then, is the case of the man; he either discovers that on
+further acquaintance the qualities he believed in were not so palpable
+as he thought, or, if there, marred in their exercise by opposing and
+antagonist forces, of whose existence he knew not, he thinks he
+detects discrepancies of temperament, disparities of taste; he
+foresees that in the channel where he looked for deep water there are
+so many rocks, and shoals, and quicksands, that he fears the bark of
+conjugal happiness may be shipwrecked upon them; and, like a prudent
+mariner, he resolves to lighten the craft by "throwing over the lady."
+Had this man married with all these impending suspicions on his mind,
+there is little doubt he would have made a most execrable husband; not
+to mention the danger that his wife should not be all amiable as she
+ought. He stops short--that is, he explains in one, perhaps in a
+series of letters, the reasons of his new course. He expects in return
+the admiration and esteem of her, for whose happiness he is
+legislating, as well as for his own; and oh, base ingratitude! he
+receives a letter from her attorney. The gentlemen of the long
+robe--newspaper again--are in ecstasies. Like devils on the arrival of
+a new soul, they brighten up, rub their hands, and congratulate each
+other on a glorious case. The damages are laid at five thousand
+pounds; and, as the lady is pretty, and can be seen from the jury-box,
+being fathers themselves, they award every sixpence of the money.
+
+I can picture to myself the feeling of the defendant at such a moment
+as this. As he stands alone in conscious honesty, ruminating on his
+fate--alone, I say, for, like Mahomet's coffin, he has no
+resting-place; laughed at by the men, sneered at by the women, mulcted
+of perhaps half his fortune, merely because for the last three years
+of his life he represented himself in every amiable and attractive
+trait that can grace and adorn human nature. Who would wonder, if,
+like the man in the farce, he would register a vow never to do a
+good-natured thing again as long as he lives; or what respect can he
+have for a government or a country, where the church tells him to love
+his neighbour, and the chief justice makes him pay five thousand for
+his obedience.
+
+I now come to the other case, and I shall be very brief in my
+observations. I mean that of him, who equally fond of flirting as the
+former, has yet a lively fear of an action at law. Love-making with
+him is a necessity of his existence--he is an Irishman, perhaps, and
+it is as indispensable to his temperament as train-oil to a Russian.
+He likes sporting, he likes billiards, he likes his club, and he likes
+the ladies; but he has just as much intention of turning a huntsman at
+the one, or a marker at the other, as he has of matrimony. He knows
+life is a chequered table, and that there could be no game if all the
+squares were of one colour. He alternates, therefore, between love and
+sporting, between cards and courtship, and as the pursuit is a
+pleasant one, he resolves never to give up. He waxes old, therefore,
+with young habits, adapting his tastes to his time of life; he does
+not kneel so often at forty as he did at twenty, but he ogles the
+more, and is twice as good-tempered. Not perhaps as ready to fight for
+the lady, but ten times more disposed to flatter her. She may love
+him, or she may not; she may receive him as of old, or she may marry
+another. What matters it to him? All his care is that _he_ shouldn't
+change. All his anxiety is, to let the rupture, if there must be one,
+proceed from _her_ side. He knows in his heart the penalty of breach
+of promise, but he also knows that the Chancellor can issue no
+injunction compelling a man to marry, and that in the courts of love
+the bills are payable at convenience.
+
+Here, then, are the two cases, which, in conformity with the world's
+opinion, I have dignified with every possible term of horror and
+reproach. In the one, the measure of iniquity is but half filled; in
+the other, the cup is overflowing at the brim. For the lesser offence,
+the law awards damages and defamation: for the greater, society
+pronounces an eulogy upon the enduring fidelity of the man thus
+faithful to a first love.
+
+If a person about to buy a horse should, on trying him for an hour or
+two, discover that his temper did not suit him, or that his paces were
+not pleasant, and should in consequence restore him to the owner: and
+if another, on the same errand, should come day after day for weeks,
+or months, or even years, cantering him about over the pavement, and
+scouring over the whole country; his answer being, when asked if he
+intended to purchase, that he liked the horse exceedingly, but that he
+hadn't got a stable, or a saddle, or a curb-chain, or, in fact, some
+one or other of the little necessaries of horse gear; but that when he
+had, that was exactly the animal to suit him--he never was better
+carried in his life. Which of these two, do you esteem the more honest
+and more honourable?
+
+When you make up your mind, please also to make the application.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE POLICE AND SIR PETER.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+When the Belgians, by their most insane revolution, separated from the
+Dutch, they assumed for their national motto the phrase "_L'union fait
+la force_." It is difficult to say whether their rebellion towards the
+sovereign, or this happy employment of a bull, it was, that so
+completely captivated our illustrious countryman, Dan, and excited so
+warmly his sympathies for that beer-drinking population. After all,
+why should one quarrel with them? Nations, like individuals, have
+their coats-of-arms, their heraldic insignia, their blazons, and their
+garters, frequently containing the sharpest sarcasm and most poignant
+satire upon those who bear them; and in this respect Belgium is only
+as ridiculous as the attorney who assumed for his motto "_Fiat
+justitia_." Time was when the chivalrous line of our own garter,
+"_Honi soit qui mal y pense_," brought with it, its bright
+associations of kingly courtesy and maiden bashfulness: but what
+sympathy can such a sentiment find in these degenerate days of
+railroads and rack-rents, canals, collieries, and chain-bridges? No,
+were we now to select an inscription, much rather would we take it
+from the prevailing passion of the age, and write beneath the arms of
+our land the emphatic phrase, "Push along, keep moving."
+
+If Englishmen have failed to exhibit in machinery that triumphant El
+Dorado called perpetual motion, in revenge for their failure, they
+resolved to exemplify it in themselves. The whole nation, from John o'
+Groat to Land's End, from Westport to Dover, are playing
+cross-corners. Every body and every thing is on the move. A
+dwelling-house, like an umbrella, is only a thing used on an
+emergency; and the inhabitants of Great Britain pass their lives amid
+the smoke of steam-boats, or the din and thunder of the
+Grand-Junction. From the highest to the lowest, from the peer to the
+peasant, from the lord of the treasury to the Irish haymaker, it is
+one universal "_chassee croissee_." Not only is this fashionable--for
+we are told by the newspapers how the Queen walks daily with Prince
+Albert on "the slopes"--but stranger still, locomotion is a law of the
+land, and standing still is a statutable offence. The hackney
+coachman, with wearied horses, blown and broken-winded, dares not
+breathe his jaded beasts by a momentary pull-up, for the implacable
+policeman has his eye upon him, and he must simulate a trot, though
+his pace but resemble a stage procession, where the legs are lifted
+without progressing, and some fifty Roman soldiers, in Wellington
+boots, are seen vainly endeavouring to push forward. The
+foot-passenger is no better off--tired perhaps with walking or
+attracted by the fascinations of a print-shop, he stops for an
+instant: alas, that luxury may cost him dear, and for the momentary
+pleasure he may yet have to perform a quick step on the mill. "Move
+on, sir. Keep moving, if you please," sayeth the gentleman in blue;
+and there is something in his manner that won't be denied. It is
+useless to explain that you have nowhere particular to go to, that you
+are an idler and a lounger. The confession is a fatal one; and however
+respectable your appearance, the idea of shoplifting is at once
+associated with your pursuits. Into what inconsistencies do we fall
+while multiplying our laws, for while we insist upon progression, we
+announce a penalty for vagrancy. The first principle of the British
+constitution, however, is "keep moving," and "I would recommend you to
+go with the tide."
+
+Thank heaven, I have reached to man's estate--although with a heavy
+heart I acknowledge it is the only estate I have or ever shall attain
+to; for if I were a child I don't think I should close my eyes at
+night from the fear of one frightful and terrific image. As it is, I
+am by no means over courageous, and it requires all the energy I can
+summon to combat my terrors. You ask me, in all likelihood, what this
+fearful thing can be? Is it the plague or the cholera? is it the dread
+of poverty and the new poor-law? is it that I may be impressed as a
+seaman, or mistaken for a Yankee? or is it some unknown and visionary
+terror, unseen, unheard of, but foreshadowed by a diseased
+imagination; No; nothing of the kind. It is a palpable, sentient,
+existent thing--neither more nor less than the worshipful Sir Peter
+Laurie.
+
+Every newspaper you take up announces that Sir Peter, with a hearty
+contempt for the brevity of the fifty folio volumes that contain the
+laws of our land, in the plenitude of his power and the fulness of his
+imagination, keeps adding to the number; so that if length of years be
+only accorded to that amiable individual in proportion to his merits,
+we shall find at length that not only will every contingency of our
+lives be provided for by the legislature, but that some standard for
+personal appearance will also be adopted, to which we must conform as
+rigidly as to our oath of allegiance.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A few days ago a miserable creature, a tailor we believe, some decimal
+fraction of humanity, was brought up before Sir Peter on a trifling
+charge of some kind or other. I forget his offence, but whatever it
+was, the penalty annexed to it was but a fine of half-a-crown. The
+prisoner, however, who behaved with propriety and decorum, happened to
+have long black hair, which he wore somewhat "_en jeune France_" upon
+his neck and shoulders; his locks, if not ambrosial, were tastefully
+curled, and bespoke the fostering hand of care and attention. The
+Rhadamanthus of the police-office, however, liked them not: whether it
+was that he wore a Brutus himself, or that his learned cranium had
+resisted all the efficacy of Macassar, I cannot say; but certain it
+is, that the tailor's ringlets gave him the greatest offence, and he
+apostrophised the wearer in the most solemn manner:
+
+"I have sat," said he, "for ----," as I quote from memory I sha'n't
+say how many, "years upon the bench, and I never yet met an honest man
+with long hair. The worst feature in your case is your ringlets. There
+is something so disgusting to me in the odious and abominable vice you
+have indulged in, that I feel myself warranted in applying to you the
+heaviest penalty of the law."
+
+The miserable man, we are told, fell upon his knees, confessed his
+delinquency, and, being shorn of his locks in the presence of a
+crowded court, his fine was remitted, and he was liberated.
+
+Now, perhaps, you will suppose that all this is a mere matter of
+invention. On the faith of an honest man I assure you it is not. I
+have retrenched considerably the pathetic eloquence of the magistrate,
+and I have left altogether untouched the poor tailor's struggle
+between pride and poverty--whether, on the one hand, to suffer the
+loss of his _half_-crown, or, on the other, to submit to the
+desecration of his _entire_ head. We hear a great deal about a law for
+the rich, and another for the poor; and certainly in this case I am
+disposed to think the complaint might not seem without foundation.
+Suppose for a moment that the prisoner in this case had been the
+Honourable Augustus Somebody, who appeared before his worship
+fashionably attired, and with hair, beard, and moustache far
+surpassing in extravagance the poor tailor's; should we then have
+heard this beautiful apostrophe to "the croppies," this thundering
+denunciation of ringlets? I half fear not. And yet, under what pretext
+does a magistrate address to one man, the insulting language he would
+not dare apply to another? Or let us suppose the rule of justice to be
+inflexible, and look at the result. What havoc would Sir Peter make
+among the Guards? ay, even in the household of her Majesty how many
+delinquents would he find? what a scene would not the clubs present,
+on the police authorities dropping suddenly down amongst them with
+rule and line to determine the statute length of their whiskers, or
+the legal cut of their eye-brows? Happy King of Hanover, were you
+still amongst us, not even the Alliance would insure your mustachoes.
+As for Lord Ellenborough, it is now clear enough why he accepted the
+government of India, and made such haste to get out of the country.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Now we will suppose that as Sir Peter Laurie's antipathy is long hair,
+Sir Frederick Roe may also have his dislikes. It is but fair, you will
+allow, that the privileges of the bench should be equal. Well, for
+argument's sake, I will imagine that Sir Frederick Roe has not the
+same horror of long hair as his learned brother, but has the most
+unconquerable aversion to long noses. What are we to do here? Heaven
+help half our acquaintance if this should strike him! What is to be
+done with Lord Allen if he beat a watchman! In what a position will he
+stand if he fracture a lamp? One's hair may be cut to any length,--it
+may be even shaved clean off; but your nose.--And then a few weeks,--a
+few months at farthest, and your hair has grown again: but your nose,
+like your reputation, can only stand one assault. This is really a
+serious view of the subject; and it is a somewhat hard thing that the
+face you have shown to your acquaintances for years past, with
+pleasure to yourself and satisfaction to them, should be pronounced
+illegal, or curtailed in its proportions. They have a practice in
+banks if a forged note be presented for payment, to mark it in a
+peculiar manner before restoring it to the owner. This is technically
+called "raddling." Something similar, I suppose, will be adopted at
+the police-office, and in case of refusal to conform your features to
+the rule of Roe, you will be raddled by an officer appointed for the
+purpose, and sent forth upon the world the mere counterfeit of
+humanity.
+
+What a glorious thing it would be for this great country, if, having
+equalized throughout the kingdom the weights, the measures, the miles,
+and the currency, we should, at length attain to an equalization in
+appearance. The "facial angle" will then have its application in
+reality, and, instead of the tiresome detail of an Old Bailey trial,
+we shall hear a judge sum up on the externals of a prisoner, merely
+directing the attention of the jury to the atrocious irregularity of
+his teeth, or the assassin-like sharpness of his under-jaw. Honour to
+you, Sir Peter, should this great improvement grow out of your
+innovation; and proud may the country well be, that acknowledges you
+among its lawgivers!
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Let men no longer indulge in that absurd fiction which represents
+justice as blind. On the contrary, with an eye like Canova's, and a
+glance quick, sharp, and penetrating as Flaxman's, she traces every
+lineament and every feature; and Landseer will confess himself
+vanquished by Laurie. "The pictorial school of judicial investigation"
+will now become fashionable, and if Sir Peter's practice be but
+transmitted, surgeons will not be the only professional men who will
+commence their education with the barbers.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE BUDGET.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+I remember once coming into Matlock, on the top of the "Peveril of the
+Peak," when the coachman who drove our four spanking thorough-breds
+contrived, in something less than five minutes, to excite his whole
+team to the very top of their temper, lifting the wheelers almost off
+the ground with his heavy lash, and, thrashing his leaders till they
+smoked with passion, he brought them up to the inn door trembling with
+rage, and snorting with anger. What the devil is all this for, thought
+I. He guessed at once what was passing in my mind, and, with a knowing
+touch of his elbow, whispered:--
+
+"There's a new coachman a-going to try 'em, and I'll leave him a
+precious legacy."
+
+This is precisely what the Whigs did in their surrender of power to
+the Tories. They, indeed, left them a precious legacy:--without an
+ally abroad, with discontent and starvation at home, distant and
+expensive wars, depressed trade, and bankrupt speculation, form some
+portion of the valuable heritage they bequeathed to their heirs in
+power. The most sanguine saw matter of difficulty, and the greater
+number of men were tempted to despair at the prospects of the
+Conservative party; for, however happily all other questions may have
+terminated, they still see, in the corn-law, a point whose subtle
+difficulty would seem inaccessible to legislation. Ah! could the two
+great parties, that divide the state, only lay their heads together
+for a short time, and carry out that beautiful principle that Scribe
+announces in one of his vaudevilles:--
+
+    "Que le ble se vend cher, et le pain bon marche."
+
+And why, after all, should not the collective wisdom of England be
+able to equal in ingenuity the conceptions of a farce-writer?
+Meanwhile, it is plain that political dissensions, and the rivalries
+of party, will prevent that mutual good understanding which might
+prove so beneficial to all. Reconciliations are but flimsy things at
+best; and whether the attempt be made to conciliate two rival
+churches, two opposite factions, or two separate interests of any kind
+whatever, it is usually a failure. It, therefore, becomes the duty of
+every good subject, and, _a fortiori_, of every good Conservative, to
+bestir himself at the present moment, and see what can be done to
+retrieve the sinking fortune of the state. Taxation, like flogging in
+the army, never comes on the right part of the back. Sometimes too
+high, sometimes too low. There is no knowing where to lay it on.
+Besides that, we have by this time got such a general raw all over us,
+there isn't a square inch of sound flesh that presents itself for a
+new infliction. Since the first French Revolution, the ingenuity of
+man has been tortured on the subject of finance; and had Dionysius
+lived in our days, instead of offering a bounty for the discovery of a
+new pleasure, he would have proposed a reward to the man who devised a
+new tax.
+
+Without entering at any length into this subject, the consideration of
+which would lead me into all the details of our every-day habits, I
+pass on at once to the question which has induced this inquiry, while
+I proclaim to the world loudly, fearlessly, and resolutely,
+"Eureka!"--I've found it. Yes, my fellow-countrymen, I have found a
+remedy to supply the deficient income of the nation, not only without
+imposing a new tax, or inflicting a new burden upon the suffering
+community, but also without injuring vested rights, or thwarting the
+activity of commercial enterprise. I neither mulct cotton or corn; I
+meddle not with parson or publican, nor do I make any portion of the
+state, by its own privations, support the well-being of the rest. On
+the contrary, the only individual concerned in my plan, will not be
+alone benefited in a pecuniary point of view, but the best feelings of
+the heart will be cultivated and strengthened, and the love of home,
+so characteristically English, fostered in their bosoms. I could
+almost grow eloquent upon the benefits of my discovery; but I fear,
+that were I to give way to this impulse, I should become so fascinated
+with myself, I could scarcely turn to the less seductive path of
+simple explanation. Therefore, ere it be too late, let me open my mind
+and unfold my system:
+
+    "What great effects from little causes spring."
+
+Any one who ever heard of Sir Isaac Newton and his apple will
+acknowledge this, and something of the same kind led me to the very
+remarkable fact I am about to speak of.
+
+One of the Bonaparte family--as well as I remember, Jerome--was one
+night playing whist at the same table with Talleyrand, and having
+dropped a crown piece upon the floor, he interrupted the game, and
+deranged the whole party to search for his money. Not a little
+provoked by a meanness which he saw excited the ridicule of many
+persons about, Talleyrand deliberately folded up a bank-note which lay
+before him, and, lighting it at the candle, begged, with much
+courtesy, that he might be permitted to assist in the search. This
+story, which is authentic, would seem an admirable parody on a portion
+of our criminal law. A poor man robs the community, or some member of
+it (for that comes to the same thing) to the amount of one penny. He
+is arrested by a policeman, whose salary is perhaps half-a-crown
+a-day, and conveyed to a police-office, that cost at least five
+hundred pounds to build it. Here are found three or four more
+officials, all salaried--all fed, and clothed by the State. In due
+course of time he is brought up before a magistrate, also well paid,
+by whom the affair is investigated, and by him he is afterwards
+transmitted to the sessions, where a new army of stipendiaries all
+await him. But his journey is not ended. Convicted of his offence, he
+is sentenced to seven years' transportation to one of the most remote
+quarters of the globe. To convey him thither the government have
+provided a ship and a crew, a supercargo and a surgeon; and, to sum up
+in one word, before he has commenced the expiation of his crime, that
+penny has cost the country something about three hundred pounds. Is
+not this, I ask you, very like Talleyrand and the Prince?--the only
+difference being, that we perform in sober earnest, what he merely
+exhibited in sarcasm.
+
+Now, my plan is, and I prefer to develop it in a single word, instead
+of weakening its force by circumlocution. In lieu of letting a poor
+man be reduced to his theft of one penny--give him two pence. _He_
+will be a gainer by double the amount--not to speak of the
+inappreciable value of his honesty--and _you_ the richer by 71,998
+pence, under your present system expended upon policemen, magistrates,
+judges, gaolers, turnkeys, and transports. Examine for a moment the
+benefits of this system. Look at the incalculable advantages it
+presents--the enormous revenue, the pecuniary profit, and the
+patriotism, all preserved to the State, not to mention the additional
+pleasure of disseminating happiness while you transport men's hearts,
+not their bodies.
+
+Here is a plan based upon the soundest philanthropy, the most rigid
+economy, and the strictest common sense. Instead of training up a race
+of men in some distant quarter of the globe, who may yet turn your
+bitterest enemies, you will preserve to the country so many true-born
+Britons, bound to you by a debt of gratitude. Upon what ground--on
+what pretext--can you oppose the system? Do you openly confess that
+you prefer vice to poverty, and punishment to prevention? Or is it
+your pleasure to manufacture roguery for exportation, as the French do
+politeness, and the Irish linen?
+
+I offer the suggestion generously, freely, and spontaneously. If the
+heads of the government choose to profit by the hint, I only ask in
+return, that when the Chancellor of the Exchequer announces in his
+place the immense reduction of expenditure, that he will also give
+notice of a motion for a bill to reward me by a government
+appointment. I am not particular as to where, or what: I only bargain
+against being Secretary for Ireland, or Chief Justice at Cape Coast
+Castle.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR REPEAL.
+
+
+When the cholera first broke out in France, a worthy prefect in a
+district of the south published an edict to the people, recommending
+them by all means to eat well-cooked and nutritious food, and drink
+nothing but _vin de Bourdeaux_, Anglice, claret. The advice was
+excellent, and I take it upon me to say, would have found very few
+opponents in fact, as it certainly did in principle. When the world,
+however, began to consider that _filets de boeuf a la Marengo_, and
+"_dindes truffees_," washed down with _Chateau Lafitte_ or _Larose_,
+were not exactly within the reach of every class of the community,
+they deemed the prefect's counsel more humane than practicable, and as
+they do at every thing in France when the tide of public opinion
+changes, they laughed at him heartily, and wrote pasquinades upon his
+folly. At the same time the ridicule was unjust, the advice was good,
+sound, and based on true principles, the only mistake was, the
+difficulty of its practice. Had he recommended as an antiseptic to
+disease, that the people should play short whist, wear red night-caps,
+or pelt stones at each other, there might have been good ground for
+the disfavour he fell into; such acts, however practicable and easy of
+execution, having manifestly no tendency to avert the cholera. Now
+this is precisely the state of matters in Ireland at this moment:
+distress prevails more or less in every province and in every county.
+The people want employment, and they want food. Had you recommended
+them to eat strawberries and cream in the morning, to drink lemonade
+during the day, take a little chicken salad for dinner, with a light
+bread pudding and a glass of negus afterwards, avoiding all stimulant
+and exciting food--for your Irishman is a feverish subject--you might
+be laughed at perhaps for your dietary, but certes it would bear, and
+bear strongly too, upon the case in question. But what do you do in
+reality? The local papers teem with cases of distress: families are
+starving; the poor, unhoused and unfed, are seen upon the road sides
+exposed to every vicissitude of the season, surrounded by children who
+cry in vain for bread. What, I ask, is the measure of relief you
+propose? not a public subscription; no general outburst of national
+charity--no public work upon a grand scale to give employment to the
+idle, food to the hungry, health to the sick, and hope to all. None of
+these. Your panacea is the Repeal of the Union; you purpose to
+substitute for those amiable jobbers in College-green, who call
+themselves Directors of the Bank of Ireland, another set of jobbers
+infinitely more pernicious and really dishonest, who will call
+themselves Directors of Ireland itself; you talk of the advantage to
+the country, and particularly of the immense benefits that must accrue
+to the capital. Let us examine them a little.
+
+Dublin, you say, will be a flourishing city, inhabited by lords and
+ladies: wealth, rank, and influence will dwell in its houses and
+parade its streets. The glare of lamps, the crash of carriages, all
+the pride, pomp, and circumstances of fashion, will flow back upon the
+long-deserted land, and Paris and London will find a rival to compete
+with them, in this small city of the west. Would that this were so;
+would that it could be! This, however, is the extent of what you
+promise yourselves: you may ring the changes as you please, but the
+"refrain" of your song is, that Dublin shall "have its own again."
+Well, for argument's sake, I say, be it so. The now silenced squares
+shall wake to the echoes of thundering equipages, peers and prelates
+shall again inhabit the dwellings long since the residence of
+hotel-keepers, or still worse, those little democracies of social
+life, called boarding-houses. Your theatre shall be crowded, your
+shops frequented, and every advantage of wealth diffused through all
+the channels of society, shall be yours. As far as Dublin is
+concerned, I say--for, mark me, I keep you to this original point, in
+the land of your promise you have strictly limited the diffusion of
+your blessings by the boundary of the Circular road; even the people
+at Ringsend and Ballybough bridge are not to be included, unless a
+special bill be brought in for their benefit. Still the picture is a
+brilliant one: it would be a fine thing to see all the pomp and
+ceremony of proud popery walk the land at noon-day, with its saints in
+gold, and its relics in silver; for of course this is included in the
+plan. Prosperous Ireland must be Catholic Ireland, and even Spain and
+Belgium will hide their diminished heads when compared with the
+gorgeous homage rendered to popery at home. The "gentlemen of
+Liffey-street chapel," far better-looking fellows than any foreign
+priest you'll meet with from Trolhatten to Tivoli, will walk about _in
+pontificalibus_; and all the exciting enthusiasm that Romanism so
+artfully diffuses through every feature of life, will introduce itself
+among a people who have all the warm temper and hot blood of the
+south, with the stern determination and headlong impulse of the north
+of Europe. By all of which I mean to say, that in points of strong
+popery, Dublin will beat the world, and that before a year of such
+prosperity be past, she will have the finest altars, the fattest
+priests, and the longest catalogue of miracles in Europe. Lord
+Shrewsbury need not then go to the Tyrol for an "estatica," he'll find
+one nearer home worth twice the money. The shin-bone of St. Januarius,
+that jumped out of a wooden box in a hackney coach, because a
+gentleman swore, will be nothing to the scenes we'll witness; and if
+St. Patrick should sport his tibia at an evening party of Daniel
+O'Connell's, it would not in the least surprise me. These are great
+blessings, and I am fully sensible of them. Now let me pass on to
+another, which perhaps I have kept last as it is the chief of all, or
+as the late Lord Castlereagh would have said, the "fundamental feature
+upon which my argument hinges."
+
+A very common topic of Irish eloquence is, to lament over the enormous
+exportation of cattle, fowl, and fish, that continually goes forward
+from Ireland into England. I acknowledge the justness of the
+complaint--I see its force, and appreciate its value. It is exactly as
+though a grocer should exclaim against his misery, in being compelled
+to part with his high-flavoured bohea, his sparkling lump sugar, and
+his Smyrna figs, or our publisher his books, for the base lucre of
+gain. It is humiliating, I confess; and I can well see how a
+warm-hearted and intelligent creature, who feels the hardship of an
+export trade in matters of food, must suffer when the principle is
+extended to a matter of genius; for, not content with our mutton from
+Meath, our salmon from Limerick, and our chickens from Carlow; but the
+Saxon must even be gratified with the soul-stirring eloquence of the
+Great Liberator himself, with only the trouble of going near St.
+Stephen's to hear him. I say near--for among the other tyrannies of
+the land, he is compelled to shout loud enough to be heard in all the
+adjacent streets. Now this is too bad. Take our prog--take even our
+poteen, if you will; but leave us our Penates; this theft, which
+embodies the antithesis of Shakspeare, is not only "trash," but
+"naught enriches them, and makes us poor indeed."
+
+Repeal the union, and you remedy this. You'll have him at home with
+you--not masquerading about in the disguise of a gentleman--not
+restricted by the habits of cultivated and civilised life--not tamed
+down into the semblance and mockery of good conduct--no longer the
+chained-up animal of the menagerie, but the roaring, rampant lion,
+roaming at large in his native forest--not performing antics before
+some political Van Amburgh--not opening his huge jaws, as though he
+would devour the Whigs, and shutting them again at the command of his
+keeper--but howling in all the freedom of his passion, and lashing his
+brawny sides with his vigorous "tail." Haydn, the composer, had an
+enormous appetite; to gratify which, when dining at a tavern, he
+ordered a dinner for three. The waiter delayed in serving, as he said
+the company hadn't yet arrived, but Haydn told him to bring it up at
+once, remarking, as he patted complacently his paunch, "I am de
+compagnie myself." Such will you have the case in your domestic
+parliament--Dan will be the company himself. No longer fighting in the
+ranks of opposition, or among the supporters of a government--no more
+the mere character of a piece, he will then be the Jack Johnson of the
+political world, taking the money at the door--in which he has had
+some practice already--he will speak the prologue, lead the
+orchestra, prompt the performers, and announce a repetition of the
+farce every night of the week for his own benefit. Only think what he
+is in England with his "forty thieves" at his back, and imagine what
+he will be in Ireland without one honest man to oppose him. He will
+indeed then be well worth seeing, and if Ireland had no other
+attraction, foreigners might visit us for a look at the Liberator.
+
+He is a droll fellow, is Dan, and there is a strong dash of native
+humour in his notion of repeal. What strange scenes, to be sure, it
+would conjure up. Only think for a moment of the absentee lord, an
+exiled peer, coming back to Dublin after an absence of half his
+lifetime, vainly endeavouring to seem pleased with his condition, and
+appear happy with his home. Like an insolvent debtor affecting to joke
+with the jailer, watch him simulating so much as he can of habits he
+has long forgotten, while his ignorance of his country is such, that
+he cannot direct his coachman to a street in the capital. What a
+ludicrous view of life would this open to our view! While all these
+men, who have been satisfied hitherto to send their sympathies from
+Switzerland, and their best wishes for Ireland by an ambassador's bag,
+should now come back to writhe beneath the scourge of a demagogue, and
+the tyranny of a man who wields irresponsible power.
+
+All Ireland would present the features of a general election--every
+one would be fascinating, courteous, affable, and dishonest. The
+unpopular debater in England might have his windows smashed. With us,
+it would be his neck would be broken. The excitement of the people
+will be felt within the Parliament; and then, fostered by all the
+rancour of party hate, will be returned to them with interest. The
+measure discussed out of doors by the Liberator, will find no one
+hardy enough to oppose it within the House, and the opinions of the
+Corn Exchange will be the programme for a committee. A notice of a
+motion will issue from Merrion-square, and not from a seat in
+Parliament; and wherever he moves through the country, great Daniel,
+like a snail, will carry "his house" on his back. "Rob me the
+Exchequer, Hal!" will be the cry of the priesthood, and no men are
+better deserving of their hire; and thus, wielding every implement of
+power, if Ireland be not happy, he can only have himself to blame for
+it.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR NATIONAL PRIDE.
+
+
+National Pride must be a strong feeling, and one of the very few
+sentiments which are not exhausted by the drain upon them; and it is a
+strange thing, how the very fact upon which one man plumes himself,
+another would regard as a terrible reproach. A thorough John Bull, as
+he would call himself, thinks he has summed up, in those few emphatic
+words, a brief description of all that is excellent in humanity. And
+as he throws out his chest, and sticks his hand with energy in his
+breeches pocket, seems to say, "I am not one of your frog-eating
+fellows, half-monkey, half-tiger, but a true Briton." The Frenchman,
+as he proclaims his nation, saying, "_Je suis F-r-r-r-rancais_," would
+indicate that he is a very different order of being, from his blunt
+untutored neighbour, "_outre mer_;" and so on to the end of the
+chapter. Germans, Italians, and Spaniards, and even Americans, think
+there is some magic in the name of their fatherland--some inherent
+nobility in the soil: and it was only lately I read in a French paper
+an eloquent appeal from a general to his soldiers, which concluded by
+his telling them, to remember, that they were "Mexicans." I devoutly
+trust that they understood the meaning of his phrase, and were able,
+without difficulty, to call to mind the bright prerogative alluded to;
+for upon my conscience, as an honest man, it would puzzle me sorely to
+say what constitutes a Mexican.
+
+But the absurdity goes further still: for, not satisfied with the
+bounties of Providence in making us what we are, we must indulge a
+rancorous disposition towards our neighbours for their less-favoured
+destiny. "He behaved like a Turk," is an every-day phrase to indicate
+a full measure of moral baseness and turpidity. A Frenchman's abuse
+can go no further than calling a man a Chinese, and when he says, "_tu
+es un Pekin_," a duel is generally the consequence. I doubt not that
+the Turks and the Chinese make use of retributive justice, and treat
+us no better than we behave to them.
+
+Civilisation would seem rather to have fostered than opposed this
+prejudice. In the feudal ages, the strength of a brawny right arm, the
+strong hand that could wield a mace, the firm seat in a saddle, were
+the qualities most in request; and were physical strength more
+estimated than the gifts of a higher order, the fine distinctions of
+national character either did not exist, or were not attended to. Now,
+however, the tournament is not held on a cloth of gold, but on a broad
+sheet of paper; the arms are not the lance and the dagger, but the
+printing-press. No longer a herald in all the splendour of his tabard
+proclaims the lists, but a fashionable publisher, through the medium
+of the morning papers, whose cry for largess is to the full as loud.
