THE MONTHLY MAGAZINE, OR BRITISH REGISTER OF POLITICS, LITERATURE, ART, SCIENCE, AND THE BELLES-LETTRES. PRESEN &erie*. JANUARY TO JUNE. VOL. XV. LONDON : PUBLISHED BY CHARLES TILT, 80, FLEET STREET. 1833. LONDON : BAYI.TS AND LEIGHTOX, JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET. INDEX, TO VOL. XV. ORIGINAL PAPERS, &c. Page A Couple of Contrasts . . . 537 A Day of Enjoyment . .... 681 Adriatic Bride ..... .148 Affairs of Turkey, Russian intervention as to . . 336 Agricultural Report . 126—238—366—486—606—718 Amateur Naturalists . . . . .616 A New Boarder . . . . . .624 Anonymous Letter . 403 Associated Painters in Water Colours, Exhibition of . . 589 Belles Lettres Extraordinary .... 673 Biography, Bits of .... 244 'Blannaid . . . . . . .619 Book Trade, Secrets of the . . . . .184 Breaking Cover . . 199 British Institution ..... . 268 British Sports and Pastimes ..... 506 Buds and Babies . . . ... 264 Calderon's Nina de Gornez Arias, Scenes from . . 525 Capoudan Pacha, Visit to the . . . 407 Captain Back's Arctic Enterprise, Absurdity of . . 241 Chateau de Courcy .... • 545 Chess Clubs and Chess Players, British and Foreign . . 428 Chess, our Correspondents on .... 640 Colocotroni, Supper Scene with . . • 177 Common Incidents . . . . 17 Conventional Fallacies . . . . .417 Corn Law Rhymer . . . . .15 Death 335 Delia Crusca School of Engraving . . . 375 Diary of a Joke Hunter ..... 298 Dining;, as it is practised about Bedford Square . • 329 Dirge . . . . . . . 648 Earl of Eldon, Biographical Sketch of . . 102 East India Excrescence .... . 514 Exeter Hall Exhibition of Paintings by the Old Masters . 591 IV INDEX. Fashionable Novel Writing, Art and Mystery of . .173 Fox Hunting, despicable ferocity of . . . 378 Frank Doctor in Greece . . . . .568 French Convulsives, the , 141 — 191 George Cruikshank, Life and Genius of . . .131 Ghost of Christmas . . . . 5 Great Powers,, Glance at the ..... 668 Hazlitt's Death-bed ..... . 257 Heroine of Poland . . . . 63 Humbug of the Bar . . . 291 Indian Anecdotes ...... 435 Irish Literature, Curiosities of . . . .696 Isle of Man . . . . . . 701 Italy .192 Janissaries, Turkish Account of .... 649 Labour Institution . . ... 45 Lamentations of a Tory . . . . -27 Late Hours . . . . . . 415 Latin Comedy, Specimens of . . . 79 Lay of the Hireling Leader . . . . . 680 Le Pied Marin .... . . 535 Literary Intelligence .... 485—589—718 Live and Dead Office .... . 580 Living Men of Genius, Calamities of . . .217 Love at Sea ....... 176 Love-Child . . . 564—656 Magisterial Mistake ...... 548 Manuscript Gazette . . . . . 271 Metropolitan Church Music ... . 413 Military Society, Pleasures of .... 259 Miss Martineau and the Multitude . . 60 Moral Want . . . . . . . 401 More Common Incidents . . . . . ] 66 Musical Review . . . . . - 117 Nauscopie . . . . . 393 , Further Illustrations of . . . 577 New Holland, Native Police of . . . .164 No more of Grief . . .... 427 Notes of an Artist .... 420—551—653 Notes of the Month . 118—231—340—462—583—705 Odessa . .... 325 Palmerston Policy . Parliament and the Property Tax Parson and Pedagogue Phrenologist, The Pirate Bothewell to his Barque Prevailing Principle Property, Unequal distribution of Prophetic Almanack for 1833 Prussian Gentleman 489 392 65 49 383 322 207 1 273 INDEX. V Page Public Opinion, Supremacy of ... 277 Puss in Boots, and the Princess Victoria . . . 158 Railways and Canals . . ... 186 Record Commissions, Results of . . .451 Recorder of Ballaporeen . . . . .69 Religion in the Back Settlements . . . 265 Reveries . .... . 249 Review, Monthly . . 118— 232— 353— 475— 591— 71 1 Royal Academy . ..... 687 Russia in 1833 . . . . .421 Russians in Poland, recent Atrocities of . .611 Short Gentleman, The . .... 384 Sketches in the Trenches . . ' . . 635 Smith, Professor, and his Opinions . . . .161 Society of British Artists, Exhibition of ... 389 Some Gentleman's Autobiography .... 201 Sonnet . . . .62 South Carolina, and its Slave Population . . . 295 Spanish Novelists, Roscoe's . . . 90 Sparrow Pudding Naturalists . . . 213 The Bottle must be broken ..... 630 The First Romance . . . . 438 The Genius and the Jackass ... . . 645 The Good Fellow ..... . 690 The Rescue . . . 576 The Schoolmaster in Muscovy .... 699 The Sweet Blade Bone ..... 685 The Walham Wag ... . .521 The Warrior Bard .... . . 101 Triton of the Pacific . . . ' . .532 Two Left Legs . . ... 633 Ultra Radicalism . ..... 28 United States and Canada . . . . . . . 250 United States, present Crisis in .... 209 Unpublished Novel, Episode from . . . 308 Venterology . . ... 665 Victor Ducange ... . . . 539 Village Antiquarian . ... . 561 Vocal Music, Mr. Phillips's Lecture on ... 520 West. India Question . . . 371 Wood Engravers . . . . .496 INDEX TO WORKS REVIEWED. Page Address on Slavery . . . . .591 Alarm on the Rights of the Poor and Property of the Rich 714 An Essay on Woman . ... 484 Anti-Slavery Reporter for February 1833 . . 604 Baine's History of the County Palatine of Lancaster . . 480 Biographical History of the Wesley Family . . .233 Book of Reform 481 Byron Gallery . . . 478 Cabinet Annual Register for the Year 1832 .... 477 Cabinet Cyclopedia . . . ... 591 Compendious German Grammar .... 364 Cottage Muse ..... . 712 De Rayos, or the Haunted Priory . . .125 Don Quixote ..... 476 Dramatic Library . . . . .126 Edith of Graystock .... 355 Edinburgh Cabinet Library ...... 562 Encyclopaedia Brittanica ' ..... 360 — 477 Encyclopaedia of Cottage, Farm, and Village Architecture 365 Excursion to Antwerp during the Siege ... . 596 Exile of Idria 478 Fables, Original and Selected .... 496 Family Classical Library ... . 598 Family Library . . . 126—476—601 Family Topographer . .... 476 Faust . . . ... 593 Female Characters of the Waverley Novels . 301 — 601 Figaro in London . . . . 363 Finden's Gallery of the Graces 361—479 Four Letters to the Bishop of London . . . 237 French Wines and Politics ..... 235 Gallery of the Graces. Part V. . 712 Gems of British Landscape . . . • 479 Geography in all Ages . . . . .237 Georgian Era, Vol. II. .... 353 German Reader . . . . 714 Golden Legends .... . 357 Golden Rules for Cigar Smokers . . . 232 Grand Canal, Venice . . 479 Historical and descriptive account of the Coast of Sussex . 362 Historical Tales of Illustrious British Children . .601 Hints to a Fashionable Mother .... 235 Illustrations to Prinsep's Journal of a Voyage from Calcutta to Van Dieman's Land .... 592 House of Colberg . . . . . 233 INDEX. VII Invisible Gentleman . .... 235 Italian Exile in England ..... 233 Last Essays of Elia ... . 363 Lectures on Poetry and General Literature . . .716 Letters on Sir Walter Scott .... 234 Letter to Charles Edward Long, Esq. . . . 480 Letter to the King ... ... 600 Library of Romance . . 236—364—478—599 Life and Works of Lord Byron . . . 475 Lights and Shadows of German Life . . . 233 Liturgia Britannica Tutamen .... 599 Lives of Celebrated Spaniards .... 713 Lyric Leaves . . . . .120 Memoirs of Silvio Pellico . ... . .715 Minstrel, and other Poems . . . 233 Moral and Political Sketch of the United States of America . 250 Moral Character of Britain, the Cause of its Political Eminence 356 New Treatise on Chess . . . . . 1\ 7 New Year's Eve . . . . . 121 Nunkovdaus, the Cobbler of Delphi . . .122 Observations on Impediments in Speech . . . 604 Oliver Cromwell . . . . .712 Otterbourne . . . . .119 Outline for a Plan for a New Circulating Medium . . 596 Paris, or, The Book of the Hundred and One . .118 Pauline . . . . . .593 Petit Tableau Literaire de la France . . . 357 Plays and Poems of Shakspeare . 125—477—599 Poems . ...... 120 Portraits of Female Characters in the Waverley Novels 592 — 71 1 Poor Laws for Ireland .... 598 Practical Notes made during a Tour in Canada, and a portion of the United States . . . 250 Puritan's Grave . . . . 600 Reflections upon the Foreign and Domestic Policy of Great Britain, since the War . . . 359 Report from the Select Committee on Secondary Punishments . 356 Roscoe's Novelist Library, Don Quixote . . . 233 Rudiments of the French Language . . . 366 Series of Views in India ... . 598 Sermons . .... 120 Sketches in Greece and Turkey . . . 597 Spirit of the Plays of Shakspeare . . . 711 Sunday in London . . . . . 506 Supreme Importance of a Right Moral to a Right Economical state of the Community . . . 357 System of Geography, on a New and Easy Plan . .715 The British Jew to his Fellow Countrymen . . 599 The Chamelion . . . . 366 The Field Book . . . . 506 The Heliotrope, or Pilgrim in Pursuit of Health . .715 vm INDEX. Page The Slaves . . . . .361 The Tyrol 71 1 Three Months in Jamaica in 1832 .... 602 Three Years in North America . . . 250 The Trade of Banking in England . . . 359 Treatise on Heat . ... 358 Treatise on the Physiology and Diseases of the Eye . 712 Two Letters to the Marquis of Salisbury on the Poor Laws . 713 Useful Geometry Practically Explained . . .713 Views in the East . . . . . 356 Waverley Novels, Vol. XLIII . . 125—601 Western Coronal . . . . 235 Wizard of the North .... 365 Works of Lord Byron . . . .601 Young Cricketer's Tutor . . . 506 . THE MONTHLY MAGAZINE. VOL. XV. JANUARY, 1833. No. 85. CONTENTS. Page I. A PROPHETIC ALMANACK FOR 1833 I II. THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS, SHEWING WHO KILLED HIM 5 III. THE CORN-LAW RHYMER, HIS HEAD, HIS BOYHOOD, AND HIS BOOKS 15 IV. COMMON INCIDENTS, WITH AN OBSERNATION OR TWO THEREON I/ V. THE LAMENTATIONS OF A TORY ; 27 VI. ULTRA RADICALISM 28 VII. THE LABOUR INSTITUTION 45 VIII. THE PHRENOLOGIST 49 IX. Miss MARTINEAU AND THE MULTITUDE , 60 X. SONNET C2 XI. THE HEROINE OF POLAND 63 XII. THE PARSON AND PEDAGOGUE 65 XIII. THE RECORDER OF BALLYPOREEN 69 XIV. SPECIMENS OF LATIN COMEDY — No. IV 79 XV. ROSCOE'S SPANISH NOVELISTS 90 XVI. THE WARRIOR BARD „ 101 XVII. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE EARL OF ELDON 102 XVIII. NOTES OF THE MONTH HI XIX. NEW Music 117 XX. REVIEW OF LITERATURE 118 XXI. AGRICULTURAL REPORT . 126 LONDON: PUBLISHED BY W. LEWER, 4, WELLINGTON STREET, STRAND. TO SUBSCRIBERS. WK are sorry to be obliged to omit notices of severalvery excellent works ; amongst which are " Mortal Life" — " The Masque of Anarchy" — " Hood's Comic Annual" — " Motherwell's Poems" — Mackintosh's History of England" — " The Invisible Gentleman/' and others we cannot now specify. Next month they shall have our attention. We have likewise received several gems in the fine arts this month. " Fin- den's Gallery of the Graces," and some lovely specimens of Female Beauty, from the Waverley Novels, published by Chapman and Hall. And to the merits of the Byron Gallery we promise to do justice. THE MONTHLY MAGAZINE, OF POLITICS, LITERATURE, AND THE BELLES LETTRES. VOL. XV.] JANUARY, 1833. [No. 85. VOX STELLARUM: A NEW PROPHETICAL AND POLITICAL FOR THE YEAR OF HUMAN REDEMPTION 1833. BY THOMAS MOORE, PHYSICIAN AND ASTROLOGER, ON MUNDANE AFFAIRS. MY Friends and Readers — I give you all a hearty welcome with the NEW YEAR. Since I addressed you last year, great things have happened, all of which I then foretold. Stranger events are now about to come to pass, which from my present intimacy with the planets, I can confidently predict. In the mean time be assured that the Monthly Magazine will proceed, as it has done, without puff, though not without profit, as well to those concerned as to your- selves ; for the which latter blessing, may heaven grant that I find you next year both wiser and better — till when, Your loving Friend and Servant, T. MOORE, P. & S. JANUARY. Great Janus comes — by Nature's will design'd To wear one face before, and one behind, Shedding an annual phiz ; and that he wore Behind last year, this year he wears before. JANUARY 1. — Jicfo ¥ear'g Bag follows close to the 31st of last month. — A rush of the reading public for the new number of the Monthly. — Fifty printers* devils sworn in as special constables to correct the press. — 15. — Duke of Gloucester's birth day. — That desideratum in science, a VACUUM will be discovered. — 19. — Meeting of the new Parliament — Mr. Cobbett will ask leave to bring in a Bill to compel every man in the kingdom to buy his Register — Mr. Gnlly offers the long odds the Bill don't pass. — 30.— Ittng €frarW PlartgrlJom.— The Statue at Charing Cross will deliver a political " lecture on heads." M.M. No. 85. B 2 PROPHETIC ALMANACK. FEBRUARY. Lo ! February comes, and with him fast, Cupid and Hymen, link'd together, haste ; This -with dim torch, and that with bow unstrung, To link with young the old, and old with young. FEB. 1. — Barori Chasse will be blown up at the Hague instead of at Antwerp. — Sharp weather ahout this time. — The ex-mem- bers and the frozen out gardeners will coalesce and carry at their head a Right Honourable Long Pole. — 14.— Ualenttne'S 33ag. — The two-penny postmen will have a public dinner on this day — no unions of cupids, courting, and doggrel. — The Political Parson, Malthus, having forbade the banns. — Mr. M. publishes another edition of " The Preventive Check/' and marries Miss Martineau. MARCH. March, like a lion, hurries o'er the plain, As four fleet racers harness'd to a wain ; Such quiet, stormy, angry, placid weather, A snail and flash of lightning join'd together. MARCH 1. — Duke of York's column completed. The creditors will be adjudged to pay the costs, it being proved, on reference to their books, that the Duke had raised three columns to their one. — 5, — The puddles all frozen over. — Very severe weather now about. — Frosty-faced Fogo carried away in a snow storm. — Bell's Life in London advertise for" a new Poet. — Editor smothered in the rush. APRIL. Ev'n as a romping miss from boarding school, Comes April, sacred to the witless fool ; The witless fool her magic pow'r concedes ; Thus Folly plays, while Wisdom counts her beads. APRIL l.-^£Ul .dpool'S ^ag- — Mr. Robert Montgomery will publish private conversation with Beelzebub, in twelve books, black letter. — The Archbishop of Canterbury will hold a convocation of the clergy. — North Pole passage discovered. — Meeting of Political Economists. — Sundry boys licked for trying to purchase pigeons' milk. — 5. — (Soot jFritiag. — Hot cross bunn Day. — Bakers toast the Mas- ter of the Rolls. — About this time, likewise, Sinecurists will smile and finger their salaries — some will complain of the fatigues of office ; others will contrive to do nothing with their usual dispatch. — 26. — (£reat ^laguf of Honfcon, 1665. — Tradesmen will be seen pondering over their back accounts. — Genteel young men in frock coats may be observed studiously avoiding individuals with crab-sticks and top-boots — they will be recognized as vic- tims to a most fearful epidemic the " TICK doloreux." MAY. May, freed at length, has left her orient track, And leaps into a chimney-sweeper's sack ; With brush and shovel plies the pliant foot, All filth and flowers — serenity and soot. MAY 1. — fftag Bag. — Another Convocation of the Clergy — Dutchess PROPHETIC ALMANACK. 3 of Berri presented with a Batchelor's degree — Jack-in- the- Green invites her Royal Highness to attend the festival. MAY 27. — Mogatton j&unfcaj). — The lawyers will hold their church anniversary. — 29. — ifc. @&ad?<£ BF. MeStorattcm.— The bells will probably ring on this day, and the Tower guns will firej more or less. — ;30.— §oanof ®rc bunxt as aTOtej. 1431.— The Earl of Eldon will be seized for a like purpose, but discovered to be ' ' no Con- juror." JUNE. June, like a weaver who has toil'd and spun, Weaves her rich garment from the florid sun, And in her untax'd finery array'd, Appears the type and symbol of free trade. JUNE 3. — About this time a great Tory law Lord will enter into Wedlock — St. Sepulchre's bell will toll merrily on that occasion only — Jack Ketch will enact the part of Hymen, and tie the knot. — 12.— S^at ^gler feiUcts, 1381.— Market-day in Smithfield— the configuration of the Bull and the Ram foretel brutal riots. Quelled by Alderman Scales, who is raised to the Peerage by the title of Baron of Smithfield Bars. — 21. — Sought Siag. — Carus Wilson will discover the longitude. — 30.— -Vast numbers of Irish hay-makers will be found dead, the coast having been strewed with poisoned potatoes. JULY. This month — I tell it with prophetic lips — Begins with a particular eclipse ; Perplexing monarchs and the wise with doubt, What in the devil's name, the moon's about. JULY 1. — Terrific rumours of revolution — many of the Nobility will learn trades — the Dukes of Wellington, Gloucester, and New- castle will take to boarding-houses. — 3. — 33og-33agS begin. — Daniel O'Connell proclaimed Emperor of the Irish — 36 members of his family form the executive. — 15 — §ki. j&fottfrin. — Mr. Irving prophecies a general deluge — Mr. Cobbett will carry his measure for the repeal of all taxes whatsoever — Ministers resign — Lord Scales will be called upon to form a new Administration. AUGUST. A little grain well sow'd will make a mickle, And August is the month to wield the sickle ; But, ere the youthful beards of wheat be shorn, Lo ! abolition of the laws of corn. AUG. 5. — A shameful monopoly of oatmeal about this time will cause a great famine in Scotland. — 11. — Jiog=13ag£ cut). — Emperor O'Connell deposed — the whole of the Irish Executive will suffer. — 16. — The eldest sons of Peers will be called to the Upper House— the son of the Marquis of Westminster by the title of Earl of Hyde-park-Corner, and Baron Pro-Bono- Pimlico. B2 4» PROPHETIC ALMANACK. AUG. 26. — Twilight ends, 2, 12. — Dissolution of Parliament — sub- scriptions opened for carrying on the Government — Messrs.Wak- ley and Wakefield appointed Lords of the Treasury. SEPTEMBER. Behold ! the Cockney, with resistless will, Leaps from his desk, and throws aside his quill ; With dangerous gun goes forth, and toilsome pain, And " sends his circulars" to birds in vain. SEPT. 1. — Shooting season commences. — A petition will be pre- sented by Mr. Vigors, from the growing constituencies of the Zoological boroughs, praying to be represented in the new Par- liament. — 7. — Mr. Henry Hunt will be discovered to be the Mr. Urban of the " Gentleman's Magazine." — 18. — IHmfccx 2££ecit. — Sir Charles Wetherell will do penance in Barking Church, in " sackcloth and ashes." — 29.