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+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 6, 2011 [EBook #35500]
+Last Updated: February 28, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NUTS AND NUTCRACKERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+NUTS AND NUTCRACKERS
+
+By Charles James Lever
+
+     “The world's my filbert which with my crackers I will open.”
+
+Shakespear.
+
+     “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.”
+
+Beggars 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 are are brought for you to crack and eat.”
+
+John Bunyan.
+
+
+Illustrated By “Phiz.”
+
+London: Chapman And Hall, 193 Piccadilly.
+
+MDCCCLVII.
+
+
+[Illustration: 018]
+
+
+
+
+AN OPENING NUT.
+
+
+“An Opening Nut.”
+
+This is the age of popular delusions! Everybody endeavours to be
+somebody else, and everything is made to resemble something it is not.
+Every class and section of society seeks to mystify the other, and the
+whole world is masquerading it, very much it would seem to the whole
+world's delight. There are people who think the Tories consistent--the
+Whigs honest--and the Repealers respectable. Nothing too palpable in
+absurdity not to have its followers; nor does the ridicule cease with
+ourselves; but all who visit us catch the malady--witness the Indian
+Chiefs, who called on Ben. D'Israeli, to see the style of life and
+habits of the English Aristocracy.
+
+These things after all are but poor delusions--little better than what
+the Wizard of the North calls “Parlour Magic,” and might be left to
+time, to be laughed at, just like the French war clamour--the O'Connell
+denunciation--or the Young England discovery of the “pure 'Cocktailian'
+race.” There are, however, other fallacies which from age and habit have
+gradually associated themselves with our social existence, and become,
+as it were, national. To disabuse the world of some of these, has been
+my object in the present little volume. To endeavour not only to show
+that we often
+
+     “Compound for sins we are inclined to,
+     By damning those we have no mind to;”
+
+but also, that our laws and institutions--our manners and customs--are
+based less upon principles of justice, than mere convenience and social
+advantage.
+
+That such an undertaking will be graciously received or kindly
+acknowledged, I have never been able to persuade myself; no more than I
+feel disposed to believe, that hunger can be fed by Acts of Parliament;
+or starvation alleviated by Cricket or Jack in the bowl; however, it is
+_my_ way of regenerating the land, and why should n't I “roll my tub”
+ as well as my neighbours. Why I have given the volume its present
+title, would be perhaps more difficult to account for, save, that I
+have remarked on so many classes and gradations of people; and that,
+“Knocks” at our neighbours are generally “Nuts” to ourselves.
+
+[Illustration: 021]
+
+[Illustration: 022]
+
+
+
+
+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
+commonplace 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 Disraeli, the long and graceful proportions
+of Hamilton Maxwell, or the portly paunch and melodramatic 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 a
+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 cf cavalry,--whose breast was a galaxy
+of orders only out-numbered 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.
+
+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, Sara 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 vital? 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 net 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 underbred 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 maybe 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: 036]
+
+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 commonplace 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 commonplace 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 barrister, 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: 044]
+
+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
+heartrending, 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 preeminence
+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: 053]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR “ENDURING AFFECTION.”
+
+[Illustration: 054]
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: 056]
+
+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: 059]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE POLICE AND SIR PETER.
+
+[Illustration: 060]
+
+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 “_Fïat 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 rail-roads 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 wont 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.
+
+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:
+
+[Illustration: 063]
+
+“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.
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: 065]
+
+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 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: 066]
+
+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: 067]
+
+I remember once coming into Matlock, on the top of the “Peveril of
+the Peak,” when the coachman who drove our four spanking thoroughbreds
+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 te vend cher, 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 bouf à la Marengo_, and
+_dindes truffées?_ washed down with _Chateau Lafitte_ or _Larase_,
+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 nightcaps, 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 miractes 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: 078]
+
+
+
+
+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 farther than calling a man a Chinese, and when he says, “_tu es un
+Pékin_,” 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, 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 witters, being, to try which can invent a new
+feature 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, _à particular_, 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, die 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 Î 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 pretension 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 if 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, verity, 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, un-syllabled 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 fid-getty 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 everyday
+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 Algeimeine 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.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR FOREIGN TRAVEL.
+
+[Illustration: 094]
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR DOMESTIC HAPPINESS.