+The result is, nations are better known to each other, and, by the
+unhappy law of humanity, are consequently less esteemed. What
+signifies the dislike our ancestors bore the French at Cressy or
+Agincourt compared to the feeling we entertain for them after nigh
+thirty years of peace? Then, indeed, it was the strong rivalry between
+two manly natures: now, the accumulated hate of ages is sharpened and
+embittered by a thousand petty jealousies that have their origin in
+politics, military glory, society, or literature; and we detest each
+other like quarterly reviewers. The Frenchman visits England as a Whig
+commissioner would a Tory institution--only anxious to discover abuses
+and defects--with an obliquity of vision that sees everything
+distorted, or a fecundity of imagination that can conjure up the ills
+he seeks for. He finds us rude, inhospitable, and illiterate; our
+habits are vulgar, our tastes depraved; our House of Commons is a
+riotous mob of under-bred debaters; our army an aristocratic _lounge_,
+where merit has no chance against money; and our literature--God
+wot!--a plagiarism from the French. The Englishman is nearly as
+complimentary. The coarseness of French habits is to him a theme of
+eternal reprobation; the insolence of the men, the indelicacy of the
+women, the immorality of all, overwhelm him with shame and disgust:
+the Chamber of Deputies he despises, as a contemptible parody on a
+representative body, and a speech from the tribune a most absurd
+substitute for the freedom of unpremeditated eloquence: the army he
+discovers to be officered by men, to whom the new police are
+accomplished gentlemen; and, in fact, he sums up by thinking that if
+we had no other competitors in the race of civilisation than the
+French, our supremacy on land, is to the full as safe, as our
+sovereignty over the ocean. Here lie two countries, separated by a
+slip of sea not much broader than an American river, who have gone on
+for ages repeating these and similar puerilities, without the most
+remote prospect of mutual explanation and mutual good-will.
+
+"I hate prejudice, I hate the French," said poor Charles Matthews, in
+one of his inimitable representations, and really the expression was
+no bad summary of an Englishman's faith. On the other hand, to hate
+and detest the English is the _sine qua non_ of French nationality,
+and to concede to them any rank in literature, morals, or military
+greatness, is to derogate from the claims of his own country. Now the
+question is, are the reproaches on either side absolutely just? They
+are not. Secondly, if they be unfair, how comes it that two people
+pre-eminently gifted with intelligence and information, should not
+have come to a better understanding, and that many a long year ago?
+Simply from this plain fact, that the opinions of the press have
+weighed against those of individuals, and that the published satires
+on both sides have had a greater currency and a greater credit than
+the calm judgment of the few. The leading journals in Paris and in
+London have pelted each other mercilessly for many a year. One might
+forgive this, were the attacks suggested by such topics as stimulate
+and strengthen national feeling; but no, the controversy extends to
+every thing, and, worse than all, is carried on with more bitterness
+of spirit, than depth of information. The reviewer "par excellence" of
+our own country makes a yearly incursion into French literature, as an
+Indian would do into his hunting-ground. Resolved to carry death and
+carnage on every side, he arms himself for the chase, and whets his
+appetite for slaughter by the last "_bonne bouche_" of the day. We
+then have some half introductory pages of eloquent exordium on the
+evil tendency of French literature, and the contamination of those
+unsettled opinions in politics, religion, and morals, so copiously
+spread through the pages of every French writer. The revolution of
+1797 is adduced for the hundredth time as the origin of these evils;
+and all the crime and bloodshed of that frightful period is denounced
+as but the first step of the iniquity which has reached its pinnacle,
+in the novels of Paul de Kock. To believe the reviewer, French
+literature consists in the productions of this writer, the works of
+George Sand, Balzac, Frederic Soulie, and a few others of equal note
+and mark. According to him, intrigue, seduction, and adultery, are the
+staple of French romance: the whole interest of every novel turning on
+the undiscovered turpitude of domestic life; and the great rivalry
+between writers, being, to try which can invent a new future of
+depravity and a new fashion of sin. Were this true, it were indeed a
+sad picture of national degradation; was it the fact that such books,
+and such there are in abundance, composed the light literature of the
+day--were to be found in every drawing-room--to be seen in every
+hand--to be read with interest and discussed with eagerness--to have
+that wide-spread circulation which must ever carry with it a strong
+influence upon the habits of those who read. Were all this so, I say
+it would be, indeed, a deplorable evidence of the low standard of
+civilisation among the French. What is the fact, however? Simply that
+these books have but a limited circulation, and that, only among an
+inferior class of readers. The _modiste_ and the _grisette_ are,
+doubtless, well read in the mysteries of Paul de Kock and Madame du
+Deffant; but in the cultivated classes of the capital, such books have
+no more currency than the scandalous memoirs of our own country have
+in the drawing-rooms of Grosvenor-square or St. James's. Balzac has,
+it is true, a wide-spread reputation; but many of his books are no
+less marked by a powerful interest than a touching appeal to the fine
+feelings of our nature. Alfred de Vigny, Eugene Sue, Victor Hugo, Leon
+Gozlan, Paul de Muset, Alexandre Dumas, and a host of others, are all
+popular, and, with the exception of a few works, unexceptionable on
+every ground of morality; but these, after all, are but the
+skirmishers before the army. What shall we say of Guizot, Thiers,
+Augustin Thierry, Toqueville, Mignet, and many more, whose
+contributions to history have formed an era in the literature of the
+age?
+
+The strictures of the reviewers are not very unlike the opinions of
+the French prisoner, who maintained that in England every one eat with
+his knife, and the ladies drank gin, which important and veracious
+facts he himself ascertained, while residing in that fashionable
+quarter of the town called St. Martin's-lane. This sweeping mode of
+argument, _a particulari_, is fatal when applied to nations. Even the
+Americans have suffered in the hands of Mrs. Trollope and others; and
+gin twist, bowie knives, tobacco chewing, and many similarly amiable
+habits, are not universal. Once for all, then, be it known, there is
+no more fallacious way of forming an opinion regarding France and
+Frenchmen, than through the pages of our periodical press, except by a
+_short_ residence in Paris--I say short, for if a little learning be a
+dangerous thing, a little travelling is more so; and it requires long
+experience of the world, and daily habit of observation, to enable any
+man to detect in the ordinary routine of life the finer and more
+distinctive traits that have escaped his neighbour; besides, however
+palpable and self-evident the proposition, it demands both tact and
+time to see that no general standard of taste can be erected for all
+nations, and, that to judge of others by your own prejudices and
+habits, is both unfair and absurd. To give an instance. No English
+traveller has commented on the French Chamber of Deputies, without
+expending much eloquence and a great deal of honest indignation on the
+practice of speaking from a tribune, written orations being in their
+opinion a ludicrous travestie on the freedom of debate. Now what is
+the fact; in the whole French Chamber there are not ten, there are not
+five men who could address the house extempore; not from any
+deficiency of ability--not from any want of information, logical
+force, and fluency--the names of Thiers, Guizot, Lamartine, Dupin,
+Arago, &c. &c. are quite sufficient to demonstrate this--but simply
+from the intricacy and difficulty of the French language. A worthy
+alderman gets up, as the phrase is, and addresses a speech of some
+three quarters of an hour to the collective wisdom of the livery; and
+although he may be frequently interrupted by thunders of applause, he
+is never checked for any solecisms in his grammar: he may drive a
+coach and six through Lindley Murray; he may inflict heaven knows how
+many fractures on poor Priscian's head, yet to criticise him on so
+mean a score as that of mere diction, would not be thought of for a
+moment. Not so in France: the language is one of equivoque and
+subtlety; the misplacement of a particle, the change of a gender, the
+employment of any phrase but the exact one, might be at any moment
+fatal to the sense of the speaker, and would inevitably be so to his
+success. It was not very long since, that a worthy deputy interrupted
+M. Thiers by alleging the non-sequitur of some assertion, "_Vous n'est
+pas consequent_," cried the indignant member, using a phrase not only
+a vulgarism in itself, but inapplicable at the time. A roar of
+laughter followed his interruption. In all the journals of the next
+day, he was styled the deputy _consequent_; and when he returned to
+his constituency the ridicule attached to his blunder still traced his
+steps, and finally lost him his election.
+
+"Thank God I am a Briton," said Nelson; a phrase, doubtless, many more
+of us will re-echo with equal energy; but while we are expressing our
+gratitude let our thankfulness extend to this gratifying fact, that
+the liberty of our laws is even surpassed by the licence of our
+language. No obscure recess of our tongue is so deep that we cannot by
+_habeas corpus_ right bring up a long-forgotten phrase, and provided
+the speaker have a meaning and be able to convey it to the minds of
+his hearers, we are seldom disposed to be critical on the manner, if
+the matter be there. Besides this, there are styles of eloquence so
+imbued with the spirit of certain eras in French history, that the
+discussion of any subject of ancient or modern days, will always have
+its own peculiar character of diction. Thus, there is the rounded
+period and flowing sententiousness of Louis XIV., the more polished
+but less forcible phraseology of the regency itself, succeeded by the
+epigrammatic taste and pointed brevity introduced by Voltaire. The
+empire left its impress on the language, and all the literature of the
+period wore the _esprit soldatesque_; and so on down to the very days
+of the barricades, each changing phase of political life had its
+appropriate expression. To assume these with effect, was not of course
+the gift of every man, and yet to have erred in their adoption, would
+have been palpable to all; here then is one important difference
+between us, and on this subject alone I might cite at least twenty
+more. The excitable Frenchman scarcely uses any action while speaking,
+and that, of the most simple and subdued kind. The phlegmatic
+Englishman stamps and gesticulates with all the energy of a madman. We
+esteem humour; they prefer wit: we like the long consecutive chain of
+proof that leads us step by step to inevitable conviction; they like
+better some brief but happy illustration that, dispensing with the
+tedium of argument, presents a question at one glance before them.
+They have that general knowledge of their country and its changes,
+that an illustration from the past is ever an effective weapon of the
+orator; while with us the force would be entirely lost from the
+necessity of recounting the incident to which reference was made.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR DIPLOMATISTS.
+
+
+Man is the most imitative of all animals: nothing can surpass the
+facility he possesses of simulating his neighbour; and I question much
+if the press, in all the plentitude of its power, has done as much for
+the spread of good or evil, as the spirit of mimicry so inherent in
+mankind. The habits of high life are transmitted through every grade
+of society: and the cheesemonger keeps his hunters, and damns his
+valet, like my lord; while his wife rolls in her equipage, and affects
+the graces of my lady. So long as wealth is present, the assumption of
+the tastes and habitudes of a different class, can merely be looked
+upon as one of those outbreaks of vanity in which rich but vulgar
+people have a right, if they like, to indulge. Why shouldn't they have
+a villa at Twickenham--why not a box at the opera--a white bait dinner
+at Blackwall--a yacht at Southampton? They have the money to indulge
+their caprice, and it is no one's affair but their own. They make
+themselves ridiculous, it is true; but the pleasure they experience
+counterbalances the ridicule, and they are the best judges on which
+side lies the profit. Wealth is power: and although the one may be
+squandered, and the other abused, yet in their very profusion, there
+is something that demands a kind of reverence from the world; and we
+have only to look to France to see, that when once you abolish an
+hereditary _noblesse_, your banker is then your great man.
+
+We may smile, if we please, at the absurd pretensions of the wealthy
+alderman and his lady, whose pompous mansion and splendid equipage
+affect a princely grandeur; yet, after all, the knowledge that he is
+worth half a million of money, that his name alone can raise the
+credit of a new colony, or call into existence the dormant energy of a
+new region of the globe, will always prevent our sarcasm degenerating
+into contempt. Not so, however, when poverty unites itself to these
+aspirings, you feel in a moment that the poor man has nothing to do
+with such vanities; his poverty is a scanty garment, that, dispose it
+as he will, he can never make it hang like a toga; and we have no
+compassion for him, who, while hunger gnaws his vitals, affects a sway
+and dominion his state has denied him. Such a line of conduct will
+often be offensive--it will always be absurd--and the only relief
+presented by its display, is in the ludicrous exhibition of trick and
+stratagem by which it is supported. Jeremy Diddler, after all, is an
+amusing person; but the greater part of the pleasure he affords us is
+derived from the fact, that, cunning as he is in all his efforts to
+deceive us, we are still more so, for we have found him out.
+
+Were I to characterise the leading feature of the age, I should
+certainly say it is this pretension. Like the monkeys at Exeter
+'Change, who could never bear to eat out of their own dish, but must
+stretch their paws into that of their neighbour, so every man
+now-a-days wishes to be in that place most unsuitable to him by all
+his tastes, habits, and associations, and where once having attained
+to, his life is one of misery and constraint. The hypocrisy of
+simulating manners he is not used to, is not more subversive of his
+self-respect, than his imitation is poor, vulgar, and unmeaning.
+
+Curran said that a corporation was, a "thing that had neither a body
+to be kicked, nor a soul to be damned." And, verily, I begin to think
+that masses of men are even more contemptible than individuals. A
+nation is a great household; and if it have not all the _prestige_ of
+rank, wealth, and power, it is a poor and miserable thing. England and
+France, Germany and Russia, are the great of the earth; and we look up
+to them in the political world, as in society we do to those whose
+rank and station are the guarantees of their power. Many other
+countries of Europe have also their claims upon us, but still smaller
+in degree. Italy, with all its association of classical
+elegance--Spain, whose history shines with the solemn splendour of an
+illuminated missal, where gold and purple are seen blending their
+hues, scarce dimmed by time; but what shall we say of those
+newly-created powers, which springing up like mushroom families, give
+themselves all the airs of true nobility, and endeavour by a strange
+mockery of institutions and customs of their greater neighbours, to
+appear of weight and consequence before the world. Look, for instance,
+to Belgium the _bourgeois gentilhomme_ of politics, which, having
+retired from its partnership with Holland, sets up for a gentleman on
+its private means. What can be more ludicrous than its attempts at
+high-life, its senate, its ministry, its diplomacy; for strange enough
+the ridicule of the individual can be traced extending to a nation,
+and when your city lady launched into the world, displays upon her
+mantelpiece the visiting cards of her high neighbours, so the first
+act of a new people is, to open a visiting acquaintance with their
+rich neighbours, and for this purpose the first thing they do is to
+establish a corps of diplomacy.
+
+Now your city knight may have a fat and rosy coachman, he may have a
+tall and portly footman, a grave and a respectable butler; but
+whatever his wealth, whatever his pretension, there is one functionary
+of a great household he can never attain to--he can never have a groom
+of the chambers. This, like the "chasseur" abroad, is the appendage of
+but one class, by constant association with whom its habits are
+acquired, its tastes engendered, and it would be equally absurd to see
+the tall Hungarian in all the glitter of his hussar costume, behind
+the caleche of a pastrycook, as to hear the low-voiced and courteous
+minion of Devonshire House announce the uncouth, unsyllabled names,
+that come east of St. Dunstan's.
+
+So, in the same way, your new nations may get up a king and a court, a
+senate, an army, and a ministry, but let them not meddle with
+diplomacy--the moment they do this they burn their fingers: your
+diplomate is like your chasseur, and your groom of the chambers; if he
+be not well done, he is a miserable failure. The world has so many
+types to refer to on this head, there can be no mistake. Talleyrand,
+Nesselrode, Metternich, Lord Whitworth, and several more, have too
+long given the tone to this peculiar walk to admit of any error
+concerning it; however, your little folk will not be denied the
+pleasures of their great acquaintance. They will have their diplomacy,
+and they will be laughed at: look at the Yankees. There is not a
+country in Europe, there is not a state however small, there is not a
+Coburgism with three thousand inhabitants and three companies of
+soldiers, where _they_ haven't a minister resident with
+plenipotentiary powers extending to every relation political and
+commercial, although all the while the Yankees would be sorely
+puzzled to point out on the map the _locale_ of their illustrious
+ally, and the Germans no less so to find out a reason for their
+embassy. Happily on this score, the very bone and marrow of diplomacy
+is consulted, and secrecy is inviolable; for, as your American knows
+no other tongue save that spoken on the Alleghanies, he keeps his own
+counsel and theirs also.
+
+Have you never in the hall of some large country house, cast your eye,
+on leave-taking, at the strange and motley crew of servants awaiting
+their masters--some well fed and handsomely clothed, with that look of
+reflected importance my lord's gentleman so justly wears; others, in
+graver, but not less respectable raiment, have that quiet and
+observant demeanour so characteristic of a well-managed household.
+While a third class, strikingly unlike the other two, wear their
+livery with an air of awkwardness and constraint, blushing at
+themselves even a deeper colour than the scarlet of their breeches.
+They feel themselves in masquerade--they were at the plough but
+yesterday, though they are in powder now. With the innate
+consciousness of their absurdity, they become fidgetty and uneasy, and
+would give the world for "a row" to conceal the defaults of their
+breeding. Just so, your petty "diplomate" suffers agony in all the
+quiet intercourse of life. The limited opportunities of small states
+have circumscribed his information. He is not a man of the world, nor
+is he a political character, for he represents nothing; nothing,
+therefore, can save him from oblivion or contempt, save some political
+convulsion where any meddler may become prominent; he has thus a bonus
+on disturbance: so long as the company behave discreetly, he must stay
+in his corner, but the moment they smash the lamps and shy the
+decanters, he emerges from his obscurity and becomes as great as his
+neighbour. For my part, I am convinced that the peace and quietness of
+Europe as much depends on the exclusion of such persons from the
+councils of diplomacy, as the happiness of every-day life does upon
+the breeding and good manners of our associates.
+
+And what straits, to be sure, are they reduced to, to maintain this
+absurd intercourse, screwing the last shilling from the budget to pay
+a _Charge d'affaires_, with an embroidered coat, and a decoration in
+his button-hole.
+
+The most amusing incidents might be culled from such histories, if one
+were but disposed to relate them.
+
+Balzac mentions, in one of his novels, the story of a physician who
+obtained great practice, merely by sending throughout Paris a
+gaudily-dressed footman, who rang at every door, as it were, in search
+of his master; so quick were the fellow's movements, so rapid his
+transitions, from one part of the city to the other, nobody believed
+that a single individual could ever have sufficed for so many calls;
+and thus, the impression was, not only that the doctor was greatly
+sought after, but that his household was on a splendid footing. The
+Emperor of the Brazils seems to have read the story, and profited by
+the hint, for while other nations are wasting their thousands in
+maintaining a whole corps of diplomacy, he would appear like the
+doctor to have only one footman, whom he keeps moving about Europe
+without ceasing: thus _The Globe_ tells us one day that the Chevalier
+de L----, the Brazilian ambassador, has arrived in London to resume
+his diplomatic functions; _The Handelsbad of the Hague_ mentions his
+departure from the Dutch Court; _The Allgemeine Zeitung_ announces
+the prospect of his arrival at Vienna, and _The Moniteur Parisien_ has
+a beautiful article on the prosperity of their relations with Mexico,
+under the auspices of the indefatigable Chevalier: "_non regio
+terrae_," exempt from his labours. Unlike Sir Boyle Roche, he has
+managed to be not only in two, but twenty places at once, and I should
+not be in the least surprised to hear of his negotiations for sulphur
+at Naples, at the same moment that he was pelting snowballs in Norway.
+Whether he travels in a balloon or on the back of a pelican, he is a
+wonderful man, and a treasure to his government.
+
+The multiplicity of his duties, and the pressing nature of his
+functions, may impart an appearance of haste to his manner, but it
+looks diplomatic to be peremptory, and he has no time for trifling.
+
+Truly, Chevalier de L----, thou art a great man--the wandering Jew was
+but a type of thee.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A NUT FOR FOREIGN TRAVEL.
+
+
+Of all the popular delusions that we labour under in England, I
+scarcely know of one more widely circulated, and less founded in fact,
+than the advantages of foreign travel. Far be it from me to undervalue
+the benefits men of education receive by intercourse with strangers,
+and the opportunities of correcting by personal observation the
+impressions already received by study. No one sets a higher price on
+this than I do; no one estimates more fully the advantages of
+tempering one's nationality by the candid comparison of our own
+institutions with those of other countries; no one values more highly
+the unbiassed frame of mind produced by extending the field of our
+observation, and, instead of limiting our experience by the details of
+a book, reading from the wide-spread page of human nature itself. So
+conscious, indeed, am I of the importance of this, that I look upon
+his education as but very partial indeed who has not travelled. It is
+not, therefore, against the benefits of seeing the world I would
+inveigh--it is rather against the general application of the practice
+to the whole class of our countrymen and countrywomen who swarm on the
+continent. Unsuited by their tastes--unprepared by previous
+information--deeming a passport and a letter of credit all-sufficient
+for their purpose--they set out upon their travels. From their
+ignorance of a foreign language, their journey is one of difficulty
+and embarrassment at every step. They understand little of what they
+see, nothing of what they hear. The discomforts of foreign life have
+no palliation, by their being enabled to reason on, and draw
+inferences from them. All the sources of information are hermetically
+sealed against them, and their tour has nothing to compensate for its
+fatigue, and expense, save the absurd detail of adventure to which
+their ignorance has exposed them.
+
+It is not my intention to rail in this place against the injury done
+to the moral feeling of our nation, by intimate association with the
+habits of the Continent. Reserving this for a more fitting time, I
+shall merely remark at present, that, so far as the habits of virtue
+are concerned, more mischief is done among the middle class of our
+countrymen, than those of a more exalted sphere.
+
+Scarcely does the month of May commence, when the whole tide of
+British population sets in upon the coast of France and Flanders. To
+watch the crowded steamers as they arrive in Antwerp, or Boulogne, you
+would say that some great and devastating plague had broken out in
+London, and driven the affrighted inhabitants from their homes. Not
+so, however: they have come abroad for pleasure. With a credit on
+Coutts, and the inestimable John Murray for a guide, they have devoted
+six weeks to France, Belgium, and the Rhine, in which ample time they
+are not only to learn two languages, but visit three nations,
+exploring into cookery, customs, scenery, literature, and the arts,
+with the same certainty of success that they would pay a visit to
+Astley's. Scarcely are they launched upon their travels when they
+unite into parties for personal protection and assistance. The
+"_morgue Britannique_," so much spoken of by foreigners, they appear
+to have left behind them; and sudden friendships, and intimacies,
+spring up between persons whose only feeling in common is that of
+their own absurd position. Away they go sight-seeking in clusters.
+They visit cathedrals, monuments, and galleries; they record in their
+journals the vulgar tirades of a hired _commissionaire_; they eat food
+they detest, and they lie down to sleep discontented and unhappy. The
+courteous civility of foreigners, the theme of so much eulogy in
+England, they now find out to be little more than selfishness,
+libertinism, and impertinence. They see the country from the window
+of a diligence, and society from a place at the _table d'hote_, and
+truly both one and the other are but the vulgar high roads of life.
+Their ignorance of the language alone protects them from feeling
+insulted at the impertinences directed at themselves and their
+country; and the untutored simplicity of their nature saves them the
+mortification of knowing that the ostentatious politeness of some
+moustached acquaintance is an exhibition got up by him for the
+entertainment of his friends.
+
+Poor John Bull, you have made great sacrifices for this tour. You have
+cut the city, and the counting-house, that your wife may become
+enamoured of dress, and your daughter of a dancing-master--that your
+son may learn to play roulette and smoke cigars, and that you yourself
+may ramble some thousand miles over paved roads, without an object to
+amuse, without an incident to attract you. While this is a gloomy
+picture enough, there is another side to the medal still worse. John
+Bull goes home generally sick of what he has seen, and much more
+ignorant of the Continent than when he set out. His tour, however, has
+laid in its stock of foreign affectation, that renders his home
+uncomfortable; his daughters pine after the flattering familiarities
+of their whiskered acquaintances at Ems, or Wiesbaden; and his sons
+lose all zest for the slow pursuit of competence, by reflecting on the
+more decisive changes of fortune, that await on _rouge et noir_. Yet
+even this is not the worst. What I deplore most of all, is the false
+and erroneous notions continental nations procure of our country, and
+its habits, from such specimens as these. The Englishman who, seen at
+home, at the head of his counting-house, or in the management of his
+farm, presents a fine example of those national traits we are so
+justly proud of--honest, frank, straightforward in all his dealings,
+kind and charitable in his affections; yet see him abroad, the sphere
+of his occupations exists no longer--there is no exercise for the
+manly habits of his nature: his honesty but exposes him to be duped;
+his frankness degenerates into credulity; the unsuspecting openness of
+his character makes him the butt of every artful knave he meets with;
+and he is laughed at from Rotterdam to Rome for qualities which,
+exercised in their fitting sphere, have made England the greatest
+country of the universe. Hence we have the tone of disparagement now
+so universally maintained about England, and Englishmen, from one end
+of the Continent to the other. It is not that our country does not
+send forth a number of men well qualified to induce different
+impressions of their nation; but unfortunately, such persons move only
+in that rank of foreign society where these prejudices do not exist;
+and it is among a different class, and unhappily a more numerous one
+also, that these undervaluing opinions find currency and belief.
+
+There is nothing more offensive than the continual appeal made by
+Frenchmen, Germans, and others, to English habits, as seen among this
+class of our countrymen. It is in vain that you explain to them that
+these people are neither among the more educated nor the better ranks
+of our country. They cannot comprehend your distinction. The habits of
+the Continent have produced a kind of table-land of good-breeding,
+upon which all men are equals. Thus, if you rarely meet a foreigner
+ignorant of the every-day _convenances_ of the world, you still more
+rarely meet with one unexceptionably well-bred. The _table d'hote_,
+like the mess in our army, has the effect of introducing a certain
+amount of decorum that is felt through every relation of life; and,
+although the count abroad is immeasurably beneath the gentleman at
+home, here, I must confess, that the foreign cobbler is a more
+civilized person than his type in England. This is easily understood:
+foreign breeding is not the outward exhibition of an inward
+principle--it is not the manifestation of a sense of mingled kindness,
+good taste, and self-respect--it is merely the rigid observance of a
+certain code of behaviour that has no reference whatever to any thing
+felt within; it is the mere popery of politeness, with its
+saint-worship, its penances, and its privations. An Englishman makes
+way for you to accommodate your passage; a foreigner--a Frenchman I
+should say--does so for an opportunity to flourish his hat or to
+exhibit an attitude. The same spirit pervades every act of both; duty
+in one case, display in the other, are the ruling principles of life;
+and, where persons are so diametrically different, there is little
+likelihood of much mutual understanding or mutual esteem. To come
+back, however, the great evil of this universal passion for travelling
+lies in the opportunity afforded to foreigners, of sneering at our
+country, and ridiculing our habits. It is in vain that our
+institutions are models of imitation for the world--in vain that our
+national character stands pre-eminent for good-faith and fidelity--in
+vain the boast that the sun never sets upon a territory that girths
+the very globe itself, so long as we send annually our tens of
+thousands out upon the Continent, with no other failing than mere
+unfitness for foreign travel, to bring down upon us the sneer, and the
+ridicule, of every ignorant and unlettered Frenchman, or Belgian, they
+meet with.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A NUT FOR DOMESTIC HAPPINESS.
+
+
+Our law code would, were its injunctions only carried out in private
+life, effect most extraordinary reformations in our customs and
+habits. The most singular innovations in our tastes and opinions would
+spring out of the statutes. It was only a few days ago where a man
+sought reparation for the greatest injury one could inflict on
+another, the great argument of the defendant's counsel was based on
+the circumstance that the plaintiff and his wife had not been proved
+to have lived happily together, except on the testimony of their
+servants. Great stress was laid upon this fact by the advocate; and
+such an impression did it make on the minds of the jury, that the
+damages awarded were a mere trifle. Now, only reflect for a moment on
+the absurdity of such a plea, and think how many persons there are
+whose quiet and unobtrusive lives are unnoticed beyond the precincts
+of their own door--nay, how many estimable and excellent people who
+live less for the world than for themselves, and although, probably
+for this very reason, but little exposed to the casualty in question,
+would yet deem the injustice great that placed them beyond the pale of
+reparation because they had been homely and domestic.
+
+Civilisation and the march of mind are fine things, and doubtless it
+is a great improvement that the criminal is better lodged, and fed, in
+the prison, than the hungry labourer in the workhouse. It is an
+admirable code that makes the debt of honour, the perhaps swindled
+losses of the card-table, an imperative obligation, while the money
+due to toiling, working industry, may be evaded or escaped from.
+Still, it is a bold step to invade the privacy of domestic life, to
+subvert the happiness we deem most national, and to suggest that the
+world has no respect for, nor the law no belief in, that peaceful
+course in life, which, content with its own blessings, seeks neither
+the gaze of the crowd, nor the stare of fashion. Under the present
+system, a man must appear in society like a candidate on the
+hustings--profuse in protestations of his happiness and redolent of
+smiles; he must lead forth his wife like a blooming _debutante_, and,
+while he presents her to his friends, must display, by every endeavour
+in his power, the angelic happiness of their state. The _coram
+publico_ endearments, so much sneered at by certain fastidious people,
+are now imperative; and, however secluded your habits, however
+retiring your tastes, it is absolutely necessary you should appear a
+certain number of times every year before the world, to assure that
+kind-hearted and considerate thing, how much conjugal felicity you are
+possessed of.
+
+It is to no purpose that your man-servant and your maid-servant, and
+even the stranger within your gates, have seen you in the apparent
+enjoyment of domestic happiness: it is the crowd of a ball-room must
+testify in your favour--it is the pit of a theatre--it is the company
+of a steam-boat, or the party on a railroad, you must adduce in
+evidence. They are the best--they are the only judges of what you, in
+the ignorance of your heart, have believed a secret for your own
+bosom.
+
+Your conduct within-doors is of little moment, so that your bearing
+without satisfy the world. What a delightful picture of universal
+happiness will England then present to the foreigner who visits our
+salons! With what ecstasy will he contemplate the angelic felicity of
+conjugal life! Instead of the indignant coldness of a husband,
+offended by some casual levity of his wife, he will now redouble his
+attentions, and take an opportunity of calling the company to witness
+that they live together like turtle-doves. He knows not how soon, if
+he mix much in fashionable life, their testimony may avail him; and
+the loving smile he throws his spouse across the supper-table is
+worth three thousand pounds before any jury in Middlesex.
+
+Romance writers will now lose one stronghold of sentiment. Love in a
+cottage will possess as little respect as it ever did attraction for
+the world. The pier at Brighton, a Gravesend steamer, Hyde Park on a
+Sunday, will be the appropriate spheres for the interchange of
+conjugal vows. No absurd notions of solitude will then hold sway.
+Alas! how little prophetic spirit is there in poetry! But a few years
+ago, and one of our sirens of song said,
+
+    "When should lovers breathe their vows?
+      When should ladies hear them?
+    When the dew is on the boughs--
+      When none else is near them."
+
+Not a word of it! The appropriate place is amid the glitter of jewels,
+the glare of lamps, the crush of fashion, and the din of conversation.
+The private boxes of the opera are even too secluded, and your
+happiness is no more genuine, until recognised by society, than is an
+exchequer bill with the mere signature of Lord Monteagle.
+
+The benefits of this system will be great. No longer will men be
+reduced to the cultivation of those meeker virtues that grace and
+adorn life; no more will they study those accomplishments that make
+home happy and their hearth cheerful. A winter at Paris and a box at
+the Varietes will be more to the purpose. Scribe's farces will teach
+them more important lessons, and they will obtain an instructive
+example in the last line of a vaudeville, where an injured husband
+presents himself at the fall of the curtain, and, as he bows to the
+audience, embraces both his wife and her lover, exclaiming,
+"_Maintenant je suis heureux--ma femme--mon meilleur ami!_" He then
+may snap his fingers at Charles Phillips and Adolphus: he has not only
+proved his affection to his wife, but his confidence in his friend.
+Let him lay the damages at ten thousand, and, with a counsel that can
+cry, he'll get every shilling of the money.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR LADIES BOUNTIFUL.
+
+
+Jean Jacques tells us, that when his wife died every farmer in the
+neighbourhood offered to console him by one of their daughters; but
+that a few weeks afterwards his cow having shared the same fate, no
+one ever thought of replacing his loss by the offer of another;
+thereby proving the different value people set upon their cows and
+children--this seems absurd enough, but is it a bit more so, than what
+is every day taking place in professional life? How many parsons are
+there who would not lend you five pounds, would willingly lend you
+their pulpit, and the commonest courtesy from a hospital surgeon is,
+to present his visitor with a knife and entreat him to carve a
+patient. He has never seen the individual before, he doesn't know
+whether he be short-sighted, or nervous, or ignorant, or rash, all he
+thinks of, is doing the honours of the institution; and although like
+a hostess, who sees the best dish at her table mangled by an unskilful
+carver, he suffers in secret, yet is she far too well-bred to evince
+her displeasure, but blandly smiles at her friend, and says "No
+matter, pray go on." This, doubtless, is highly conducive to science;
+and as medicine is declared to be a science of experiment, great
+results occasionally arise from the practice. Now that I am talking of
+doctors--what a strange set they are, and what a singular position do
+they hold in society; admitted to the fullest confidence of the world,
+yet by a strange perversion, while they are the depositaries of
+secrets that hold together the whole fabric of society, their
+influence is neither fully recognised, nor their power acknowledged.