— J§td)aelmas Bag. — Some members, both of church and state, will be roasted and cut up by mistake. — Mr. Sadler and Bishop Philpotts escape by a miracle. OCTOBER. As without hops our beer is made, and malt, Old birds are caught with chaff, and young with salt ; As men on tea get drunk, on wine keep sober, So shall " the debt" be paid in this October. OCT. 10. — The Bishops will prepare a Bill to amend the Calendar, by shortening the year one-tenth — the clergy claiming that portion for tithe. — A general gloom will pervade these Right Reverends, to find their ft sees" shrunk into rivers. — 21. — The emigrant Poles will be in great demand for the Kent- ish hop-growers — Mr. Wellesley Pole having entered into a permanent engagement with the frozen-out gardeners. NOVEMBER November ! fairest month of all the year, To sentiment and suicides most dear — Swift through my brain thy varied pleasure jumps ; Werter, llousseau, arsenic and stomach-pumps. Nov. 1. — &11 jEatntS. — All London will be converted, in consequence of Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. Fowell Buxton preaching from the top of the Monument. — 2. — Michaelmas Term begins. — The Devil will supersede Lord Brougham in Chancery. — 5.— Gunpofoticr ^lot. — Sir Charles Wetherall will be elected perpetual representative of the Guys of Great Britain. — 9. — Lord Mayor s Day. — The Lord Mayor and Aldermen being members of the Temperance Society, the libations at the feast will be limited to toast and water. — 25. — Michaelmas Term ends. — Seventeen lawyers hanged for cheating the Chancellor. THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS. 5 DECEMBER. Last of the year — that like a swan doth sing Upon thy death-bed, and mirth thither bring ; Oh ! may'st thou, drawn by turkeys vast, and geese, With plums and suet strew the path of peace. DEC. 21. — j&t- 'Sfjomag. — Shortest day. — Many about this time will be so short, that their landlords will be long expecting them. — Christmas Day. — A day of general mourning. — The ghost of Old Christmas appears, and the reader will learn in the next page '" who killed him/' — 26. — j&t. J&tepDcn. — Moon eclipsed. Numerous honourable mem- bers of Lords and Commons will have a lucid interval — like- wise all — Bedlamites. The Rev. Mr. Irving vanishes in a flash of fire. — All " Bills" presented at this time, ordered to " lie on the table." — Irnnocentg. — The Lord Premier Scales and Messrs. Secretaries Cobbett and Wakley impeached, or are now about to be. — 31. — Great riots and conflagrations — Several windows broken, many apple stalls consumed.— Divers will from these significa- tions foretel the speedy approach of the Millenium ; others will doubt, amongst whom, Lord Eldon, particularly. I say nothing — Time will shew. THE GHOST OP CHRISTMAS; SHEWING WHO KILLED HIM. CHRISTMAS is dead and gone! The jovial fellow, known to our great progenitors, to the stout hearts that grew stouter at wassail, is de- funct. What a brave old boy he was — what a jovial hundred-handed giant, offering the good things of the earth with every fist. What household ceremonies did herald his coming ! His was the advent — his the glorious triumph — his were the spoils. His foot- fall was accompanied by richer music than ever filled the ears of Roman conqueror ; the bellowing of the slaughtered ox, the gobling of mul- titudinous turkies, the rich cackling of a million geese, the rushing torrents of mulberry, ale, and mead ; and for spices, every house wras a phrenix nest. Then each man, maid, and child had a song to honour him, and the lusty varlet was carolled in, as the birds sing to the budding leaves. " Come bring, with a noise, My merrie, merrie boys, The Christmas log to the firing ; While my good dame, she Bids ye all be free, And drink to your heart's desiring. 6 THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS. " With the last yeere's brand Light the new block, and For good success in his spending, On your psalteries play, That sweet luck may Come while the log is a teending. " Drink now the strong beer, Cut the white loafe here, The while the meat is a shredding ; For the rare mince pie, And the plums stand by, To fill the paste, that's a kneading!" — (HERRICK.) The spirit of Christmas was invoked to propitiate the workings of autumn. The very trees, leafless,, bare, and ice-bound, had their draughts of wassail. " Wassail the trees that they may beare You many a plumb and many a peare ; For more or less fruits they will bring, As you do give them wassaling." — (HERRICK.) The boar's head, stuck with rosemary, an orange in his grim mouth, did homage to the season. The yule log, religiously kept, reddened the huge fireside ; and the chesnuts hissed and bounced into the laps of the maids, who therein saw a happy augury of a sudden wedding. The sweet smelling elder passed from lip to lip —the carol was sung — the story told — and Christmas, with all his thousand genialities, his antique tricks, his legendary lore, sat the father at every hearth, with all its household, like happy children about his knees. Time was forgotten — age ran backwards to be gamesome with childhood — the whole world was but a round of merry makers. At Christmas, the lord and his serving-man met on the broad genial footing of their common nature ; gifts were exchanged ; trifles, which in themselves told of affection and loyal desire, assurances of mutual love and pro- tection. Hearts that, in the working-days of traffic, had chilled to- wards each other, dilated with the heat and cheer of Christmas, and were again as friends. And many a lip, that for years had fed upon the honey of its wedded fellow, took its first luscious feast from under the silver-bearded misletoe of Christmas. Nay, it was Hymen's tree, and the little loves would cluster in its branches, would look down upon the upturned blushing face of beauty, and cry " a bride !" At Christmas every rich man's door gaped to field and street ; the cha- ritable monk would give treble alms to the poor — the mud cottage, a very swallow's nest, glowed like an oven. And thus lived old Christmas, thus came he to us once a-year, borne down with happy gifts — sweating with the primest stores of the world, tumbling them down in every porch, bearing them to every hearth, filling the bellies of all men with glorious cheer, and calling up the contentment of their hearts into their eyes. He was the most noble spirit of earth, for he was the sire of hospitality, the parent of so worthy a brood. CHristmas, however, the hale, the hearty, he whose very white locks seemed the true Samson's hair — Christmas has had his term of life — Christmas is dead. Christmas gave a rich THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS. / dignity to roast beef, yet was he not immortal ; it was he who., (won- derful architect !) fashioned the mince pie, and in the structure of its paste, kneaded a resemblance of a sacred symbol. Christmas did this, yet could he not be scared : Christmas gave us plum-porridge, (since consolidated into a pudding) yet could not the gift lengthen out his days. Christmas brought home the choicest logs from the forest — Christmas tapped the elder-cask — Christmas roasted nuts for us in the wood embers — Christmas brought us sweet music— -and yet, for all these gifts, all these wondrous dispensations, Christmas is dead and extinct. Grevious, albeit gradual was his dissolution. It is of that, with tremulous quill, we write. A brighter December day never glanced about the hollies. The sky was blue, with heaved up masses of white — the air brought freshness to the brain — and the ground tinkled to the clouted shoes of the peasant. The church roads were thronged with old and young — the bells rang out — a look of gladness seemed in all things. Then followed joyful greetings and salutations — the travelled son came home — the wife- daughter was again at the fireside of her child- hood, her children with her — the lover nestled by his mistress, — the traveller was brought in from the wayside, his staff put to the wall — kindred and neighbours came and came, until the circle was fairly wedged with happy faces. What spirits hovered about the good folks ! What genial workings rose in every heart ! What frank kindness was increased in every face ! At the fire-side sat illustrious old Christmas ! A veryjgiant he sat, with whole families, like children, on his knees. What benign jovia- lity in his looks — what a heart is in his face ! There is a deep blush of wine in either cheek— nay, the wine seems smeared over his wrinkled forehead — his eyes gleaming and sparkle like the yule log. About his head is wreathed the everlasting holly, with its red berries burning among his white hairs ; whilst above, the misletoe canopies him with its leafy glory. Towards it he at intervals casts a roguish eye, then hugs some white-toothed damsel, proclaiming, with a kiss, the presence of Christmas! His garb is motley, not the motley of the court but of the buttery. On his doublet are figured chines and quarters of beasts ; the fowls, from the peacock to the bustard, are pictured there ; yea, there is nothing edible of which there is not, in that glorious costume, some hint or remembrance ; yet, take the suit in generals, the ruddiness of beef, with its streaky yellowness of fat does most predominate. Only to look at the doublet of Christmas is to hunger ! To hear him talk, to hear him crow and chuckle is to have a passion for merriment. He jests and laughs, and the very chesnuts come from the fire to take a part in the merriment. Thus passes the time at the fireside, but, see without, the snow- clouds are tumbling down, — the trees, the earth, all are white, — and the keen north-wind goes cutting by the panes, like envy shrieking at another's good. As far as eye can reach is sheeted snow. There seems not, in the whole landscape, a moving thing. Ha ! — look there! — a speck in the white waste — it stumbles on, at every motion half- buried in the snow ! Christmas rises, with all the merry-makers— the door'is flung open, 8 GHOST OF CHRISTMAS. and a dozen kindly souls have started for the labouring traveller. — Another log or so is thrown upon the fire — vestments are got ready, and, as they are warmed through, the ambassadors of Christmas re- turn, bearing with them, his blood a frozen mass, the poor way-worn plodder of the snow. In a trice he is stripped, newly cloathed — his bowels glow with liquor, offered him by fifty hands — he eats, is placed by the fire, and in a brief time is as gay as the merriest. Nay, when his turn comes, like his fellow-sufferer the robin redbreast, he can give thanks for hospitality in a song, — in some such slip-shod verse as that which follows : — A traveler have I been from birth, A traveler must I be, — Yet ne'er saw I the tree on earth, That's like the holly tree. — Beneath the palm I've found relief, Beneath the great banyan — But nought is like the holly leaf, Unto an Englishman. Hie holly — the holly, with berries red, That garlands the snows of old Winter's head The cedar is a mighty thing — It form'd the Temple's roof; The oak — it is a forest king, With trunk of tempest proof; The coco a cures a thirsty grief, As well as cup or can — But nought is like the holly leaf, Unto an Englishman. The holly — the holly, with berries red, That garlands the snows of old Winter's head. The laurel pays the poet's deeds, — The laurel soldiers win ; But lattice panes, with holly beads — As red as hearts within ! — They make the traveler's sorrow brief- Take off the pilgrim ban ; No ! — nought is like the holly leaf, Unto an Englishman. The holly — the holly, with berries red, That garlands the snows of old Winter's head. And now Christmas is fairly off. The feast's dispatched — and all now sit te sphering about the wassail cup." The old boy tells his merriest tales — his features take a deeper red, — and, with whim twinkling in his eyes, he roars out snatches of songs — of ballads al- most as old as the chalk cliffs of our wonderful island. Then he jumps on his feet, dances in the morning star ; — and so, for twelve long days, made hours by enjoyment, rare Old Christmas eats and drinks,, and scatters abroad good liquor and meat, and puts heart into the bodies of his poorer neighbours. This was the course of Christmas, when the veteran was in robust health. This very course was he pursuing, when a spell fell upon him, which, although he tried to beat it by sheer good humour and stout determination, wasted him away by slow degrees, until his GHOST O¥ CHRISTMAS. 9 mighty spirit fled from among men. One fine anniversary,, he was sitting, as he was wont, supreme in enjoyment — his house crowded, his table groaning, when a knock — a dead, authoritative knock, was heard at the gate, which flew open on the instant ; indeed, it was a miracle how it came to be shut. A slow, measured step was dis- tinctly heard, and Christmas looking round to greet, as he hoped, a happy visitor, saw a strange gaunt-looking figure enter the circle* Though of human form and dimensions, the visitor had a certain spectral look : his visage was long, care-worn, and pallid ; his arms were of extraordinary length, and no less remarkable were the nails, which, like the claws of a bird of prey, curved and projected from his fingers. Though of a spare consumptive figure, he seemed to have tremendous capacity of belly, which, however, despite its width and breadth, retained but little of the monstrous meals daily thrjust adown it. The dress of the visitor was of an odd grotesque charac- ter ; there seemed worked in it, as in tapestry, battle-pieces, royal processions, with the insignia of civil and military authority. He carried a feather behind his ear, and at his button-hole a phial, filled with some black liquid ; one hand seemed as though it grasped im- moveably a small book. The figure approached wealthy Master Christmas, who took him aside; and, after a brief time, the imperious visitant, with a careless inclination of the head, departed. Old Christmas took his chair again, and once more began to laugh and call about him. But it was open to those who well knew the joyous old blade, that something had occurred to lower a peg of his full-toned jollity. He wriggled and shifted uneasily, and, at times, cast a furtively anxious glance at many of the young people ; still, it was manifest that he fought stoutly with any black thoughts that might be crossing him : ijadeed, so well did he rally, that there were many who saw no change whatever in him. He was the same gay- witted, open-hearted reveller, that he had been for hundreds of win- ters. On the following anniversary, Christmas had of course his party. There was, as usual, open house — the traveller still found a place at the hearth, the wassail bowl went its rounds — all things seemed to the many as they had been on the preceding festival. A few of the elders, however, thought they did not perceive that superabundance of meat and drink, which made the glory of all former meetings. There was enough of all things, — but, at every other time, there had been more than enough. Be it as it might, old Christmas put a blithe face upon it, and after atime, was as loud and as jocund as ever. Thus jollity reached its noon- tide, when a knock like that of the former year was heard at the gate, which this time had been — no — not barred, but there was a spring-latch added to the fastening since the former time — purposely closed. Again the spectre entered. Old Christmas rose from the board, passed his hand across his brow, and again retired with the phantom ; who, after a short sojourn, returning the quill, which for a minute he had removed, to his ear, took him- self from the house. Old Christmas came back to his friends, but with an altered look : his face seemed as though it had been suddenly pinched in by fairy fingers, and the purple studdings of his nose wax- 10 tiHO-ST OF CHIUSTMAS. ed dim and faint. On his return, a momentary silence assured him th.it his altered manner was not unnoticed. This thought put the old boy on his metal ; and with an attempted bacchanal air — for spite of himself, there was a nervous puckering of his lips, and his left hand fumbled blindly about the table — he