+
+[Illustration: 100]
+
+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 _débutante_, 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 rail-road, 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 Variétés 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: 104]
+
+
+
+
+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, ol 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: 107]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE PRIESTS.
+
+[Illustration: 108]
+
+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 he
+baptized nor confirmed, married nor buried; they may get a name in the
+streets, and a wite 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.
+
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR LEARNED SOCIETIES.
+
+[Illustration: 110]
+
+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 title, 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 id. 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 smallclothes, 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 if 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 as 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: 114]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE LAWYERS.
+
+[Illustration: 115]
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: 117a]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: 117b]
+
+The youth you remember as if it were yesterday, the lounger at evening
+parties, or the chaperon of tiding 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.
+
+[Illustration: 118]
+
+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.
+
+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 topsails, and let go her
+anchor, the Aurora should not have luffed up, or got stern way 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 Charniers--ve 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: 121]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE IRISH.
+
+AN IRISH ENCORE.
+
+[Illustration: 122]
+
+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 land 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.
+
+“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 noi”
+ 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 leasure, 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 Black 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 twopence, 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 a finance; 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 snout for repeal.
+
+
+
+
+RICH AND POOR-POUR ET CONTRE.
+
+[Illustration: 132]
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR ST. PATRICK'S NIGHT.
+
+[Illustration: 137]
+
+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, un-fenced 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 Betliam, 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.”
+
+[Illustration: 143]
+
+“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.
+
+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
+Tattersalls; 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 racecourse 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: 148]
+
+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 k 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, is 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.
+
+[Illustration: 159]
+
+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 credit' able 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!
+
+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 obstruction of the copperplate. 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.”
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE KINGSTOWN RAILWAY.
+
+[Illustration: 164]
+
+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.
+
+9 1/2.--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?”
+
+10 1/2.--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 lush.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE DOCTORS.
+
+[Illustration: 168]
+
+Would you ask, Who is the greatest tyrant of modern days? Mr. O'Connell
+will tell you--Nicholas, or Es-partero. 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 animiculas 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.
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE ARCHITECTS.
+
+[Illustration: 172]
+
+“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 this 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 bedfellows; 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
+Venders' 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 t 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: 179]
+
+
+
+
+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
+rail-road.
+
+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, wildcat-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: 184]
+
+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 land-marks 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 off 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 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 scent 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 “Stony-batter.”
+
+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-mattresses 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. Paneras. “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
+flight 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 g It 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: 201]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR “POLITICAL ECONOMISTS.”
+
+[Illustration: 202]
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: 205]
+
+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 have n'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: 206]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR “GRAND DUKES.”
+
+[Illustration: 207]
+
+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 Blacklock; 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 krentzer 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: 209]
+
+
+
+
+A NUT FOR THE EAST INDIA DIRECTORS.
+
+[Illustration: 210]
+
+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.”
+
+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: 212]
+
+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: 213]
+
+
+
+
+“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 un-painful
+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: 216]
+
+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 com-merce, 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 feet. 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: 219]
+
+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 millionaire mill-owners and her impoverished thousands.
+Never was the skill of machinery pushed to the same wonderful--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.
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: 221]
+
+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 headgear--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!--could n'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 au 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 the 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.
+
+[Illustration: 225]
+
+
+
+
+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: 229]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: 230]
+
+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.”
+
+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 dis-likings 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.
+
+
+
+
+NUT FOR “CLIMBING BOYS”
+
+[Illustration: 232]
+
+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,” (*) like a policeman.
+
+     * 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: 237]
+
+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 was n'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 do n'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 quostio_.”--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 circumstances
+atténuantes,” 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: 245]
+
+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 vice-regal
+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.”
+
+“Could n't ye make Tom Steele Bishop of Cashel?”
+
+“He wouldn't take it,” groaned the viceroy.
+
+“Is Mr. Arkips 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 handcuffs, 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: 250]
+
+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 had 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” did n'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 feet
+concerning the commission or its labours, nor could you hear in any
+society the slightest allusion ever made to their whereabouts.
+
+It is, in feet, 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 maybe. 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
+ghast-liness. 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 sparky 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.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Nuts and Nutcrackers, by Charles James Lever
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