+The doctor is now what the monk once was, with this additional
+advantage, that from the nature of his studies and the research of his
+art, he reads more deeply in the human heart, and penetrates into its
+most inmost recesses. For him, life has little romance; the grosser
+agency of the body re-acting ever on the operations of the mind,
+destroy many a poetic daydream and many a high-wrought illusion. To
+him alone does a man speak "_son dernier mot_:" while to the lawyer
+the leanings of self-respect will make him always impart a favourable
+view of his case. To the physician he will be candid, and even more
+than candid--yes, these are the men who, watching the secret workings
+of human passion, can trace the progress of mankind in virtue and in
+vice; while ministering to the body they are exploring the mind, and
+yet, scarcely is the hour of danger passed, scarcely the shadow of
+fear dissipated, when they fall back to their humble position in life,
+bearing with them but little gratitude, and, strange to say, no fear!
+
+The world expects them to be learned, well-bred, kind, considerate,
+and attentive, patient to their querulousness, and enduring under
+their caprice; and, after all this, the humbug of homoeopathy, the
+preposterous absurdity of the water cure, or the more reprehensible
+mischief of Mesmerism, will find more favour in their sight than the
+highest order of ability accompanied by great natural advantages.
+
+Every man--and still more, every woman--imagine themselves to be
+doctors. The taste for physic, like that for politics, is born with
+us, and nothing seems easier than to repair the injuries of the
+constitution, whether of the state or the individual. Who has not
+seen, over and over again, physicians of the first eminence put aside,
+that the nostrum of some ignorant pretender, or the suggestion of some
+twaddling old woman, should be, as it is termed, tried? No one is too
+stupid, no one too old, no one too ignorant, too obstinate, or too
+silly, not to be superior to Brodie and Chambers, Crampton and Marsh;
+and where science, with anxious eye and cautious hand, would scarcely
+venture to interfere, heroic ignorance would dash boldly forward and
+cut the Gordian difficulty by snapping the thread of life. How comes
+it that these old ladies, of either sex, never meddle with the law? Is
+the game beneath them, where the stake is only property, and not life?
+or is there less difficulty in the knowledge of an art whose
+principles rest on so many branches of science, than in a study
+founded on the basis of precedent? Would to heaven the "Ladies
+Bountiful" would take to the quarter-sessions and the assizes, in lieu
+of the infirmaries and dispensaries, and make Blackstone their
+aid-de-camp--_vice_ Buchan retired.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE PRIESTS.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+There would be no going through this world if one had not an
+India-rubber conscience, and one could no more exist in life without
+what watch-makers call accommodation, in the machinery of one's heart,
+than a blue-bottle fly could grow fat in the shop of an apothecary.
+Every man's conscience has, like Janus, two faces--one looks most
+plausibly to the world, with a smile of courteous benevolence, the
+other with a droll leer seems to say, I think we are doing them. In
+fact, not only would the world be impossible, and its business
+impracticable, but society itself would be a bear-garden without
+hypocrisy.
+
+Now, the professional classes have a kind of licence on this subject;
+just as a poet is permitted to invent sunsets, and a painter to
+improvise clouds and cataracts, so a lawyer dilates upon the virtues
+or attractions of his client, and a physician will weep you good round
+substantial tears, at a guinea a drop, for the woes of his patient;
+but the church, I certainly thought, was exempt from this practice. A
+paragraph in a morning paper, however, disabused my ignorance in the
+most remarkable manner. The Roman Catholic hierarchy have unanimously
+decided that all persons following the profession of the stage, are
+to be considered without the pale of the church, they are neither to
+be baptized nor confirmed, married nor buried; they may get a name in
+the streets, and a wife there also, but the church will neither bless
+the one, nor confirm the other; in fact, the sock and the buskin are
+proclaimed in opposition to Christianity, and Madame Lafarge is not a
+bit more culpable than Robert Macaire. A few days since, one of the
+most fashionable churches in Paris was crowded to suffocation by the
+attraction of high mass, celebrated with the assistance of the whole
+opera choir, with Duprez at their head. The sum contributed by the
+faithful was enormous, and the music of Mozart was heard to great
+effect through the vaulted aisles of Notre Dame, yet the very morning
+after, not an individual of the choir could receive the benediction of
+the church--the _rationale_ of all which is, that the Dean of Notre
+Dame, like the Director of the Odeon, likes a good house and a heavy
+benefit. He gets the most attractive company he can secure, and
+although he makes no scruple to say they are the most disreputable
+acquaintances, still they fill the benches, and it will be time enough
+to damn them when the performance is over!
+
+Whenever the respectable Whigs are attacked for their alliance with
+O'Connell, they make the same reply the priest would probably do in
+this circumstance--How can we help it? We want a mob; if he sings, we
+have it--we know his character as well as you; so only let us fill our
+pockets, and then ---- I do not blame them in the least, if the popery
+of their politics has palled upon the appetite; if they can work no
+more miracles of reform and revolution, I do not see how they can help
+calling in aid from without.
+
+Dan, however, will not consent, like Duprez, to be damned when he is
+done with; he insists on a share of the profits, and, moreover, to be
+treated with some respect too. He knows he is the star of the company,
+and can make his own terms; and, even now, when the house is broken
+up, and the manager beggared, and the actors dismissed, like Matthews,
+he can get up a representation all to himself, and make a handsome
+thing of it besides.
+
+If one could see it brought about something in the fashion of Sancho's
+government of Barrataria, I should certainly like to see O'Connell on
+the throne of Ireland for about twenty-four hours, and to salute King
+Dan, _par la grace de diable_, king of Erin, just for the joke's sake!
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR LEARNED SOCIETIES.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+We laugh at the middle ages for their trials by ordeal, their jousts,
+their tournaments, their fat monasteries, and their meagre people; but
+I am strongly disposed to think, that before a century pass over,
+posterity will give us as broad a grin for our learned societies. Of
+all the features that characterise the age, I know of none so
+pre-eminently ridiculous, as nine-tenths of these associations would
+prove; supported by great names, aided by large sums, with a fine
+house, a library and a librarian, they do the honours of science
+pretty much as the yeomen of the guard do those of a court on a levee
+day, and they bear about the same relation to literature and art, that
+do the excellent functionaries I have mentioned, to the proceedings
+around the throne.
+
+An old gentleman, hipped by celibacy, and too sour for society, has
+contracted a habit of looking out of his window every morning, to
+observe the weather: he sees a cloud very like a whale, or he fancies
+that when the wind blows in a particular direction, and it happens to
+rain at the same time, that the drops fall in a peculiarly slanting
+manner. He notes down the facts for a month or two, and then
+establishes a meteorological society, of which he is the perpetual
+president, with a grant from Parliament to extend its utility. Another
+takes to old volumes on a book-stall; and becoming, as most men are
+who have little knowledge of life, fascinated with his own
+discoveries, thinks he has ascertained some curious details of ancient
+history, and communicating his results to others as stupid and old as
+himself, they dub themselves antiquarians, or archaeologists, and
+obtain a grant also.
+
+Now, one half of these societies are neither more nor less than most
+impertinent sarcasms on the land we live in. The man who sets himself
+down deliberately to chronicle the clouds in our atmosphere, and jot
+down the rainy days in our calendar, is, to my thinking, performing
+about as grateful a task, as though he were to count the carbuncles on
+his friend's nose. We have, it is true, a most abominable climate: the
+sun rarely shows himself, and, when he does, it is through a tattered
+garment of clouds, dim and disagreeable; but why throw it in our
+teeth? and, still more, why pay a body of men to publish the slander?
+Then again, as to history, all the world knows that since the Flood
+the Irish have never done any thing else than make love, illicit
+whiskey, and beat each other. What nonsense, then, to talk about the
+ancient cultivation of the land, of its high rank in literature, and
+its excellence in art. A stone bishop, with a nose like a negro, and a
+crosier like a garden-rake, are the only evidences of our ancestors'
+taste in sculpture; and some doggrel verses in Irish, explaining how
+King Phelim O'Toole cheated a brother monarch out of his
+small-clothes, are about the extent of our historic treasures. But,
+for argument's sake, suppose it otherwise; imagine for a moment that
+our ancestors were all that Sir William Betham and Mr. Petrie would
+make them--I do not know how other people may feel, but I myself deem
+it no pleasant reflection to think of _their_ times and look at _our
+own_. What! we were poets and painters, architects, historians, and
+musicians! What have we now among us to represent these great and
+mighty gifts? I am afraid, except our Big Beggarman, we have not a
+single living celebrity; and is this a comfortable reflection, is this
+a pleasing thought, that while, fourteen hundred years ago, some Irish
+Raphael and some Galway Grisi were the delight of our illustrious
+ancestors--that while the splendour of King Malachi, with his collar
+of gold, astonished the ladies in the neighbourhood of Trim--we have
+nothing to boast of, save Dan for Lord Mayor, and Burton Bindon's
+oysters? Once more, I say, if what these people tell us be facts, they
+are the most unpalatable facts could be told to a nation; and I see no
+manner of propriety or good-breeding in replying to a gipsy who begs
+for a penny, by the information, that "his ancestors built the
+Pyramids."
+
+Again, if our days are dark, our nights are worse; and what, in
+Heaven's name, have we to do with an observatory and a telescope as
+long as the _Great Western_? The planets are the most expensive
+vagabonds to the Budget, and the fixed stars are a fixed imposition.
+Were I Chancellor of the Exchequer, I'd pension the Moon, and give the
+Great Bear a sum of money as compensation. Do not tell me of the
+distresses of the people, arising from cotton, or corn, China, or
+Chartists--it is our scientific institutions are eating into the
+national resources. There is not an egg-saucepan of antiquity that
+does not cost the country a plum, and every wag of a comet's tail may
+be set down at half-a-million. I warrant me the people in the Moon
+take us a deuced deal more easily, and give themselves very little
+trouble to make out the size of Ireland's eye or the height of
+Croaghpatrick. No, no; let the Chancellor of the Exchequer come down
+with a slapping measure of retrenchment, and make a clear stage of all
+of them. Every man with money to buy a cotton umbrella is his own
+meteorologist; and a pocket telescope, price eight-and-fourpence, is
+long enough, in all conscience, for any man in a climate like ours;
+or, if such a course seem too peremptory, call on these people for
+their bill, and let there be a stated sum for each item. At Dolly's
+chop-house, you know to the exact farthing how much your beefsteak and
+glass of ale will cost you; and if you wish, in addition, a slice of
+Stilton with your XX, you consult your pocket before you speak. Let
+not the nation be treated worse than the individual: let us first look
+about us, and see if a year of prosperity and cheap potatoes will
+permit us the indulgence of obtaining a new luminary or an old
+chronicle; then, when we know the cost, we may calculate with safety.
+Suppose a fixed star, for instance, be set down at ten pounds; a
+planet at five; Saturn has so many belts, I would not give more than
+half-a-crown for a new one; and, as for an eclipse of the sun, I had
+rather propose a reward for the man who could tell us when we could
+see him palpably.
+
+For the present I merely throw out these suggestions in a brief,
+incomplete manner, intending, however, to return to the subject on
+another occasion.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE LAWYERS.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Authors have long got the credit of being the most accomplished
+persons going--thoroughly conversant not only with the features of
+every walk and class in life, but also with their intimate sentiments,
+habits of thought, and modes of expression. Now, I have long been of
+opinion, that in all these respects, lawyers are infinitely their
+superiors. The author chooses his characters as you choose your dish,
+or your wine at dinner--he takes what suits, and leaves what is not
+available to his purpose. He then fashions them to his hand--finishing
+off this portrait, sketching that one--now bringing certain figures
+into strong light, anon throwing them into shadow: they are his
+creatures, who must obey him while living, and even die at his
+command. Now, the lawyer is called on for all the narrative and
+descriptive powers of his art, at a moment's notice, without time for
+reading or preparation; and worse than all, his business frequently
+lies among the very arts and callings his taste is most repugnant to.
+One day he is to be found creeping, with a tortoise slowness through
+all the wearisome intricacy of an equity case--the next he is borne
+along in a torrent of indignant eloquence, in defence of some Orange
+processionist or some Ribbon associate: now he describes, with the
+gravity of a landscape gardener, the tortuous windings of a
+mill-stream; now expatiating in Lytton Bulwerisms over the desolate
+hearth and broken fortunes of some deserted husband. In one court he
+attempts to prove that the elderly gentleman whose life was insured
+for a thousand at the Phoenix, was instrumental to his own decease, for
+not eating Cayenne with his oysters; in another, he shows, with
+palpable clearness, that being stabbed in the body, and having the
+head fractured, is a venial offence, and merely the result of
+"political excitement" in a high-spirited and warm-hearted people.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+These are all clever efforts, and demand consummate powers, at the
+hand of him who makes them; but what are they to that deep and
+critical research with which he seems, instinctively, to sound the
+depths of every scientific walk in life, and every learned profession.
+Hear him in a lunacy case--listen to the deep and subtle distinctions
+he draws between the symptoms of mere eccentricity and erring
+intellect--remark how insignificant the physician appears in the case,
+who has made these things the study of a life long--hear how the
+barrister confounds him with a hail-storm of technicals--talking of
+the pineal gland as if it was an officer of the court, and of atrophy
+of the cerebral lobes, as if he was speaking of an attorney's clerk.
+Listen to him in a trial of supposed death by poison; what a triumph
+he has there, particularly if he be a junior barrister--how he walks
+undismayed among all the tests for arsenic--how little he cares for
+Marsh's apparatus and Scheele's discoveries--hydro-sulphates,
+peroxydes, iodurates, and proto-chlorides are familiar to him as
+household words. You would swear that he was nursed at a glass
+retort, and sipped his first milk through a blow-pipe. Like a child
+who thumps the keys of a pianoforte, and imagines himself a Liszt or
+Moschelles, so does your barrister revel amid the phraseology of a
+difficult science--pelting the witnesses with his insane blunders, and
+assuring the jury that their astonishment means ignorance. Nothing in
+anatomy is too deep--nothing in chemistry too subtle--no fact in
+botany too obscure--no point in metaphysics too difficult. Like
+Dogberry, these things are to him but the gift of God; and he knows
+them at his birth. Truly, the chancellor is a powerful magician; and
+the mystic words by which he calls a gentleman to the bar, must have
+some potent spell within them. The youth you remember as if it were
+yesterday, the lounger at evening parties, or the chaperon of riding
+damsels to the Phoenix, comes forth now a man of deep and consummate
+acquirement--he whose chemistry went no further than the composition
+of a "tumbler of punch," can now perform the most difficult
+experiments of Orfila or Davy, or explain the causes of failure in a
+test that has puzzled the scientific world for half a century. He
+knows the precise monetary value of a deserted maiden's affections--he
+can tell you the exact sum, in bank notes, that a widow will be
+knocked down for, when her heart has been subject to but a feint
+attack of Cupid. With what consummate skill, too, he can show that an
+indictment is invalid, when stabbing is inserted for cutting; and when
+the crown prosecutor has been deficient in his descriptive anatomy,
+what a glorious field for display is opened to him. Then, to be sure,
+what droll fellows they are!--how they do quiz the witness as he sits
+trembling on the table--what funny allusions to his habits of
+life--his age--his station--turning the whole battery of their powers
+of ridicule against him--ready, if he venture to retort, to throw
+themselves on the protection of the court. And truly, if a little
+Latin suffice for a priest, a little wit goes very far in a law court.
+A joke is a universal blessing: the judge, who, after all, is only "an
+old lawyer," loves it from habit: the jury, generally speaking, are
+seldom in such good company, and they laugh from complaisance; and the
+bar joins in the mirth, on that great reciprocity principle, which
+enables them to bear each other's dulness, and dine together
+afterwards. People are insane enough to talk of absenteeism as one of
+the evils of Ireland, and regret that we have no resident aristocracy
+among us--rather let us rejoice that we have them not, so long as the
+lawyers prove their legitimate successors.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+How delightful in a land where civilization has still some little
+progress before it, and where the state of crime is not quite
+satisfactory--to know that we have those amongst us who know all
+things, feel all things, explain all things, and reconcile all
+things--who can throw such a Claude Lorraine light over right and
+wrong, that they are both mellowed into a sweet and hallowed softness,
+delightful to gaze on. How the secret of this universal acquirement is
+accomplished I know not--perhaps it is the wig.
+
+What set me first on this train of thought, was a trial I lately read,
+where a cross action was sustained for damage at sea--the owners of
+the brig Durham against the Aurora, a foreign vessel, and _vice
+versa_, for the result of a collision at noon, on the 14th of October.
+It appeared that both vessels had taken shelter in the Humber from
+stress of weather, nearly at the same time--that the Durham, which
+preceded the Prussian vessel, "clewed up her top-sails, and dropped
+her anchor _rather_ suddenly; and the Aurora being in the rear, the
+vessels came in collision." The question, therefore, was, whether the
+Durham came to anchor too precipitately, and in an unseamanlike
+manner; or, in other words, whether, when the "Durham clewed up
+top-sails and let go her anchor, the Aurora should not have luffed up,
+or got sternway on her," &c. Nothing could possibly be more
+instructive, nor anything scarcely more amusing, than the lucid
+arguments employed by the counsel on both sides. The learned Thebans,
+that would have been sick in a ferry-boat, spoke as if they had
+circumnavigated the globe. Stay-sails, braces, top-gallants, clews,
+and capstans they hurled at each other like _bon bons_ at a carnival;
+and this naval engagement lasted from daylight to dark. Once only,
+when the judge "made it noon," for a little refection, did they cease
+conflict, to renew the strife afterwards with more deadly daring, till
+at last so confused were the witnesses--the plaintiff, defendant, and
+all, that they half wished, they had gone to the bottom, before they
+thought of settling the differences in the Admiralty Court. This was
+no common occasion for the display of these powers so peculiarly the
+instinctive gift of the bar, and certainly they used it with all the
+enthusiasm of a _bonne bouche_.
+
+How I trembled for the Aurora, when an elderly gentleman, with a wart
+on his nose, assured the court that the Durham had her top-sail backed
+ten minutes before the anchor fell; and then, how I feared again for
+the Durham, as a thin man in spectacles worked the Prussian about in a
+double-reefed mainsail, and stood round in stays so beautifully. I
+thought myself at sea, so graphic was the whole description--the waves
+splashed and foamed around the bulwarks, and broke in spray upon the
+deck--the wind rattled amid the rigging--the bulkheads creaked, and
+the good ship heaved heavily in the trough of the sea, like a mighty
+monster in his agony. But my heart quailed not--I knew that Dr.
+Lushington was at the helm, and Dr. Haggard had the look-out a-head--I
+felt that Dr. Robinson stood by the lee braces, and Dr. Addison
+waited, hatchet in hand, to cut away the mainmast. These were
+comforting reflections, till I was once more enabled to believe myself
+in her Majesty's High Court of Admiralty.
+
+Alas! ye Coopers--ye Marryats--ye Chamiers--ye historians of storm and
+sea-fight, how inferior are your triumphs compared with the
+descriptive eloquence of a law court. Who can pourtray the broken
+heart of blighted affection, like Charles Phillips in a breach of
+promise? What was Scott compared to Scarlett?--how inferior is Dickens
+to Counsellor O'Driscoll?--here are the men, who, without the trickery
+of trade, ungilt, unlettered, and unillustrated, can move the world to
+laughter and to tears. They ask no aid from Colburn, nor from
+Cruikshank--they need not "Brown" nor Longman. Heaven-born warriors,
+doctors, chemists, and anatomists--deep in every art, learned in every
+science--mankind is to them an open book, which they read at will, and
+con over at leisure--happy country, where we have you in abundance,
+and where your talents are so available, that they can be had for
+asking.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE IRISH.
+
+AN IRISH ENCORE.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+We certainly are a very original people, and contrive to do everything
+after a way of our own! Not content with cementing our friendships by
+fighting, and making the death of a relative the occasion of a merry
+evening, we even convert the habits we borrow from other lands into
+something essentially different from their original intention, and
+infuse into them a spirit quite national.
+
+The echo which, when asked "How d'ye do, Paddy Blake?" replied,
+"Mighty well, thank you," could only have been an Irish echo. Any
+other country would have sulkily responded, "Blake--ake--ake--ake," in
+_diminuendo_ to the end of the chapter. But there is a courtesy, an
+attention, a native politeness on our side of the channel, it is in
+vain to seek elsewhere. A very strong instance in point occurs in a
+morning paper before me, and one so delightfully characteristic of our
+habits and customs, it would be unpardonable to pass it without
+commemoration. At an evening concert at the Rotundo, we are informed
+that Mr. Knight--I believe his name is--enchanted his audience by the
+charming manner he sung "Molly Astore." Three distinct rounds of
+applause followed, and an encore that actually shook the building, and
+may--though we are not informed of the circumstance--have produced
+very remarkable effects in the adjacent institution; upon which Mr.
+Knight, with his habitual courtesy, came forward and sang--what, think
+ye, good reader? Of course you will say, "Molly Astore," the song he
+was encored for. Alas! for your ignorance;--that might do very well in
+Liverpool or Manchester, at Bath, Bristol, or Birmingham--the poor
+benighted Saxons there might like to get what they asked so eagerly
+for; but we are men of very different mould, and not accustomed to the
+jog-trot subserviency of such common-sense notions; and accordingly,
+Mr. Knight sang "The Soldier Tired"--a piece of politeness on his part
+that actually convulsed the house with acclamations; and so on to the
+end of the entertainment, "the gentleman, when encored, invariably
+sang a new song"--I quote the paper _verbatim_--"which testimony of
+his anxiety to meet the wishes of the audience afforded universal
+satisfaction."
+
+Now, I ask--and I ask it in all the tranquillity of triumph--show me
+the country on a map where such a studied piece of courteous civility
+could have been practised, or which, if attempted, could have been so
+thoroughly, so instantaneously appreciated. And what an insight does
+it give us into some of the most difficult features of our national
+character. May not this Irish encore explain the success with which
+Mr. O'Connell consoles our "poverty" by attacks on the clergy, and
+relieves our years of scarcity by creating forty-shilling freeholders.
+We ask for bread; and he tells us we are a great people--we beg for
+work, and he replies, that we must have repeal of the union--we
+complain of our poverty, and his remedy is--subscribe to the rent.
+Your heavy-headed Englishman--your clod-hopper from Yorkshire--or
+your boor from Northumberland, would never understand this, if you
+gave him a life-long to con over it. Norfolk pudding to his gross and
+sensual nature would seem better than the new registration bill; and
+he'd rather hear the simmering music of the boiled beef for his
+dinner, than all the rabid ruffianism of a repeal meeting.
+
+But to come back to ourselves. What bold and ample views of life do
+our free-and-easy habits disclose to us, not to speak of the very
+servant at table, who will often help you to soup, when you ask for
+sherry, and give you preserves, when you beg for pepper. What amiable
+cross-purposes are we always playing at--not bigotedly adhering to our
+own narrow notions, and following out our own petty views of life, but
+eagerly doing what we have no concern in, and meritoriously performing
+for our friends, what they had been well pleased, we'd have let alone.
+
+This amiable waywardness--this pleasing uncertainty of
+purpose--characterises our very climate; and the day that breaks in
+sunshine becomes stormy at noon, calm towards evening, and blows a
+hurricane all night. So the Irishman that quits his home brimful of
+philanthropy is not unlikely to rob a church before his return. But so
+it is, there is nobody like us in any respect. We commemorate the
+advent of a sovereign by erecting a testimonial to the last spot he
+stood on at his departure; and we are enthusiastic in our gratitude
+when, having asked for one favour, we receive something as unlike it
+as possible.
+
+Our friends at the other side are beginning to legislate for us in the
+true spirit of our prejudices; and when we have complained of "a
+beggared proprietary and a ruined gentry," they have bolstered up our
+weakness with the new poor law. So much for an Irish encore.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR VICEREGAL PRIVILEGES.
+
+     "The sixth of Anne, chap. seventeen, makes it unlawful to
+     keep gaming-houses in any part of the city except the
+     'Castle,' and prohibits any game being played even there
+     except during the residence of the Lord Lieutenant. This act
+     is still on the statute book."--_Dublin Paper._
+
+
+One might puzzle himself for a very long time for an explanation of
+this strange _morceau_ of legislation, without any hope of arriving at
+a shadow of a reason for it.
+
+That gaming should be suppressed by a government is in no wise
+unnatural; nor should we feel any surprise at our legislature having
+been a century in advance of France, in the due restriction of this
+demoralizing practice. But that the exercise of a vice should be
+limited to the highest offices of the state is, indeed, singular, and
+demands no little reflection on our part to investigate the cause.
+
+Had the functions of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland been of that drowsy,
+tiresome, uninteresting nature, that it was only deemed fair by the
+legislature to afford him some amusing pastime to distract his
+"_ennui_" and dispel his melancholy, there might seem to have been
+then some reason for this extraordinary enactment. On the contrary,
+however, every one knows that from the remotest times to the present,
+every viceroy of Ireland has had quite enough on his hands. Some have
+been saving money to pay off old mortgages, others were farming the
+Phoenix; some took to the King Cambyses' vein, like poor dear Lord
+Normanby--raked up all the old properties and faded finery of the
+Castle, and with such material as they could collect, made a kind of
+Drury-lane representation of a court. And very lately, and with an
+originality so truly characteristic of true genius, Lord Ebrington
+struck out a line of his own, and slept away his time with such a
+persevering intensity of purpose, that "the least wide-awake" persons
+of his government became actually ashamed of themselves. But to go
+back. What, I would ask, was the intention of this act? I know you
+give it up. Well, now, I have made the matter the subject of long and
+serious thought, and I think I have discovered it.
+
+Have you ever read, in the laws of the smaller German states, the
+singular rules and regulations regarding the gaming-table? If so, you
+will have found how the entire property of the "_rouge et noir_" and
+"_roulette_" is vested in certain individuals in return for very
+considerable sums of money, paid by them to the government, for the
+privilege of robbing the public. These honourable and estimable people
+farm out iniquity as you would do your demesne, selling the cheatable
+features of mankind, like the new corn law, on the principle of "a
+general average." The government of these states, finding--no uncommon
+thing in Germany--a deficiency in their exchequer, have hit upon this
+ready method of supplying the gap, by a system which has all the
+regularity of a tax, with the advantage of a voluntary contribution.
+These little kingdoms, therefore, of some half-dozen miles in
+circumference, are nothing more than _rouge et noir_ tables, where the
+grand duke performs the part of croupier, and gathers in the gold.
+Now, I am convinced that something of this kind was intended by our
+lawgivers in the act of parliament to which I have alluded, and that
+its programme might run thus--that "as the office of Lord Lieutenant
+in Ireland is one of great responsibility, high trust, and necessarily
+demanding profuse expenditure; and that, as it may so happen that the
+same should, in the course of events, be filled by some Whig-Radical
+viceroy of great pretension and little property; and that as the
+ordinary sum for maintaining his dignity may be deemed insufficient,
+we hereby give him the exclusive liberty and privilege of all games of
+chance, skill, or address, in the kingdom of Ireland, whether the same
+may be chicken-hazard, blind hookey, head and tail, &c.--thimble-rigging
+was only known later--to be enjoyed by himself only, or by persons
+deputed by him; such privilege in nowise to extend to the lords
+justices, but only to exist during the actual residence and presence
+of the Lord Lieutenant himself."--_See the Act._
+
+I cannot but admire the admirable tact that dictated this portion of
+legislation; at the same time, it does seem a little hard that the
+chancellor, the archbishop, and the other high functionaries, who
+administer the law in the absence of the viceroy, should not have been
+permitted the small privilege of a little unlimited loo, or even
+beggar-my-neighbour, particularly as the latter game is the popular
+one in Ireland.
+
+There would seem, too, something like an appreciation of our national
+character in the spirit of this law, which, unhappily for England, and
+Ireland, too, has not always dictated her enactments concerning us.
+It is well known that we hate and abhor anything in the shape of a
+legal debt. Few Irishmen will refuse you the loan of five pounds;
+still fewer can persuade themselves to pay five shillings. The kingdom
+of Galway has long been celebrated for its enlightened notions on this
+subject, showing how much more conducive it is to personal
+independence and domestic economy, to spend five hundred pounds in
+resisting a claim, than to satisfy it by the payment of twenty.
+Accordingly, had any direct taxation of considerable amount been
+proposed for the support of viceregal dignity, the chances are--much
+as we like show and glitter, ardently as we admire all that gives us
+the semblance of a state--we should have buttoned up our pockets, and
+upon the principle of those economical little tracts, that teach us to
+do so much for ourselves, every man would have resolved to be "his own
+Lord Lieutenant;" coming, however, in the shape of an indirect
+taxation, a voluntary contribution to be withheld at pleasure, the
+thing was unobjectionable.
+
+You might not like cards, still less the company--a very possible
+circumstance, the latter, in some times we wot of not long
+since--Well, then, you saved your cash and your character by staying
+at home; on the other hand, it was a comfort to know that you could
+have your rubber of "shorts" or your game at _ecarte_, while at the
+same time you were contributing to the maintenance of the crown, and
+discharging the _devoirs_ of a loyal subject. It is useless, however,
+to speculate upon an obsolete institution; the law has fallen into
+disuse, and the more is the pity. How one would like to have seen Lord
+Normanby, with that one curl of infantine simplicity that played upon
+his forehead, with that eternal leer of self-satisfied loveliness that
+rested on his features, playing banker at _rouge et noir_, or calling
+the throws at hazard. I am not quite so sure that the concern would
+have been so profitable as picturesque. The principal frequenters of
+his court were "York too;" Lord Plunket was a "downy cove;" and if
+Anthony Blaek took the box, most assuredly "I'd back the caster." Now
+and then, to be sure, a stray, misguided country gentleman--a kind of
+"wet Tory"--used to be found at that court; just as one sees some
+respectable matronly woman at Ems or Baden, seated in a happy
+unconsciousness that all the company about her are rogues and
+swindlers, so _he_ might afford some good sport, and assist to
+replenish the famished exchequer. Generally speaking, however, the
+play would not have kept the tables; and his lordship would have been
+_in_ for the wax-lights, without the slightest chance of return.
+
+As for his successor, "patience" would have been his only game; and
+indeed it was one he had to practise whilst he remained amongst us.
+Better days have now come: let us, therefore, inquire if a slight
+modification of the act might not be effected with benefit, and an
+amendment, somewhat thus, be introduced into the bill:--"That the
+words 'Lord Mayor' be substituted for the words 'Lord Lieutenant;' and
+that all the privileges, rights, immunities, &c., aforesaid, be
+enjoyed by him to his sole use and benefit; and also that, in place of
+the word 'Castle,' the word 'Mansion-house' stand part of this
+bill"--thus reserving to his lordship all monopoly in games of chance
+and address, without in anywise interfering with such practices of the
+like nature exercised by him elsewhere, and always permitted and
+conceded by whatever government in power.
+
+Here, my dear countrymen, is no common suggestion. I am no prophet,
+like Sir Harcourt Lees; but still I venture to predict, that this
+system once legalised at the Mayoralty, the tribute is totally
+unnecessary. The little town of Spa, with scarce 10,000 inhabitants,
+pays the Belgian government 200,000 francs per annum for the liberty:
+what would Dublin--a city so populous and so idle? only think of the
+tail!--how admirably they could employ their little talent as
+"bonnets," and the various other functionaries so essential to the
+well-being of a gambling-house; and, lastly, think of great Dan
+himself, with his burly look, seated in civic dignity at the green
+cloth, with a rake instead of a mace before him, calling out, "Make
+your game, gentlemen, make your game"--"Never venture, never
+win"--"Faint heart," &c., &c.
+
+How suitable would the eloquence that has now grown tiresome, even at
+the Corn Exchange, be at the head of a gaming-table; and how well
+would the Liberator conduct a business whose motto is so admirably
+expressed by the phrase, "Heads, _I_ win; tails, _you_ lose." Besides,
+after all, nothing could form so efficient a bond of union between the
+two contending parties in the country as some little mutual territory
+of wickedness, where both might forget their virtues and their
+grievances together. Here you'd soon have the violent party-man of
+either side, oblivious of everything but his chance of gain; and what
+an energy would it give to the great Daniel to think that, while
+filling his pockets, he was also spoiling the Egyptians! Instead,
+therefore, of making the poor man contribute his penny, and the
+ragged man two-pence, you'd have the Rent supplied without the trouble
+of collection; and all from the affluent and the easy, or at least the
+idle, portion of the community.