seized a silver-hooped flag- gon, and dared any man to quaff with him. Draining it to the bot- tom, he called out for the dance, — and catching about the waist a pretty piece of womanhood, he challenged any younker to tire him down. Thus old Christmas carried off his care, — for care was in his vitals, though he forced laughter into his face. The winter waned into spring — the spring flourished into sum- mer— the summer ripened into autumn — the fields are reaped, the weeks pass on, the holiday of old Christmas is here again. Well, once more the board is spread. Why, it is not so long as it was wont to be : no — nor are there so many feasters ; and, dear heart, old Master Christmas never looked so pale. He sees that folks are staring at him, and grows fidgetty. The revellers are seated ; and now, in- deed, we see how spare the numbers. Where can be all the neigh- bours— the flocks of friends welcome at the feasting of Christmas ? There seems scarcely one that is not of the old fellow's blood — that is not some branch, some sucker of the household holly tree. And the fare — it is very good, extremely good — but there is certainly not half the proportion of former times ; no, nor is the banquet half so good in quality : the meats are surely not so delicate, and the wine is certainly poorer. What can have caused all this change ? te Rat- tat." At the sound, Old Christmas turns pale down to the very tip of his nose. It cannot be another traveller, for three have already asked and enjoy the hospitality of the roof. No ; again, again — it is the phantom. The spectre enters, with his eternal phial, quill, and look ; and nodding knowingly to Old Christmas, again retires with him into his private cabinet. As usual, the stay of the visitor is but short. Christmas returns to the table, his face blanker than ever, with a sickly smile struggling to get the better of his features. For the first time a long sigh escapes him ; — and, at that very sigh, the eye of Fancy believes it sees the holly leaves on the head of Christ- mas grow dull and parched, and the berries turn like discoloured wax ; nay, the very wines on the table seem on a sudden as dashed with water, the meats look dry and shrivelled, and the crust of the mince-pie — a wondrous omen — untouched fell in ! Thus, for many years the feast of Christmas came and passed, — and as it came, the phantom, grinning more rapaciously at every visit, darkened the doors of the once jovial reveller ; and as the spectre went away, it was remarkable that he carried with him some of the former spirit of the old man, who no longer gave the profuse ban- quets which had heaped honour on his name, but dealt out his feasts carefully, though just sufficiently. Besides, in all these declensions the way-farer was never turned from the door ; though the invited visitors were few, the chance traveller was never refused. It would have violated the religion — it would have broken the heart of Old Christmas, to close his gate against the weary plodder, leaving him to the snows and storm. GHOST OF CHRISTMAS. 11 Still the phantom came and went, and the board of Christmas be- came more scanty. Selfish thoughts would intrude themselves upon the old man, who with tears and indignation would beat them away. So matters went on, until a certain day of the accustomed festival, when Christmas took his seat at the head of his board, albeit there were few, very few faces to grace it — indeed, there were many of his more distant kin uninvited. As usual, the knock was heard, the hor- rid phantom made his appearance, had the customary interview with poor Old Christmas, and retired. The old man had returned to his chair, and a half-suppressed yet audible groan broke from his lips. On the succeeding moment, the voice of a traveller — the wind blew, and the sleet came cutting down — begged for shelter. There was a general stir among the few guests to the door to admit the petitioner, when Old Christmas sprang to his feet, and bade every one again sit down. " What ! — Did he not hear the traveller, the poor traveller?" In sudden wrath, Old Christmas cried, " Let him budge on — he had nought for beggars !" Had the old man vanished from before them, the guests could not have stared with greater consternation : — they gazed at each other — then looked at Christmas, who, as he met their eyes, sank with his head on his breast, smitten rather by compunction, than by their wondering glances. They hastened to him — all help was vain. The traveller had cried for shelter from the wintry blast, the wilderness of snow, — had been denied ; had begged a warm nook, and been told to budge on. The traveller passed the door, and, at that moment — old, hospitable, English Christmas rendered up the ghost ! Old Christmas was buried. With much natural pomp — the sighs, and groans, and tears of the poor — was ancient Christmas buried. The phantom, whose persecutions caused his death, hath writ his epitaph. Nor hath Christmas had but one funeral : every year his obsequies are performed — every year is his death lamented — mourn- ed for by those on whom his ancient hospitality was rained like manna. Believe it, old Christmas is dead ! Trust not to the mummeries done, the apparitions which appear in his name; they are, at the best, idle mockeries, shadowy semblances of the great ancient liver in the flesh. Let us calculate the trifles — the sordid trifles — which, in these earth-stricken days, make up the jovial majesty of Christmas. His coming, it will be said, is duly heralded. But how ? A few venal knaves, with no touch of the music of the time in their souls, congre- gate together to play preluding harmonies to the advent of the great father of hospitality, of household kindness, love to fellow-man, and all the hundred sympathies of a golden time; and when the sleeper is awakened from some happy dream in the night — a dream it may be — which placed him among those solemn shepherds, watching the star, what doth greet his ears ? The simple air, the touching melody sung by his fathers a thousand years ago ? The same notes, chaunted by young Alfred, taught by his royal mother — the notes which, in their simple pathos, their soft sighing congratulations, seem but as the long echoes to the very carols sung by the shepherd of Beth- lehem ? Do we hear such music ? — Do we hear that which, in the 12 THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS. gentle tune of which it sounds, the Saxon, the Dane, and Norman sung? — \vhichthesolemnself-persecutedmonk chaunted in his cell — which cheered and softened the rude heart of the swineherd, tending his grunting charge ? Do we hear this genius of antiquity, evoked from the obscurity of time, tell to human hearts of the primitive and eternal sympathies of human nature ? Alas ! no j we have none of this. The carol, the beautiful affecting Christmas carol, the notes in which the rich and powerful forget their pride of wealth and iron sway — in which the beggar confronted the noble — the carol is dumb. A few fitful notes may, at Christmas time, be heard, shrieked in some pestilential alley, un visited by the guardians of the peace — in the foulest, most squalid haunts of city men, the carol may, per- chance, lift it's voice ; but not elsewhere — in the broad path of men, under the eaves of the rich, it is shunned as the cry of a leper ; and yet Christmas has it's modern songs, and choruses, and jigs, which tell of his coming — the music profane that usurped the antique holy, and, in a love ditty to a lady's eye, a chorus of hunters or fishermen, we are to listen to the signs and things which make and consecrate the purpose of Christmas. The musicians are of apiece with their strains. We are forewarned by them that their harmony is the acknowledged, licensed harmony of the time ; that there are other players on the sackbut, timbrel, and psaltery, coveting their neighbour's wages. We are invoked to have all our eyes and faculties of thrift about us — to mark one man's flute another's fiddle — to take good cognizance of the viol-di-gamba of a third, in order that, in the overflowing of our Christmas hearts, we may compare the aforesaid flute, fiddle, and bass, with the instruments of divine sound, borne by the expected despoilers. And this, this is merry Christmas ! Why do not, in these days of mercantile exchange, the very robins present their bills for singing too ? Where is the beadle, with his sonorous chaunt? In some few happy places his warning may be heard. Some few puddings and mince- pies may be leavened with his benediction ; but yet, how few ? He is no longer a familiar of the time ; a fellow girdled with foolish good- humour. No, he is a mere parish functionary, hardly kept in our remembrance by his verses ; for they too, like the instrumental music denounced above, are of the day present, and not of the day by-gone. The bellman's Apollo should be some reverend straggler from another age — a brain festooned with the cobwebs of the last century. Well, the way tes have gone their course; the beadle, at least in very fortunate districts, has done his dues. Christmas is come. Was there ever such a sneak-up ? Look in his face — it is blank as un- written paper ; grasp his hand — a very bunch of icicles. Why, the rascal looks as though he had risen from a church-yard. There is no blood — no life in him ; his belly is gone ; and, for his legs, they may be matched by the polished drum-sticks of a turkey. Well, let us steal into his house, and see Christmas at his board. The table is spread decently enough ; there are all the relations, but very few friends, of Christmas. The feast passes off with tolerable quiet, ex- cept that it's tranquillity is twice broken by the angry whistling voice of Christmas, who cried out to a beggar, whining in the snow, " If THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS. 13 you don't go on I'll send for the constable." The dishes of the feast have in them but little of the antiquity of the holyday ; and there is nothing like a wassail bowl ; to be sure there are painted bits of paper flung about, at which some look very demure, and some very savage. Nearly all the holly trees have of course withered, for there are not alive two or three twigs of tooth-pick size in the whole room. Once, too, a young fellow, the merriest of the leaden-looking groupe, looked about him, and ventured inquiringly to speak of " misletoe ?" At this, Christmas called up a black look into his meagre face, and, with an action and voice with which he evidently intended to stop all further remark on the subject, cried— " Misletoe ! — vulgar!" And can this be Christmas — this the fellow with a heart for all the world? Again, we say, believe it not ; wrong not ancient hospitality by har- bouring such a thought — Christmas is dead, and the thing that once a-year now visits us is but the shadow — THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS ! The Christmas-box is an alleged relic of the olden time ; but, what a mean mendicant affair it has dwindled to — a mere thing of trade — a mercenary catch-penny. Who claim it ? First, those great practical moralists — the dustmen ; then follow in rank and file posfrnen, general and two-penny; boys, butcher and publican; lamplighters, news- men, and little vagabond school urchins ; though, by the way, the most interesting of the whole tribe of claimants, soliciting, with icy fingers and blue noses, permission to exhibit penmanship, done for the peculiar honour of the season ! Well, here is a sturdy band of claimants, the legitimate descendants of the knaves who, hundreds of years ago, were wont to celebrate Christmas as the spring-time of the heart — the very season of gifts and good fortune. How is it now ? They see at almost every door a face of flint : and when they are prosperous enough to obtain what they seek, it is paid to them more like a tax than a free offering, directed by ancient custom and the genial spirit of the time. Every thing of Christmas is changed. It is in vain that the stage-coaches, with their thousands of presents of turkey, goose, and wild fowl, pass before us ; their very burden speaks of the meagreness of the holiday. Where a man now sends one turkey, he would have despatched half a modern farm-yard. Where he gives a gallon of wine he would have sent a hogshead. A single goose shall now, in its unaccompanied nakedness, tell a man it is Christmas ; one turkey must suffice to give him an inkling of the mighty season ; a draught of wine must, in these times, make the drinker glorious. Alas ! — in the generous age he would have drained whole bowls. The Court was wont to open its heart, and declare its common sympathies with the world by bountiful gifts of cheer at Christmas. The Court hath now grown wise and stately, arid Christmas may hunger for it. There are no oxen roasted at Windsor — no large collops of meat served to the fasting — no flowing ale to thaw the bowels of the poor. No; all doors are locked — all curtains drawn. State will not thrust its head abroad for fear of being frost-bitten. The very essence of the English character seems evaporated in the air of modern refinement ; were it possible that some of our an- cestors, of the roaring boys who did due honour to the season, were 14 THE GHOST OE CHRISTMAS. waked from their graves on a Christmas-day, they would vow they had risen in Iceland, and not in the land of merry Britain. Stay— we have said the Court has no charity : we must unsay the slander. Our recantation may be read in the subjoined : — " MARSHALSEA PRISON. — The Lord Steward of his Majesty's household having, with his accustomed munificence, forwarded to J. Rutland, Esq., Deputy Marshal, his annual Christmas donation, the same was distributed by him on Christmas-eve, each debtor receiving a liberal allowance of meat, bread, and porter, with one shilling in money. His Lordship's bounty, so opportunely bestowed, was most gratefully received, and duly appreciated by each individual." — Times, Dee. 26, 1832. We withdraw our charge. The munificence of the household beams in the splendid shilling ! Christmas has yet honours paid to him. The bailiff Rutland is the almoner, and the revellers are prisoners for debt in the Marshalsea prison ! We believe there are, moreover, two, or it may be three, instances in which the public charity of Christmas is made manifest. Some twenty " old, old men" receive a shilling and a loaf from his chilly fingers, and at Whitehall a certain score of old women, each being recommended by the hand and seal of a person of quality, obtain a crown. With these benefactions Christmas contents his modern generosity; what re- mains of him is, it would appear, a government officer. If any portion of his spirit be yet among us, it is lodged in the bosom of a public functionary; in private life he is dead — it is but his ghost that visits us. But it may be asked — who killed Christmas ? The mercenary is well known : he who, by implanting in the bosom of Christmas feel- ings of selfishness ; in fact, by making that selfishness almost an in- strument of self-preservation — he it was who slew Christmas. Year after year have we seen the phantom visit him ; year after year have we marked the diminution of comforts at the banquet — the absence of ancient well known faces ; the lowered tones of mirth and revelry ; the struggle to outface the comparative squaller with a look of careless resolution ; yet for all this, we have marked how the cheeks of Christmas have gradually fallen in ; how his colour has faded ; his stout hand trembled ; his bright eye flickered, and grown dreamy : we have seen how hospitality died in his heart, and we have seen how inseparable was hospitality from the existence of ancient Christmas ; for, when it died, he on the very instant rendered up his glorious being. Reader — if you would know the name of the assassin of Christmas, it may be seen written on the tomb of the dead ; nor has he only one tomb that bears the name of the murderer ; but, in merry England, thousands and tens of thousands. Go into the cottage of the labourer, the room of the artisan, the parlour of the tradesman, and you will see the death of Christmas thus written on their hearth- stones : — KILLED BY EXCESSIVE TAXATION ! 15 THE CORN-LAW RHYMER— HIS HEAD, HIS BOYHOOD* AND HIS BOOKS.