+
+This is the second time I have thrown out a suggestion--and all for
+nothing, remember--on the subject of afinance; and little reflection
+will show that both my schemes are undeniable in their benefits. Here
+you have one of the most expensive pleasures a poor country has ever
+ventured to afford itself--a hired agitator, pensioned, without any
+burden on the productive industry of the land; and he himself, so far
+from having anything to complain of, will find that his revenue is
+more than quadrupled.
+
+Look at the question, besides, in another point of view, and see what
+possible advantages may arise from it. Nothing is so admirable an
+antidote to all political excitement as gambling: where it flourishes,
+men become so inextricably involved in its fascinations and
+attractions that they forget everything else. Now, was ever a country
+so urgently in want of a little repose as ours? and would it not be
+well to purchase it, and pension off our great disturbers, at any
+price whatever? Cards are better than carding any day; short whist is
+an admirable substitute for insurrection; and the rattle of a dice-box
+is surely as pleasant music as the ruffian shout for repeal.
+
+
+
+
+RICH AND POOR--POUR ET CONTRE.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+If I was a king upon a throne this minute, an' I wanted to have a
+smoke for myself by the fireside--why, if I was to do my best, what
+could I smoke but one pen'orth of tobacco, in the night, after
+all?--but can't I have that just as asy?
+
+"If I was to have a bed with down feathers, what could I do but sleep
+there?--and sure I can do that in the settle-bed above."
+
+Such is the very just and philosophical reflection of one of Griffin's
+most amusing characters, in his inimitable story of "The
+Collegians"--a reflection that naturally sets us a thinking, that if
+riches and wealth cannot really increase a man's capacity for
+enjoyment with the enjoyments themselves, their pursuit is, after all,
+but a poor and barren object of even worldly happiness.
+
+As it is perfectly evident that, so far as mere sensual gratifications
+are concerned, the peer and the peasant stand pretty much on a level,
+let us inquire for a moment in what the great superiority consists
+which exalts and elevates one above the other? Now, without entering
+upon that wild field for speculation that power (and what power equals
+that conferred by wealth?) confers, and the train of ennobling
+sentiment suggested by extended views of philanthropy and
+benevolence--for, in this respect, it is perfectly possible the poor
+man has as amiable a thrill at his heart in sharing his potato with a
+wandering beggar, as the rich one has in contributing his thousand
+pounds' donation to some great national charity--let us turn rather to
+the consideration of those more tangible differences that leave their
+impress upon character, and mould men's minds into a fashion so
+perfectly and thoroughly distinct.
+
+To our thinking, then, the great superiority wealth confers lies in
+the seclusion the rich man lives in from all the grosser agency of
+every-day life--its make-shifts, its contrivances, its continued
+warfare of petty provision and continual care, its unceasing effort to
+seem what it is not, and to appear to the world in a garb, and after a
+manner, to which it has no just pretension. The rich man knows nothing
+of all this: life, to him, rolls on in measured tread; and the world,
+albeit the changes of season and politics may affect him, has nothing
+to call forth any unusual effort of his temper or his intellect; his
+life, like his drawing-room, is arranged for him; he never sees it
+otherwise than in trim order; with an internal consciousness that
+people must be engaged in providing for his comforts at seasons when
+he is in bed or asleep, or otherwise occupied, he gives himself no
+farther trouble about them; and, in the monotony of his pleasures,
+attains to a tranquillity of mind the most enviable and most happy.
+
+Hence that perfect composure so conspicuous in the higher ranks, among
+whom wealth is so generally diffused--hence that delightful simplicity
+of manner, so captivating from its total absence of pretension and
+affectation--hence that unbroken serenity that no chances or
+disappointments would seem to interfere with; the knowledge that he is
+of far too much consequence to be neglected or forgotten, supports him
+on every occasion, and teaches that, when anything happens to his
+inconvenience or discomfort, that it could not but be unavoidable.
+
+Not so the poor man: his poverty is a shoe that pinches every hour of
+the twenty-four; he may bear up from habit, from philosophy, against
+his restricted means of enjoyment; he may accustom himself to limited
+and narrow bounds of pleasure; he may teach himself that, when wetting
+his lips with the cup of happiness, that he is not to drink to his
+liking of it: but what he cannot acquire is that total absence of all
+forethought for the minor cares of life, its provisions for the
+future, its changes and contingencies--hence he does not possess that
+easy and tranquil temperament so captivating to all within its
+influence; he has none of the careless _abandon_ of happiness, because
+even when happy he feels how short-lived must be his pleasure, and
+what a price he must pay for it. The thought of the future poisons the
+present, just as the dark cloud that gathers round the mountain-top
+makes the sunlight upon the plain seem cold and sickly.
+
+All the poor man's pleasures have taken such time and care in their
+preparation that they have lost their freshness ere they are tasted.
+The cook has sipped so frequently at the pottage, he will not eat of
+it when at table. The poor man sees life "_en papillotes_" before he
+sees it "dressed." The rich man sees it only in the resplendent blaze
+of its beauty, glowing with all the attraction that art can lend it,
+and wearing smiles put on for his own enjoyment. But if such be the
+case, and if the rich man, from the very circumstance of his position,
+imbibe habits and acquire a temperament possessing such charm and
+fascination, does he surrender nothing for all this? Alas! and alas!
+how many of the charities of life lie buried in the still waters of
+his apathetic nature! How many of the warm feelings of his heart are
+chilled for ever, for want of ground for their exercise! How can he
+sympathise who has never suffered? how can he console who has never
+grieved? There is nothing healthy in the placid mirror of that glassy
+lake; uncurled by a breeze, unruffled by a breath of passion, it wants
+the wholesome agitation of the breaking wave--the health-giving,
+bracing power of the conflicting element that stirs the heart within,
+and nerves it for a noble effort.
+
+All that he has of good within him is cramped by _convenance_ and
+fashion; for he who never feared the chance of fortune, trembles, with
+a coward's dread, before the sneer of the world. The poor man,
+however, only appeals to this test on a very different score. The
+"world" may prescribe to him the fashion of his hat, or the colour of
+his coat--it may dictate the _locale_ of his residence, and the style
+of his household, and he may, so far as in him lies, comply with a
+tyranny so absurd; but with the free sentiments of his nature--his
+honest pride, his feeling sympathy--with the open current of his warm
+affection he suffers no interference: of this no man shall be the
+arbiter. If, then, the shoals and quicksands of the world deprive him
+of that tranquil guise and placid look--the enviable gift of richer
+men--he has, in requital, the unrestricted use of those greater gifts
+that God has given him, untrammelled by man's opinion, uncurbed by
+the control of "the world."
+
+Each supports a tyranny after his own kind:--
+
+The rich man--above the dictates of fashion--subjects the thoughts of
+his mind and the meditations of his heart to the world's rule.
+
+The poor man--below it--keeps these for his prerogative, and has no
+slavery save in form.
+
+Happy the man who, amid all the seductions of wealth, and all the
+blandishments of fortune, can keep his heart and mind in the healthy
+exercise of its warm affections and its generous impulses. But still
+happier he, whose wealth, the native purity of his heart--can limit
+his desires to his means, and untrammelled by ambition, undeterred by
+fear of failure, treads the lowly but peaceful path in life, neither
+aspiring to be great, nor fearing to be humble.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR ST. PATRICK'S NIGHT.
+
+
+There is no cant offends me more than the oft-repeated criticisms on
+the changed condition of Ireland. How very much worse or how very much
+better we have become since this ministry, or that measure--what a
+deplorable falling off!--what a gratifying prospect! how poor! how
+prosperous! &c. &c. Now, we are exactly what and where we used to be:
+not a whit wiser nor better, poorer nor prouder. The union, the relief
+bill, the reform and corporation acts, have passed over us, like the
+summer breeze upon the calm water of a lake, ruffling the surface for
+a moment, but leaving all still and stagnant as before. Making new
+laws for the use of a people who would not obey the old ones, is much
+like the policy of altering the collar or the cuffs of a coat for a
+savage, who insists all the while on going naked. However, it amuses
+the gentlemen of St. Stephen's; and, I'm sure I'm not the man to
+quarrel with innocent pleasures.
+
+To me, looking back, as my Lord Brougham would say, from the period of
+a long life, I cannot perceive even the slightest difference in the
+appearance of the land, or the looks of its inhabitants. Dublin is the
+same dirty, ill-cared-for, broken-windowed, tumble-down concern it
+used to be--the country the same untilled, weed-grown, unfenced thing
+I remember it fifty years ago--the society pretty much the same
+mixture of shrewd lawyers, suave doctors, raw subalterns, and fat,
+old, greasy country gentlemen, waiting in town for remittances to
+carry them on to Cheltenham--that paradise of Paddies, and elysium of
+Galway _belles_. Our table-talk the old story, of who was killed last
+in Tipperary or Limerick, with the accustomed seasoning of the
+oft-repeated alibi that figures at every assizes, and is successful
+with every jury. These pleasant topics, tinted with the party colour
+of the speaker's politics, form the staple of conversation; and,
+"barring the wit," we are pretty much what our fathers were some half
+century earlier. Father Mathew, to be sure, has innovated somewhat on
+our ancient prejudices; but I find that what are called "the upper
+classes" are far too cultivated and too well-informed to follow a
+priest. A few weeks ago, I had a striking illustration of this fact
+brought before me, which I am disposed to quote the more willingly as
+it also serves to display the admirable constancy with which we adhere
+to our old and time-honoured habits. The morning of St. Patrick's day
+was celebrated in Dublin by an immense procession of teetotallers,
+who, with white banners, and whiter cheeks, paraded the city,
+evidencing in their cleanly but care-worn countenances, the benefits
+of temperance. On the same evening a gentleman--so speak the morning
+papers--got immoderately drunk at the ball in the Castle, and was
+carried out in a state of insensibility. Now, it is not for the sake
+of contrast I have mentioned this fact--my present speculation has
+another and very different object, and is simply this:--How comes it,
+that since time out of mind the same event has recurred on the
+anniversary of St. Patrick at the Irish court? When I was a boy I
+remember well "the gentleman who became so awfully drunk," &c. Every
+administration, from the Duke of Rutland downwards, has had its
+drunken gentleman on "St. Patrick's night." Where do they keep him all
+the year long?--what do they do with him?--are questions I continually
+am asking myself. Under what name and designation does he figure in
+the pension list? for of course I am not silly enough to suppose that
+a well-ordered government would depend on chance for functionaries
+like these. One might as well suppose they would calculate on some one
+improvising Sir William Betham, or extemporaneously performing "God
+save the Queen," on the state trumpet, in lieu of that amiable
+individual who distends his loyal cheeks on our great anniversaries.
+No, no. I am well aware he is a member of the household, or at least
+in the pay of the government. When the pope converts his Jew on Holy
+Thursday, the Catholic church have had ample time for preparation: the
+cardinals are on the look-out for weeks before, to catch one for his
+holiness--a good respectable hirsute Israelite, with a strong Judas
+expression to magnify the miracle. But then the Jew is passive in the
+affair, and has only to be converted patiently--whereas "the
+gentleman" has an active duty to discharge; he must imbibe sherry,
+iced punch, and champagne, at such a rate that he can be able to shock
+the company, before the rooms thin, with his intemperate excess.
+Besides, to give the devil--the pope, I mean--his Jew, they snare a
+fresh one every Easter. Now, I am fully persuaded that, at our Irish
+court, the same gentleman has performed the part for upwards of fifty
+years.
+
+At the ancient banquets it was always looked upon as a triumph of
+Amphitryonism when a guest or two died the day after of indigestion,
+from over eating. Now, is it not possible that our classic origin may
+have imparted to us the trait I am speaking of, and that "the
+gentleman" is retained as typical of our exceeding hilarity and
+consummate conviviality--an evidence to the "great unasked" that the
+festivities within doors are conducted on a scale of boundless
+profusion and extravagance--that the fountains from which honour
+flows, run also with champagne, and that punch and the peerage are to
+be seen bubbling from the same source.
+
+It is a sad thing to think that the gifted man, who has served his
+country so faithfully in this capacity for so long a period, must now
+be stricken in years. Time and rum must be telling upon him; and yet,
+what should we do were we to lose him?
+
+In the chapel of Maria Zell, in Styria, there is a portly figure of
+St. Somebody, with more consonants than I find it prudent to venture
+on from mere memory; the priest is rolling his eyes very benignly on
+the frequenters of the chapel, as they pass by the shrine he resides
+in. The story goes, that when the saint ceases winking, some great
+calamity will occur to the commune and its inhabitants. Now, the last
+time I saw him, he was in great vigour, ogled away with his accustomed
+energy, and even, I thought--perhaps it was a suspicion on my
+part--had actually strained his eyeballs into something like a squint,
+from actual eagerness to oblige his votaries--a circumstance happily
+of the less moment in our days, as a gifted countryman of ours could
+have remedied the defect in no time. But to return; my theory is, that
+when we lose our tipsy friend it's all up with us; "Birnam wood will
+then have come to Dunsinane;" and what misfortunes may befal us, Sir
+Harcourt Lees may foresee, but I confess myself totally unable to
+predicate.
+
+Were I the viceroy, I'd not sleep another night in the island. I'd
+pack up the regalia, send for Anthony Blake to take charge of the
+country, and start for Liverpool in the mail-packet.
+
+Happily, however, such an event may be still distant; and although the
+Austrians have but one Metternich, we may find a successor to our
+"Knight of St. Patrick."
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR "GENTLEMAN JOCKS."
+
+
+"The Honourable Fitzroy Shuffleton," I quote _The Morning Post_, "who
+rode Bees-wing, came in a winner amid deafening cheers. Never was a
+race better contested; and although, when passing the distance-post,
+the Langar colt seemed to have the best of it, yet such was Mr.
+Shuffleton's tact and jockeyship, that he shot a-head in advance of
+his adversary, and came in first." I omit the passages descriptive of
+the peculiar cleverness displayed by this gifted gentleman. I omit
+also that glorious outbreak of newspaper eloquence, in which the
+delight of his friends is expressed--the tears of joy from his
+sisters--the cambric handkerchiefs that floated in the air--the
+innumerable and reiterated cries of "Well done!--he's a trump!--the
+right sort!" &c. &c., so profusely employed by the crowd, because I am
+fully satisfied with what general approbation such proofs of ability
+are witnessed.
+
+[Illustration: Gentlemen Jocks.]
+
+We are a great nation, and nowhere is our greatness more conspicuous
+than in the education of our youth. The young Frenchman seems to
+fulfil his destiny, when, having drawn on a pair of the most
+tight-fitting kid gloves, of that precise shade of colour so approved
+of by Madame Laffarge, he saunters forth on the Boulevard de Gand, or
+lounges in the _coulisse_ of the opera.
+
+The German, whose contempt not only extends to glove-leather, but
+clean hands, betakes himself early in life to the way he should go,
+and from which, to do him justice, he never shows any inclination to
+depart. A meerschaum some three feet long, and a tobacco bag like a
+school-boy's satchel, supply his wants in life. The dreamy visions of
+the unreal woes, and the still more unreal greatness of his country,
+form the pabulum for his thoughts; and he has no other ambition, for
+some half dozen years of his life, than to boast his utter
+indifference to kings and clean water.
+
+Now, we manage matters somewhat better. Our young men, from the very
+outset of their career, are admirable jockeys; and if by any fatality,
+like the dreadful revolution of France, our nobles should be compelled
+to emigrate from their native land, instead of teaching mathematics
+and music, the small sword and quadrilles, we shall have the
+satisfaction of knowing that we supply stable-boys to the whole of
+Europe.
+
+Whatever other people may say or think, I put a great value on this
+equestrian taste. I speak not here of the manly nature of horse
+exercise--of the noble and vigorous pursuits of the hunting field. No;
+I direct my observations solely to the heroes of Ascot and Epsom--of
+Doncaster and Goodwood. I only speak of those whose pleasure it is to
+read no book save the Racing Calendar, and frequent no lounge but
+Tattersall's; who esteem the stripes of a racing-jacket more
+honourable than the ribbon of the Bath, and look to a well-timed
+"hustle" or "a shake" as the climax of human ability. These are fine
+fellows, and I prize them. But if it be not only praiseworthy, but
+pleasant, to ride for the Duke's cup at Goodwood, or the Corinthian's
+at the Curragh, why not extend the sphere of the utility, and become
+as amiable in private as they are conspicuous in public life?
+
+We have seen them in silk jackets of various hues, with leathers and
+tops of most accurate fitting, turn out amid the pelting of a most
+pitiless storm, to ride some three miles of spongy turf, at the hazard
+of their necks, and the almost certainty of a rheumatic fever; and
+why, donning the same or some similar costume, will they not perform
+the office of postillion, when their fathers, or mayhap, some
+venerated aunt, is returning by the north road to an antiquated
+mansion in Yorkshire? The pace, to be sure, is not so fast--but it
+compensates in safety what it loses in speed--the assemblage around is
+not so numerous, or the excitement so great; but filial tenderness is
+a nobler motive than the acclamations of a mob. In fact, the parallel
+presents all the advantages on one side: and the jockey is as inferior
+to the postillion as the fitful glare of an _ignis-fatuus_ is to the
+steady brilliancy of a gas-lamp.
+
+An Englishman has a natural pride in the navy of his country--our
+wooden walls are a glorious boast; but, perhaps, after all, there is
+nothing more captivating in the whole detail of the service, than the
+fact that even the highest and the noblest in the land has no royal
+road to its promotion, but, beginning at the very humblest step, he
+must work his way through every grade and every rank, like his
+comrades around him. Many there are now living who remember Prince
+William, as he was called--late William the Fourth, of glorious
+memory--sitting in the stern seats of a gig, his worn jacket and
+weather-beaten hat attesting that even the son of a king had no
+immunity from the hardships of the sea. This is a proud thought for
+Englishmen, and well suited to gratify their inherent loyalty and
+their sturdy independence. Now, might we not advantageously extend the
+influence of such examples, by the suggestion I have thrown out above?
+If a foreigner be now struck by hearing, as he walks through the
+dockyard at Plymouth, that the little middy who touches his hat with
+such obsequious politeness, is the Marquis of ----, or the Earl of
+----, with some fifty thousand per annum, how much more astonished
+will he be on learning that he owes the rapidity with which he
+traversed the last stage to his having been driven by Lord Wilton--or
+that the lengthy proportions, so dexterously gathered up in the
+saddle, belong to an ex-ambassador from St. Petersburgh. How surprised
+would he feel, too, that instead of the low habits and coarse tastes
+he would look for in that condition in life, he would now see elegant
+and accomplished gentlemen, sipping a glass of curacoa at the end of a
+stage; or, mayhap, offering a pinch of snuff from a box worth five
+hundred guineas. What a fascinating conception would he form of our
+country from such examples as this! and how insensibly would not only
+the polished taste and the high-bred depravity of the better classes
+be disseminated through the country; but, by an admirable reciprocity,
+the coarsest vices of the lowest would be introduced among the highest
+in the land. The race-course has done much for this, but the road
+would do far more. Slang is now but the language of the _elite_--it
+would then become the vulgar tongue; and, in fact, there is no
+predicting the amount of national benefit likely to arise from an
+amalgamation of all ranks in society, where the bond of union is so
+honourable in its nature. Cultivate, then, ye youth of England--ye
+scions of the Tudors and the Plantagenets--with all the blood of all
+the Howards in your veins--cultivate the race-course--study the
+stable--read the Racing Calendar. What are the precepts of Bacon or
+the learning of Boyle compared to the pedigree of Grey Momus, or the
+reason that Tramp "is wrong?" "A dark horse" is a far more interesting
+subject of inquiry than an eclipse of the moon, and a judge of pace a
+much more exalted individual than a judge of assize.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR YOUNGER SONS.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Douglas Jerrold, in his amusing book, "Cakes and Ale," quotes an
+exquisite essay written to prove the sufficiency of thirty pounds
+a-year for all a man's daily wants and comforts--allowing at least
+five shillings a quarter for the conversion of the Jews--and in which
+every outlay is so nicely calculated, that it must be wilful
+eccentricity if the pauper gentleman, at the end of the year, either
+owes a shilling or has one. To say the least of it, this is close
+shaving; and, as I detest experimental philosophy, I'd rather not try
+it. At the same time, in this age of general glut, when all
+professions are overstocked--when you might pave the Strand with
+parsons' skulls, and thatch your barn with the surplus of the college
+of physicians; when there are neither waste lands to till and give us
+ague and typhus, nor war to thin us--what are we to do? The
+subdivision of labour in every walk in life has been carried to its
+utmost limits: if it takes nine tailors to make a man, it takes nine
+men to make a needle. Even in the learned professions, as they are
+called, this system is carried out; and as you have a lawyer for
+equity, another for the Common Pleas, a third for the Old Bailey, &c.,
+so your doctor, now-a-days, has split up his art, and one man takes
+charge of your teeth, another has the eye department, another the ear,
+a fourth looks after your corns; so that, in fact, the complex
+machinery of your structure strikes you as admirably adapted to give
+employment to an ingenious and anxious population, who, until our
+present civilization, never dreamed of morselling out mankind for
+their benefit.
+
+As to commerce, our late experiences have chiefly pointed to the
+pleasure of trading with nations who will not pay their debts,--like
+the Yankees. There is, then, little encouragement in that quarter.
+What then remains I scarcely know. The United Services are pleasant,
+but poor things by way of a provision for life. Coach-driving, that
+admirable refuge for the destitute, has been smashed by the railroads;
+and there is a kind of prejudice against a man of family sweeping the
+crossings. For my own part, I lean to something dignified and
+respectable--something that does not compromise "the cloth," and
+which, without being absolutely a sinecure, never exacts any undue or
+extraordinary exertion,--driving a hearse, for instance: even this,
+however, is greatly run upon; and the cholera, at its departure, threw
+very many out of employment. However, the question is, what can a man
+of small means do with his son? Short whist is a very snug thing--if a
+man have natural gifts,--that happy conformation of the fingers, that
+ample range of vision, that takes in everything around. But I must
+not suppose these by any means general--and I legislate for the mass.
+The turf has also the same difficulties,--so has toad-eating; indeed
+these three walks might be included among the learned professions.
+
+As to railroads, I'm sick of hearing of them for the last three years.
+Every family in the empire has at least one civil engineer within its
+precincts; and I'm confident, if their sides were as hard as their
+skulls, you could make sleepers for the whole Grand Junction by merely
+decimating the unemployed.
+
+Tax-collecting does, to be sure, offer some little prospect; but that
+won't last. Indeed, the very working of the process will limit the
+advantages of this opening,--gradually converting all the payers into
+paupers. Now I have meditated long and anxiously on the subject,
+conversing with others whose opportunities of knowing the world were
+considerable, but never could I find that ingenuity opened any new
+path, without its being so instantaneously overstocked that
+competition alone denied every chance of success.
+
+One man of original genius I did, indeed, come upon, and his career
+had been eminently successful. He was a Belgian physician, who, having
+in vain attempted all the ordinary modes of obtaining practice,
+collected together the little residue of his fortune, and sailed for
+Barbadoes, where he struck out for himself the following singularly
+new and original plan:--He purchased all the disabled, sick, and
+ailing negroes that he could find; every poor fellow whose case seemed
+past hope, but yet to his critical eye was still curable, these he
+bought up; they were, of course, dead bargains. The masters were
+delighted to get rid of them--they were actually "eating their heads
+off;" but the doctor knew, that though they looked somewhat "groggy,"
+still there was a "go" in them yet.
+
+By care, skill, and good management, they recovered under his hands,
+and frequently were re-sold to the original proprietor, who was
+totally unconscious that the sleek and shining nigger before him had
+been the poor, decrepid, sickly creature of some weeks before.
+
+The humanity of this proceeding is self-evident: a word need not be
+said more on that subject. But it was no less profitable than
+merciful. The originator of the plan retired from business with a
+large fortune, amassed, too, in an inconceivably short space of time.
+The shrewdest proprietor of a fast coach never could throw a more
+critical eye over a new wheeler or a broken-down leader, than did he
+on the object of his professional skill; detecting at a glance the
+extent of his ailments, and calculating, with a Babbage-like accuracy,
+the cost of keep, physic, and attendance, and setting them off, in his
+mind, against the probable price of the sound man. What consummate
+skill was here! Not merely, like Brodie or Crampton, anticipating the
+possible recovery of the patient, but estimating the extent of the
+restoration--the time it would take--ay, the very number of basins of
+chicken-broth and barley-gruel that he would devour, _ad interim_.
+This was the cleverest physician I ever knew. The present altered
+condition of West Indian property has, however, closed this opening to
+fortune, in which, after all, nothing short of first-rate ability
+could have ensured success.
+
+I have just read over the preceding "nut" to my old friend, Mr.
+Synnet, of Mulloglass, whose deep knowledge of the world makes him no
+mean critic on such a subject. His words are these:--
+
+"There is some truth in what you remark--the world is too full of us.
+There is, however, a very nice walk in life much neglected."
+
+"And what may that be?" said I, eagerly.
+
+"The mortgagee," replied he, sententiously.
+
+"I don't perfectly comprehend."
+
+"Well, well! what I mean is this: suppose, now, you have only a couple
+of thousand pounds to leave your son--maybe, you have not more than a
+single thousand--now, my advice is, not to squander your fortune in
+any such absurdity as a learned profession, a commission in the Line,
+or any other miserable existence, but just look about you, in the west
+of Ireland, for the fellow that has the best house, the best cellar,
+the best cook, and the best stable. He is sure to want money, and will
+be delighted to get a loan. Lend it to him: make hard terms, of
+course. For this--as you are never to be paid--the obligation of your
+forbearance will be the greater. Now, mark me, from the day the deed
+is signed, you have snug quarters in Galway, not only in your friend's
+house, but among all his relations--Blakes, Burkes, Bodkins, Kirwans,
+&c., to no end; you have the run of the whole concern--the best of
+living, great drink, and hunting in abundance. You must talk of the
+loan now and then, just to jog their memory; but be always 'too much
+the gentleman' to ask for your money; and it will even go hard, but
+from sheer popularity, they will make you member for the county. This
+is the only new thing, in the way of a career, I know of, and I have
+great pleasure in throwing out the suggestion for the benefit of
+younger sons."
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE PENAL CODE.
+
+
+It has often struck me that the monotony of occupation is a heavier
+infliction than the monotony of reflection. The same dull round of
+duty, which while it demands a certain amount of labour, excludes all
+opportunity of thought, making man no better than the piston of a
+steam-engine, is a very frightful and debasing process. Whereas,
+however much there may be of suffering in solitude, our minds are not
+imprisoned; our thoughts, unchained and unfettered, stroll far away to
+pleasant pasturages; we cross the broad blue sea, and tread the ferny
+mountain-side, and live once more the sunny hours of boyhood; or we
+build up in imagination a peaceful and happy future.
+
+That the power of fancy and the play of genius are not interrupted by
+the still solitude of the prison, I need only quote Cervantes, whose
+immortal work was accomplished during the tedious hours of a
+captivity, unrelieved by one office of friendship, uncheered by one
+solitary ray of hope.
+
+Taking this view of the matter, it will be at once perceived how much
+more severe a penalty solitary confinement must be, to the man of
+narrow mind and limited resources of thought, than to him of
+cultivated understanding and wider range of mental exercise. In the
+one case, it is a punishment of the most terrific kind--and nothing
+can equal that awful lethargy of the soul, that wraps a man as in a
+garment, shrouding him from the bright world without, and leaving him
+nought save the darkness of his gloomy nature to brood over. In the
+other, there is something soothing amid all the melancholy of the
+state, in the unbroken soaring of thought, that, lifting man above the
+cares and collisions of daily life, bear him far away to the rich
+paradise of his mind-made treasures--peopling space with images of
+beauty--and leave him to dream away existence amid the scenes and
+features he loved to gaze on.
+
+Now, to turn for the moment from this picture, let us consider whether
+our government is wise in this universal application of a punishment,
+which, while it operates so severely in one case, may really be
+regarded as a boon in the other.
+
+The healthy peasant, who rises with the sun, and breathes the free air
+of his native hills, may and will feel all the infliction of
+confinement, which, while it chains his limbs, stagnates his
+faculties. Not so the sedentary and solitary man of letters. Your cell
+becomes _his_ study: the window may be somewhat narrower--the lattice,
+that was wont to open to the climbing honeysuckle, may now be barred
+with its iron stanchions; but he soon forgets this. "His mind to him a
+palace is," wherein he dwells at peace. Now, to put them on something
+of a par, I have a suggestion to make to the legislature, which I
+shall condense as briefly as possible. Never sentence your man of
+education, whatever his offence, to solitary confinement; but condemn
+him to dine out, in Dublin, for seven or fourteen years--or, in murder
+cases, for the term of his natural life. For slight offences, a week's
+dinners, and a few evening parties might be sufficient--while old
+offenders and bad cases, might be sent to the north side of the city.
+
+It may be objected to this--that insanity, which so often occurs in
+the one case, would supervene in the other; but I rather think not. My
+own experience could show many elderly people of both sexes, long
+inured to this state, who have only fallen into a sullen and apathetic
+fatuity; but who, bating deafness and a look of dogged stupidity, are
+still reasoning beings--what they once were, it is hard to say.
+
+But I take the man who, for some infraction of the law, is suddenly
+carried away from his home and friends--the man of mind, of reading,
+and reflection. Imagine him, day after day, beholding the everlasting
+saddle of mutton--the eternal three chickens, with the tongue in the
+midst of them; the same travesty of French cookery that pervades the
+side-dishes--the hot sherry, the sour Moselle: think of him, eating
+out his days through these, unchanged, unchangeable--with the same
+_cortege_ of lawyers and lawyers' wives--doctors, male and
+female--surgeons, subalterns, and, mayhap, attorneys: think of the old
+jokes he has been hearing from childhood still ringing in his ears,
+accompanied by the same laugh which he has tracked from its burst in
+boyhood to its last cackle in dotage: behold him, as he sits amid the
+same young ladies, in pink and blue, and the same elderly ones, in
+scarlet and purple; see him, as he watches every sign and pass-word
+that have marked these dinners for the long term of his sentence, and
+say if his punishment be not indeed severe.
+
+Then think how edifying the very example of his suffering, as, with
+pale cheek and lustreless eye--silent, sad, and lonely--he sits there!
+How powerfully such a warning must speak to others, who, from accident
+or misfortune, may be momentarily thrown in his society.
+
+The suggestion, I own, will demand a much more ample detail, and
+considerable modification. Among other precautions, for instance, more
+than one convict should not be admitted to any table, lest they might
+fraternize together, and become independent of the company in mutual
+intercourse, &c.
+
+These may all, however, be carefully considered hereafter: the
+principle is the only thing I would insist on for the present, and now
+leave the matter in the hands of our rulers.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE OLD.
+
+
+Of all the virtues which grace and adorn the inhabitants of these
+islands, I know of none which can in anywise be compared with the deep
+and profound veneration we show to old age. Not content with paying it
+that deference and respect so essentially its due, we go even further,
+and by a courteous adulation would impose upon it the notion, that
+years have not detracted from the gifts which were so conspicuous in
+youth, and that the winter of life is as full of promise and
+performance, as the most budding hours of spring-time.
+
+Walk through the halls of Greenwich and Chelsea--or, if the excursion
+be too far for you, as a Dubliner, stroll down to the Old Man's
+Hospital, and cast your eyes on those venerable "fogies," as they are
+sometimes irreverently called, and look with what a critical and
+studious politeness the state has invested every detail of their daily
+life. Not fed, housed, or clothed like the "debris" of humanity, to
+whom the mere necessaries of existence were meted out, but actually a
+species of flattering illusion is woven around them. They are dressed
+in a uniform; wear a strange, quaint military costume; are officered
+and inspected like soldiers; mount guard; answer roll-call, and mess
+as of yore.
+
+They are permitted, from time to time, to clean and burnish pieces of
+ordnance, old, time-worn, and useless as themselves, and are marched
+certain short and suitable distances to and from their dining-hall,
+with all the "pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war." I like
+all this. There is something of good and kindly feeling in
+perpetuating the delusion that has lasted for so many years of life,
+and making the very resting-place of their meritorious services recall
+to them the details of those duties, for the performance of which they
+have reaped their country's gratitude.
+
+The same amiable feeling, the same grateful spirit of respect, would
+seem, from time to time, to actuate the different governments that
+wield our destinies, in their promotions to the upper house.