* THE decline of what has been termed, by those who are without its pale, the Cockney School of Poetry, is a matter to be somewhat regretted. Bad as it was, it possessed this negative virtue, namely , — it might have been worse ; and while its supporters were in full fea- ther, they twittered in chorus sufficiently loud to drown the " vernal strains" of Kitty Wren, Tom Tit, and similar birdlings : now, how- ever, that they have almost moulted their last feathers, the minikin tribes come perking and peering from their obscure haunts, and find- ing the old, and somewhat bigger birds silent, chirp gladsomely, vote one another nightingales, and the inhabitants of Brompton believe them. On the ruins of the Cockney, they have founded the Carra- way-comfit School of Song; than which nothing is worse than the Bar- ley-sugar ditto in cookery, which represents Leander noye by blanch- ed capon, in a compot of crcme sucre, iced and waved au naturel. As claret is to caudle, so is the Corn-Law rhymer to the Carraway comfits. They are " far as the poles asunder." While the saccharine clique puzzle their small brains for confectionary conceits, Ebenezer Elliott, the hardwareman of Sheffield, welds iron truths in his mental smithy. He knows nothing — he cares nothing — about the sugar- plum opinions, the small thoughts of genteel evening parties, com- posed of literary danglers, slammocking girls — half finery, half rags — who scribble verses about festal halls, and bridal joys, and glittering groups, and senses stunned at seeing Signer Such-a-one glance some- what too lovingly at Signora Somebody, and all that stuff, while they ought to be darning their two-and-sixpenny silk stockings ; but, on the contrary, turning aside, as man does from gilt gingerbread, from such namby-pamby nonsense and nursery tales, dives boldly into the depths of the human heart, and depicts it to us as it is ; looks upon nature in the woodlands, and shows us its loveliness and its gross abuse ; sees how happy the poor man might be, if his rich brother would let him ; traces our sins and our sorrows to their source ; elo- quently points out the polluted fountain, and indignantly calls upon us to cleanse it. Poetry in his hands is something like what it should be — mighty, not tickling ; patriotic, not merely pretty ; conducive to the amelioration of our race, not contemptibly courteous and parasitical to small souchong-and-sandwich-giving coteries ; capable of being felt '• from Indus to the Pole," not unintelligible beyond the bourne of such little literary clans as flourish within the bills of mortality; not a morsel of Mosaic work, composed of trumpery conceits and distorted pictures, but a grand map of the mind and heart, truly depicted ; not nature perched on the unhappy leaves of a polyanthus in a London parlour-window, or a blue glass hyacinth bottle, or the summit of a cockney bough-pot, but as she appears in her own free and * The Splendid Village ; Corn-Law Ilhvmes, and other Poems. By Eben- excr Elliott. 12mo. London. B. Steill. 183:t. 16 THE COUN-LAW RHYMER. fair dominions ; not a tea-party toy, but a majestic power, a mental steam-engine. While the Comfit bardlings exert their " five wits" to enshrine carraways in sugar, the Sheffield shopkeeper erects " bas- tions and batteries, beautiful as they are impregnable/' against the oppressor, on behalf of the oppressed. They appeal to Brompton ; he to the universe. The carraway-comfit tribe are each of them sui generis, they resemble nobody but themselves ; Elliott claims " kith and kin" with the best and noblest of mankind. He is not only the Burns, the Crabbe, the Teniers, and the Wilkie, but the Salvator Rosa and Michael Angelo of humble life. Some of his sketches are Titanic. In the volume before us, however, a few of the pieces are disgraceful to his genius. He knows but little of the language, in which he frequently writes with all the splendour and might of Milton. In his former publications, outrages were often committed on gram- mar. In the present collection, however, these have been corrected. But we know, from capital authority, that the subjunctive mood, and other niceties, are,, and probably ever will be, hedgehogs to him. No author is more unequal. He sometimes raves like an imaginative bedlamite, and then suddenly discourses most excellent sense in pure music. Most of his passages are <( clear to the meanest under- standing ;" but many of them are certainly unintelligible to all the world, — himself included. Yet, with all his faults, Elliott has few compeers, either in poetry or patriotism. His youth gave but little promise of his future pow- ers. A friend of ours, who has known him from his infancy, asks us " how we can account for his having been, in his school-boy days, an impenetrable dunce, delighting in nothing but in building boats, and making other puerile play-things ?" According to the same un- impeachable authority, ' ' he never could learn the Numeration Table, nor could he acquire, nor does he now know, a single rule of grammar. When he detects errors in construction, it is by thinking alone. Almost any boy's hat is too large for his head ; that of one of his sons, a lad aged fourteen, and small-headed for his years, descends over the father's eyes and nose ! The painter of the portrait affixed to the collection of his works, has given him an inch, at least, of brain, more than he possesses. His brows are remarkably prominent and angular, strongly wrinkled across, and deeply indented in the centre. He has no brain behind his ears, and very little above them — his head possessing neither height nor depth, but breadth only ; so that if Gall and Spurzheim be right, the Corn-Law Rhymer is an idiot." In his last passage, our estimable correspondent appears to have come to an unwarrantable conclusion. If his statement be correct, the Corn-Law Rhymer must, according to the phrenologists, be defi- cient in animal propensities, but rich in mental endowments. A. 17 COMMON INCIDENTS; WITH AN OBSERVATION OR TWO THEREON. * Facetiarum apud prsepotentes in longura memoria est.' WHAT business I had to sojourn in France, during the war,, is of no consequence to any body. Suffice it to say, I landed at Brighton. Of course I put up at an inn or hotel; whichever the reader pleases; and went through the usual stale misery of location, where a coffee- room is the theatre of" Habeas Corpus" for the ingressor. It is not my purpose here to remark upon the company in the coifee-room ; far less to dilate upon the interesting aggregate of human items usually found in the general coffee-rooms for travellers, in England. I cheerfully consign such labours to the proprietors of Menageries, or Zoological Gardens ; their practical tact enabling them readily to detect that iong-spoken-of partition between animal instinct and reason, which, I confess, my dulness or stubbornness has never enabled me to make any thing of. My arrival having been late in the evening, the first word I heard uttered in the coffee-room, while throwing my cloak over the par- tition of my box, was ' BOOTS !' This sound, the euphony of which might admit of disputation, was uttered by a fat man in a purple coat; an ejaculatory note, seemingly propelled by the pressure of the abdominal muscles, as he leant his broad head upon his arms crossed on the table before him. — BOOTS! 1 do not affect to say that I did not understand the appellation, Still my long absence from England had rendered the illustrious cognomen unfamiliar to me. I therefore musingly awaited the appearance of the shining functionary, to the end that I might request him to send the waiter ; for, unlike a ' sentimental traveller,' I wanted something to'eat. As the purple man departed for bed, after encasing his feet in those genuine endemic luxuries, English coffee-house slippers, a pale, tall man, clad in a black frock, stepped over to my box, apparently to engage a soy-and-ketchup-splashed newspaper; but more pro* bably in earnest desire to answer the inquiring looks I had, heed- lessly, and unknown to myself, bent upon the man of purple, as he staggered towards his dormitory. " That man, sir, is lost," whispered he, in a confidential under- tone. " We shall be called up in the night to him. He betrays in- cipient paralysis of the extremities. I supped in the same box with him. He has eaten two slices of salmon, and a boat of lobster sauce. We drank two bottles of wine together ; after which he had three strong tumblers of hollands and water, and ate a plate of chestnuts !" " You are a medical man, sir?'* " I am, sir. You, too, are of the profession, as I judge from the attention I observed you pay to the symptoms?" I did not answer the interrogative. I simply remarked, that, my observations of the stranger were quite casual, and without interest. " Mais vous plaisantez mon cher : n'est il pas vrai que vous etes eleve de 1'ecole de Medecine de ." M. M.— No. 85. C 18 COMMON INCIDENTS. " Comment done?" said I, thrown off my guard by the cool man- ner in which this stranger drew the double inference, that I under- stood French, and was, moreover, a student in medicine. What added to my astonishment, was the purity of his French accent, after having previously addressed me in English, as free from foreign idiom or accent, as I could have spoken myself. After some expla- nation, it appeared that my new acquaintance was really a French- man, and had a brother who was a fellow-passenger with me from France, and with whom I had some conversation on board. He was a student at the Ecole de , where he had frequently seen me, as I certainly had passed a few ' Trimestres' at that college, hot with any professional view, but merely in admiration of the institution. My supper now appeared ; and, of necessity, the animal part of my being took the lead in excitement ; — further conversation ceased. As the brother of my new acquaintance was for London, it was agreed that we should start by the same coach in the morning. I now availed myself of the professional labours of BOOTS, soliciting one slight deviation from his usual habits, viz. that he should have my boots cleaned and brought to me immediately. I am an. early riser ; and having had occasion to sleep at more inns than one during my life, I have necessarily gone through that agonizing ordeal of rising two hours before you can obtain a hearing of any living soul in the inn, and three hours before the dusky peripatetic has suffered ' DAY'S orient streak' to shine upon your over-night consignment of leather. Something may, and ought to be said of early rising in general, with a view to establish its just position in the scale of society, either as a nuisance or an advantage. It is a faculty possessed by comparatively few, when genuinely re- sulting from the pure love of getting up, unallured by expectant excitement, as applies to the huntsman or sportsman — uncompelled, as applicable to our various avocations in life. Your real, or, one may say, professional early riser, is a being ' sui generis.' Winter or summer, it is next to impossible for him to lie in bed after his usual hour of rising. He is fidgetty, restless, heated, and excited at the restraint. Illness-alone can detain him in bed; and even illness is much more supportable to him, up and dressed, than imprisoned in a bed ; the object of remaining in which, ceases to exist the moment the propensity to sleep is satisfied. It matters little at what hour such a man goes to bed ; early or late, he will awake at his usual rising hour, even if he have not enjoyed one-fourth of his wonted repose. Now this disposition of feelings requires that the individual should possess a 'sanguine temperament;' a nervous ' appareil/ highly sensitive and imaginative. This the reader may take for granted. Whence else the intense interest, the devoted anxiety, which enchains his attention to that first pale shadow, grey as a gos- samer veil, which hangs for an instant betwixt darkness and day- break : which constrains his eye to dwell still upon the gathering phenomena in the east, as the distant horizon, indented by darkling tree-tops, steals coldly upon his view ; and, as he watches tint after tint, mellow, deeper, and at length blaze into the full effulgence of sun-rise ; think you, he would exchange his feelings and position for COMMON INCIDENTS. 19 that of the supine, comatose, flea-bitten snoozling, who lies uncon- sciously degraded into a common rail-road for bugs ? The beings are perfectly distinct ; — they bear the same analogy to each other, as a Dutch clock, with its weights, to the compensating mercurial pen- dulum of a chronometer ; or, the object-glass of a celestial telescope to the fresh puttied pane in a tap-room window. Let not, therefore, the reader fall into error, by supposing that every one is morally constituted to become an early riser. Such an impression might urge many a mistaken simpleton to get out of his bed with no more favourable result to himself than the execration of the inmates of the house where he lodged, a cold, and sore throat, and a two-hours-state of wondering abstraction, at what could possibly be the golden secret of the pleasures of confronting the break of day. With all this, it must not be presumed that early rising is without its concomitant miseries even to the practitioner, when the varied business of life throws him out of the channel of his usual habits. The benefits be- stowed by nature, like the current coins of government, are never suffered to circulate without alloy. Among other rigid examples of this depressing truth, my first morning at Brighton was a weary instance. I rose at six o'clock : — it was the month of December : — my tobacco-pouch furnished flint, steel, and German tinder, towards a light, and a pipe of fragrant tobacco. Cigars were not then so very much in vogue : besides, had they so been, I hold it decidedly inconvenient for a man, upon whom nature has shed a more than average luxuriance of nose, to smoke a cigar. True it is, we now daily see lighted cigars burning beneath noses from infinitesimal admeasurement, up to the portico of two-and- a-half inch horizontal projection. But this is solely attributable to idiosyncratic affectation. If you take the pains, reader, to look stea- dily into the eyes of the wearer of this exaggerated architecture, you will see them ever and anon streaming in tears, as the products of destructive distillation are eddied into the yawning recipient. You will see one thus gifted, continually removing the cigar from his mouth, to appease the agony of the Schneiderian membrane. More- over, we all know that a four-inch cigar, which is about an average length, cannot (allowing half an inch for insertion into the mouth) burn under a two-and-a-half inch emunctory; meeting, as it must do, the current of air occasioned by walking, without fixing upon such a pent-house for its chimney and smoke-consumer. The thing is self- evident. 1 beg pardon for this digression. My pipe and travelling-lamp lighted, I cast one look towards my window, and sat down to follow the only rational amusement within my grasp — viz. reading. Time passed, as it always ought to do in reading, unheeded. At length the fainter lustre of my lamp warned me that day was approaching, or approached ; for, encircled as my chamber was by adjacent buildings, the term ' day-light' was a vague and comparative expression. Long before this epoch, I had craved my usual indulgence of a cup of coffee ; but this could not be effected without disturbing the house. I therefore at once dismissed the thought : for, as I hope I have elsewhere given the reader to under- stand, the early riser, ' par excellence," is a sensitive being, and C2 ) 20 COMMON INCIDENTS. appreciating, as he is enabled to do, the the " bienseances" of society, he is very cautious, and even timid of rendering his habits a source of annoyance, even to those who affect the grosser appetite of unli- mited sleep. Instead, therefore, of ringing my bell, I had recourse to the cosmoramic luxury which my window might afford. I threw up the sash: — my chamber, as the French express it, " donnoit dans la basse cour, the reflected light from three parallelo- gramical brick houses, of which the inn forms a fourth, fell as yet imperfectly below. I could distinguish, however, a series of dark shining circles, which were shortly developed into the contents of an enormous bottle-rack. Some pennons were now seen waving in the " battle field ;" but being chiefly of a dark hue, what is professionally termed <( checked apron stuff," hung upon a black horse-hair line, they had at first escaped my observation. The rain, which I had long heard, was now visible in continuous cataracts from the concave-tiled outhouses of the court. Two large water-tubs, juxta-posited, with a communicating pipe, were running over in tumultuous profusion ; some rabbits, encased in hutches contiguous, seemed to contemplate with any thing but philosophic admiration these mimic falls of the Niagara. Five washing-tubs and three stands for ditto, were partially illumined by the god of day. Various pieces of deteriorated crockery were discernable upon the ground plan, some containing fish bones, some cold potatoes, and brewers' grains. Suddenly the " cock's shrill clarion" startled me in my medita- tions. Slowly from beneath the eaves of a hen-house door, emerged the head and body of the proud harbinger of morn — the cock — but such a cock ! In vain I watched for the egress of his tail — he had none ; in vain my imagination was strained to picture his glossy plumage : the pen-feathered wretch stood bristling like a hedge-hog — he was moulting, poor devil, I supposed. I pitied him from my heart, though my enthusiasm was somewhat clamped at not seeing him fly upon some eminence, and execute his herald functions ; besides, he got such a thorough ducking from the eaves of his dwelling as he came forth, that he appeared, for an instant, undecided whether or not to prosecute his crusade. Hen after hen followed in mute and nervous succession, each undergoing the shower-bath. The whole posse then congregated in a corner of the court, their tails drooping, those that had any : some standing on one leg, " looking unutterable things." I could not stand this. I felt the poultry " enter my soul," and though a sprightly string of ducks was egressing from a bran- and-pollard-spattered hatch, to enliven the scene, I incontinently dashed my window down, and violently pulled the chamber bell- rope. The rattling of the slack-wires against the ceiling left it doubtful whether the summons had reached the bell ,- I repeated my challenge frequently, with no better success ; at length I went into the passage, and struck two or three bells sharply with my slipper — 'twas all in vain — the sounds died harmless on the air. Feelings, something approaching to disgust, now began to assail me. I de- scended the stairs, and succeeded in reaching the entrance passage : COMMON INCIDENTS. 