+
+Some old, feeble, partizan of the ministry, who has worn himself to a
+skeleton by late sittings; dried, like a potted herring, by committee
+labour; hoarse with fifty years' cheering of his party, and deaf from
+the cries of "divide" and "adjourn" that have been ringing in his ears
+for the last cycle of his existence, is selected for promotion to the
+peerage. He was eloquent in his day, too, perhaps; but that day is
+gone by. His speech upon a great question was once a momentous event,
+but now his vote is mumbled in tones scarce audible.--Gratefully
+mindful of his "has been," his party provide him with an asylum,
+where the residue of his days may be passed in peace and pleasantness.
+
+Careful not to break the spell that has bound him to life, they
+surround him with some semblance of his former state, suited in all
+respects to his age, his decrepitude, and his debility; they pour
+water upon the leaves of his politics, and give him a weak and
+pleasant beverage, that can never irritate his nerves, nor destroy his
+slumbers. Some insignificant bills--some unimportant appeals--some
+stray fragments that fall from the tables of sturdier politicians, are
+his daily diet; and he dozes away the remainder of life, happy and
+contented in the simple and beautiful delusion that he is legislating
+and ruling--just as warrantable the while, as his compeer of Chelsea,
+in deeming his mock parades the forced marches of the Peninsula, and
+his Sunday guards the dispositions for a Toulouse or a Waterloo.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE ART UNION.
+
+
+The battle between the "big and little-endians" in Gulliver, was
+nothing to the fight between the Destructives and Conservatives of the
+Irish Art Union. A few months since the former party deciding that the
+engraved plate of Mr. Burton's picture should be broken up; the latter
+protesting against the Vandalism of destroying a first-rate work of
+art, and preventing the full triumph of the artist's genius, in the
+circulation of a print so creditable to himself and to his country.
+
+The great argument of the Destructives was this:--We are the devoted
+friends of art--we love it--we glory in it--we cherish it: yea, we
+even give a guinea a-year a-piece for the encouragement of a society
+established for its protection and promotion;--this society pledging
+themselves that we shall have in return--what think ye?--the immortal
+honour of raising a school of painting in our native country?--the
+conscientious sense of a high-souled patriotism?--the prospect of
+future estimation at the hands of a posterity who are to benefit by
+our labours? Not at all: nothing of all this. We are far too great
+materialists for such shadowy pleasures; we are to receive a plate,
+whose value is in the direct ratio of its rarity, "which shall
+certainly be of more than the amount of our subscription," and, maybe,
+of five times that sum. The fewer the copies issued, the rarer (_i.
+e._, the dearer) each impression. We are the friends of
+art--therefore, we say, smash the copper-plate, destroy every vestige
+of the graver's art, we are supplied, and heaven knows to what price
+these engravings may not subsequently rise!
+
+[Illustration: "This is a Rembrandt."]
+
+Now, I like these people. There is something bold, something masterly,
+something decided, in their coming forward and fighting the battle on
+its true grounds. There is no absurd affectation about the circulation
+of a clever picture disseminating in remote and scarce-visited
+districts the knowledge of a great man and a great work; there is no
+prosy nonsense about encouraging the genius of our own country, and
+showing with pride to her prouder sister, that we are not unworthy to
+contend in the race with her. Nothing of this.--They resolve
+themselves, by an open and candid admission, into a committee of
+printsellers, and they cry with one voice--"No free trade in 'The
+Blind Girl'--no sliding scale--no fixed duty--nothing save absolute,
+actual prohibition!" It is with pride I confess myself of this party:
+perish art! down with painting! to the ground with every effort of
+native genius! but keep up the price of our engraving, which, with the
+rapid development of Mr. Burton's talent, may yet reach ten, nay,
+twenty guineas for an impression. But in the midst of my enthusiasm, a
+still small voice of fear is whispering ever:--Mayhap this gifted man
+may live to eclipse the triumphs of his youthful genius: it may be,
+that, as he advances in life, his talents, matured by study and
+cultivation, may ascend to still higher flights, and this, his early
+work, be merely the beacon-light that attracted men in the outset of
+his career, and only be esteemed as the first throes of his intellect.
+What is to be done in this case? It is true we have suppressed "The
+Blind Girl;" we have smashed _that_ plate; but how shall we prevent
+him from prosecuting those studies that already are leading him to the
+first rank of his profession? Disgust at our treatment may do much;
+but yet, his mission may suggest higher thoughts than are assailable
+by us and our measures. I fear, now, that but one course is open; and
+it is with sorrow I confess, that, however indisposed to the shedding
+of blood, however unsuited by my nature and habits to murderous deeds,
+I see nothing for us but--to smash Mr. Burton.
+
+By accepting this suggestion, not only will the engravings, but the
+picture itself, attain an increased value. If dead men are not
+novelists, neither are they painters; and Mr. Burton, it is expected,
+will prove no exception to the rule. Get rid of him, then, at once,
+and by all means. Let this resolution be brought forward at the next
+general meeting, by any leader of the Destructive party, and I pledge
+myself to second and defend it, by every argument, used with such
+force and eloquence for the destruction of the copper-plate. I am sure
+the talented gentleman himself will, when he is put in possession of
+our motives, offer no opposition to so natural a desire on our part,
+but will afford every facility in his power for being, as the war-cry
+of the party has it, "broken up and destroyed."
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A NUT FOR THE KINGSTOWN RAILWAY.
+
+
+If the wise Calif who studied mankind by sitting on the bridge at
+Bagdad, had lived in our country, and in our times, he doubtless would
+have become a subscriber to the Kingstown railway. There, for the
+moderate sum of some ten or twelve pounds per annum, he might have
+indulged his peculiar vein, while wafted pleasantly through the air,
+and obtained a greater insight into character and individuality,
+inasmuch as the objects of his investigation would be all sitting
+shots, at least for half an hour. Segur's "Quatre Ages de la Vie"
+never marked out mankind like the half-hour trains. To the uninitiated
+and careless observer, the company would appear a mixed and
+heterogeneous mass of old and young, of both sexes--some sickly, some
+sulky, some solemn, and some shy. Classification of them would be
+deemed impossible. Not so, however; for, as to the ignorant the
+section of a mountain would only present some confused heap of stone
+and gravel, clay and marl; to the geologist, strata of divers kinds,
+layers of various ages, would appear, all indicative of features, and
+teeming with interests, of which the other knew nothing: so, to the
+studious observer, this seeming commixture of men, this tangled web of
+humanity, unravels itself before him, and he reads them with pleasure
+and with profit.
+
+So thoroughly distinctive are the classes, as marked out by the hour
+of the day, that very little experience would enable the student to
+pronounce upon the travellers--while so striking are the features of
+each class, that "given one second-class traveller, to find out the
+contents of a train," would be the simplest problem in algebra. As for
+myself, I never work the equation: the same instinct that enabled
+Cuvier, when looking at a broken molar tooth, to pronounce upon the
+habits, the size, the mode of life and private opinions of some
+antediluvian mammoth, enables me at a glance to say--"This is the
+apothecaries' train--here we are with the Sandycoves."
+
+You are an early riser--some pleasant proverb about getting a worm for
+breakfast, instilled into you in childhood, doubtless inciting you:
+and you hasten down to the station, just in time to be too late for
+the eight o'clock train to Dublin. This is provoking; inasmuch as no
+scrutiny has ever enabled any traveller to pry into the habits and
+peculiarities of the early voyager. Well, you lounge about till the
+half-after, and then the _conveniency_ snorts by, whisks round at the
+end, takes a breathing canter alone for a few hundred yards, and comes
+back with a grunt, to resume its old drudgery. A general scramble for
+places ensues--doors bang--windows are shut and opened--a bell
+rings--and, snort! snort! ugh, ugh, away you go. Now--would you
+believe it?--every man about you, whatever be his age, his size, his
+features, or complexion, has a little dirty blue bag upon his knees,
+filled with something. They all know each other--grin, smile, smirk,
+but don't shake hands--a polite reciprocity--as they are none of the
+cleanest: cut little dry jokes about places and people unknown, and
+mix strange phrases here and there through the dialogue, about
+"_demurrers_ and _declarations_, traversing _in prox_ and _quo
+warranto_." You perceive it at once--it is very dreadful; but they are
+all attorneys. The ways of Providence are, however, inscrutable; and
+you arrive in safety in Dublin.
+
+Now, I am not about to take you back; for at this hour of the morning
+you have nothing to reward your curiosity. But, with your leave, we'll
+start from Kingstown again at nine. Here comes a fresh, jovial-looking
+set of fellows. They have bushy whiskers, and geraniums in the
+button-hole of their coats. They are traders of various sorts--men of
+sugar, soap, and sassafras--Macintoshes, molasses, mouse-traps--train-oil
+and tabinets. They have, however, half an acre of agricultural
+absurdity, divided into meadow and tillage, near the harbour, and they
+talk bucolic all the way. Blindfold them all, and set them loose, and
+you will catch them groping their way down Dame-street in half an
+hour.
+
+91/2.--The housekeepers' train. Fat, middle-aged women, with cotton
+umbrellas--black stockings with blue _fuz_ on them; meek-looking men,
+officiating as husbands, and an occasional small child, in plaid and
+the small-pox.
+
+10.--The lawyers' train. Fierce-looking, dictatorial, categorical
+faces look out of the window at the weather, with the stern glance
+they are accustomed to bestow on the jury, and stare at the sun in the
+face, as though to say--"None of your prevarication with _me_; answer
+me, on your oath, is it to rain or not?"
+
+101/2.--The return of the doctors. They have been out on a morning beat,
+and are going home merry or mournful, as the case may be. Generally
+the former, as the sad ones take to the third class. These are jocose,
+droll dogs; the restraint of physic over, they unbend, and chat
+pleasantly, unless there happen to be a sickly gentleman present, when
+the instinct of the craft is too strong for them; and they talk of
+their wonderful cures of Mr. Popkins's knee, or Mr. Murphy's elbow, in
+a manner very edifying.
+
+11.--The men of wit and pleasure. These are, I confess, difficult of
+detection; but the external signs are very flash waistcoats, and
+guard-chains, black canes, black whiskers, and strong Dublin accents.
+A stray governess or two will be found in this train. They travel in
+pairs, and speak a singular tongue, which a native of Paris might
+suppose to be Irish.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE DOCTORS.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Should you ask, Who is the greatest tyrant of modern days? Mr.
+O'Connell will tell you--Nicholas, or Espartero. An Irish Whig member
+will reply, Dan himself. An _attache_ at an embassy would say, Lord
+Palmerston,--"'Tis Cupid ever makes us slaves!" A French _depute_ of
+the Thiers party will swear it is Louis Philippe. Count D'Orsay will
+say, his tailor. But I will tell you it is none of these: the most
+pitiless autocrat of the nineteenth century is--the President of the
+College of Physicians.
+
+Of all the unlimited powers possessed by irresponsible man, I know of
+nothing at all equal to his, who, _mero motu_, of his own free will
+and caprice, can at any moment call a meeting of the dread body at
+whose head he stands, assemble the highest dignitaries of the
+land--archbishops and bishops, chancellors, chief barons, and chief
+remembrancers--to listen to the minute anatomy of a periwinkle's
+mustachios, or some singular provision in the physiology of a crab's
+breeches-pocket: all of whom, _luto non obstante_, must leave their
+peaceful homes and warm hearths to "assist" at a meeting in which,
+nine cases out of ten, they take as much interest as a Laplander does
+in the health of the Grand Lama; or Mehemet Ali in the proceedings of
+Father Mathew.
+
+By nine o'clock the curtain rises, displaying a goodly mob of medical
+celebrities: the old ones characterised by the astute look and
+searching glance, long and shrewd practice in the world's little
+failings ever confers; the young ones, anxious, wide awake, and
+fidgetty, not quite satisfied with what services they may be called on
+to render in candle-snuffing and crucible work; while between both is
+your transition M.D.--your medical tadpole, with some practice and
+more pretension, his game being to separate from the great unfeed, and
+rub his shoulders among the "dons" of the art, from whose rich board
+certain crumbs are ever falling, in the shape of country jaunts, small
+operations, and smaller consultings. Through these promiscuously walk
+the "_gros bonnets_" of the church and the bar, with now and then--if
+the scene be Ireland--a humane Viceroy, and a sleepy commander of the
+forces. Round the room are glass cases filled with what at first blush
+you might be tempted to believe were the _ci-devant_ professors of the
+college, embalmed, or in spirits; but on nearer inspection you detect
+to be a legion of apes, monkeys, and ourangoutangs, standing or
+sitting in grotesque attitudes. Among them, pleasingly diversified,
+you discover murderers' heads, parricides' busts in plaster,
+bicephalous babies, and shapeless monsters with two rows of teeth.
+Here you are regaled with refreshments "with what appetite you may,"
+and chat away the time, until the tinkle of a small bell announces the
+approach of the lecture.
+
+For the most part, this is a good, drowsy, sleep-disposing affair of
+an hour long, written to show, that from some peculiarity lately
+discovered in the cerebral vessels, man's natural attitude was to
+stand on his head; or that, from chemical analysis just invented, it
+was clear, if we live to the age of four hundred years and upwards,
+part of our duodenum will be coated with a delicate aponeurosis of
+sheet iron.
+
+Now, with propositions of this kind I never find fault. I am satisfied
+to play my part as a biped in this breathing world, and to go out of
+it too, without any rivalry with Methuselah. But I'll tell you with
+what I am by no means satisfied,--nor shall I ever feel satisfied--nor
+do I entertain any sentiment within a thousand miles of gratitude to
+the man who tells me, that food--beef and mutton, veal, lamb, &c.--are
+nothing but gas and glue. The wretch who found out the animalculae in
+clean water was bad enough. There are simple-minded people who
+actually take this as a beverage: what must be their feelings now, if
+they reflect on the myriads of small things like lobsters; with claws
+and tails, all fighting and swallowing each other, that are disporting
+in their stomachs? But only think of him who converts your cutlet into
+charcoal, and your steak into starch! It may stick to your ribs after
+that, to be sure; but will it not stick harder to your conscience?
+With what pleasure do you help yourself to your haunch, when the
+conviction is staring you in the face, that what seems venison is but
+adipose matter and azote? That you are only making a great Nassau
+balloon of yourself when you are dreaming of hard condition, and
+preparing yourself for the fossil state when blowing the froth off
+your porter.
+
+Of latter years the great object of science would appear to be an
+earnest desire to disenchant us from all the agreeable and pleasant
+dreams we have formed of life, and to make man insignificant without
+making him humble. Thus, one class of philosophers labour hard to
+prove that manhood is but monkeyhood--that a slight adaptation of the
+tail to the customs of civilized life has enabled us to be seated;
+while the invention of looking-glasses, bear's grease, cold cream, and
+macassar, have cultivated our looks into the present fashion.
+
+Another, having felt over our skulls, gravely asserts, "There is a
+_vis a tergo_ of wickedness implanted in us, that must find vent in
+murder and bloodshed." While the magnetic folk would make us believe
+that we are merely a kind of ambulating electric-machine, to be
+charged at will by the first M. Lafontaine we meet with, and mayhap
+explode from over-pressure.
+
+While such liberties are taken with us without, the case is worse
+within. Our circulation is a hydraulic problem; our stomach is a
+mill--a brewing vat--a tanner's yard--a crucible, or a retort. You
+yourself, in all the resplendent glory of your braided frock, and your
+decoration of the Guelph, are nothing but an aggregate of mechanical
+and chemical inventions, as often going wrong as right; and your wife,
+in the pride of her Parisian bonnet, and robe _a la Victorine_, is
+only gelatine and adipose substance, phosphate of lime, and a little
+arsenic.
+
+Now, let me ask, what remains to us of life, if we are to be robbed of
+every fascination and charm of existence in this fashion? And
+again--has medical science so exhausted all the details of practical
+benefit to mankind, that it is justified in these far-west
+explorations into the realms of soaring fancy, or the gloomy depths of
+chemical analysis? Hydrophobia, consumption, and tetanus are not so
+curable that we can afford to waste our sympathies on chimpanzees:
+nor is this world so pleasant that we must deny ourselves the
+advantage of all its illusions, and throw away the garment in which
+Nature has clothed her nakedness. No, no. There was sound philosophy
+in Peter, in the "Tale of a Tub," who assured his guests that whatever
+their frail senses might think to the contrary, the hard crusts were
+excellent and tender mutton; but I see neither rhyme nor reason in
+convincing us, that amid all the triumphs of turtle and white bait,
+Ardennes ham and _pate de Strasbourg_, our food is merely coke and
+glue, roach, lime, starch, and magnesia.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE ARCHITECTS.
+
+
+"God made the country," said the poet: but in my heart I believe he
+might have added--"The devil made architects." Few cities--I scarcely
+know of one--can boast of such environs as Dublin. The scenery,
+diversified in its character, possesses attraction for almost every
+taste: the woody glade--the romantic river--the wild and barren
+mountain--the cultivated valley--the waving upland--the bold and
+rocky coast, broken with promontory and island--are all to be found,
+even within a few miles of the capital; while, in addition, the nature
+of our climate confers a verdure and a freshness unequalled, imparting
+a depth and colour to the landscape equal to the beauty of its
+outline.
+
+Whether you travel inland or coastwise, the country presents a
+succession of sites for building, there being no style of house for
+which a suitable spot cannot readily be found; and yet, with all this,
+the perverse taste of man has contrived, by incongruous and
+ill-conceived architecture, to mar almost every point of view, and
+destroy every picturesque feature of the landscape.
+
+The liberty of the subject is a bright and glorious prerogative; and
+nowhere should its exercise be more freely conceded than in those
+arrangements an individual makes for his own domestic comfort, and the
+happiness of his home.
+
+That one man likes a room in which three people form a crowd, and that
+another prefers an apartment spacious as Exeter Hall, is a matter of
+individual taste, with which the world has nothing whatever to do.
+Your neighbour in the valley may like a cottage not larger than a
+sugar-hogshead, with rats for company and beetles for bed-fellows;
+your friend on the hill-side may build himself an imaginary castle,
+with armour for furniture, and antique weapons for ornaments;--with
+all this you have no concern--no more than with his banker's book, or
+the thoughts of his bosom: but should the one or the other, either by
+a thing like a piggery, or an incongruous mass like a jail, destroy
+all the beauty and mar all the effect of the scenery for miles round,
+far beyond the precincts of his own small tenure--should he outrage
+all the principles of taste, and violate every sentiment of landscape
+beauty, by some poor and contemptible, or some pretentious and vulgar
+edifice--then, do I say, you are really aggrieved; and against such a
+man you have a just and equitable complaint, as one interfering with
+the natural pleasures and just enjoyments to which, as a free citizen
+of a free state, you have an indubitable, undeniable right.
+
+That waving, undulating meadow, hemmed in with its dark woods, and
+mirrored in the fair stream that flows peacefully beneath it, was
+never, surely, intended to be disfigured with a square house like a
+salt-box, and a verandah like a register-grate: the far-stretching
+line of yellow coast that you see yonder, where the calm sea is
+sleeping, land-locked by those jutting headlands, was never meant to
+be pock-marked with those vile bathing lodges, with green baize
+draperies drying before them.
+
+Was that bold and granite-sided mountain made thus to be hewed out
+into parterres for polyanthuses, and stable-lanes for Cockneys'
+carmen?--or is the margin of our glorious bay, the deep frame-work of
+the bright picture, to be carved into little terraces, with some
+half-dozen slated cabins, or a row of stiff-looking, Leeson-street-like
+houses, with brass knockers and a balcony? Forbid it, heaven! We have
+a board of wide and inconvenient streets, who watch over all the
+irregularities of municipal architecture, and a man is no more
+permitted to violate the laws of good taste, than he is suffered to
+transgress those of good morals. Why not have a similar body to
+protect the fairer part of the created globe? Is Pill-lane more sacred
+than Bray-head? Has Copper-alley stronger claims than the
+Glen-of-the-Downs? Is the Cross-poddle more classic ground than
+Poolaphuca?
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR A NEW COLONY.
+
+
+If you happen to pass by Dodd's auction-room, on any Wednesday,
+towards the hour of three in the afternoon, the chances are about
+seven to one that you hear a sharp, smart voice articulating, somewhat
+in this fashion:--"A very handsome tea-service, ladies. What shall I
+say for this remarkably neat pattern? One tea-pot, one sugar-bowl, one
+slop-basin, and twelve cups and saucers.--Show them round, Tim," &c.
+
+Now it is with no intention of directing the public eye to the "willow
+pattern," that I have alluded to this circumstance. It is simply,
+because that thereby hangs an association, and I have never heard the
+eloquent expatiator on china, without thinking of the Belgian navy,
+which consists of--"One gun-boat, one pinnace, one pilot, one
+commodore, and twelve little sailors." Unquestionably, there never was
+a cheaper piece of national extravagance than this, nor do I believe
+that any public functionary enjoys a more tranquil and undisturbed
+existence than the worthy "_ministre de la marine_," whose duty it is
+to preside over the fleet I have mentioned. Once, and once only do I
+remember that his quiet life was shaken by the rude assault of
+political events: it was when the imposing force under his sway
+undertook a voyage of discovery some miles down the Scheldt, which
+they did alike to the surprise and admiration of the whole land.
+
+After a day's peaceful drifting with the river's current, they reached
+the fort of Lillo, where, _more majorum_, as night was falling, they
+prudently dropped anchor, having a due sense of the danger that might
+accrue "from running down a continent in the dark." There was,
+besides, a feeling of high-souled pride in anchoring within sight,
+under the guns, as it were, of the Dutch fort--the insolent Dutch,
+whom they, with some aid from France--as the Irishman said of his
+marriage, for love, and a trifle of money--had driven from their
+country; and, although the fog rendered everything invisible, and the
+guns were spiked, still the act of courage was not disparaged; and
+they fell to, and sang the Brabancon, and drank Flemish beer till
+bed-time.
+
+Happy and patriotic souls! little did you know, that amid your dreams
+of national greatness, some half-dozen imps of Dutch middies were
+painting out the magnificent tricolor streaks that adorned your good
+craft, and making the whole one mass of dirty black.
+
+Such was the case, however; and when day broke, those brilliant
+emblems of Belgian independence had vanished, and in their place a
+murky line of pitch now stood.
+
+Homeward they bent their course, sadder and wiser men; and, to their
+credit be it spoken, having told their sorrows to their sage minister,
+they have lived a life of happy retirement, and never strayed beyond
+the peaceful limits of the Antwerp basin.
+
+Far be from me the unworthy object of drawing before the public gaze
+the blissful and unpretending service, that shuns the noontide glitter
+of the world's applause, and better loves the quiet solitude of their
+own unobtrusive waters; and had they thus remained, nothing would have
+tempted me to draw them from their obscurity. But alas! national
+ambition has visited even the seclusion of this service. Not content
+with coasting voyages, some twelve miles down their muddy river--not
+satisfied with lording it over fishing smacks and herring wherries,
+this great people have resolved on becoming a maritime power in blue
+water, and running a race of rivalry with England, France, and Russia;
+and to it they have set in right earnest.
+
+They began by purchasing a steam-vessel, which happens to turn out on
+such a scale of size, as to be inadmissible into any harbour they
+possess. By dint of labour, time, cost, and great outlay, they
+succeeded, after four months, in getting her into dock. But alas! if
+it took that time to admit her, it takes six months to let her out
+again; and, when out, what are they to do with her?
+
+When Admiral Dalrymple turned farmer, he mentions in one of his
+letters, the sufferings his unhappy ignorance of all agricultural
+pursuits involved him in, and feelingly tells us: "I have given ten
+pounds for a dunghill, and would now willingly give any man twenty, to
+tell me what to do with it." This was exactly the case with the
+Belgians. They had bought a steam-ship, they put coals in her, and a
+crew; and then, for the life and soul of them, they did not know what
+to do with them.
+
+They desired an export trade--a _debouche_ for their Namur cutlery and
+Verviers' frieze. But where could they go? They had no colonies.
+Holland had, to be sure: but then, they had quarrelled with Holland,
+and there was no use repining. "What can't be cured," &c. Besides, if
+they had lost a colony, they had gained a cardinal; and if they had no
+merchantmen, they had at least high-mass; and if they were excluded
+from Batavia, why they had free access to the "Abbe Boon."
+
+There were, however, some impracticable people engaged in traffic,
+who would not listen to these great advantages, and who were obstinate
+enough to suppose that the country was as prosperous when it had a
+market for its productions, as it was when it had none. And although
+the priests, who have multiplied some hundredfold since the
+revolution, were willing "to consume" to any extent, yet, unhappily,
+they were not as profitable customers as their _ci-devant_ friends
+beyond sea.
+
+Nothing then remained but to have a colony, and after much
+consideration, long thought, and anxious deliberation, it was
+announced to the chamber that the Belgians had a colony, and that the
+colony was called "Guatemala."
+
+When Sancho Panza appealed to Don Quixote, to realise his promised
+dream of greatness, you may remember, he always asked for an island:
+"Make me governor of an island!" There was something defined,
+accurate, and tangible, as it were, in the sea-girt possession, that
+suggested to the honest squire's mind the idea of perfect, independent
+rule. And in the same way, the Belgians desired to have an island.
+
+Some few, less imaginative, suspected, however, that an island must
+always have its limit to importation quicker attained than a
+continent, and they preferred some vast, unexplored tract, like India,
+or Central America, where the consumption of corduroy and cast-iron
+might have an unexhausted traffic for centuries.
+
+Now, it is a difficult condition to find out that spot on a map which
+should realise both expectations. Happily, however, M. Van de Weyer
+had to deal with a kind and confiding people, whose knowledge of
+geography is about equal to a blind man's appreciation of scarlet or
+sky-blue. Not only, therefore, did he represent to one party, the
+newly-acquired possession as an island, and to the other as a vast
+continent, but he actually shifted its _locale_ about the globe, from
+the tropics to the north-pole, with such admirable dexterity, that not
+only is all cavil silenced about its commercial advantages, but its
+very climate has an advocate in every taste, and an admirer in every
+household. Steam-engines, therefore, are fabricated; cannon are cast;
+railroads are in preparation; broadcloth is weaving; flax is growing;
+lace is in progress, all through the kingdom, for the new colony of
+Guatemala,--whose only inhabitants are little grateful for the
+profound solicitude they are exciting, inasmuch as, being but rats and
+sea-gulls, their modes of living and thinking give them a happy
+indifference about steam-travelling, and the use of fine linen.
+
+No matter;--the country is prospering--shares are rising--speculations
+are rife--loans are effected every day in the week, and M. Van de
+Weyer sleeps in the peaceful composure of a man who knows in his
+heart, that even if they get their unwieldy craft to sea, there is not
+a man in the kingdom who could, by any ingenuity, discover the
+whereabout of the far-famed Guatemala.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A "SWEET" NUT FOR THE YANKEES.
+
+
+Lord Chesterfield once remarked that a thoroughly vulgar man could not
+speak the most common-place word, nor perform the most ordinary act,
+without imparting to the one and the other a portion of his own inborn
+vulgarity. And exactly so is it with the Yankees; not a question can
+arise, no matter how great its importance, nor how trivial its
+bearings, upon which, the moment they express an opinion, they do not
+completely invest with their own native coarseness, insolence, and
+vulgarity. The boundary question was made a matter of violent
+invective and ruffian abuse; the right of search was treated with the
+same powers of ribaldry towards England; and now we have these amiable
+and enlightened citizens defending the wholesale piracy of British
+authors, not on the plausible but unjust pretext of the benefit to be
+derived from an extended acquaintance with English literature; but,
+only conceive! because, if "English authors were invested with any
+control over the republication of their own books, it would be no
+longer possible for American editors to alter and adapt them as they
+do now to the American taste." However incredible this may seem, the
+passage formed part of a document actually submitted to congress, and
+favourably received by that body. This is not the place for me to
+dwell on the unprincipled usurpation by which men who have contributed
+nothing to the production of a work, assume the power of reaping its
+benefits, and profiting by its success. The wholesale robbery of
+English authors has been of late well and ably exposed. The gifted
+and accomplished author of "Darnley" and "The Gipsy" has devoted his
+time and his talents to the subject; and although the world at large
+have few sympathies with the wrongs of those who live to please them,
+yet the day is not distant when the rights of a large and influential
+body, who stamp the age with the image of their own minds, can be no
+longer neglected, and the security of literary property must become at
+least as great as of mining scrip, or the shares in a railroad.
+
+My present business is with the Yankee declaration, that English
+authors to be readable in America must be passed through the ordeal of
+re-writing. I scarcely think that the annals of impertinence and
+ignorance could equal this. What! is it seriously meant that Scott and
+Byron, Wordsworth, Southey, Rogers, Bulwer, James, Dickens, and a host
+of others, must be converted into the garbage of St. Giles, or the
+foetid slang of Wapping, before they can pass muster before an American
+public? Must the book reek of "gin twist," "cock tail," and fifty
+other abominations, ere it reach an American drawing-room? Must the
+"bowie-knife and the whittling-stick" mark its pages; and the coarse
+jest of some tobacco-chewing, wild-cat-whipping penny-a-liner
+disfigure and sully the passages impressed with the glowing brilliancy
+of Scott, or the impetuous torrent of Byron's genius? Is this a true
+picture of America? Is her reading public indeed degraded to this
+pass? I certainly have few sympathies with brother Jonathan. I like
+not his spirit of boastful insolence, his rude speech, or his
+uncultivated habits; but I confess I am unwilling to credit this. I
+hesitate to believe in such an amount of intellectual depravity as can
+turn from the cultivated writings of Scott and Bulwer to revel in the
+coarseness and vulgarity of a Yankee editor, vamping up his stolen
+wares with oaths from the far west, or vapid jests from life in the
+Prairies. Again, what shall I say of those who follow this traffic? Is
+it not enough to steal that which is not theirs, to possess themselves
+of what they have no right or claim to? Must they mangle the corpse
+when they have extinguished life? Must they, while they cheat the
+author of his gain, rob him also of his fair fame? "He who steals my
+purse steals trash," but how shall I characterise that extent of
+baseness that dares to step in between an author and his
+reputation--inserting between him and posterity their own illiterate
+degeneracy and insufferable stupidity?
+
+Would not the ghost of Sir Walter shudder in his grave at the thought
+of the fair creations of his mind--Jeanie Deans and Rebecca--Yankeefied
+into women of Long Island, or damsels from Connecticut? Is Childe
+Harold to be a Kentucky-man? and are the vivid pictures of life
+Bulwer's novels abound in, to be converted into the prison-discipline
+school of manners, that prevail in New York and Boston, where, as
+Hamilton remarks, "the men are about as like gentlemen, as are our new
+police?" What should we say of the person who having stolen a
+Rembrandt or a Vandyke from its owner, would seek to legalise his
+theft by daubing over the picture with his own colours--obliterating
+every trace of the great master, and exulting that every stroke of his
+brush defaced some touch of genius, and that beneath the savage
+vandalism of his act, every lineament of the artist was obliterated? I
+ask you, would not mere robbery be a virtue beside such a deed as
+this? Who could compare the sinful promptings to which want and
+starvation give birth to, to the ruffian profligacy of such
+barbarity? And now, when I tell you, that not content with this, not
+satisfied to desecrate the work, the wretch goes a step farther and
+stabs its author--what shall I say of him now, who, when he had
+defaced the picture, marred every effect, distorted all drawing, and
+rendered the whole a chaotic mass of indistinguishable nonsense, goes
+forth to the world, and announces, "This is a Rembrandt, this is a
+Vandyke: ay, look at it and wonder: but with all its faults, and all
+its demerits, it is cried up above our native artists; it has got the
+seal of the old world's approval upon it, and in vain we of younger
+origin shall dare to dissent from its judgments." Now, once more, I
+say, can you show the equal of this moral turpitude? and such I pledge
+myself is the conduct of your transatlantic pirates with respect to
+British literature. Mr. Dickens, no mean authority, asserts that in
+the same sheet in which they boast the sale of many thousand copies of
+an English reprint, they coarsely attack the author of that very book,
+and heap scurrility and slander on his head.
+
+Yes, such is the fact; not satisfied with robbery, they murder
+reputation also. And then we find them expatiating in most moving
+terms over the superiority of their own neglected genius!