21 here, directed by a noise which I took for the measured roar of waves breaking on the beach — here, in a niche, I discovered a frousy being enveloped in great coats, whose wind instrument to judge from its compass, was of no despicable construction. Fruitless were my efforts to rouse the snorer by shouting and bellowing in his ear — the torpid zoophite shrunk closer within his shell. I tried the door to effect my escape ; but no — the key was withdrawn. Impatient and irritated at my imprisonment, I began systematically to uncase the monster ; he awoke during the process of unravelling ; he handed me the key. Now, thought I, for a bracing walk amid the odorous and freshening breezes of the ocean. The fastenings of the door flew rapidly back at the joyous enthusiasm of my touch. I rushed into — the " basse cour !" God of mercies ! here I was face to face with the melancholy, hope-denouncing fowls. I retraced my steps with as much composure as I could command I gave the porter a look which ought to have annihilated him, had he been made of any thing more sensitive than a black pudding. I motioned far the key of the entrance door, for speech was denied me. At this instant a loud and reiterated ringing of a bell, on the second floor, broke the spell of my enchantment. The peals continued so loud and conse- cutive that an alarm of fire suggested itself to me. I bounded up stairs, and entering a room, from which groans and call for help pro- ceeded, I found a person stretched on the floor, apparently in the last agony. I lost no time in again applying to the bell, and raising the patient from the floor, seated him in an arm-chair. Again I summoned the inmates, by appeal to the bell ; at length, no less important a personage than BOOTS made his appearance, with a lanthorn in his hand, although it was now broad day-light. Jn the countenance of the sufferer, I not only recognized the man of the purple coat, but one who had, some years previously, been my fellow-passenger from India — a retired East Indian general. My medical acquaintance of the preceding evening instantly oc- curred to me, as did also his apparently too just diagnosis of the case ; I dispatched BOOTS instantly to his chamber, and he was soon in attendance. He shrugged his shoulders on entering : — " N'est ce pas que je vous Favois bien dit, mon cher ?" With this remark he proceeded to bind the General's arm, and depleted him, to the tune of an avoirdupois pound of circulating medium, in a twinkling. The delicacies, of which the General had so abstemiously partaken over night, having been already eleminated, things were not so despe- rate as my friend apprehended ; the patient rapidly came round, re- fused every sort of medicine, and ordered a couple of bottles of soda water and a glass of brandy, by way of restoring the energy of his system, and cooling his over-heated coppers. The Frenchman's countenance exhibited evident dissatisfaction at this rapid rally ; not that he could possibly inherit, for an instant, one feeling foreign to the purest humanity — but he was disappointed in a professional view. The progress of the attack was quite at variance with nosological doc- trines, as applicable to congestion of the brain ; and he was prepared to prove, with the physician spoken of by Voltaire, that the patient 22 COMMON INCIDENTS. ought not to have recovered, until a certain series of symptoms had been made to give way to an active pharmaceutical treatment. I descended to the coffee-room, and ordered breakfast; the French surgeon and his brother joined me in the same box. Ere we had well commenced, the General descended, and desired to be of our party — he, too, was going to London. It is hardly worth while to offer a long comment on inn breakfasts; — ham, salt as the briny deep, the animal who erst owned the limb having uttered his death-rattle in the EMERALD ISLE— eggs, whose claims to partial incubation, and subsequent antiquity of location in the larder window, formed only a secondary flaw in their alluring properties, inasmuch as the ambiguous food and puddle-drink of the parents excluded the possi- bility of their laying a fresh egg — of these we had plenty, with muf- fins, dead and sodden as the pudding crust consigned to the pupils at the sixty guineas per annum classical seminaries near the metro- polis, the printed cards of which usually close with this delicate allu- sion— " *** Each pupil to bring (only) SILVER SPOONS, knives and forks, towels and sheets, &c." Quere — Why not add food too, and face the thing out manfully ? Time now became an object : the coach was to start at ten o'clock. Having reviewed the economy of my " malles," I quietly awaited the approach of that real English luxury, a well-appointed stage coach. My companions were for going outside ; I had taken my place inside — this arrangement inferred a separation of our company, which was not desired on either side. The Frenchman argued the point, still I was inexorable. I gave, in my turn, my own reasons for my obstinacy. Every man who pays his tailor and hatter, has, or ought to have, an affection for his hat and coat. Now, an outside place, though it presents less present outgoing from the pocket, is both too hot and too dusty — mark that, for the coat and hat — in sum- mer, and, I think, rather too cold to be pleasant in winter, even ab- stracting the chances of rain. The inside is, if you face the horses, cooler in summer ; and, if one glass be put up, certainly warmer in winter. Don't talk to me of great coats. Who, that valued a coat, would ever squeeze that modified horse sheet, a great coat, over it, to distort and horrify the sublime disposal of its nap, and render it little better, at the journey's end, than a savoy-cabbage leaf? What ails an umbrella ? you will say. Heaven forfend ! Have you never travelled outside a coach during a shower, in due propinquity to an old woman weilding an umbrella, whose area befitted it for the " pa- rachute" of an aeronaut ? Have you not seen the interesting rills, which each conducting whalebone makes its own, to lavish between the coat collar and neck-cloth of its defenceless victims ? Have you not felt those brass-sheathed portion of the anatomy of the mammiferous leviathan, now closing your vision, as with an extinguisher, by thump- ing your hat over your eyes — now, by a change of posture in the in- flictor's arm, nearly scooping it off your head — and, at every instant, rub, rub, rubbing against the delicate salient angles of your hat, re- ducing those points to a mere felt, convulsing you with agony and cold sweat, as each rub speaks — beaver ! beaver ! to your sinking soul ? If you have not noted these trials, all I can say is, that you are COMMON INCIDENTS. 23 not an observing traveller. My arguments prevailed ; the coach ar- rived, we took our seats, and away — away we sped. Every one knows that the first quarter of an hour's conversation in a stage coach, at starting, is always engrossed by local topics; I mean local, as applied to the scene we have just left, and to that passing before us. In about twenty-five minutes the General " broke ground," by some slight allusions to India — mere casual remarks, contrasting the season and scenery before us, with the blazing brilliance of that enchanted and fairy land ; from this he naturally deviated to touch upon the picturesque, the descriptive, and at length upon his own professional career. I breathed hard, for I foresaw that a prosing " moonsoon" was setting in, and experience had taught me the na- ture and weight of the infliction, when arrived at its full swing. In self-defence, I rapidly began a conversation in French with my fellow-traveller, the student. There could be no impropriety or ill manners attributable to this course, because a retired Indian of that rank ought to understand French — no offence was taken. By degrees the General, taking advantage of pauses in our conversation, began by warping the conversation towards the mother country — from thence to the Pacific Ocean ; eastward^ and still eastward he strained it, by the power of his unwearied " capstan/' till the sounds of Tili- chery and Calicut fell upon my astounded ear, like the first bomb upon the citadel of Antwerp. The Ghauts, Poonah, Aurungabad — the whole of the Mysore country, followed thick and fast; — I was agonized. I had often visited, personally, the whole geographical area he described ; more, I had heard him go over the same ground, on board ship, many a weary time. Now, by an immense land-slip, he transported us to — that garden of India — Guzzerat ; and he was just on the point of plunging us in the gulph of ditch, when a loud volley of cries for the coachman to stop, echoed from behind. A sailor had fallen from his "high estate," and was squatted on his mother earth, two hundred yards astern. The coachman pulled up, amidst a cloud of curses ; the guard retraced his way, to pick the man up ; he was not at all hurt — only drunk. How thankful I was for this episode ; who shall describe my relief? It was as scraped potatoes to a scorched limb — magnesian draught to the wretch who has swallowed oil of vitriol. Not the green-grocer's porter, who, ac- cording to the advertisement in the Evangelical Magazine, is war- ranted to ' e fear God, and carry one hundred weight of turnips," for miles, upon a narrow obstructed pavement — not the locomotive fish- retailer, who carries the same weight from Billingsgate to Battersea — not one of these can view the end of his toil, with half the joy that " extacized" me, when — l( Stop, coachman, stop !" broke upon my staggering senses. In five minutes more the general would have crossed the deserts, and encamped us under the walls of Isphahan ! The coach again proceeded. I lost no time in striking in upon a point of science with my French eleve, where I knew the General could not follow us. I persevered, I heated myself on the topic, I made the most extravagant observations, drew the most ludicrous and inapposite conclusions, with a view to elicit the gesticulations and rapid verbosity of the Frenchman. He smiled and stared alterna- 24 COMMON INCIDENTS. lively at my arguments; it was all the same, I succeeded. The Gene- ral's prosing fit grew calm, it cooled, it settled, it froze ; he fell asleep ! Thank heaven this will do, thought I, as far as the next relay of horses ; after which I will endeavour to fall asleep myself. This resolution of mine may appear the effect of an unsociable tem- per ; very far from it, it was an act of moral necessity. I had, long ago, heard all that this Indian could say upon almost every topic, during a five months' voyage, at the cuddy table, where he was always felt, though not voted, an essential bore. I did not like him : I could not esteem him. Similar to many very ignorant men, he was malicious, revengeful, and always unforgiving of offence to those who had the least claim to classical acquirements. He now and 'then, from pure indolence, would dip into a scientific tract, which, if he happened to absorb part of the contents, was sure to intoxicate him, as the brandy bottle does the savage, exposing him, when striving at practical action under the stimulus, to derision and contempt. He was stately, severe, and morose on the voyage ; few on board were his equals,, in rank or riches ; with these alone he deigned to associate. A Lieutenant returning home on furlough, a Captain, even of the same army, were not to be familiarly greeted. The very Captain of the ship was oply tolerated as a companion, by courtesy ; he was patronized, occasionally, by a question or two relative to his professional duties. If a signal were made by the Commodore of the fleet, the General was the first to bore the Captain with impertinent inquiries relative to its information, meaning, &c. His rank was presumed to neutralize the intrusive ' platitude' of asking childish questions, while yet the glass was at the Captain's eye. He, of course, unhesitatingly interrupted the Captain's communi- cations with the officer in attendance with the signal-book ; and he confused the Midshipman, preparing to unravel the mysteries of the colour-chest. Were the ship's crew employed in sealing their guns, or exercising in the various evolutions of gunnery, the General was there; he longed to give orders, as usual, concerning a subject of which he could possibly know nothing practically, as applicable to sea service. Were the top-gallant sails to be taken in, the top-sails reefed, the gib hauled down, preparatory to a coming squall ; — Le voici encore Monsieur le General ! was the word, ' steady' given to the helmsman, in a solemn prolonged tone, technically understood to command severe attention to the helm, you would have found our gentlemen looking into the ' binnacle.' Has a flying fish dropped on board, in attempting to cross the ship, " here Midshipman shew this to the General." Has a boneta been speared forward; " where is the General ?" Do the lady passenger wish to walk the quarter-deck, " bless me, where is the General ?" In short, this is but a shadow of that way-giving, time-serving, obse- quious flattery, so grossly spread, layer upon layer, which unfits half the empty heads in the richer, I had almost said the upper walks of life from conducting themselves like any thing but hallucinated asses. Independently of these saturating agents of disgust, I knew the Ge- neral, when in London, to carry constantly about with him a small COMMON INCIDENTS. 25 pocket volume, containing the exact fares of hackney coachmen, cab- men, and Thames watermen. I had also casually detected him sneaking about oil shops, reading the labels upon pickle-jars and currie powders; staring at the ' cartes' appended in restaurateurs' windows : eyeing the muligatawney coffee- houses, and perpetrating various other questionable manoeuvres, slightly antithetical to the liberal feelings of a General, retired upon his pay, plus a handsome metallic independence. My pointed inat- tention to his campaigning efforts, and evident wishes to avoid the re- cital of his wonders, so completely annoyed him, that he cut my com- panion and myself dead, long before our arrival in town. This cruel decision on his part did not much affect our feelings, neither did the award appear to have any prejudicial influence upon either the celerity or the destination of the coach, for it arrived, at its usual time, at the Golden Cross Inn, West Strand. We all, once more, took refuge in the coffee-room. The General selected a box for himself. We could still command a view of his future scene of action. My companion and myself confined our physical exigencies to a bottle of Sherry, proposing to visit the Theatre, and order a late supper. In the meantime, (to the shame of the discrimination of the British pub- lic be it asserted,) no soul in the coffee-room, save ourselves, knew that the abode enclosed an East Indian General ; nobody took any notice of him; nobody cared about him. Even the waiter, the members of whose craft have the credit of nice discriminating powers, even he waited upon him only as he waited upon others, — the fool ! The Ge- neral took up a newspaper, laid it down again — ordered his dinner. A vulgar fellow, with metal buttons to his leggins, and a double- breasted drab waistcoat, furnished with the same insolent metallic ' de- viations/ strode up to the General's table, and, after whisking the pa- per away, remarked, * you have done with this paper sir ?' The Ge- neral blackened with rage at the cool postulate ; he was petrified by the shock of this vulgar shower-bath. After waiting nearly an hour, under those favouring circumstances, where hunger is relieved by the mental abstraction and interest afforded by a view of a cruet-stand, two salt-cellars, and a square of stale bread, reposing on the bosom of a soft-soap smelling table-cloth. The General ventured upon a re- monstrance with the waiter. ' Beg your pardon, sir directly ;' and almost directly it came, or rather part of that dinner came. A sole, well browned, not blackened, but inclining rather to No. 30, Strand ; dried up in its best parts, and the back bone visible through a deep crack following its entire course ; the whole animal in a cold perspi- ration from the second culinary process, viz : standing a good while before the fire, with the cover on, awaiting its tardy consort the potatoe. The General looked down in despair upon