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE SEASON--JULLIEN'S QUADRILLES.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+A very curious paper might be made by any one who, after an absence of
+some years from Ireland, should chronicle his new impressions of the
+country, and compare them with his old ones. The changes time works
+everywhere, even in a brief space, are remarkable, but particularly so
+in a land where everything is in a state of transition--where the
+violence with which all subjects are treated, the excited tone people
+are wont to assume on every topic, are continually producing their
+effects on society--dismembering old alliances--begetting new
+combinations. Such is the case with us here; and every year evidences
+by the strange anomalies it presents in politics, parties, public
+feeling, and private habits, how little chance there is for a prophet
+to make a character by his predictions regarding Ireland. He would,
+indeed, be a skilful chemist who would attempt the analysis of our
+complex nature; but far greater and more gifted must he be, who, from
+any consideration of the elements, would venture to pronounce on the
+probable results of their action and re-action, and declare what we
+shall be some twenty years hence.
+
+Oh, for a good Irish "Rip van Winkle," who would at least let us look
+on the two pictures--what we were, and what we are. He should be a
+Clare man--none others have the same shrewd insight into character,
+the same intuitive knowledge of life; none others detect, like them,
+the flaws and fractures in human nature. There may be more
+mathematical genius in Cork, and more classic lore in Kerry; there may
+be, I know there is, a more astute and patient pains-taking spirit of
+calculation in the northern counties; but for the man who is only to
+have one rapid glance at the game, and say how it fares--to throw a
+quick _coup-d'oeil_ on the board, and declare the winner, Clare for
+ever!
+
+Were I a lawgiver, I would admit any attorney to practise who should
+produce sufficient evidence of his having served half the usual time
+of apprenticeship in Ennis. The Pontine marshes are not so prolific of
+fever, as the air of that country of ready-witted intelligence and
+smartness; and now, ere I return from my digression, let me solemnly
+declare, that, for the opinion here expressed, I have not received any
+money or moneys, nor do I expect to receive such, or any place,
+pension, or other reward, from Tom Steele or any one else concerned.
+
+Well, we have not got this same western "Rip van Winkle," nor do I
+think we are likely to do so, for this simple reason, that if he were
+a Clare man, he'd never have been caught "napping;" so, now, let us
+look about us and see if, on the very surface of events, we shall not
+find something to our purpose. But where to begin, that's the
+question: no clue is left to the absentee of a few years by which to
+guide his path. He may look in vain even for the old landmarks which
+he remembered in boyhood; for somehow he finds them all in
+masquerade. The goodly King William he had left in all the effulgence
+of his Orange livery, is now a cross between a river-god and one of
+Dan's footmen. Let him turn to the Mansion-house to revive his memory
+of the glorious hip, hip, hurra's he has shouted in the exuberance of
+his loyalty, and straightway he comes plump against Lord Mayor
+O'Connell, proceeding in state to Marlborough-street chapel. He asks
+who are these plump gentlemen with light blue silk collars, and
+well-rounded calves, whose haughty bearing seems to awe the beholders,
+and he is told that he knew them of old, as wearing dusky black coats
+and leather shorts; pleasant fellows in those days, and well versed in
+punch and polemics. The hackney-coaches have been cut down into
+covered cars, and the "bulky" watchmen reduced to new police. Let him
+turn which way he will--let it be his pleasure to hear the popular
+preacher, the eloquent lawyer, or the scientific lecturer, and if his
+memory be only as accurate as his hearing, he will confess "time's
+changes;" and when he learns who are deemed the fashionable
+entertainers of the day--at whose boards sit lords and baronets most
+frequently, he will exclaim with the poet--
+
+    "Pritchard's genteel, and Garrick's six feet high."
+
+Well, well, it's bad philosophy, and bad temper, too, to quarrel with
+what is; nowhere is the wisdom of Providence more seen than in the
+universal law, by which everything has its place somewhere; the
+gnarled and bent sapling that would be rejected by the builder, is
+exactly the piece adapted for the knee timber of a frigate; the
+jagged, ill-formed rock that would ill suit the polished portico, is
+invaluable in a rustic arch; and, perhaps, on the same principle,
+dull lawyers make excellent judges, and the people who cannot speak
+within the limits of Lindley Murray, are admirable public writers and
+excellent critics; and as Doctor Pangloss was a good man "because he
+knew what wickedness was," so nothing contributes to the detection of
+faults in others, like the daily practice of their commission by
+ourselves; and never can any man predict failure to another with such
+eloquence and impressiveness, as when he himself has experienced what
+it is to "be damned."
+
+Here I am in another digression, and sorry am I not to follow it out
+further; but for the present I must not--so now, to try back: I will
+suppose my absentee friend to have passed his "day in town," amazed
+and surprised at the various changes about him; I will not bewilder
+him with any glance at our politics, nor puzzle him with that game of
+cross corners by which every one seems to have changed his place; nor
+attempt any explanation of the mysterious doctrine by which the party
+which affects the strongest attachment to the sovereign should exult
+in any defeat to her armies; nor how the supporters of the government
+contribute to its stability, by rabid attacks on its members, and
+absurd comparisons of their own fitness for affairs, with the heads of
+our best and wisest. These things he must have remembered long ago,
+and with respect to them, we are pretty much as we were; but I will
+introduce him to an evening party--a society where the _elite_ of
+Dublin are assembled; where, amid the glare of wax lights, and the
+more brilliant blaze of beauty, our fairest women and most gifted and
+exalted men are met together for enjoyment. At first blush there will
+appear to him to have been no alteration nor change here. Even the
+very faces he will remember are the same he saw a dozen years ago:
+some pursy gentlemen with bald foreheads or grey whiskers who danced
+before, are now grown whisters; a few of the ladies, who then figured
+in the quadrille, have assumed the turban, and occupy an ottoman; the
+gay, laughing, light-hearted youth he formerly hobnobbed with at
+supper, is become a rising barrister, and has got up a look of learned
+pre-occupation, much more imposing to his sister than to Sir Edward
+Sugden; the wild, reckless collegeman, whose name was a talisman in
+the "Shades," is now a soft-voiced young physician, vibrating in his
+imitation of the two great leaders in his art, and alternately
+assuming the "Epic or the Lake" school of physic. All this may amuse,
+but cannot amaze him: such is the natural current of events, and he
+ought to be prepared for it. The evening wears on, however; the frigid
+politeness and ceremonious distance which we have for some years back
+been borrowing from our neighbours, and which seem to suit our warmer
+natures pretty much as a suit of plate armour would a _danseuse_ in a
+ballet--this begins to wear off, and melt away before the genial heat
+of Irish temperament; "the mirth and fun grow fast and furious;" and a
+new dance is called for. What, then, is the amazement, shall I say the
+horror, of our friend to hear the band strike up a tune which he only
+remembered as associated with everything base, low, and disgraceful;
+which, in the days of his "libertine youth," he only heard at riotous
+carousals and roistering festivals; whose every bar is associated with
+words--ay, there's the rub--which, in his maturer years, he blushes to
+have listened to! he stares about him in wonderment; for a moment he
+forgets that the young lady who dances with such evident enjoyment of
+the air, is ignorant of its history; he watches her sparkling eye and
+animated gesture, without remembering that _she_ knows nothing of the
+associations at which her partner is, perhaps, smirking; he sees her
+_vis-a-vis_ exchanging looks with his friend, that denote _their_
+estimation of the music; and in very truth, so puzzled is he, he
+begins to distrust his senses. The air ceases, and is succeeded by
+another no less known, no less steeped in the same class of
+associations, and so to the conclusion. These remembrances of past
+wickedness go on "crescendo," till the _finale_ caps the whole with a
+melody, to which even the restraints of society are scarcely able to
+prevent a humming accompaniment of concurring voices, and--these are
+the Irish Quadrilles! What can account for this? What special pleading
+will find an argument in its favour? When Wesley objected to all the
+good music being given to the devil, he only excused his adoption of
+certain airs which, in their popular form, had never been connected
+with religious words and feelings; and in his selection of them, was
+rigidly mindful to take such only as in their character became easily
+convertible to his purpose: he never enlisted those to which, by an
+unhappy destiny, vulgarising and indelicate associations have been so
+connected as to become inseparably identified; and although the object
+is widely different, I cannot see how, for the purposes of social
+enjoyment, we should have diverged from his example. If we wished a
+set of Irish quadrilles, how many good and suitable airs had we not
+ready at our hands? Is not our national music proverbially rich, and
+in the very character of music that would suit us? Are there not airs
+in hundreds, whose very names are linked with pleasing and poetic
+memories, admirably adapted to the purpose? Why commit the choice, as
+in this case, to a foreigner who knew nothing of them, nor of us? And
+why permit him to introduce into our drawing-rooms, through the means
+of a quadrille band, a class of reminiscences which suggest levity in
+young men, and shame in old ones? No, no; if the Irish quadrilles are
+to be fashionable, let it be in those classic precincts where their
+merits are best appreciated, and let Monsieur Jullien's popularity be
+great in Barrack-street!
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR "ALL IRELAND."
+
+
+From Carrickfergus to Cape Clear, the whole island is on the "_qui
+vive_" as to whether her gracious majesty the queen will vouchsafe to
+visit us in the ensuing summer. The hospitable and magnificent
+reception which awaited her in Scotland has given a more than ordinary
+impulse to every plan by which we might evince our loyalty, and
+exhibit ourselves to our sovereign in a point of view not less
+favourable than our worthy neighbours across the sea.
+
+At first blush, nothing would seem more easy to accomplish than this.
+A very cursory glance at Mr. O'Connell's speeches will convince any
+one that a land more favourably endowed by nature, or blessed with a
+finer peasantry, never existed: with features of picturesque beauty
+dividing the attention of the traveller, with the fertility of the
+soil; and, in fact, presenting such a panorama of loveliness, peace,
+plenty, and tranquillity, that a very natural doubt might occur to Sir
+Robert Peel's mind in recommending this excursion to her majesty,
+lest the charms of such an Arcadia should supersede the more homely
+attractions of England, and "our ladye the queene" preferring the
+lodge in the Phoenix to the ancient towers of Windsor, fix her
+residence amongst us, and thus at once repeal the Union.
+
+It were difficult to say if some vision of this kind did not float
+across the exalted imagination of the illustrious Daniel, amid that
+shower of fortune's favours such a visit would inevitably bring
+down--baronetcies, knighthood, deputy-lieutenancies would rain upon
+the land, and a general epidemic of feasting and festivity raise every
+heart in the island, and nearly break Father Mathew's.
+
+If the Scotch be warm in their attachment, our affections stand at a
+white heat; if they be enthusiastic, we can go clean mad; and for that
+one bepraised individual who boasted he would never wash the hand
+which had the honour to touch that of the queen, we could produce a
+round ten thousand whose loyalty, looking both ways, would enable
+them, under such circumstances, to claim superiority, as they had
+never washed theirs since the hour of their birth.
+
+Notwithstanding all these elements of hospitality, a more mature
+consideration of the question would show how very difficult it would
+be to compete successfully with the visit to Scotland. Clanship, the
+remains of feudalism, and historical associations, whose dark colours
+have been brought out into glowing brightness under the magic pencil
+of Scott--national costume and national customs--the wild sports of
+the wilder regions--all conspired to give a peculiar interest to this
+royal progress; and from the lordly Baron of Breadalbane to the kilted
+Highlander upon the hills, there was something of ancient splendour
+and by-gone homeliness mixed up together that may well have evoked the
+exclamation of our queen, who, standing on the terrace at Drummond,
+and gazing on the scene below her, uttered--"HOW GRAND!"
+
+Now, unfortunately in many, if not in all these advantages, we have no
+participation. Clanship is unknown amongst us,--only one Irishman has
+a tail, and even that is as ragged an appendage as need be. Our
+national costume is nakedness; and of our national customs, we may
+answer as the sailor did, who, being asked what he had to say in his
+defence against a charge of stealing a quadrant, sagely replied--"Your
+worship, it's a damn'd ugly business, and the less that's said about
+it the better."
+
+Two doubts press upon us--who is to receive her Majesty; and how are
+they to do it? They who have large houses generally happen to have
+small fortunes, and among the few who have adequate means, there is
+scarcely one who could accommodate one half of the royal suite. In
+Scotland, everything worthy of being seen lies in a ring-fence. The
+Highlands comprise all that is remarkable in the country; and thus the
+tour of them presents a quick succession of picturesque beauty without
+the interval of even half a day's journey devoid of interest. Now, how
+many weary miles must her Majesty travel in Ireland from one
+remarkable spot to another--what scenes of misery and want must she
+wade through from the south to the west. Would any charms of
+scenery--would any warmth of hospitality--repay her for the anguish
+such misery must inflict upon her, as her eye would range over the
+wild tract of country where want and disease seem to have fixed their
+dwelling, and where the only edifice that rises above the mud-cabin
+of the way-side presents the red brick front of a union poor-house?
+These, however, are sad topics--what are we to do with the Prince? His
+Royal Highness loves sporting: we have scarcely a pheasant--we have
+not one capercailzie in the island; but then we have our national
+pastimes. If we cannot turn out a stag to amuse him, why we can
+enlarge a tithe-proctor; and, instead of coming home proud that he has
+bagged a roe, he shall exult in having brought down a rector. How poor
+and insignificant would any _battue_ be in comparison with a good
+midnight burning--how contemptible the pursuit of rabbits and hares,
+when compared with a "tithe affray," or the last collision with the
+military in Tipperary. I have said that the Scotch have a national
+costume; but if _semi_-nakedness be a charm in them, what shall be
+said of us, who go the "whole hog?" The details of their ancient
+dress--their tartan, their kilt, their philabeg, that offered so much
+interest to the royal suite--how shall they vie with the
+million-coloured patches of an Irishman's garment? or what bonnet that
+ever flaunted in the breeze is fit to compare with the easy jauntiness
+of Paddy's _caubeen_, through which, in lieu of a feather, a lock of
+his hair is floating?
+
+    "Nor clasp nor nodding plume was there;
+    But for feather he wore one lock of hair."
+
+                                        _Marmion._
+
+
+Then, again, how will the watch-fires that blazed upon the mountains
+pale before the glare of a burning haggard; and what cheer that ever
+rose from Highland throats will vie with the wild yell of ten thousand
+Black-feet on the march of a midnight marauding? No, no; it is quite
+clear the Scotch have no chance with us. Her Majesty may not have all
+her expectations fulfilled by a visit to Ireland; but most assuredly a
+"touch of our quality" will show her many things no near country could
+present, and the probability is, she will neither have time nor
+leisure for a trip to New Zealand.
+
+Everything that indicates nationality will then have its reward. Grave
+dignitaries of the Church will practise the bagpipes, and
+prothonotaries will refresh their jig-dancing; whatever is Irish, will
+be _la vogue_; and, instead of reading that her Majesty wore a shawl
+of the Gordon tartan, manufactured at Paisley, we shall find that the
+Queen appeared in a novel pattern of rags, devised at Mud Island;
+while his Royal Highness will compliment the mildness of our climate
+by adopting our national dress. What a day for Ireland that will
+be!--we shall indeed be "great, glorious, and free;" and if the
+evening only concludes with the Irish Quadrilles, I have little doubt
+that her Majesty will repeat her exclamation of "How grand!" as she
+beholds the members of the royal suite moving gracefully to the air of
+"Stonybatter."
+
+Let us, then, begin in time. Let there be an order of council to
+preserve all the parsons, agents, tithe-proctors, and landlords till
+June; let there be no more shooting in Tipperary for the rest of the
+season; let us "burke" Father Mathew, and endeavour to make our heads
+for the approaching festivities; and what between the new poor-law and
+the tariff, I think we shall be by that time in as picturesque a state
+of poverty as the most critical stickler for nationality would
+desire.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR "A NEW COMPANY."
+
+
+By no one circumstance in our social condition is a foreigner more
+struck than by the fact that there is not a want, an ailing, an
+incapacity for which British philanthropy has not supplied its remedy
+of some sort or other. A very cursory glance at the advertising
+columns of the _Times_ will be all-sufficient to establish this
+assertion. Mental and bodily infirmities, pecuniary difficulties,
+family afflictions, natural defects, have all their separate _corps_
+of comforters; and there is no suffering condition in life that has
+not a benevolent paragraph specially addressed to its consolation. To
+the "afflicted with gout;" to "all with corns and bunions;" to "the
+friends of a nervous invalid"--who is, by the bye, invariably a
+vicious madman; to "the childless;" to "those about to marry." Such
+are the headings of various little crumbs of comfort by which the
+active philanthropy of England sustains its reputation, and fills its
+pocket. From tooth-powder to tea-trays--from spring-mattrasses to
+fictitious mineral waters--from French blacking to the Widow Welch's
+Pills--all have their separate votaries; and it would be difficult to
+conceive any real or imaginary want unsupplied in this prolific age of
+contrivance.
+
+A gentleman might descend from the moon, like our clever friend, "The
+Commissioner," and, by a little attention to these plausible
+paragraphs, become as thoroughly John Bull in all his habits and
+observances as though he were born within St. Pancras. "A widow lady
+with two daughters would take a gentleman to board, where all the
+advantages and comforts of a private family might be found, within ten
+minutes' walk from Greenwich. Unexceptionable references will be given
+and expected on either side." Here, without a moment's delay, he might
+be domiciled in an English family; here he might retire from all the
+cares and troubles of life, enjoying the tranquil pleasures of the
+widow's society, with no other risk or danger, save that of falling in
+love with one or both of the fair daughters, who have "a taste for
+music," and "speak French."
+
+It is said that few countries offer less resources to the stranger
+than England; which I stoutly deny, and assert that no land has set up
+so many sign-posts by which to guide the traveller--so many directions
+by which to advise his course. With us there is no risk of doing
+anything inappropriate, or incompatible with your station, if you will
+only suffer yourself to be borne along on the current. Your tailor
+knows not only the precise shade of colour which suits your
+complexion, but, as if by intuition, he divines the exact cut that
+suits your condition in life. Your coachmaker, in the same way, augurs
+from the tone of your voice, and the _contour_ of your features, the
+shade of colour for your carriage; and should you, by any misfortune,
+happen to be knighted, the Herald's-office deduce, from the very
+consonants of your name, the _quantum_ of emblazonry they can bestow
+on you, and from how far back among the burglars and highwaymen of
+antiquity they can venture to trace you. Should you, however, still
+more unfortunately, through any ignorance of etiquette, or any
+inattention to those minor forms of breeding with which every native
+is conversant, offer umbrage, however slight and unintentional, to
+those dread functionaries, the "new police;" were you by chance to
+gaze longer into a jeweller's window than is deemed decorous; were you
+to fall into any reverie which should induce you to slacken your pace,
+perchance to hum a tune, and thus be brought before the awful "Sir
+Peter," charged by "G 743" with having impeded the passengers--collected
+a crowd--being of suspicious appearance, and having refused "to tell
+who your friends were"--the odds are strongly against you that you
+perform a hornpipe upon the treadmill, or be employed in that very
+elegant chemical analysis, which consists in the extraction of
+magnesia from oyster-shells.
+
+Now, let any man consider for a moment what a large, interesting, and
+annually-increasing portion of our population there is, who, from
+certain peculiarities attending their early condition, have never been
+blessed with relatives or kindred--who, having no available father and
+mother, have consequently no uncles, aunts, or cousins, nor any good
+friends. Here the law presses with a fearful severity upon the
+suffering and the afflicted, not upon the guilty and offending. The
+state has provided no possible contingencies by which such persons are
+to escape. A man can no more create a paternity than he can make a new
+planet. I have already said that with wealth at his disposal, ancestry
+and forefathers are easily procured. He can have them of any age, of
+any country, of any condition in life--churchmen or laymen--dignitaries
+of the law or violators of it;--'tis all one, they are made to order.
+But let him be in ever such urgent want of a near relative; let it be
+a kind and affectionate father, an attached and doting mother, that he
+stands in need of--he may study _The Times_ and _The Herald_--he may
+read _The Chronicle_ and _The Globe_, in vain! No benevolent society
+has directed its philanthropy in this channel; and not even a
+cross-grained uncle or a penurious aunt can be had for love or money.
+
+Now this subject presents itself in two distinct views--one as regards
+its humanity, the other its expediency. As the latter, in the year of
+our Lord, 1844, would seem to offer a stronger claim on our attention,
+let us examine it first. Consider them how you will, these people form
+the most dangerous class of our population--these are the "waifs and
+strays" of mankind. Like snags and sawyers in the Mississippi, having
+no voyage to perform in life, their whole aim and destiny seems to be
+the shipwreck of others. With one end embedded in the mud of uncertain
+parentage, with the other they keep bobbing above the waves of life;
+but let them rise ever so high, they feel they cannot be extricated.
+
+If rich, their happiness is crossed by their sense of isolation; for
+them there are no plum-pudding festivals at Christmas, no family
+goose-devourings at Michaelmas. They have none of those hundred little
+ties and torments which weary and diversify life. They have acres, but
+they have no uncles--they have gardens and graperies, but they cannot
+raise a grandfather--they may have a future, but they have scarcely a
+present; and they have no past.
+
+Should they be poor, their solitary state suggests recklessness and
+vice. It is the restraint of early years that begets submission to the
+law later on, and he who has not learned the lesson of obedience when
+a child, is not an apt scholar when he becomes a man. This, however,
+is a part of the moral and humane consideration of the question, and
+like most other humane considerations, involves expense. With that we
+have nothing to do; our present business is with the rich; for their
+comfort and convenience our hint is intended, and our object to
+supply, on the shortest notice, and the most reasonable terms, such
+relatives of either sex as the applicant shall stand in need of.
+
+Let there be, therefore, established a new joint stock company to be
+called the "GRAND UNITED ANCESTRAL, KINDRED, AND BLOOD RELATION
+SOCIETY"--capital any number of pounds sterling. Actuaries--Messrs.
+Oliver Twist and Jacob Faithful.
+
+Only think of the benefits of such a company! Reflect upon the numbers
+who leave their homes every morning without parentage, and who might
+now possess any amount of relatives they desire before night. Every
+one knows that a respectable livelihood is made by a set of persons
+whose occupation it is to become bails at the different police
+offices, for any class of offence, and to any amount. They exercise
+their calling somewhat like bill-brokers, taking special pains always
+to secure themselves against loss, and make a trifle of money, while
+displaying an unbounded philanthropy. Here then is a class of persons
+most appropriate for our purpose: fathers, uncles, first cousins, even
+grandfathers, might be made out of these at a moment's notice. What
+affecting scenes, too, might be got up at Bow-street, under such
+circumstances, of penitent sons, and pardoning parents, of unforgiving
+uncles and imploring nephews. How would the eloquence of the
+worshipful bench revel, on such occasions, for its display. What
+admonitions would it not pour forth, what warnings, what
+commiseration, and what condolings. Then what a satisfaction to the
+culprit to know that all these things were managed by a respectable
+company, who were "responsible in every case for the good conduct of
+its servants." No extortion permitted--no bribery allowed; a regular
+rate of charges being printed, which every individual was bound, like
+a cab-man, to show if required.
+
+So much for a father, if respectable; so much more, if professional;
+or in private life, increased premium. An angry parent, we'll say two
+and sixpence; sorrowful, three shillings; "deeply afflicted and bound
+to weep," five shillings.
+
+A widowed mother, in good weeds, one and sixpence; do, do, in a cab,
+half a crown; and so on.
+
+How many are there besides who, not actually in the condition we speak
+of, would be delighted to avail themselves of the benefits of this
+institution. How many moving in the society of the west end, with a
+father a tobacconist or a cheesemonger in the city, would gladly pay
+well for a fashionable parent supposed to live upon his estate in
+Yorkshire, or entertaining, as the _Morning Post_ has it, a
+"distinguished party at his shooting lodge in the Highlands." What a
+luxury, when dining his friends at the Clarendon, to be able to talk
+of his "Old Governor" hunting his hounds twice a week, while, at the
+same moment, the real individual was engaged in the manufacture of
+soap and short sixes. What happiness to recommend the game-pie, when
+the grouse was sent by his Uncle, while he felt that the only
+individual who stood in that capacity respecting him, had three gilt
+balls over his door, and was more conversant with duplicates than
+double barrels.
+
+But why pursue a theme whose benefits are self-evident, and come home
+to every bosom in the vast community. It is one of "the wants of our
+age," and we hope ere long to see the "fathers" as much respected in
+Clerkenwell or College-street, as ever they were in Clongowes or
+Maynooth.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A NUT FOR "POLITICAL ECONOMISTS."
+
+
+This is the age of political economists and their nostrums. Every
+newspaper teems with projects for the amelioration of our working
+classes, and the land is full of farming societies, temperance unions,
+and a hundred other Peter Purcellisms, to improve its social
+condition; the charge to make us
+
+    "Great, glorious, and free,"
+
+remaining with that estimable and irreproachable individual who
+tumbles in Lower Abbey-street.
+
+The Frenchman's horse would, it is said, have inevitably finished his
+education, and accomplished the faculty of existing without food, had
+he only survived another twenty-four hours. Now, the condition of
+Ireland is not very dissimilar, and I only hope that we may have
+sufficient tenacity of life to outlive the numerous schemes for our
+prosperity and advancement.
+
+Nothing, indeed, can be more singular than the manner of every
+endeavour to benefit his country. We are poor--every man of us is only
+struggling; therefore, we are recommended to build expensive
+poorhouses, and fill them with some of ourselves. We have scarcely
+wherewithal to meet the ordinary demands of life, and straightway are
+told to subscribe to various new societies--repeal funds--agricultural
+clubs--O'Connell tributes--and Mathew testimonials. This, to any
+short-sighted person, might appear a very novel mode of filling our
+own pockets. There are one-idea'd people in the world, who can only
+take up the impression which, at first blush, any subject suggests;
+they, I say, might fancy that a continued system of donation,
+unattended by anything like receipt, is not exactly the surest element
+of individual prosperity. I hope to be able to controvert this
+plausible, but shallow theory, and to show--and what a happy thing it
+is for us--to show that, not only is our poverty the source of our
+greatest prosperity, but that if by any accident we should become
+rich, we must inevitably be ruined; and to begin--
+
+Absenteeism is agreed on all hands to be the bane of Ireland. No one,
+whatever be his party prejudices, will venture to deny this. The
+high-principled and well-informed country gentleman professes this
+opinion in common with the illiterate and rabid follower of
+O'Connell; I need not, therefore, insist further on a proposition so
+universally acknowledged. To proceed--of all people, none are so
+naturally absentees as the Irish; in fact, it would seem that one
+great feature of our patriotism consists in the desire to display, in
+other lands, the ardent attachment we bear our own. How can we tell
+Frenchmen, Italians, Germans, Russians, Swedes, and Swiss, how devoted
+we are to the country of our birth, if we do not go abroad to do so?
+How can we shed tears as exiles, unless we become so? How can we rail
+about the wrongs of Ireland and English tyranny, if we do not go among
+people, who, being perfectly ignorant of both, may chance to believe
+us? These are the patriotic arguments for absenteeism; then come
+others, which may be classed under the head of "expediency reasons,"
+such as debts, duns, outlawries, &c. Thirdly, the temptations of the
+Continent, which, to a certain class of our countrymen, are of the
+very strongest description--Corn Exchange politics, vulgar associates,
+an air of bully, and a voice of brogue, will not form such obstacles
+to success in Paris, as in Dublin. A man can scarcely introduce an
+Irish provincialism into his French, and he would be a clever fellow
+who could accomplish a bull under a twelvemonth. These, then, form the
+social reasons; and from a short revision of all three, it will be
+seen that they include a very large proportion of the land--Mr.
+O'Connell talks of them as seven millions.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+It being now proved, I hope, to my reader's satisfaction, that the
+bent of an Irishman is to go abroad, let us briefly inquire, what is
+it that ever prevents him so doing? The answer is an easy one. When
+Paddy was told by his priest that whenever he went into a
+public-house to drink, his guardian angel stood weeping at the door,
+his ready reply was, "that if he had a tester he'd have been in too;"
+so it is exactly with absenteeism; it is only poverty that checks it.
+The man with five pounds in his pocket starts to spend it in England;
+make it _ten_, and he goes to Paris; _fifteen_, and he's up the Rhine;
+_twenty_, and Constantinople is not far enough for him! Whereas, if
+the sum of his wealth had been a matter of shillings, he'd have been
+satisfied with a trip to Kingstown, a chop at Jude's, a place in the
+pit, and a penny to the repeal fund; all of which would redound to his
+patriotism, and the "prosperity of Ireland."
+
+The same line of argument applies to every feature of expense. If we
+patronise "Irish manufacture," it is because we cannot afford English.
+If we like Dublin society, it is upon the same principle; and, in
+fact, the cheap pleasures of home, form the sheet-anchor of our
+patriotism, and we are only "guardian angels," because "we haven't a
+tester."
+
+Away then with any flimsy endeavours to introduce English capital or
+Scotch industry. Let us persevere in our present habits of mutual
+dislike, attack, and recrimination; let us interfere with the projects
+of English civilisation, and forward, by every means in our power, the
+enlightened doctrines of popery, and the patriotic pastime of
+parson-shooting, for even in sporting we dispense with a "game
+license;" let no influx of wealth offer to us the seduction of
+quitting home, and never let us feel with our national poet that
+"Ireland is a beautiful country to live out of."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR "GRAND DUKES."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+God help me but I have always looked upon a "grand duke" pretty much
+in the same light that I have regarded the "Great Lama," that is to
+say, a very singular and curious object of worship in its native
+country. How any thing totally destitute of sovereign attributes could
+ever be an idol, either for religious or political adoration, is
+somewhat singular, and after much pains and reflections on the
+subject, I came to the opinion, that German princes were valued by
+their subjects pretty much on the principle the Indians select their
+idols, and knowing men admire thorough-bred Scotch terriers--viz., not
+their beauty.
+
+Of all the cant this most canting age abounds in, nothing is more
+repulsive and disgusting than the absurd laudation which travellers
+pour forth concerning these people, by the very ludicrous blunder of
+comparing a foreign aristocracy with our own. Now, what is a German
+grand duke? Picture to yourself a very corpulent, moustached, and
+befrogged individual, who has a territory about the size of the Phoenix
+Park, and a city as big and as flourishing as the Blackrock; the
+expenses of his civil list are defrayed by a chalybeate spring, and
+the budget of his army by the license of a gambling-house, and then
+read the following passage from "Howitt's Life in Germany," which,
+with that admirable appreciation of excellence so eminently their
+characteristic, the newspapers have been copying this week past--
+
+"You may sometimes see a grand duke come into a country inn, call for
+his glass of ale, drink it, pay for it, and go away as unceremoniously
+as yourself. The consequence of this easy familiarity is, that princes
+are everywhere popular, and the daily occurrence of their presence
+amongst the people, prevents that absurd crush and stare at them,
+which prevails in more luxurious and exclusive countries."
+
+That princes do go into country inns, call for ale, and drink it, I
+firmly believe; a circumstance, however, which I put the less value
+upon, inasmuch as the inn is pretty much like the prince's own house,
+the ale very like what he has at home, and the innkeeper as near as
+possible, in breeding, manner, and appearance, his equal. That he
+_pays_ for the drink, which our author takes pains to mention, excites
+all my admiration; but I confess I have no words to express my
+pleasure on reading that "he goes away again," and, as Mr. Howitt has
+it, "as unceremoniously as yourself," neither stopping to crack the
+landlord's crown, smash the pewter, break the till, nor even put a
+star in the looking-glass over the fire-place, a condescension on his
+part which leads to the fact, that "princes are everywhere popular."
+
+Now, considering that Mr. Howitt is a Quaker, it is somewhat
+remarkable the high estimate he entertains of this "grand ducal"
+forbearance. What he expected his highness to have done when he had
+finished his drink, I am as much at a loss to conjecture, as what
+trait we are called upon to admire in the entire circumstance; when
+the German prince went into the inn, and knocking three times with a
+copper kreutzer on the counter, called for his choppin of beer, he was
+exactly acting up to the ordinary habits of his station, as when the
+Duke of Northumberland, on his arriving with four carriages at the
+"Clarendon," occupied a complete suite of apartments, and partook of a
+most sumptuous dinner. Neither more nor less. His Grace of Alnwick
+might as well be lauded for his ducal urbanity as the German prince
+for his, each was fulfilling his destiny in his own way, and there was
+not anything a whit more worthy of admiration in the one case, than in
+the other.
+
+But three hundred pounds per annum, even in a cheap country, afford
+few luxuries; and if the Germans are indifferent to cholic, there
+might be, after all, something praiseworthy in the beer-drinking, and
+here I leave it.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE EAST INDIA DIRECTORS.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+When the East India Directors recalled Lord Ellenborough, and replaced
+him by Sir Henry Harding, the impression upon the public mind was, as
+was natural it should be, that the course of policy adopted by the
+former, was such as met not their approval, and should not be
+persisted in by his successor.
+
+To supersede one man by another, that he might perform the very same
+acts in the same way, would be something too ludicrous and absurd.
+When John Bull chassees the Tories, and takes to the Whigs, it is
+because he has had enough of Peel, and wants to try a stage with Lord
+John, who handles the ribbons differently, and drives another sort of
+a team; a piebald set of screws they are, to be sure, but they can go
+the pace when they are at it; and, as the road generally lies
+downhill, they get along right merrily. But John would never think of
+a change, if the pace were to be always the same. No; he'd just put up
+with the set he had, and take his chance. Not so your India Directors.
+They are quite satisfied with everything; all is right, orderly, and
+proper; but still they would rather that another man were at the head
+of affairs, to do exactly what had been done before. "What are you
+doing, Peter?"--"Nothing, sir." "And you, Jem, what are you
+about?"--"Helping Peter, sir." That is precisely the case, and Sir
+Henry is gone out to help Lord Ellenborough.
+
+Such a line of proceeding is doubtless singular enough, and many
+sensible people there are, who cannot comprehend the object and
+intention of the wise Directors; while, by the press, severe
+imputations have been thrown upon their consistency and intelligence,
+and some have gone so far as to call their conduct unparalleled.
+
+This, however, is unjust. The Old Almanack, as Lord Brougham would
+call it, has registered a not inapplicable precedent; and, in the
+anxious hope of being remembered by the "Old Lady," I hasten to
+mention it:--
+
+When Louis XIV. grew tired of Madame la Valliere, and desired to
+replace her by another in his favour, he committed the difficult task
+of explanation on the subject, to his faithful friend and confessor,
+Bossuet. The worthy Bishop undertook his delicate mission with
+diffidence; but he executed it with tact. The gentle La Valliere wept
+bitterly; she knew nothing of the misfortune that menaced her. She
+believed that her star still stood in the ascendant, and fancied (like
+Lord Ellenborough) that her blandishments were never more
+acknowledged. "Whence, then, this change?" cried she, in the agony of
+her grief. "How have I offended him?"
+
+"You mistake me, my daughter," said Mons. de Meaux. "His Majesty is
+most tenderly attached to you; but religious scruples--qualms of
+conscience--have come upon him. 'C'est par la peur du diable,' that he
+consents to this separation."
+
+[Illustration: Honorable Members.]
+
+Poor Louise dried her tears; the case was bad enough, but there was
+one consolation--it was religion, and not a rival, had cost her a
+lover; and so she began her preparations for departure with a heart
+somewhat less heavy. On the day, however, of her leave-taking, a
+carriage, splashed and travel-stained, arrived at the "petite porte"
+of the Palace; and as instantaneously ran the rumour through the
+household that his Majesty's new mistress had arrived: and true it
+was, Madame de Maintenon had taken her place beside the fauteuil of
+the King.
+
+"So, Mons. de Bossuet," said La Valliere, as he handed her to her
+carriage--"so, then, his Majesty has exiled me, 'par la peur du
+diable.'"
+
+The Bishop bowed in tacit submission and acquiescence.
+
+"In that case," resumed she, "c'est par complaisance au diable, that
+he accepts Madame de Maintenon."
+
+
+
+
+A FILBERT FOR SIR ROBERT PEEL.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Sir Robert Peel was never more triumphant than when, in the last
+session of Parliament, he rebuked his followers for a casual defection
+in the support of Government, by asking them what they had to complain
+of. Are _we_ not on the Treasury benches? said the Right Honourable
+Baronet. Do not my friend Graham and myself guide and direct you?--do
+we not distribute the patronage and the honours of the government,--take
+the pay--and rule the kingdom--what more would you have? Ungrateful
+bucolics, you know not what you want! The apostrophe was bold, but not
+original. I remember hearing of a West country farmer having ridden a
+long day's journey on a poor, ill-fed hack, which, as evening drew
+near, showed many symptoms of a fatal knock-up. The rider himself was
+well tired, too, and stopped at an ale-house for a moment's
+refreshment, while he left the jaded beast standing at the door. As he
+remounted his saddle, a few minutes after, he seized his reins
+briskly, flourished his whip (both like Sir Robert), and
+exclaimed:--"I've had two glasses of spirits.--Let us see if you won't
+go after that."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+"THE INCOME TAX."
+
+
+Among the many singular objections which have been made to the new
+property tax, I find Mr. C. Buller stating in the House, that his
+greatest dislike to the project lay in the exceedingly small amount of
+the impost.
+
+    "My wound is great because it is so small,"
+
+might have been the text of the honourable and learned gentleman's
+oration. After setting forth most eloquently the varied distresses of
+the country--its accumulating debt and heavy taxation--he turns the
+whole weight of his honest indignation against the new imposition,
+because, forsooth, it is so "little burdensome, and will inflict so
+slight an additional load upon the tax-payer." There is an attempt at
+argument, however, on the subject, which is somewhat amusing; for he
+continues not only to lament the smallness of the new tax, but the
+"slight necessity that exists" even for that. Had we some great
+national loss to make up, the deficiency of which rendered a call on
+the united people necessary, then, quoth he, how happily we should
+stand forward in support of the Constitution. In fact, he deplores, in
+the most moving terms, that ill off as the country is, yet it is not
+one-half so bad as it might be, or as he should like to see it. Ah!
+had we only some disastrous Continental war, devastating our
+commerce--ruining our Colonies, and eating into the very heart of our
+national resources--how gladly I should pay this Income Tax; but to
+remedy a curable evil--to restore, by prompt and energetic measures,
+the growing disease of the State--is a poor, pettifogging practice,
+that has neither heroism nor fame to recommend it. I remember hearing
+that at one of those excellent institutions, so appropriately
+denominated Magdalen Asylums, a poor, but innocent girl, presented
+herself for admission, pleading her lonely and deserted condition, as
+a plea for her reception. The patroness, an amiable and excellent
+person--but somewhat of the complexion of the honourable and learned
+Member for Liskeard--asked at once, whether she had resolved on a
+total reformation of her mode of life. The other replied, that her
+habits had been always chaste and virtuous, and that her character had
+been invariably above reproach. "Ah, in that case," rejoined the lady,
+"we can't admit you; this institution is expressly for the reception
+of penitents. If you could only qualify for a week or so, there is no
+objection to your admission."
+
+Is not this exactly Mr. Buller's proposition? "Let us have the Whigs
+back for a few years longer; let us return to our admirable foreign
+policy; and when we have successfully embroiled ourselves with
+America, lost Canada, been beaten in China, driven out of our Eastern
+possessions, and provoked a war with France, then I'm your man for an
+Income Tax; lay it on only heavily; let the nation, already bowed down
+under the heavy burden of its calamities, receive in addition the
+gracious boon of enormous taxation." Homoeopathy teaches us that
+nothing is so curative in its agency, as the very cause of our present
+suffering, or something as analogous to it as possible; and, like
+Hahnemann, Mr. Buller administers what the vulgar call "a hair of the
+dog that bit us," as the most sovereign remedy for all our evils.
+
+The country is like a sick man with a whitlow, for the cure of which
+his physician prescribes a slight, but clearly necessary, operation.
+Another medical Dr. Buller is, however, standing by. He at once
+insinuates his veto; remarks upon the trivial nature of the
+disease--the unpainful character of the remedy; "but wait," adds
+he--"wait till the inflammation extends higher; have patience till the
+hand becomes swollen and the arm affected; and then, when your agony
+is beyond endurance, and your life endangered, then we'll amputate the
+limb high up, and mayhap you may recover, after all."
+
+As for me, it is the only occasion I'm aware of, where a successful
+comparison can be instituted between honour and the Whigs; for
+assuredly neither have "any skill in surgery."
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE "BELGES."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Every one knows that men in masses, whether the same be called boards,
+committees, aggregate, or repeal meetings, will be capable of
+atrocities and iniquities, to which, as individuals, their natures
+would be firmly repugnant. The irresponsibility of a number is felt by
+every member, and Curran was not far wrong when he said, a
+"corporation was a thing that had neither a body to be kicked, nor a
+soul to be damned."
+
+It is, indeed, a melancholy fact, that nations partake much more
+frequently of the bad than the good features of the individuals
+composing them, and it requires no small amount of virtue to flavour
+the great caldron of a people, and make its incense rise gratefully to
+heaven. For this reason, we are ever ready to accept with enthusiasm
+anything like a national tribute to high principle and honour. Such
+glorious bursts are a source of pride to human nature itself, and we
+hail with acclamation these evidences of exalted feeling, which make
+men "come nearer to the gods." The greater the sacrifice to selfish
+interests and prejudices, the more do we prize the effort. Think for a
+moment what a sensation of surprise and admiration, wonderment, awe,
+and approbation it would excite throughout Europe, if, by the next
+arrival from Boston, came the news that "the Americans had determined
+to pay their debts!" That at some great congress of the States,
+resolutions were carried to the effect, "that roguery and cheating
+will occasionally lower a people in the estimation of others, and that
+the indulgences of such national practices may be, in the end,
+prejudicial to national honour;" "that honesty, if not the best, may
+be good policy, even in a go-a-head state of society;" "that smart
+men, however a source of well-founded pride to a people, are now and
+then inconvenient from the very excess of their smartness;" "that
+seeing these things, and feeling all the unhappy results which
+mistrust and suspicion by foreign countries must bring upon their
+commerce, they have determined to pay something in the pound, and go
+a-head once more." I am sure that such an announcement would be hailed
+with illuminations from Hamburg to Leghorn. American citizens would be
+cheered wherever they were found; pumpkin pie would figure at royal
+tables, and twist and cocktail be handed round with the coffee; our
+exquisites would take to chewing and its consequences; and our belles,
+banishing Rossini and Donizetti, would make the air vocal with the
+sweet sounds of Yankee Doodle. One cannot at a moment contemplate what
+excesses our enthusiasm might not carry us to; and I should not wonder
+in the least if some great publisher of respectable standing might not
+start a pirated reprint of the _New York Herald_.
+
+Let me now go back and explain, if my excitement will permit me, how
+I have been led into such extravagant imaginings. I have already
+remarked, that nations seldom gave evidence of noble bursts of
+feeling; still more rarely, I regret to say, do they evince any sorrow
+for past misconduct--any penitence for by-gone evil.
+
+This would be, indeed, the severest ordeal of a people's greatness;
+this, the brightest evidence of national purity. Happy am I to say
+such an instance is before us; proud am I to be the man to direct
+public attention to the fact. The following paragraph I copy verbatim
+from the _Times_.
+
+     "On the 18th of June, the anniversary of the battle of
+     Waterloo, a black flag was hoisted by the Belgians at the
+     top of the monument erected on the field where the battle
+     was fought."
+
+A black flag, the emblem of mourning, the device of sorrow and regret,
+waves over the field of Waterloo! Not placed there by vanquished
+France, whose legions fought with all their chivalry; not hoisted by
+the proud Gaul, on the plain where, in defeat, he bit the dust; but in
+penitence of heart, in deep sorrow and contrition, by the Belgians who
+ran--by the people who fled--by the soldiers who broke their ranks and
+escaped in terror.
+
+What a noble self-abasement is this; how beautifully touching such an
+instance of a people's sorrow, and how affecting to think, that while
+in the halls of Apsley House the heroes were met together to
+commemorate the glorious day when they so nobly sustained their
+country's honour, another nation should be in sackcloth and ashes, in
+all the trappings of woe, mourning over the era of their shame, and
+sorrowing over their degradation. Oh, if a great people in all the
+majesty of their power, in all their might of intellect, strength, and
+riches, be an object of solemn awe and wonder, what shall we say of
+one whose virtues partake of the humble features of every-day life,
+whose sacrifice is the tearful offering of their own regrets?
+
+Mr. O'Connell may declaim, and pronounce his eight millions the finest
+peasantry in the world--he may extol their virtues from Cork to
+Carrickfergus--he may ring the changes over their loyalty, their
+bravery, and their patriotism; but when eulogising the men who assure
+him "they are ready to die for their country," let him blush to think
+of the people who can "cry" for theirs.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR WORKHOUSE CHAPLAINS.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The bane and antidote of England is her immense manufacturing
+power--the faculty that enables her to inundate the whole habitable
+globe with the products of her industry, is at once the source of her
+prosperity and poverty--her millionnaire mill-owners and her
+impoverished thousands. Never was the skill of machinery pushed to the
+same wonderful extent--never the results of mechanical invention so
+astoundingly developed. Men are but the presiding genii over the
+wonder-working slaves of their creative powers, and the child, is the
+volition that gives impulse to the giant force of a mighty engine.
+Subdivision of labour, carried to an extent almost incredible, has
+facilitated despatch, and induced a higher degree of excellence in
+every branch of mechanism--human ingenuity is racked, chemical
+analysis investigated, mathematical research explored--and all, that
+Mr. Binns, of Birmingham, may make thirteen minikin pins--while Mr.
+Sims, of Stockport, has been making but twelve. Let him but succeed in
+this, and straightway his income is quadrupled--his eldest son is
+member for a manufacturing borough, his second is a cornet in the Life
+Guards--his daughter, with a fortune of one hundred thousand pounds,
+is married to the heir of a marquisate--and his wife, soaring above
+the murky atmosphere of the factory, breathes the purer air of western
+London, and advertises her _soirees_ in the _Morning Post_. The
+pursuit of wealth is now the grand characteristic of our age and
+country; and the headlong race of money-getting seems the great
+feature of the day. To this end the thundering steamer ploughs the
+white-crested wave of the broad Atlantic--to this end the clattering
+locomotive darts through the air at sixty miles the hour--for this,
+the thousand hammers of the foundry, the ten thousand wheels of the
+factory are at work--and man, toiling like a galley-slave, scarce
+takes time to breathe in his mad career, as with straining eyeballs
+and outstretched hands, he follows in the pursuit of lucre.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Now, men are imitative creatures; and strange enough, too, they are
+oftentimes disposed from the indulgence of the faculty to copy things,
+and adapt them to purposes very foreign to their original destination.
+This manufacturing speed, this steeple-chase of printed calico and
+Paisley wear, is all very well while it is limited to the districts
+where it began. That two hundred and seventy thousand white cotton
+night-caps, with a blue tassel on every one of them, can be made in
+twenty-four hours at Messrs. Twist and Tredlem's factory, is a very
+gratifying fact, particularly to all who indulge in ornamental
+head-gear--but we see no reason for carrying this dispatch into the
+Court of Chancery, and insisting that every nod of the woolsack is to
+decide a suit at law. Yet have the lawyer and the physician both
+adopted the impetuous practices of the manufacturing world, and
+Haste, red haste! is now the cry.
+
+Lord Brougham's Chancery practice was only to be equalled by one of
+Lord Waterford's steeple-chases. He took all before him in a fly--he
+rode straight, plenty of neck, baulked nothing--up leap or down leap,
+sunk fence or double ditch, post and rail, or quickset, stone wall, or
+clay bank, all one to him--go it he would. Others might deny his
+judgment; he wanted to get over the ground, and _that_ he did do.
+
+The West-end physician, in the same way, visits his fifty patients
+daily, walks his hospital, delivers a lecture to old ladies about some
+"curious provision" of nature in the palm of the human hand (for
+fee-taking); and devoting something like three minutes and twelve
+seconds to each sick man's case, pockets some twenty thousand per
+annum by his dispatch.
+
+Speed is now the _El Dorado_. Jelly is advertised to be made in a
+minute, butter in five, soup seasoned and salted in three seconds of
+time. Even the Quakers--bless their quiet hearts!--couldn't escape the
+contagion, and actually began to walk and talk with some faint
+resemblance to ordinary mortals. The church alone maintained the even
+tenor of its way, and moved not in the wild career of the whirlwind
+world about it. Such was my gratulation, when my eye fell upon the
+following passage of the _Times_. Need I say with what a heavy heart I
+read it? It is Mr. Rushton who speaks:--
+
+     "In the month of December, 1841, he heard that a man had
+     been found dead in the streets of Liverpool; that all the
+     property he possessed had been taken from his person, and
+     that an attempt to trace his identity had been made in
+     vain. He was taken to the usual repository for the dead,
+     where an inquest had been held upon him, and from the 'dead
+     house,' as it was called, he was removed to the workhouse
+     burial-ground. The man who drove the hearse on the occasion
+     was very old, and not very capable of giving evidence. His
+     attendant was an idiot. It had been represented to Mr.
+     Hodgson and himself that the dead man had been taken in the
+     clothes in which he died and put into a coffin which was too
+     small for him; that a shroud was put over him; that the lid
+     of the coffin would not go down; and that he was taken from
+     the dead-house and buried in the parochial ground, no
+     funeral rites having been performed on the occasion. It had
+     also been communicated to Mr. Hodgson and himself that,
+     after two days, the clergyman who was instructed to perform
+     those rites over the paupers, came and performed one service
+     for the dead over all the paupers who had been buried in the
+     intermediate time."
+
+Now, without stopping to criticise the workhouse equipage, which
+appears to be driven by a man too old to speak, with an idiot for his
+companion; nor even to advert to the scant ceremony of burying a man
+in his daily dress, and in a coffin that would not close on him--what
+shall we say of the "patent parson power" that buries paupers in
+detachments, and reads the service over platoons of dead? The reverend
+chaplain feeling the uncertainty of human life, and knowing how frail
+is our tie to existence, waits in the perfect conviction of a large
+party before he condescends to appear. Knowing that dead men tell no
+tales, he surmises also that they don't run away, and so he says to
+himself--these people are not pressed for time, they'll be here when I
+come again--it is a sickly season, and we'll have a field-day on
+Saturday. Cheap soup for the poor, says Mrs. Fry. Cheap justice, says
+O'Connell. Cheap clothing, says a tailor who makes new clothes from
+old, with a machine called a devil--but cheap burial is the boast of
+the Liverpool chaplain, and he is the most original among them.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE "HOUSE."
+
+
+I have long been of opinion that a man may attain to a very
+respectable knowledge of Chinese ceremonies and etiquette before he
+can learn one half the usages of the honourable house. Seldom does a
+debate go forward without some absurd interruption taking place in a
+mere matter of form. Now it is a cry of "Order, order," to some
+gentleman who is subsequently discovered not to have been in the least
+disorderly, but whom the attack has so completely dumfounded, that he
+loses his speech and his self-possession, and sits down in confusion,
+to be sneered at in the morning papers, and hooted by his constituents
+when he goes home.
+
+Now some gifted scion of aristocracy makes an essay in braying and
+cock-crowing, both permitted by privilege, and overwhelms the speaker
+with the uproar. Now it is that intolerable nuisance, old Hume,
+shouting out "divide," or "adjourn;" or it is Colonel Sibthorpe who
+counts the house. These ridiculous privileges of members to interfere
+with the current of public business because they may be sleepy or
+stupid themselves, are really intolerable, besides being so numerous
+that the first dozen years of a parliamentary life will scarcely teach
+a man a tithe of them. But of all these "rules of the house," the
+most unjust and tyrannical is that which compels a man to put up with
+any impertinence because he has already spoken. It would seem as if
+each honourable member "went down" with a single ball cartridge in his
+pouch, which, when fired, the best thing he could do was to go home
+and wait for another distribution of ammunition; for by remaining he
+only ran the risk of being riddled without any power to return the
+fire.
+
+A case of this kind happened a few evenings since:--A Mr. Blewitt--I
+suppose the composer--made a very absurd motion, the object of which
+was to inquire "What office the Duke of Wellington held in the present
+government, and whether he was or was not a member of the cabinet."
+Without referring the learned gentleman to a certain erudite volume
+called the Yearly Almanack and Directory, Sir Robert Peel proceeded to
+explain the duke's position. He eulogised, as who would not? his
+grace's sagacity and his wisdom; the importance of his public
+services, and the great value the ministers, his _confreres_, set upon
+a judgment which, in a long life, had so seldom been found mistaken;
+and then he concluded by quoting from one of the duke's recent replies
+to some secretary or other who addressed him on a matter foreign to
+his department--"That he was one of the few men in the present day who
+did not meddle in affairs over which they have no control." "A piece
+of counsel," quoth Sir Robert, "I would strenuously advise the
+honourable member to apply to his own case."
+
+Now we have already said that we think Blewitt--though an admirable
+musician--seems to be a very silly man. Still, if he really did not
+know what the duke represented in her Majesty's government--if he
+really were ignorant of what functions he exercised, the information
+might have been bestowed upon him without a retort like this. In the
+first place, his query, if a foolish, was at least a civil one; and in
+the second, it was his duty to understand a matter of this nature: it
+therefore came under his control, and Sir Robert's application of the
+quotation was perfectly uncalled-for. Well; what followed? Mr. Blewitt
+rose in wrath to reply, when the house called out, "Spoke, spoke!" and
+Blewitt was muzzled; the moral of which is simply this--you ask a
+question in the house, and the individual addressed has a right to
+insult you, you having no power of rejoinder, under the etiquette of
+"spoke." Any flippancy may overturn a man at this rate; and the words
+"loud laughter," printed in italics in the _Chronicle_, is sure to
+renew the emotion at every breakfast table the morning after.
+
+Now I am sorry for Blewitt, and think he was badly treated.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR "LAW REFORM."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Of all the institutions of England there is scarcely one more lauded,
+and more misunderstood, than trial by jury. At first blush, nothing
+can seem fairer and less objectionable than the unbiassed decision of
+twelve honest men, sworn to do justice. They hear patiently the
+evidence on both sides; and in addition to the light derivable from
+their own intelligence, they have the directing charge of the judge,
+who tells them wherein the question for their decision lies, what are
+the circumstances of which they are to take cognizance, and by what
+features of the case their verdict is to be guided. Yet look at the
+working of this much-boasted privilege. One jury brings in a verdict
+so contrary to all reason and justice, that they are sent back to
+reconsider it by the judge; another, more refractory still, won't come
+to any decision at all, and get carted to the verge of the county for
+their pains; and a third, improving on all former modes of proceeding,
+has adopted a newer and certainly most impartial manner of deciding a
+legal question. "Court of Common Pleas, London, July 6.--The Chief
+Justice (Tindal) asked the ground of objection, and ten of the jurymen
+answered that in the last case one of their colleagues had suggested
+that the verdict should be decided by tossing up!" Here is certainly a
+very important suggestion, and one which, recognising justice as a
+blind goddess, is strictly in conformity with the impersonation.
+Nothing could possibly be farther removed from the dangers of undue
+influence than decisions obtained in this manner. Not only are all the
+prejudices and party bearings of individual jurors avoided, but an
+honest and manly oblivion of all the evidence which might bias men if
+left to the guidance of their poor and erring faculties, is thus
+secured. It is human to err, says the poet moralist; and so the
+jurymen in question discovered, and would therefore rather refer a
+knotty question to another deity than Justice, whom men call Fortune.
+How much would it simplify our complex and gnarled code, the
+introduction of this system? In the next place, juries need not be any
+longer empannelled, the judge could "sky the copper" himself. The only
+question would be, to have a fair halfpenny. See with what rapidity
+the much-cavilled court would dispatch public business! I think I see
+our handsome Chief of the Common Pleas at home here, with his knowing
+eye watching the vibrations of the coin, and calling out in his
+sonorous tone, "Head--the plaintiff has it. Call another case." I peep
+into the Court of Chancery, and behold Sir Edward twirling the penny
+with more cautious fingers, and then with his sharp look and sharper
+voice, say, "Tail! Take a rule for the defendant."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+No longer shall we hear objections as to the sufficiency of legal
+knowledge possessed by those in the judgment-seat. There will be no
+petty likings for this, and dislikings for that court; no changes of
+venue; no challenges of the jury; even Lord Brougham himself, of whom
+Sir Edward remarked, "What a pity it was he did not know a little law,
+for then he would have known a little of everything"--even he might be
+a chancellor once more. What a power of patronage it would give each
+succeeding ministry to know that capacity was of no consequence; and
+that the barrister of six years' standing could turn his penny as well
+as the leader in Chancery. Public business need never be delayed a
+moment; and if the Chief Baron were occupied in chamber, the crier of
+the court could perform his functions till he came back again.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR "CLIMBING BOYS."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+One man may lead a horse to the water, but ten cannot make him drink,
+sayeth the adage; and so it might be said, any one might devise an act
+of parliament--but who can explain all its intentions and
+provisions--define its powers--and illustrate its meanings? One clause
+will occasionally vitiate another; one section completely contradict
+the preceding one; the very objects of the legislature are often so
+pared away in committee, that a mere shadowy outline remains of what
+the original framer intended; and were it not for the bold hand of
+executive justice, the whole might be inoperative. The judge, happily,
+supplies the deficiency of the lawmaker--and the thing were perfect,
+if judges were not, like doctors, given to differ--and thus,
+occasionally, disseminate somewhat opposite notions of the statutes of
+the land.
+
+Such being the case, it will not be deemed impertinent of one, who
+desires to conform in all respects to the law, to ask, from time to
+time, of our rulers and governors, certain questions, the answers to
+which, should he happily receive them, will be regarded by him as
+though written on tables of brass.
+
+Now, in a late session of parliament, some humane member brought in a
+bill to interdict the sweeping of chimneys by all persons small enough
+for the purpose, and ingeniously suggested supplying their place by
+others, whose size would have inevitably condemned them to perish in a
+flue. Never had philanthropist a greater share of popularity. Little
+sweeps sang his praises along the streets--penny periodicals had
+verses in his honour--the "song of the soot" was set to music--and
+people, in the frenzy of their enthusiasm, so far forgot their
+chimneys, that scarcely a street in town had not, at least, one fire
+every night in the week. Meanwhile, the tender sweeplings had lost
+their occupation, they had pronounced their farewell to the
+brush--what was to become of them? Alas, the legislature had not
+thought of that point; for, they were not influential enough to claim
+compensation. I grieve to think, but there is too much reason to fear,
+that many of them betook themselves to the ancient vocation of
+pickpockets. Yes, as Dr. Watts has it--
+
+    "Satan finds some mischief still
+    For idle hands to do."
+
+The divisional police-offices were filled each morning with small
+"suttees"--whose researches after handkerchiefs and snuff-boxes were
+of the most active kind; while their full-grown brethren, first
+impacted in a funnel of ten inches by eight, were cursing the Commons,
+and consigning to all manner of misfortune the benevolent framer of
+the bill.
+
+Now, I cannot help asking myself, was this the intention of the
+legislature--did they really mean that big people should try to
+penetrate where little ones were not small enough to pass?--or was it
+some piece of conciliation to the climbing boys, that they should see
+their masters grilled and wasted, in revenge for "the disabilities
+they had so long laboured under?" This point of great difficulty--and
+after much thought and deliberation, I have come to one solution of
+the whole question, and I only hope it may prove the right one. It is
+this. The bill is a parable--the climbing boy, and the full-grown
+sweep--and the chimney, and the householder, and the machine, are mere
+types which I would interpret thus:--the householder is John Bull, a
+good-natured, easy fellow, liking his ease, and studying his
+comfort--caring for his dinner, and detesting smoke above all things;
+he wishes to have his house neat and orderly, neither confusion nor
+disturbance--but his great dread is fire; the very thought of it sets
+him a-trembling all over. Now, for years past, he has remarked that
+the small sweeps, who mount so glibly to the top of the flue, rarely
+do anything but make a noise--they scream and shout for ten minutes,
+or so, and then come down, with their eyes red, and their noses
+bloody, and cry themselves sick, till they get bread-and-butter. John
+is worried and fretted at all this; he remembers the time a good-sized
+sweep used to go up and rake down all the soot in no time. These were
+the old Tory ministers, who took such wise and safe precautions
+against fire, that an insurance-office was never needed. "Not so now,"
+quoth John; "'od! rabbit it, they've got their climbing boys, who are
+always bleating and bawling, for the neighbourhood to look at
+them--and yet, devil a bit of good they do the whole time."
+
+And now, who are these? you would ask. I'll tell you--the "Climbing
+Boys" are the Howicks, and the Clements--the Smith O'Briens and the
+D'Israelis, and a host of others, scraping their way upwards, through
+soot and smoke, that they may put out their heads in high places, and
+cry "'weep! 'weep!" and well may they--they've had a dirty
+journey--and black enough their hands are, I warrant you, before they
+got there.
+
+To get rid of these, without offending them, John brings in his
+philanthropic bill, making it penal to employ them, or to have any
+other than the old legitimate sweeps, that know every turn of the
+flue, and have gone up and down any time these twenty years. No new
+machine for him--no Whig contrivance, to scrape the bricks and burn
+the house--but the responsible full-grown sweeps--who, if the passage
+be narrow, have strength to force their way, and take good care not to
+get dust in their eyes in the process.
+
+Such is my interpretation of the bill, and I only trust a discerning
+public may agree with me.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR "THE SUBDIVISION OF LABOUR."
+
+
+I forget the place, and the occasion also, but I have a kind of misty
+recollection of having once, in these nutting excursions of mine, been
+excessively eloquent on the subject of the advantages derivable from
+division of labour.
+
+Not a walk or condition in life is there to which it has not
+penetrated; and while natural talents have become cultivated from
+finding their most congenial sphere of operation, immense results have
+accrued in every art and science where a higher degree of perfection
+has been thus attained. Your doctor and your lawyer now-a-days select
+the precise portion of your person or property they intend to operate
+on. The oculist and the aurist, and the odontalgist and the
+pedicurist, all are suggestive of various local sufferings, by which
+they bound their skill; and so, the equity lawyer and the common-law
+lawyer, the special pleader and the bar orator, have subdivided
+knavery, without diminishing its amount. Even in literature, there are
+the heavy men who "do" the politics, and the quiet men who do the
+statistics, and the rough-and-ready men, who are a kind of
+servants-of-all-work, and so on. In universities, there is the science
+man and the classical man, the man of simple equations and the man of
+spondees. Painting has its bright colourists and its more
+sombre-loving artists, and so on--the great camps of party would seem
+to have given the impulse to every condition of life, and "speciality"
+is the order of the day.
+
+No sooner is a new discovery made, no matter whether in the skies
+above, or the dark bowels of the earth, than an opportunity of
+disagreement is sure to arise. Two, mayhap three, gentlemen, profess
+diversity of opinion; followers are never lacking, let any one be fool
+enough to turn leader--and straightway there comes out a new sect,
+with a Greek name for a title.
+
+It is only the other day, men began to find out that primitive rocks,
+and basalt, ochre, and sandstone, had lived a long time, and must
+surely know something of antiquity--if they only could tell it. The
+stones, from that hour, had an unhappy time of it--men went about in
+gangs with hammers and crowbars, shivering this and shattering
+that--picking holes in respectable old rocks, that never had a word
+said against them, and peeping into "quarts,"[1] like a policeman.
+
+    [1] Query "quartz."--_Devil._
+
+Men must be quarrelsome, you'd say, if they could fight about
+paving-stones--but so they did. One set would have it that the world
+was all cinders, and another set insisted it was only slack--and so,
+they called themselves Plutonians and Neptunians, and made great
+converts to their respective opinions.
+
+Gulliver tells us of "Big-endians" and "Little-endians," who hated
+each other like poison; and thus it is, our social condition is like a
+row in an Irish fair, where one strikes somebody, and nobody thinks
+the other right.
+
+Oh! for the happy days of heretofore, when the two kings of Brentford
+smelled at one nosegay. It couldn't happen now, I promise you.
+
+One of their majesties would have insisted on the petals, and the
+other been equally imperative regarding the stamina: they'd have
+pushed their claims with all the weight of their influence, and there
+would have been soon little vestige of a nosegay between them.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+But to come back, for all this is digression. The subdivision of
+labour, with all its advantages, has its reverse to the medal. You are
+ill, for instance. You have been dining with the Lord Mayor, and
+hip-hipping to the health of her Majesty's ministers; or drinking,
+mayhap, nine times nine to the independence of Poland, or civil and
+religious liberty all over the globe--or any other fiction of large
+dinners. You go home, with your head aching from bad wine, bad
+speeches, and bad music; your wife sees you look excessively flushed;
+your eyes have got an odd kind of expression, far too much of the
+white being visible; a half shut-up look, like a pastry-cook's shop on
+Sunday; there are evident signs, from blackness of the lips, that in
+your English ardour for the navy you have made a "port-hole" of your
+mouth; in fact, you have a species of semi-apoplectic threatening,
+that bodes ill for the insurance company.
+
+A doctor is sent for--he lives near, and comes at once--with a glance
+he recognises your state, and suggests the immediate remedy--the
+lancet.
+
+"Fetch a basin," says somebody, with more presence of mind than the
+rest.
+
+"Not so fast," quoth the medico. "I am a pure physician--I don't
+bleed: that's the surgeon's affair. I should be delighted to save the
+gentleman's life--but we have a bye-law against it in the college.