the colliquative phenomenon. The potatoe, however, promised better, the exterior was white and mealy ; alas ! the application of the fork detected for its nucleus a patent cricket ball. And now appeared that terror and abomination of continental Europe, the RUMP STEAK ; at least two pounds of the gristly, grid- 26 COMMON INCIDENTS. iron-branded monster, be-peppered, be-salted, and be-horse-radished, stared the general in the face. In vain the ' sheer-steel ' knife-blade is pressed and drawn in tor- turing efforts upon it's hide : — it must be torn — it must be convulsed by downright sinewy strength. The general has been fortunate enough to detach a portion and insert it into his mouth ; his teeth close harmless over the morsel ; the mouth is rapidly forced open again by the elastic and re-active agency of the intruder. To tritu- rate it — to masticate it, is impossible. To what, or to whom, save the jaws of a greyhound, or the professional pedestrian, for insertion between the stocking and sole of his walking shoes — to what, I re- peat, save such purposes, can this rescinded ' Gluteus' be made available ? " But for one end, one much neglected use Are ' Rump-steaks' worth your care." This would have formed a trying disappointment, had not the considerate cook added oyster sauce, to" temper the rigidity of the steak. The General looked wistfully at the sauce-boat ; nothing, save a tranquil surface of congealed paste, was to be seen. Has the bill-sticker been robbed of the contents of his tin pouch ? He re- moved the superstratum : slowly the waves of greasy starch were convoluted to the side of the boat ; he stirred the sub-natant liquid ; the uniformity of the speckled deep was now broken by the eruption of four skinny corrugated shapes, which, shrinking at the stimulus of candle-light, again sunk to the bottom ; they are not mermaids : from their care-wrinkled aspect, they are, without doubt, " oysters cross'd in love." If my memory serve me truly, a roast fowl was included in the " carte." From a cursory glance which I had of it, I can pronounce it to have been an industrious and indefatigable biped, as it carried it's liver under one arm and it's gizzard under the other. What sauce or garnish adorned this latter dainty, I will not take upon my- self to determine ; for, by this time, the dinner-disappointed East Indian, who had been some time kindling, burst into a devouring flame. Bells were rung, and waiters congregated, while, in a tor- rent of invective, the General endeavoured to annihilate them by a declaration of his name, rank, wealth, and honours. Pacification could hardly be effected, till the master or head functionary made his appearance, bearing in his hand a large bason of mulligatawny soup, intended for somebody else, but brought as a votive offering, to appease the fiery-faced, tempest-raising Pagan. The effect was as miraculous as that of the Empress Helena casting overboard the nail of the true Cross. The moment the fumes of the barbaric com- pound saluted his distended organs, his bellowing and distorted tones died away into a scarcely audible whisper — the fiery perturbation of his rolling eye-balls relaxed into a tender expression of contentment ; his inflamed visage became suddenly imbued with the stolid tender- ness of an heretofore enraged cow, who, licking her restored calf, expresses her subsided fury by prolonged and indistinct mutterings ! The last we saw of the general, was, bending over the landlord's COMMON INCIDENTS. 27 offering, with the eagerness of a Pagan god, devouring his sacrifice, spoon in hand and napkin under chin, his face as red as a lobster, and large particular drops bounding their way across its volcanic sur- face, suffering all the agonies of cayenne and caloric with a satanic delight ; his matured capabilities of endurance resolving the fire-re- joicing Chabert into a mere sucking imp ! The last I heard of him, was, that he had married his cook, least she should give him warning, and, assisted by his wife, was publishing a treatise on the " Lights and Shades" of English cookery ! K. K. THE LAMENTATIONS OF A TORY. THE Commons House ! the Commons House ! Whence glorious Pitt, resounded far The spells omnipotent to rouse The arts of peace the flames of war. Your vaulted roof is standing yet, But ah ! your sun of fame is set. Here stood a Fox and Sheridan, And tasked their high soul's energies; They counted o'er their Whiggish clan, And listening to their factious cries, Exulted in their close array. The Question's put — and where are they ? And where are they ? and where are ye, Close Boroughs ? on your voiceless score, Of benches, shouts of victory From Tory bosoms rise no more. And must a Tory bard proclaim The downfall of the Tory name. Must we but weep o'er days more bright, Must we but sigh for places lost. Close Boroughs, exercise your right, Give back the glory of our host ; Give back a chosen faithful few, We'll fight the battle o'er anew. What ! silent still, and silent all ; Ah no, the tongues of Schedule A. Responsive echo to the call, And with lago in the play, They cry, " Put money in thy purse," And you may still avoid the curse. Fill high the bowl with Bourdeaux wine, By Cam's and Isis* tuneful shore Exists the offspring of a line, Such as our Tory mother's bore ; And there, perhaps, the seed is sown, Aristocratic blood may own. Place me on Sarum's lonely mound, Where nothing but the winds and I, Shall hear our mutual wailings sound ; There, owl-like, let me live, there die. A House, where Whigs in office shine, Sha'n't number me, for I'll resign. 28 ULTRA RADICALISM. Est huic diversum vitio vitium prope majus * » * * * Bum vult libertas dici mera, veraque virtus. IT is always of great importance to the formation of sound poli- tical characters, to possess clear and -well-defined knowledge of the existing divisions of the political world. This would not be the case, if the ends of politics were abstract and speculative • if political inquiry and reflection were to be entered upon with the sole view of establishing just principles, to be arranged and composed into a sound and complete theory. But, regarding political ends, in com- mon with those of all other departments of the business of life, as based upon social utility, and as utterly unattainable without social activity and conduct ; it is impossible to separate the real question of politics from its close connection with the principles and proceedings of the various parties in a state. No one, however distinguished by talent and acquirements, can attain a political end by himself. A man may collect his own materials for reflection, and pursue his thoughts to just conclusions, without aid from the co-operative prin- ciple ; but here individual power in politics ends. No good result can ensue from just political opinions, but through the combined activity of party; party, not, of course, in the invidious sense of the term, as meaning a set of men with no other views than their own collective advantage ; but as meaning a body of men brought toge- ther by the sole necessity of our social condition, which renders co- operation essential to all practical public good. A sound politician must, therefore, be always attached to some party, in the sense we have attributed to the word. It were as fea- sible an attempt to navigate a ship without a crew, as obtain a lawful political end without a party. No man of sense, when he disclaims party connection, can mean any other than the unholy and detestable union above alluded to, and which it would be as well, by the bye, in order to avoid equivocation, to agree to call, not party, but conspiracy; as denoting a combination of selfish men for an anti-social purpose. Our opening proposition is, we think, indisputable : and, if a ra- tional and practical politician must attach himself to some party, it is of first-rate importance for every man enlightened enough to be inte- rested in politics, to be thoroughly acquainted with the political parties of his day. And what then seems to be the state of our country in this respect? The existence of a great quantity of political opinion at the present juncture, greater by far than at any earlier period of our history, being unquestionable, is this aggregate mass of opinion still in the chaotic state ? or has it developed itself into the distinct properties of its constitution ? May we quote concerning it from the poet ? — • ULTRA RADICALISM. 29 rudis indigestaque moles ; Nee quidquam, nisi pondus iners ; congestaque eodem Non bene junctarum discordia semina rerum. * « * * * Ostabatque aliis aliud : quia corpore in uno Frigida pugnabant calidis, humentia siccis, Mollia cum duris, sine pondere habentia pondus. or do the following lines convey a more just representation of the present state of our political elements ? Hanc Deus et melior litem Natura diremit : Nam ccelo terras, et terris abscidit undas, Et liquidum spisso secrevit ab sere ccelum. Quse postquam evolvit, csecoque exemit acervo, Dissociata locis .concordi pace ligavit. We have no doubt ourselves upon the subject. We think it quite clear, that political opinion has now evolved itself into a certain num- ber of clearly defined party divisions j that the chaos, into which the late break-up of the old political system had for a season thrown us, is now reduced to order, at least for all purposes of decided opinion : that we may consider our political elements as separated into their own proper regions of natural attraction and repulsion. We by no means infer the perpetuity or long continuance of this condition of political analysis. We are quite sure, that as knowledge and reflection become more general, there is a natural tendency to cohesion ; and that in process of time, party divisions will be fewer. But for present purposes ; for all attainable ends of current politics ; we consider party divisions clearly defined, and that any conscientious politician may be helped to a just and consistent choice of some one party, in decided preference to all others. We divide, then, our politicians into five parties, as follows :— • Ultra Tories — Tory and Whig conspirators — Liberal Whigs and Re- formers— Radicals — Ultra Radicals. To these we assign, for clearer distinction sake, the appellations Maintainers — Yielders — Menders and Restorers — Alterers and Improvers — Destroyers and Manufac- turers. To commence with the first mentioned ; thus affording them, what they so doat upon, precedence. Every one, by this time, thoroughly understands the nature of a genuine old Tory. Not to dwell invi- diously and spitefully upon the inadmissible peculiarities of this class of politicians, we will pass over them, after selecting a most re- spectable individual from their ranks for their representative. The Duke of Newcastle is surely the Ultra Tory, par excellence. Who so consistent and unflinching a Maintainer, as his Grace ? The military Duke deserves not to be named in the same century with him. The latter has, to be sure, resolved upon maintaining the future integrity of his windows ; but how will this mere precautionary measure bear comparison with the civil Duke's maintenance of his right to remune- ration for the outrage on his castle at Nottingham, and his final tri- umph in a court of justice? And here we must take the liberty of assuring his Grace, that the most prostrate of his Tory admirers does 30 ULTRA RADICALISM. not rejoice more heartily than our Radical selves, at the compensation awarded him for the brutal injury. We only wish the value of his castle had been at least doubled in the verdict : for surely neither a country nor an individual makes due reparation for an act of heinous barbarity, by mere restitution of value, even when value can be ex- actly measured, which in this instance it would not.* We recollect too, how his Grace maintained his rights in Portman- Square with true constitutional consistency, by heading his domestics and a posse of police, against a herd of human tigers, or rather jackalls, who had beset his mansion. Then, again, the spirited holding out of Clumber against the savages of the surrounding country ! All these instances, in addition to the famous original maintenance of the right to do what he would with his own ; not to omit, moreover, the " Address to all Classes and Conditions of Englishmen/' not long since published by his Grace, prove him to be a most apt representative of those whom we have designated Maintainers. The Tories may thank us for this selection of a pattern man from them. Thoroughly averse, from their profound and inordinate folly, we still despise the meanness and inhumanity of those who curiously spy out their bad, and blink their redeeming qualities ; and, while we would brand their politics with detestation, we make it a point of honour and probity to be the more scrupulously just to their social merits in other respects. Pursuing this principle of hostility, we have always gladly lent an ear to detail of facts creditable to those from whom, as politicians, we are altogether estranged ; nor could we derive so much pleasure in overhauling a fresh and full budget of Newcastle political fooleries, as we did the other day, in hearing this nobleman spoken well of by a Radical acquaintance from his neigh- bourhood. We rejoiced to learn from this person, that the Duke, while he maintains every item of the catalogue of false political prin- ciples, maintains also the character of a kind t and considerate land- * The fact, that this Duke's castle has never been rated at its just value, for the house-tax, does not interfere with our wish, that a double compensation had been awarded him. We must not have ex post facto laws to operate against the aristocracy, any more than ourselves. The injury of that savage and brutal burning, cannot be palliated (but by an Ultra-ltadical writer) on the score of the Duke's having not been duly charged with the house-tax. The insufferable iniquity of incendiarism does not admit of the slightest extenuation. Society at large ought to be charged with at least double compensation to individual sufferers, till it is awakened to a sense of its duty, to keep those men more effectually in check, whose indirect excitement leads to such atrocities. We know well enough the Ultras never write ' burn,' ' destroy ;' but they inva- riably treat burning and destruction as a matter of course; and, by attributing all the blame to remote causes, very intelligibly exculpate the immediate per- petrators of mischief. •f- c Kind and considerate landlord,' indeed! we think we hear some Ultra exclaim. 4 Yes, friend Ultra,' we reply. ' The ejecting an independent te- nant was a mere piece of class tyranny; and not a jot worse than the common practice of all borough proprietors under the past corruption. Unless, O Ultra, thou art prepared to maintain, that the breast of a borough proprietor must have, in every instance, been closed to kindly feelings, thou must needs be convicted of ungenerous ferocity towards Newcastle, if thou disbelievest in his general hu- manity. He spoke out the tyranny of his class like a man. Thou, O Ultra, art ULTRA RADICALISM. 