+Nothing could give me more pleasure than to cure you, if it wasn't for
+the charter. What a pity it is! I'm sure I wish, with all my heart,
+the cook would take courage to open a vein, or even give you a bloody
+nose with the cleaver."
+
+Do you think I exaggerate here? Try the experiment--I only ask that.
+
+Sending for the surgeon does not solve the difficulty; he may be a man
+who cuts corns and cataracts--who only operates for strabismus, or
+makes new noses for Peninsular heroes. In fact, if you don't hit the
+right number--and it's a large lottery--you may go out of the world
+without even the benefit of physic.
+
+This great system, however, does not end with human life. The
+coroners--resolved not to be behind their age--have made a great
+movement, and shown themselves men worthy of the enlightened era they
+live in. Read this:--
+
+     "On Friday morning last, a man named Patrick Knowlan, a
+     private in the 3rd Buffs, was discovered lying dead close
+     beneath the platform of a wharf at the bottom of
+     Holborn-lane, Chatham. It would appear that deceased had
+     mistaken his way, and fallen from the wharf, which is used
+     for landing coals from the river, a depth of about eight
+     feet, upon the muddy beach below, which was then strewn with
+     refuse coal. There was a large and severe wound upon the
+     left temple, and a piece of coal was sticking in the left
+     cheek, close below the eye. The whole left side of the face
+     was much contracted. He had evidently, from the state of his
+     clothes, been covered with water, which overflows this spot
+     at the period of spring tides. Although nothing certain is
+     known, it is generally supposed that he mistook Holborn-lane
+     for the West-lane, which leads to the barracks, and that
+     walking forward in the darkness he fell from the wharf. Mr.
+     Lewis, the coroner for the city of Rochester, claims
+     jurisdiction over all bodies found in the water at this
+     spot; and as the unfortunate man had evidently been
+     immersed, he thought this a proper case for the exercise of
+     his office, and accordingly summoned a jury to sit upon the
+     body at ten o'clock on Friday morning--but on his going to
+     view the deceased, he found that it was at the King's Arms,
+     Chatham, in the hands of Bines, the Chatham constable, as
+     the representative of Mr. Hinde, one of the coroners for the
+     eastern division of the county of Kent, who refused to give
+     up the key of the room, but allowed Mr. Lewis and his jury
+     to view the body. They then returned to the Nag's Head,
+     Rochester, and having heard the evidence of John Shepherd, a
+     fisherman, who deposed that a carter, going on to the beach
+     for coals, at half-past seven o'clock on Friday morning,
+     found the body as already described, the jury returned a
+     verdict of 'Found dead.' Mr. Hinde, the county coroner, held
+     another inquest upon the deceased, at the King's Arms; and
+     after taking the evidence of William Whittingham, the
+     carter who found the body, and Frederick Collins, a corporal
+     of the 3rd Buffs, who stated that he saw the deceased on the
+     evening preceding his death, and he was then sober, the jury
+     returned a verdict of 'Accidental death;' each of the
+     coroners issued a warrant for the interment of the body. The
+     disputed jurisdiction, it is believed, will now be submitted
+     to the decision of a higher court, in order to settle what
+     is here considered a _vexata quaestio_."--_Maidstone
+     Journal._
+
+Is not this perfect? Only think of land coroners and water
+coroners--imagine the law defining the jurisdiction of the Tellurian
+as far forth into the sea as he could sit on a corpse without danger,
+and the Neptunian ruling the waves beyond in absolute sway--conceive
+the "solidist" revelling in all the accidents that befall life upon
+the world's highways, and the "fluidist" seeking his prey like a pearl
+diver, five fathoms low, beneath "the deep, deep sea." What a rivalry
+theirs, who divide the elements between them, and have nature's
+everlasting boundaries to define the limits of their empire.
+
+I hope to see the time when these great functionaries of law shall be
+provided with a suitable costume. I should glory to think of Mr. Hinde
+accoutred in emblems suggestive of earth and its habits--a wreath of
+oak leaves round his brows; and to behold Mr. Lewis in a garment of
+marine plants and sea shells sit upon his corpse, with a trident in
+his right hand. What a comfort for the man about to take French leave
+of life, that he could know precisely the individual he should
+benefit, and be able to go "by land" or "water," as his taste inclined
+him.
+
+I have no time here to dwell upon the admirable distinctions of the
+two verdicts given in the case I allude to. When the great change I
+suggest is fully carried out, the difficulty of a verdict will at
+once be avoided, for the jury, like boys at play, will only have to
+cry out at each case--"wet or dry."
+
+There would be probably too much expense incurred in poor localities
+by maintaining two officials; and I should suggest, in such cases, an
+amphibious coroner--a kind of merman, who should enjoy a double
+jurisdiction, and, as they say of half-bred pointers, be able "to take
+the water when required."
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR A "NEW VERDICT."
+
+
+Money-getting and cotton-spinning have left us little time for fun of
+any kind in England--no one has a moment to spare, let him be ever so
+droll, and a joke seems now to be esteemed a _bona fide_ expenditure;
+and as "a pin a day" is said to be "a groat a year," there is no
+calculating what an inroad any manner of pleasantry might not make
+into a man's income. Book-writers have ceased to be laughter-moving--the
+stage has given it up altogether, except now and then in a new
+tragedy--society prefers gravity to gaiety--and, in fact, the spirit
+of comic fun and drollery would seem to have died out in the land--if
+it were not for that inimitable institution called trial by jury.
+Bless their honest hearts! jurymen do indeed relieve the drab-coloured
+look of every-day life--they come out in strong colour from the sombre
+tints of common-place events and people. Queer dogs! nothing can damp
+the warm ardour of their comic vein--all the solemnity of a court of
+justice--the look of the bar and the bench--the voice of the crier--the
+blue bags of briefs--the "terrible show," has no effect on their
+minds--"ruat coelum," they will have their joke.
+
+It is in vain for the judge, let him be ever so rigid in his charge,
+to tell them that their province is simply with certain facts, on
+which they have to pronounce an opinion of yea or nay. They must be
+jurymen, and "something more." It's not every day Mr. Sniggins, of
+Pimlico, is called upon to keep company with a chief-justice and
+sergeant learned in the law--Popkins don't leave his shop once a week
+to discuss Coke upon Littleton with an attorney-general. No: the event
+to them is a great one--there they sit, fawned on, and flattered by
+counsel on both sides--called impartial and intelligent, and all
+that--and while every impertinence the law encourages has been bandied
+about the body of the court, _they_ remain to be lauded and praised by
+all parties, for they have a verdict in their power, and when it
+comes--what a thing it is!
+
+There is a well-known story of an English nobleman, desiring to remain
+_incog._ in Calais, telling his negro servant--"If any one ask who I
+am, Sambo, mind you say, 'a Frenchman.'" Sambo carried out the
+instruction by saying--"My massa a Frenchman, and so am I." This
+anecdote exactly exemplifies a verdict of a jury--it cannot stop short
+at sense, but must, by one fatal plunge, involve its decision in
+absurdity.
+
+Hear what lately happened in the north of Ireland. A man was tried and
+found guilty of murder--the case admitted no doubt--the act was a
+cold-blooded, deliberate assassination, committed by a soldier on his
+sergeant, in the presence of many witnesses. The trial proceeded; the
+facts were proved; and--I quote the local newspaper--
+
+     "The jury retired, and were shut up when the judge left the
+     court, at half-past seven. At nine, his lordship returned to
+     court, when the foreman of the jury intimated that they had
+     agreed. They were then called into court, and having
+     answered to their names, returned a verdict of guilty, but
+     recommended the prisoner to mercy upon account of the close
+     intimacy that existed between the parties at the time of the
+     occurrence."
+
+Now, what ever equalled this? When the jury who tried Madame Laffarge
+for the murder of her husband, returned a verdict of guilty, with that
+recommendation to mercy which is implied by the words "des
+circonstances attenuantes," Alphonse Karr pronounced the "extenuating
+circumstances," to be the fact, that she always mixed gum with the
+arsenic, and never gave him his poison "neat."
+
+But even _they_ never thought of carrying out their humanity farther
+by employing the Belfast plea, that she had been "intimate with him"
+before she killed him. No, it was reserved for our canny northerns to
+find out this new secret of criminal jurisprudence, and to show the
+world that there is a deep philosophy in the vulgar expression, a
+blood relation--meaning thereby that degree of allianceship which
+admits of butchery, and makes killing no murder; for if intimacy be a
+ground of mercy, what must be friendship, what brotherhood, or
+paternity?
+
+Were this plea to become general, how cautious would men become about
+their acquaintances--what a dread they would entertain of becoming
+intimate with gentlemen from Tipperary!
+
+I scarcely think the Whigs would throw out such lures for Dan and his
+followers, if they could consider these consequences; and I doubt
+much--taking everything into consideration, that the "Duke" would see
+so much of Lord Brougham as he has latterly.
+
+"Whom can a man make free with, if not with his friends?" saith
+Figaro; and the Belfast men have studied Beaumarchais, and only
+"carried out his principle," as the Whigs say, when they speak of
+establishing popery in Ireland, to complete the intention of
+emancipation.
+
+Lawyers must have been prodigiously sick of all the usual arguments in
+defence of prisoners in criminal cases many a year ago. One of the
+cleverest lawyers and the cleverest men I ever knew, says he would
+hang any man who was defended on an _alibi_, and backed by a good
+character. Insanity is worn out; but here comes Belfast to the rescue,
+with its plea of intimacy. Show that your client was no common
+acquaintance--prove clearly habits of meeting and dining
+together--display a degree of friendship between the parties that
+bordered on brotherhood, and all is safe. Let your witness satisfy the
+jury that they never had an altercation or angry word in their lives,
+and depend upon it, killing will seem merely a little freak of
+eccentricity, that may be indulged with Norfolk Island, but not
+punished with the gallows.
+
+"Guilty, my lord, but very intimate with the deceased," is a new
+discovery in law, and will hereafter be known as "the Belfast
+verdict."
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE REAL "LIBERATOR."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+When Solomon said there was nothing new under the sun, he never knew
+Lord Normanby. That's a fact, and now to show cause.
+
+No attribute of regal, and consequently it may be inferred of
+viceregal personages, have met such universal praise from the world,
+as the wondrous tact they would seem to possess, regarding the most
+suitable modes of flattering the pride and gratifying the passions of
+those they govern.
+
+It happens not unfrequently, that they leave this blessed privilege
+unused, and give themselves slight pains in its exercise; but should
+the time come when its exhibition may be deemed fit or necessary,
+their instinctive appreciation is said never to fail them, and they
+invariably hit off the great trait of a people at once.
+
+Perhaps it may be the elevated standard on which they are placed,
+gives them this wondrous _coup-d'oeil_, and enables them to take wider
+views than mortals less eminently situated; perhaps it is some old
+leaven of privileges derivable from right divine. But no matter, the
+thing is so.
+
+Napoleon well knew the temper of Frenchmen in his day, and how certain
+short words, emblematic of their country's greatness and glory, could
+fascinate their minds and bend them to his purpose. In Russia, the
+czar is the head of the church, as of the state, and a mere word from
+him to one of his people is a treasure above all price. In Holland, a
+popular monarch taps some forty puncheons of schnapps, and makes the
+people drunk. In Belgium, he gets up a high mass, and a procession of
+virgins. In the States, a rabid diatribe against England, and a spice
+of Lynch Law, are clap-trap. But every land has its own peculiar
+leaning--to be gratified by some one concession or compliment in
+preference to every other.
+
+Now, when Lord Normanby came to Ireland, he must have been somewhat
+puzzled by the very multiplicity of these expectations. It was a
+regular "embarras de richesses." There was so much to give, and he so
+willing to give it!
+
+First, there was discouragement to be dealt out against
+Protestants--an easy and a pleasant path; then the priests were to be
+brought into fashion--a somewhat harder task; country gentlemen were
+to be snubbed and affronted; petty attorneys were to be petted and
+promoted; all claimants with an "O" to their names were to have
+something--it looked national; men of position and true influence were
+to be pulled down and degraded, and so on. In fact, there was a good
+two years of smart practice in the rupture of all the ties of society,
+and in the overthrow of whatever was respectable in the land, before
+he need cry halt.
+
+Away he went then, cheered by the sweet voices of the mob he loved,
+and quick work he made of it. I need not stop to say, how pleasant
+Dublin became when deserted of all who could afford to quit it; nor
+how peaceful were the streets which no one traversed--_ubi solitudinem
+faciunt pacem appellant_. The people, like Oliver, "asked for more;"
+ungrateful people! not content with Father Glynn at the viceroy's
+table, and the Bishop of "Mesopotamia" in the council, they cried,
+like the horseleech's daughters, "Give! give!"
+
+"What would they have, the spalpeens?" said Pierce Mahony; "sure ain't
+we destroying the place entirely, and nobody will be able to live here
+after us."
+
+"What do they want?" quoth Anthony Blake; "can't they have patience?
+Isn't the church trembling, and property not worth two years'
+purchase?"
+
+"Upon my life!" whispered Lord Morpeth, "I can't comprehend them. I
+fear we have been only but too good-natured!--don't you think so?"
+
+And so they pondered over their difficulties, but never a man among
+them could suggest a remedy for their new demand, nor make out a
+concession which had not been already made.
+
+"Did you butter Dan?" said Anthony.
+
+"Ay, and offered him the 'rolls' too," said Sheil.
+
+"It's no use," interposed Pierce; "he's not to be caught."
+
+"Couldn't ye make Tom Steele Bishop of Cashel?"
+
+"He wouldn't take it," groaned the viceroy.
+
+"Is Mr. Arkins a privy councillor?"
+
+"No; but he might if he liked. There's no use in these trifles."
+
+"_Eureka_, gents, I have it!" cried my lord; "order post-horses for me
+this instant--I have it!"
+
+And so he had, and by that act alone he stamped himself as the first
+man of his party.
+
+Swift philosophised on the satiric touch of building a madhouse, as
+the most appropriate charity to Ireland; but what would he have said
+had he heard that the greatest favour its rulers could bestow--the
+most flattering compliment to national feeling--was to open the gaols,
+to let loose robbers and housebreakers, highwaymen and cutthroats--to
+return burglars to their afflicted homes, and bring back felons to
+their weeping families. Some sneering critic will object to it, as
+scarcely complimentary to a country to say--"these gentlemen are only
+thieves--murderers; they cannot hurt _your_ morals. They were
+sentenced to transportation, but why should we spread vice among
+innocent bushmen, and disseminate wickedness through Norfolk Island?
+Let them loose where they are, they know the ways of the place,
+they'll not murder the 'wrong man;' depend upon it, too, the rent
+won't suffer by their remaining." And so my lord took off the
+hand-cuffs, and filed the fetters; and the bondsmen, albeit not all
+"hereditary," went free. Who should be called the Liberator, I ask,
+after this? Is it your Daniel, who promises year after year, and never
+performs; or you, my lord, who strikes off real chains, not
+metaphorical ones, and liberates real captives, not figurative slaves?
+
+It was, indeed, a "great day for Ireland" when the villains got loose;
+and must have been a strong lesson on the score of domestic duty to
+many a roving blade, who preferred spending that evening at home, to
+venturing out after dark. My lord covered himself with laurels, and
+albeit they were gathered, as Lord Wellesley said, in the "Groves of
+Blarney," they well became the brow they ornamented.
+
+I should scarcely have thought necessary to ring a paean of praise on
+this great governor, if it were not for a most unaccountable attack
+his magnanimous and stupendous mercy, as Tom Steele would call it,
+has called forth from some organ of the press.
+
+This print, calling itself _The Cork Constitution_, thus
+discourseth:--
+
+     "Why, of 16 whom he pardoned, and of 41 whose sentences he
+     commuted in the gaol of our own city, 13 were re-committed,
+     and of these no fewer than 10 were in due time transported.
+     One of the latter, Mary Lynch, was subsequently five times
+     committed, and at last transported; Jeremiah Twomey, _alias_
+     Old Lock, was subsequently six times committed, and finally
+     transported, while two others were twice committed. These
+     are a specimen of the persons whom his lordship delighted to
+     honour. Of the whole 57 (who were liberated between January,
+     1835, and April, 1839), there were, at the time of their
+     sentences being commuted, or themselves discharged, 34 under
+     sentence of transportation, and two under sentence of death.
+     In the county gaol, 47 prisoners experienced the benefit of
+     viceregal liberality. Of these 18 had been under sentence of
+     transportation, 11 of them for life; but how many of them it
+     became the duty of the government to introduce a second or
+     third time to the notice of the judge, or what was their
+     ultimate destiny, we are, unfortunately, not informed. The
+     recorder, we observe, passed sentence of transportation
+     yesterday on a fellow named Corkery, who had some years ago
+     been similarly sentenced by one of the judges, but for whose
+     release his worship was unable to account. The explanation,
+     however, is easy. Corkery was one of the scoundrels
+     liberated by Lord Normanby, and he has since been living on
+     the plunder of the citizens, on whom that vain and visionary
+     viceroy so inconsiderately let him loose."
+
+Now I detest figures, and, therefore, I won't venture to dispute the
+man's arithmetic about the "ten in due time transported," nor Corkery,
+nor Mary Lynch, nor any of them.
+
+I take the facts on his own showing, and I ground upon them the most
+triumphant defence of the calumniated viceroy. What was it, I ask, but
+the very prescience of the lord lieutenant we praise in the act? He
+liberated a gaol full of ruffians, not to inundate the world with a
+host of felons and vagabonds, but, simply, to give them a kind of
+day-rule.
+
+"Let them loose," cried my lord; "take the irons off--devil a long
+they'll be free. Mark my words, that fellow will murder some one else
+before long. Thank you, Mary Lynch, it is a real pleasure to me to
+restore you to liberty;" and then, _sotto_, "you'll have a voyage out,
+nevertheless, I see that. Open the gates--pass out, gentlemen
+highwaymen. Don't be afraid, good people of Cork, these are infernal
+ruffians, they'll all be back again before six months. It's no
+consequence to me to see you at large, for I have the heartfelt
+conviction that most of you must be hanged yet."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Here is the true defence of the viceroy, here the real and
+well-grounded explanation of his conduct; and I hope when Lord
+Brougham attacks his noble friend--which of course he will--that the
+marquis will hurl back on him, with proud triumph, this irresistible
+mark of his united foresight and benevolence.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR "HER MAJESTY'S SERVANTS."
+
+
+If a fair estimate were at any moment to be taken of the time employed
+in the real business of the country, and that consumed by public
+characters in vindicating their conduct, recapitulating their good
+intentions, and glossing over their bad acts, it would be found that
+the former was to the latter as the ratio of Falstaff's bread to the
+"sack."
+
+A British House of Commons is in fact nineteen out of every twenty
+hours employed in the pleasant personalities of attack and defence. It
+is something that the "noble baron" said last session, or the "right
+hon. baronet" didn't say in the present one, engrosses all their
+attention; and the most animated debates are about certain expressions
+of some "honourable and learned gentleman," who always uses his words
+in a sense different from the rest of the nation.
+
+If this satisfies the public and stuffs the newspapers, perhaps I
+should not repine at it; but certainly it is very fatiguing and
+tiresome to any man with a moderately good memory to preserve the
+excellent traditions each ministry retains of their own virtues, and
+how eloquently the opposition can hold forth upon the various good
+things they would have done, had they been left quietly on the
+treasury benches. Now how much better and more business-like would it
+be if, instead of leaving these gentlemen to dilate and expatiate on
+their own excellent qualities, some public standards were to be
+established, by which at a glance the world at large could decide on
+their merits and examine into their fitness for office at a future
+period. Your butler and your coachman, when leaving your service, do
+not present themselves to a new master with characters of their own
+inditing, or if they did they would unquestionably require a very
+rigid scrutiny. What would you say if a cook who professes herself a
+perfect treasure of economy and excellence, warrants herself sober,
+amiable, and cleanly--who, without other vouchers for her fitness than
+her own, would dilate on her many virtues and accomplishments, and
+demand to be taken into your service because she has higher taste for
+self-panegyric than her rival. Such a thing would be preposterous in
+the kitchen, but it is exactly what takes place in parliament, and
+there is but one remedy for it. Let her majesty's servants, when they
+leave their places, receive written characters, like those of less
+exalted persons. These documents would then be on record when the
+applicants sought other situations, and could be referred to with more
+confidence by the nation than if given by the individuals themselves.
+
+How easily would the high-flown sentiments of any of the "outs" be
+tested by a simple comparison with his last character--how clearly
+would pretension be measured by what he had done in his last place. No
+long speeches, no four-hour addresses would be required at the
+hustings then. Show us your character, would be the cry--why did he
+leave his mistress? the question.
+
+The petty subterfuges of party would not stand such a test as this;
+all the little miserable explanations--that it was a quarrel in the
+kitchen, that the cook said this and the footman said that, would go
+for nothing. You were turned out, and why?--that's the bone and sinew
+of the matter.
+
+To little purpose would my Lord John remind his party that he was
+going to do every thing for every body--to plunder the parsons and
+pay the priests--to swamp the constitution and upset the
+church--respectable people would take time to look at his papers; they
+would see that he was an active little busy man, accustomed to do the
+whole work of a family single-handed; that he was in many respects
+attentive and industrious, but had a following of low Irish
+acquaintances whom he let into the house on every occasion, and that
+then nothing escaped them--they smashed the furniture, broke the
+looking-glasses, and kicked up a regular row: for this he was
+discharged, receiving all wages due.
+
+And then, instead of suffering long-winded panegyrics from the member
+for Tiverton, how easily would the matter be comprehended in one
+line--"a good servant, lively, and intelligent, but self-sufficient,
+and apt to take airs. Turned off for quarrelling with the French valet
+next door, and causing a difference between the families."
+
+Then again, how decisively the merits of a certain ex-chancellor might
+be measured in reading--"hired as butler, but insisted on cleaning the
+carriage, and scratched the panels; would dress the dinner, and
+spoiled the soup and burned the sauce; never attended to his own
+duties, but spent his time fighting with the other servants, and is in
+fact a most troublesome member of a household. He is, however, both
+smart and intelligent, and is allowed a small pension to wait on
+company days."
+
+Trust me, this plan, if acted on--and I feel it cannot be long
+neglected--will do more to put pretension on a par with desert, than
+all the adjourned debates that waste the sessions; it would save a
+world of unblushing self-praise and laudation, and protect the country
+from the pushing impertinence of a set of turned-off servants.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE LANDLORD AND TENANT COMMISSION.
+
+
+Every one knows the story of the man who, at the penalty of losing his
+head in the event of failure, promised the caliph of Bagdad that he
+would teach his ass to read in the space of ten years, trusting that,
+ere the time elapsed, either the caliph, or the ass, or he himself,
+would die, and the compact be at an end. Now, it occurs to me that the
+wise policy of this shrewd charlatan is the very essence of all
+parliamentary commissions. First, there is a grievance--then comes a
+debate--a very warm one occasionally, with plenty of invective and
+accusation on both sides--and then they agree to make a drawn game of
+it, and appoint "a Commission."
+
+Nothing can be more plausible in appearance than such a measure; nor
+could any man, short of Hume himself, object to so reasonable a
+proceeding as a patient and searching inquiry into the circumstances
+and bearings of any disputed question. The Commission goes to work: if
+a Tory one, consisting usually of some dumb country gentlemen, who
+like committee work;--if Whig, the suckling "barristers of six years'
+standing:" and at it they go. The newspapers announce that they are
+"sitting to examine witnesses"--a brief correspondence appears at
+intervals, to show that they have a secretary and a correspondent, a
+cloud then wraps the whole concern in its dark embrace, and not the
+most prying curiosity is ever able afterwards to detect any one fact
+concerning the commission or its labours, nor could you hear in any
+society the slightest allusion ever made to their whereabouts.
+
+It is, in fact, the polite mode of interment applied to the question
+at issue--the Commissioners performing the solemn duties of
+undertakers, and not even the most reckless resurrectionist being
+found to disturb the remains. Before the report should issue, the
+Commissioners die off, or the question has taken a new form; new
+interests have changed all its bearings; a new ministry is in power,
+or some more interesting matter has occupied the place it should fill
+in public attention; and if the Report was even a volume of "Punch,"
+it might pass undetected.
+
+Now and then, however, a Commission will issue for the real object of
+gleaning facts and conveying information; and then the duties are most
+uncomfortable, and but one course is open, which is, to protract the
+inquiry, like the man with the ass, and leave the result to time.
+
+In a country like ours, conflicting interests and opposing currents
+are ever changing the landmarks of party; and the commissioners feel
+that with years something will happen to make their labours of little
+consequence, and that they have only to prolong the period, and all is
+safe.
+
+At this moment, we have what is called a "Landlord and Tenant
+Commission" sitting, or sleeping, as it may be. They have to
+investigate diverse, knotty, and puzzling points, about people who
+want too much for their land, and others who prefer paying nothing for
+it. They are to report, in some fashion, respecting the prospects of
+estated gentlemen burdened with rent-charges and mortgages, and who
+won't improve properties they can scarcely live on--and a peasantry,
+who must nominally pay an exaggerated rent, depending upon the chance
+of shooting the agent before the gale-day, and thus obtaining easier
+terms for the future.
+
+They are to investigate the capabilities of waste lands, while
+cultivated lands lie waste beside them; they must find out why
+land-owners like money, and tenants hate paying it; and why a people
+hold life very cheap when they possess little means to sustain it.
+
+Now these, take them how you will, are not so easy of solution as you
+may think. The landlord, for his own sake, would like a thriving,
+well-to-do, contented tenantry; the tenants, for their sakes, would
+like a fair-dealing, reasonable landlord, not over griping and
+grabbing, but satisfied with a suitable value for his property. They
+both have no common share of intelligence and acuteness--they have a
+soil unquestionably fruitful, a climate propitious, little taxation,
+good roads, abundant markets; and yet the one is half ruined in his
+house and the other wholly beggared in his hovel--each averring that
+the cause lies in the tithes, the tariff, the poor-rate, or popery,
+the agent or the agitation: in fact, it is something or other which
+one favours and the other opposes--some system or sect, some party or
+measure, which one advocates and the other denounces; and no matter
+though its influence should not, in the remotest way, enter into the
+main question, there is a grievance--that's something; and as Sir
+Lucius says, "it's a mighty pretty quarrel as it stands"--not the
+less, that certain partizans on either side assist in the _melee_, and
+the House of Commons or the Association Hall interfere with their
+influence.
+
+If, then, the Commissioners can see their way here, they are smart
+fellows, and no small praise is due to them. There are difficulties
+enough to puzzle long heads; and I only hope they may be equal to the
+task. Meanwhile, depopulation goes on briskly--landlords are shot
+every week in Tipperary; and if the report be but delayed for some few
+months longer, a new element will appear in the question--for however
+there may remain some pretenders to perpetuity of tenure, the
+landlords will not be there to grant the leases. Let the
+Commissioners, then, keep a look-out a-head--much of the embarrassment
+of the inquiry will be obviated by only biding their time; and if they
+but delay their report till next November, there will be but one party
+to legislate for in the island.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE HUMANE SOCIETY.
+
+
+If my reader will permit me to refer to my own labours, I would wish
+to remind him of an old "Nut" of mine, in which I endeavoured to
+demonstrate the defective morality and economy of our penal code--a
+system, by which the smallest delinquent is made to cost the state
+several hundreds of pounds, for an offence frequently of some few
+pennies in value; and a theft of a loaf is, by the geometrical scale
+of progressive aggrandisement, gradually swelled into a most expensive
+process, in which policemen, station-houses, inspectors, magistrates,
+sessions, assizes, judges, crown prosecutors, gaols, turnkeys, and
+transports, all figure; and the nation is left to pay the cost of this
+terrible array, for the punishment of a crime the prevention of which
+might, perhaps, have been effected for two-pence.
+
+I do not now intend to go over the beaten track of this argument; my
+intention is simply to refer to it, and adduce another instance of
+this strange and short-sighted policy, which prefers waiting to
+acting, and despises cheap, though timely interference with evil, and
+indulges in the somewhat late, but more expensive process of
+reparation.
+
+And to begin. Imagine--unhappily you need exercise no great stretch of
+the faculty, the papers teem with too many instances--imagine a poor,
+woe-begone, miserable creature, destitute and friendless, without a
+home, without a meal; his tattered clothing displaying through every
+rent the shrunken form and wasted limbs to which hunger and want have
+reduced him. See him as night falls, plodding onwards through the
+crowded thoroughfares of the great city; his lack-lustre eye glazed
+and filmy; his pale face and blue lip actually corpse-like in their
+ghastliness. He gazes at the passers-by with the vacant stare of
+idiotcy. Starvation has sapped the very intellect, and he is like one
+in some frightful vision; a vague desire for rest--a dreamy belief
+that death will release him--lives in the place of hope; and as he
+leans over the battlements of the tall bridge, the plash of the dark
+river murmurs softly to his ear. His despair has conjured up a
+thousand strange and flitting fancies, and voices seem to call to him
+from the dull stream, and invite him to lie down and be at peace.
+Meanwhile the crowd passes on. Men in all the worldliness of their
+hopes and fears, their wishes, their expectations, and their dreads,
+pour by. None regard _him_, who at that moment stands on the very
+brink of an eternity, whither his thoughts have gone before him. As he
+gazes, his eye is attracted by the star-like spangle of lights in the
+water. It is the reflection of those in the house of the Humane
+Society; and he suddenly remembers that there is such an institution;
+and he bethinks him, as well as his poor brain will let him, that some
+benevolent people have called this association by this pleasing title,
+and the very word is a balm to his broken heart.
+
+"Humane Society!" Muttering the words, he staggers onwards; a feeling
+too faint for hope still survives; and he bends his wearied steps
+towards the building. It is indeed a goodly edifice; Portland stone
+and granite, massive columns and a portico, are all there; and
+Humanity herself is emblematised in the figures which decorate the
+pedestal. The man of misery stands without and looks up at this
+stately pile; the dying embers emit one spark, and for a second, hope
+brightens into a brief flicker. He enters the spacious hall, on one
+side of which a marble group is seen representing the "good
+Samaritan;" the appeal comes home to his heart, and he could cry, but
+hunger has dried up his tears.
+
+I will not follow him in his weary pilgrimage among the liveried
+menials of the institution, nor shall I harass my reader by the cold
+sarcasm of those who tell him that he has mistaken the object of the
+association: that their care is not with life, but death; that the
+breathing man, alive, but on the verge of dissolution, has no interest
+for _them_; for _their_ humanity waits patiently for his corpse. It
+is true, one pennyworth of bread--a meal your dog would turn
+from--would rescue this man from death and self-murder. But what of
+that--how could such humble, unobtrusive charity inhabit a palace? How
+could it pretend to porters and waiting-men, to scores of officials,
+visiting doctors, and physicians in ordinary? By what trickery could a
+royal patron be brought to head the list of benefactors to a scheme so
+unassuming? Where would be the stomach-pumps and the galvanic
+batteries for science?--where the newspaper reports of a miraculous
+recovery?--where the magazine records of suspended animation?--or
+where that pride and pomp and circumstance of enlightened humanity
+which calls in chemistry to aid charity, and makes electricity the
+test of benevolence? No, no; the hungry man might be fed, and go his
+way unseen, untrumpeted--there would be no need of this specious
+plausibility of humanity which proclaims aloud--Go and drown yourself;
+stand self-accused and condemned before your Creator; and if there be
+but a spark of vitality yet remaining, we'll call you back to life
+again--a starving suicide! No effort shall be spared--messengers shall
+fly in every direction for assistance--the most distinguished
+physician--processes the most costly--experiments the most
+difficult--care unremitting--zeal untiring, are all yours. Cordials,
+the cost of which had sustained you in life for weeks long, are now
+poured down your unconscious throat--the limbs that knew no other bed
+than straw, are wrapped in heated blankets--the hand stretched out in
+vain for alms, is now rubbed by the jewelled fingers of a west-end
+physician.
+
+Men, men, is this charity?--is the fellow-creature nought?--is the
+corpse everything?--is a penny too much to sustain life?--is a hundred
+pounds too little to restore it? Away with your stuccoed walls and
+pillared corridors--support the starving, and you will need but little
+science to reanimate the suicide.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Nuts and Nutcrackers, by Charles James Lever
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NUTS AND NUTCRACKERS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 31685.txt or 31685.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/6/8/31685/
+
+Produced by Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/31685.zip b/31685.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d17836a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31685.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a9162ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #31685 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31685)
author	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-14 19:56:14 -0700
committer	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-14 19:56:14 -0700
commit	0d707feee316944bbce960a5cabc2510e5f1dc8b (patch)
tree	eabc91993e832ba4b5ac1b53a2510a5340745571