31 lord; and that his numerous tenants were animated by a feeling of enthusiasm in his favour, and prepared to risk their lives in defending him at Clumber. Thus much for the genuine U lira-Tory maintainers. Of course we need not beseech any of our friends not to attach them- selves to the party of these men ! Next, for our Tory and Whig conspirators. We loudly protest against allowing these men any longer use of the honourable title of Party ! We trust the public is far advanced enough in political judg- ment to be fully aware of the necessity of aiming henceforth at the most logically correct application of terms. No observing man can mix in society without conviction of the great mischief accruing to amateur politicians, from the confused and indeterminate state of the political nomenclature. For ourselves, considering politics insepa- rably intertwined with moral truth, we are too deeply impressed with the dignity of the subject to take it up as a vehicle for conversation or display. This impression is of long standing with us, and we have consequently addicted ourselves to politics as a task, full of the most gratifying interest in every stage of advancement ; but still a task, rather than an amusement. We could not help their soon finding out the misapprehension and mischief resulting from the unrestrained use of the current appellations of the political world. Hardly ever were we present at a discussion on politics, but at least two indivi- duals of the party separated in huff and* mutual misunderstanding, through the too comprehensive or too contracted sense in which they had respectively applied to themselves, or those they approved of, some of the political designations of the day. We are not so Utopian as to believe that this mischief can ever be got rid of entirely ; much less so egotistical as to expect a great deal from our own efforts at purgation. But " every little helps/7 as the old saying is, and in the hope of doing some slight service to the cause of political truth we now write. We have learnt, then, for ourselves, to attach our own meaning to all class designations, and should as soon think of painting a portrait from a verbal description, as judging of a political pun or measure from the current slang of politics. But our amateur political friends seem to vis very generally careless in this respect. It seems enough for their purpose to be able to maintain an opinion with some degree of plausibility and consistency, or perhaps wit, in social converse. We hardly ever meet with a talking politician, too seldom with a writing one, who gives us the notion of having a mind duly conscious of the existing state of party divisions, and made up, as to which of them he is included in. In the hope of benefitting such persons, we are now writing; and we conjure them, at all events, to deliberate upon our suggestion, that the Moderate Tories and Party Whigs, as they have hitherto been usually termed, should henceforth be ( Toryl bracketted together, thus : -< and > conspirators. (Whig) for ever babbling of manliness. Let the civil Duke reap the benefit of thy vaunted liberality. " Rather extenuate than set down aught in malice" against him. Believe, that had his heart notbeen a sound one, he would not have been simple enough to blurt out the vox ineffabilis of borough-mongery, as he did. 32 ULTRA RADICALISM. Is not the bond of union, by which Tories and Whigs of this class are respectively held together, a bond of sheer conspiracy? In which of these politicians do we ever recognize the slightest indication of a regard for general interests ? Amongst the Ultra-Tories, futile and mistaken though their views are, any one but a bitter partizan must discern a palpable and pervading principle. The staunch maintainers are, very generally, estimable members of society. The crotchet, by which their minds are perverted to the extent of political imbecility, viz. the absolute preference of antiquity, is nothing but the excess of a holy and praiseworthy sentiment. There is certainly ground for a constant joke against them, in the fact, that, in ninety-nine instances out of an hundred, their social position does not appear susceptible of advantage from change; but, as the old saying is, " a joke's a joke," and, we will add, ought not, in serious matters, to be carried too far ; nor can we, though, like other humorous persons, we often smile at the complete coincidence between Ultra-Tory interests and Ultra- Tory politics, deny these men the credit of really meaning well to the Public, though they also are very fond of themselves. But och ! the Tory and Whig conspirators ! the men who, pro- fessing the principles of public good, and upholding certain tenets in pretended pursuance of that principle, are never found to hold on in a straight course when the popular breeze has freshened into a gale, and the cargo of their own gross selfishness is in danger of injury from shipping a sea ! Cannot any mere tyro in politics fix upon many public men of this description, held together by ihefadus Icetronum, without one jot of real principle beyond the faith which selfish instinct prompts them to keep with their own band, because they could not hope by indivi- dual effort to sack so much booty, as by conspiracy ? We have been forced, by indignant feeling, to speak too bitterly of such persons to admit of our selecting an instance from amongst them. Pass we on then, after requesting our friends, the amateurs, to strengthen their resolutions against associating with this worthless herd, by mentally ejaculating the " Justum et tenacem propositi virum," &c., whenever they meet with, or think of them. As Cromwell ex- Claimed at Sir Harry Vane, so do we in parting, at the Tory and Whig conspirators. " The Lord deliver us from them !" But who have we got to deal with next? the Liberal Whigs and Reformers ? or, as we have taken the liberty to denominate them, the Menders and Restorers ? Concerning party, we feel it difficult to ex- press ourselves. We are conscious of considerable debt towards them, for the go<3ds to which they have helped us, and which could not have been safely acquired without their instrumentality. Our grati- tude and good-will towards them makes us lament that we cannot addict ourselves to their party. But here again we must qualify our expression of dissent. We avow, then, that we rejoice in their occu- pation of the helm of our good ship at present ; nor, till we have given some of our younger hands a longer and severer trial, would we wil- lingly trust ourselves to their pilotage in preference. We cannot give Earl Grey, nor any of his Cabinet, except perhaps Lord Durham, (we say perhaps, because we have not yet had quite experience enough ULTRA RADICALISM. 33 of him,) credit for a willingness to look at every measure wholly and solely with reference to its intrinsic worth arid fitness for the existing condition of society. We deem the present Cabinet men of principle,, but we consider them to be influenced by some portion of the Ultra Tory fanaticism. Sin- cerely liking and respecting them, we have nothing of severity, much less bitterness, to say against the party, and shall not scruple, there- fore, to fix upon the noble Premier himself, as exhibiting, what we deem their essential imperfections. It is quite enough for us, that Earl Grey once deliberately avowed himself unable to view any poli- tical measure without reference to the interests of his order. This nobleman is a man of thoroughly tried principle and consistency ; and being too old in politics to have a new leading opinion to adopt, and too wary and self-possessed to utter a sentiment on the mere spur of the moment, we confess ourselves widely at variance with him in political principle. The notion of a titled and privileged class, upon any other ground, and with any other object than the common good, is to us an insufferable heresy ; nor can a man, endowed with such an intellect as Earl Grey, be deemed, we think, less than incurably and damnably* unsound, for uttering a sentiment in exception to the absoluteness of general interests. Evil, we think, ought to be, and evil, we prognosticate, will be the day, for the English Nobility, when it shall contumaciously insist upon maintaining any privileges of its own without due regard and deference to the essential principle of their origin, in the spirit, if not always in the letter of Constitutional Law. The golden calf of such wilful and invincible idolatry will assur- edly be broken and pounded into dust, although, as we devoutly hope, the idolaters, with their families, may not be swallowed up in the yawning abyss of a political earthquake. Upon casting our eye over the names of the present ministers, we cannot single out one, to be entirely trusted, as free from the Grey heresy, except Sir John Hobhouse. Of this man we entertain not the slightest suspicion. We cannot praise him for discretion towards the Westminster Electors. We think he has treated them with a pre- sumption and levity quite preposterous. How he would deem him- self justified in flying off at a tangent, as he has done, from the circle of his old political professions, the moment his former supporters applied the test which he used to glory in being subject to, is more than we can account for ! We have no notion of the honour of repre- senting a constituency, over particular in prescribing opinions on questions still in a debatable state. But Sir John Hobhouse had li- terally no pretensions but those derived through his former pledges, to the representation of Westminster. Old service, though it will support a just claim to reward, is not always admissible as a plea for future employment. The man who has hitherto served us faithfully, may be justified, in some instances, no doubt, for refusing to solve doubts of his future trust-worthiness. But if ever there was an exception to the propriety of such scrupulousness, Sir John Hob- * Damnably, in the classic and controversial sense.. M. M. No. 85. D 34 ULTRA RADICALISM. house's case is surely one. His recorded speeches to his constituents avow, beyond the possibility of mistake, a recognition of the general expediency of Pledges ; they also avow a suspicion of the very party, with whom he now has coalesced. We think the Party in power worthy of power, for the present ; and give Sir John Hobhouse full credit for good intentions in acting with them. But this is foreign to the question of his offence against the Westminster Electors. When they elected him, his views would not amalgamate with Whiggism of any kind ; and though his conduct may have since been, as we ourselves deem it, irreproachable, he certainly, in common courtesy, and with- out reference to the serious nature of his trust, owed his constituents the most temperate, and respectful, and elaborate explanation, if not downright apology. For our own parts, we cannot help believing Sir John to be the better Baronet of the two ; to have, by far, the less of the Aristocratic leaven in his composition, if indeed he has any of it, and to be, in all respects, a more suitable representative for a radical constituency than Sir Francis. But this is no business of ours. If the Westminster men choose to be grateful to Sir Francis for his deeds of old, and re- ward him by continuance in service, they had a right to do so ; nor, however rejoicing in Sir John's return, do we think he could justly have complained of ejection. Having at present said thus much respecting the Menders and Re- storers, we must reserve a little more consideration for them, in our conclusion ; when we argue for the present fitness of these men as a party for office, in preference to such as would be chosen by our hot- headed brethren, the Ultra Radicals, either from amongst their own sub-division, or from amongst those to which we profess to belong, viz. : the Radicals, the Alterers and Improvers. Of what sort of men then, and of what sort of views may the Ra- dical Party be said to consist? and hence, as the best way to establish the existence of our own party in due individual distinctness, we shall attempt a definition of a Radical. A Radical then, in our opinion, adopts for his fundamental prin- ciple, alteration and improvement, in reference to amendment and restoration. He believes that, as in the moral, so in the political world, it is contrary to the law of our creator for men and things to remain long in the same state. He not only objects to the principle of maintaining things as they are, but also to the principle of establishing anyjixed condition of things whatever, as the beau ideal of political per- fection. He does not give man, of past or present time, credit for wisdom to contrive absolutely for the future. He allows full scope for the utmost stretch of human sagacity and foresight in providing • but he believes the chances are so much against these, in attempts to enact permanent provision, that he is always rather disposed to be stirring, and, if possible, improving, than standing still and letting alone. The Radical attributes more practical wisdom to the confessedly reflective and deliberative portion of the present, than of the past world ; but this principle is guarded from excess by habitual unwil- lingness to trust the impetuous and heady light troops and skir- ULTRA RADICALISM. 35 mishers of the radical subdivision, the ultras, with the conduct of main operations. As a tangible instance of this cautiousness, he ap- proves entirely of Attwood of Birmingham, who refuses to submit the Union to democratic direction, in contradistinction to those who, as represented by the True Sun, are for extending the union principle without any allowances for the deliberative incapacity of the masses. The Radical recognizes junctures, though he knows they cannot be constitutionally provided for, when the voice of reason and com- mon sense must be obeyed as an instinct, in bold independence of, and perhaps fierce hostility against, all laws, but those of religion and humanity. He deems such junctures of very rare occurrence; and that they never lawfully arive but when leading principles cannot be maintained by means already instituted. He thinks the good and con- scientious man cannot be subjected to a severer trial than in acting a prominent part at such junctures; and he admires Attwood, more than any English political citizen of the day, for having assumed the independent position and attitude, at the right time, and with the right spirit ; and for having promptly discountenanced the energy of political union, of imperium in imperio, as soon as the leading principles had been placed beyond reach of danger. The Radical loves to contemplate the progressive advancement of the masses to a point of comfort, independent of the cruel and de- testable tyranny of unjust taxation, and insufficient reward for ser- vices. This advancement of his fellow creatures is the guiding star of his political course. On this object his mind is intently fixed ; towards it his hopes are bent. If his spirit is apt to be raised to the contrary point, it is in hostility towards those who would keep the masses in their present unworthy and suffering condition ; or in jealousy of such as, like the ultra radicals, insist upon being the only lovers of the people. Of these boastful pretenders to exclusive humanity he exclaims with Hamlet — " Why, I will fight with thee upon this theme Until my eyelids will no longer wag." The Radical is for raising the people by gradually gaining upon, not degrading their ignorant oppressors ; still he scruples not to chastise the aristocratic spirit; to tell noblemen and gentlemen plainly, if hinting will not suffice, that they are but the creatures of society, and must behave themselves accordingly ; and if hinting and plain speaking will neither of them answer the purpose, he will gladly lend a hand to make them mind their p's and q's. He has not patience enough to wait for improvement as long as old-fashioned politicians require ; dum defluat amnis ; but he is not in the confounded hurry of ultra radicalism. He feels that what we have to gain from the aristocratic party, must be gained for good and all, when it is gained ; and not being aware of the exemption of the radical party from the common weakness of human nature, the dispo- sition, namely, to do number one a little more justice than may be quite fair upon members two and three, he had rather wait in moderation than run the risk of perpetrating an irreparable injury. He does not give the workies, as the Americans call them, credit for the wisdom D2 36 ULTRA RADICALISM. or temper, or self-renunciation, requisite in adjusting the differences between themselves and their oppressors. Nobody would delight more than the Radical, in the native supe- riority of such men as Samuel Downing, cabinet-maker ! brought before the public by Junius Redivivus in the Examiner. Nobody would more entirely admit the propriety of the writer's suggestion, that Samuel Downing should be elevated promptly above handicraft, and enabled to devote his powers to the instruction of his fellows. But the Radical's lip would curl into a smile at the inference of the exaggerated Junius, that the said Samuel Downing, in virtue of his capacity of thinking correctly and feeling deeply, and being thereby, of course, better qualified for public service than some legislators, ought to be forthwith elevated to legislative office ! Much more would the Radical dissent from the current inferences of ultra radicalism, that the numbers of wise and temperate politicians, amongst the workies, bear a controlling proportion to the slightly informed and intem- perate. The Radical must be astounded at the readiness with which ultra radicals swerve, in practice, from their favourite tenet, the all- involving importance of knowledge. He is deeply impressed with the truth of this tenet, and has probably caught some portion of his en- thusiasm in its maintenance from the ultras. It must be a marvel to him then, how the chief pretenders to this political principle habi- tually exert themselves to counteract it, by appealing., on questions re- quiring knowledge, ere they can be entertained, to the judgments of men still in a general state of ignorance and prejudice. This astonishment must be all the greater, because the ultra Radicals are wont to dwell upon the tendency of knowledge to obviate danger from popular excite- ment ; and thus readily admit the present existence of an evil they continually provoke. The Radical again is forcibly struck by the glaring inconsistency of the ultras in the tone they adopt respecting the misdemeanours of the masses. He cannot understand why the ultras advocate extension of knowledge to improve the people, if the people, as at present, are never, on any occasion of conflict with the authorities, so much to blame as their opponents. If the people are now wise and cool enough to be canvassed indiscriminately upon questions of politics ; and, when assembled in numbers, are only tempted to outrage by the brutal conduct of the force employed against them, the inference is un- avoidable, that no security to the state can be expected from popular refinement ; and that the only parties in need of education for that purpose are the military, the police, and their employers. The Radical cannot discern much difference, in point of crimina- lity, between urging men on to deeds of brutal outrage, and defending or palliating such deeds, and accusing those who would apply suffi- cient force to check them of inhumanity and tyranny. It seems to him then somewhat over-scrupulous and squeamish in certain poli- tical writers of great ability, and no slight moral merit, to take offence at being termed destructive, incendiary politicians. As on no one occasion of civil tumult, and conflict, and destruction, these writers can find ought to be so much lamented as the sufferings of the ULTRA RADICALISM. 37 burners and scull-batterers ; it follow s, though they do not perhaps positively approve of such doings, they are certainly not so disgusted at them as the rest of educated society are. The appellations de- structive and incendiary are, it must be confessed, not attractive; and, no doubt, somewhat over-express the political bias and ten- dencies of the ultra party, But they are not applied, in their full import, to the educated and controversial portion of the party ; and as meaning no more than toleration of, and comparative indifference to, destruction and incendiarism, and abomination of all efficient mea- sures of coercion, the Radical is surprised at their being objected to. The Radical, the alterer and improver, is not for directly wrench- ing up by root, whatever displeases in branch, or bud, or blossom, or fruit, but for carefully digging down and laying bare in order to dis- cern the source of mischief ; and then, either pruning, or lopping, or sawing off, or, if it be really necessary, rooting up. The Radical is generally disposed to believe something may be worth preserving in the midst of that which is more or less bad. But he is, at the same time, utterly fearless of consequences in undertaking and prosecuting inquiry to the utmost. He is determined to spare absolutely nothing, in kind as well as degree, which, after the most pains taking investi- gation, shall be found worthless. The radical holds his own distinct opinions upon the subject of pledges, alike removed from aristocratic insolence and democratic illiberality. He deems it preposterous presumption in a man to affect representa- tion, till he has laid up in his head and heart a certain store of poli- tical principles, adopted after years of observation and reflection. Of course, therefore, the radical scouts the canting delicacy of candidates, who, justly spurning the yoke of servitude to constituents, go the absurd length of refusing to admit any definition of the trust they covet, It being only his political principles that can qualify one man of sufficient ability in preference to another, the radical considers a clear and detailed avowal of principles indispensable in a candidate. " De non apparentibus et non existentibus" thinks the radical, " eadem est ratio;" therefore, though averse from requiring formal pledges, on any points, still fairly in a debatable state, he expects a candidate to declare to what extent he has made up his mind on many subjects which have been long before the public; and to explain, with satis- factory precision, the existing bias of his opinion on other points still undetermined with him. He thinks no man fit for a representative who has all, or very much to learn, from listening to future debates in parliament, on measures already old in public consideration ; and cannot help suspecting incompetency or sinister intention in those who profess themselves altogether " in statu pupillari" as to particu- lars of future conduct. But the radical has the feelings of a gentle- man, and wonders how his countrymen can allow writers or speakers to compare a representative to a servant in want of place. He would not feel himself degraded by cleaning shoes, brushing coats, &c. and, under reduced circumstances, proving himself in all respects " Verna ministeriis ad nutus aptus hcriles ;" but his very gorge rises at the idea of serving the many-headed master Plebs in his own way. Death from one of Plebs's brickbats would be luxury to such servi- 38 ULTRA RADICALISM, tude. He thinks it impossible to define the due extent of explanation from a candidate with greater nicety than by saying, that principles and ulterior general views should be unequivocally and fully avowed, as well as fixed opinions on matters old in debate, and a disposition to afford constituents, after each session of parliament, an argumenta- tive exposee of conduct during it. The Radical considers short parliaments (triennial are short enough) inseparable from the principle of representation, and would therefore require his candidate to be of the same opinion. He deems absolute independence of vote also essentially inherent in that principle, and would not give his support to a candidate who dissented. The utmost rational entension of the suffrage, accommodated from time to time to the increased intelligence and orderly disposition of the people : item, the substitution of a sound, and general, and compulsory edu- cation for the masses : item, the removal of checks on publication ; item, the simplicity and equitable arrangement of taxation : all these are principles on which the Radical would expect his candidate to agree with him, and undertake to lose no opportunity of supporting them. With respect to vote by ballot, the Radical has himself not the slightest fear of any ill consequences from it ; and thinks it will soon plainly appear that it must be adopted as a safeguard against popular as well as aristocratic tyranny. But the Radical cannot think it fair to press the ballot forward just yet, as a matter of principle. Granted that the talk about straight- for ward English manliness to be sacrificed, and spirit of dishonesty to be originated by the ballot, is all fustian and affectation, wherever it is not absolutely criminal ? still this sort of self-delusion has prevailed so long in our political world, as to create, even in strong minds, a species of superstition. The Radical has a certain respect for bond Jtde superstition, and is much more afraid of the consequences of forcing men's consciences on this sub- ject just at present, than of letting the constituency be bullied and tampered with a little longer (it can only be a little longer), till the necessity of the ballot is as obvious to all well-intentioned persons as it deserves to be. The Radical would expect his candidate to avow a willingness to adopt the ballot, unless some other equally efficient protection can be soon suggested ; but he would suspend the admis- sion of the ballot into his catalogue of representative requisites, till the measure has been more freely and formally discussed in a re- formed parliament. On the subject of slavery, the Radical would expect no more, at present, from a candidate, than to avow his intention to support Go- vernment in all measures for the protection and improvement of this class of his fellow-creatures generally, and especially for the prompt institution of a searching and efficient police, to be maintained at the expence of slave proprietors, but controlled by the home Govern- ment alone. The Radical has ultimate views for the extinction of slavery altogether ; but he thinks one or two Reformed Parliaments at least must have passed, and the Colonists become convinced of the utter hopelessness of a return to slavish principles at home, ere they can be brought to the temper, surely necessary, to render the emanci- ULTRA RADICALISM. 39 pation of their slaves a benefit to the latter. The Radical will not countenance the slaves, any more than the mob-clients of the Ultra- Radicals, in destruction and incendiarism. If, after the assassination, and burning, and destruction, the slaves could with justice seize the remaining property, or could equitably adjust differences with their former masters, the Radical would perhaps choose the limited extent of violence and mis-rule necessary to attain the ultimate benefit. But the slaves abroad cannot, and must not be, any more than the workies at home, trusted with the means of settling affairs as they please. Should they be thus trusted, they would infallibly institute a system against which their former masters would be justified in waging war; nor could the evils of such a state of things be less, but must be greater to all parties, than any which at present belong to the con- dition of slavery. The radical knows, and admits, the necessity and legitimate use of the physical force of the workies, and of course, also, of the slaves, at junctures of hopeless oppression. But, if ever there can be hope of final adjustment without violence, surely, thinks the Radical, that blessed day has dawned upon England and her de- pendencies ! and surely the work of enlightening the popular mind and humanizing the popular temper must be allowed to proceed for some time longer ere a sound politician would not rather hold slaves, as well as workies, a little back, than urge them a little on. The Radical would expect his candidate, as a matter of course, and, in consistency with general principles, to urge or help a Govern- ment to check hasty, much more tyrannical punishment of sailors and soldiers. If the Radical found a considerable, or even numerically respectable, division upon this subject in the army and navy, he would turn his serious thoughts to it, and expect his candidate to ex- press at least an opinion on the expediency or non-expediency of the power of flogging. But, mixing with soldiers and sailors, and finding them, though in other respects differing, what may fairly be called unanimous in supporting the necessity of the power of very severe cor- poral infliction being lodged with officers, the Radical really would deem himself an impertinent personage for meddling in the matter at all, and considers his ultra brethren reprehensible, in point of com- mon sense, for doing so. The Radical is for preserving the Church property, at least for some years to come, for religious purposes. He is no stickler for any of the paraphernalia and mere circumstance of the present absurd and corrupt system. But he knows the religious sentiment must be, for ages to come, perhaps as long as man is man, publicly expressed ; and as inspiration cannot be procured, he wants all the philosophy and mental refinement which money is the only general means for obtaining, in those who are selected to preside over and influence this expression. Tithes the Radical deems a monstrous mode of maintenance for any men who can do nothing without the good- will of their neighbourhood ; but the Radical will not let the country gentlemen pocket a shilling more from that portion of tithe, which is strictly public property, The Radical knows how they have profited by this already, arid is for making them pay up, therefore, to the uttermost farthing of the actual value, when the Government shall 40 ULTRA RADICALISM, require them to buy their estates free from the reserved annuity charge. The Radical questions not the absolute right of the Legis- lature to do exactly what it will with the public portion of the tithes ; but,, as they are nothing more than a permanent exception to the right of private purchase and appropriation, and do not involve the slightest injustice. Until it has been thoroughly ascertained that the sentiment of religion does not require funds for its most befitting ex- pression and influence over the public mind, the Radical withholds his permission to seize upon public Church property, and substitute a tax for it. He thinks a tax might justly be deemed a hardship and injustice by Dissenters of all denominations ; whereas it is ridiculous to view a reservation from the right of purchase in the light of a tax, and preposterous in any individual to feel aggrieved in paying it,. although he has an undoubted right to wish the payment otherwise appropriated than it is. We think that enough ; and all that need be has now been said to exhibit our beau ideal of prudent Radicalism in. due distinctness. As instances of it in public characters, we do not think fitter persons can be selected than Sir John Hobhouse and Mr. Hume. Whatever may be plausibly argued to the contrary, we maintain it is not quite possible for a man, in the predicament of the former of these gentlemen, to be quite so plain spoken in debate, and quite so independant, as if he were out of office ; and, as we deem the plain speaking and independence of such a man as the worthy Baronet to be of more consequence to us at present than his influence with the Ministry, we regret, for his own sake and our's, that he has taken office. We feel convinced that Hobhouse is at least, and would at a pinch be, in word and deed, a Radical, to the extent we have been describing. As for Mr. Hume, we never saw him j but we have acquired such a respect for him, through his public conduct, as would make us wish to uncover our heads before him in the street. Oh ! that he would but ride his hobby, Retrenchment, with a little of that conside- ration, without which we think he will make him a sorry beast at last! But Mr. Hume, though well versed in figures, is, too, in matter of fact, a man to render figurative language appropriate in speaking of him. Mr. Hume's pervading fault is, we think, a too rigid eco- nomy. His, and our own disgust at the former wicked profusion, cannot, in our view, in the least justify the opposite extreme. We cannot cease to wonder how a man of his good and shrewd sense should deem cheap government essential to wealthy England ! We hold niggardly payment of public officers, in any grade, not only useless, but downright pernicious, and disgraceful. So do we the retrenchment of working hands to a point, at which the public ser- vice can be obstructed in execution and dispatch, or too severe labour exacted from public servants. Oh ! that Mr. Hume would discard the notion of cheap government, except as regards pensions and sine- cures, and aim hereafter at nothing beyond open and explicit accounts of expenditure. Oh ! that he would forbear to insist upon the odious principle of cheapness, and not push retrenchment beyond what might be deemed liberal economy, leaving the generosity of a reformed ULTRA RADICALISM. 41 Parliament to judge a little for itself, on adequate remuneration for bona fide public service ! It is owing to our high opinion of Mr. Hume that we cannot for- bear hazarding what may be deemed hypercriticism on him. We will not run the chance of losing any of this gentleman's good service, from delicacy in finding fault with him ; we would feign correct him into the absolutely perfect man, the Tslpaywvo? avyp of Aristotle. In this spirit we respectfully hint our suspicion of his being a little too prone to treat the masses as he would a deliberative body* We are convinced of the great use of debating with men of the lower orders, upon the most unreserved footing : but we strenuously oppose the admission to debate of large bodies of them at once. In our opinion it is a monstrous absurdity to confer with the working classes on matters of politics, except in the persons of a select few, deputed by themselves, through whom the results of conference might trans- pire in publication to the main body. We deem an educated man's proper dignity degraded, when he condescends to address so large a number of uneducated men as may be tempted to receive his counter- arguments in a partizan spirit. Multitude and debate are philoso- phical contradictions. Even in the Houses of Parliament they are scarcely reconcilable with reason. We hope to see the day when hustings shall be abolished, and deputations from the electoral body alone conferred with, while the more general debate may be carried on by publication. Viva voce addresses to multitudes we think should be reserved for exhortation to arms against tyranny, foreign or do- mestic, when all other means of ensuring justice are despaired of. — We hope Mr. Hume would not, in cool moments, dissent from these our views ; and, if so, we would implore him to adopt a line of con- duct in direct and consistent maintenance of them. The Ultra- Radicals are the party who run into all those excesses which the Radicals stop short of. They are for razing every thing, but a few political abstractions, to the ground, and then building again, after their own fashion, such institutions as they and the workies may deem fit for all the rest of their countrymen. They are, doubtless, well intentioned, most of them, and mean nothing more by their asperitas agrestis et inconcinna gravisque, than the mainte- nance of Isibertas mera Veraque Virtus. But they are men in no wise to be approved of by a sound politician ; nor should a man who would serve his country, and humanity at large, hesitate to lend his voice, and, if needful, his arm, to support any other party in the State in keeping this party in the back-ground. These are the men who, like Madame Roland, as stated in Dumont's Recollections of Mirabeau, ie overlook every fault in those who declaim against courtiers, and believe that virtue is coiifined to hovels, and will exalt very mediocre personages, merely because they possess the same opinion" Nay, these are the men, who, in the teeth of their admis- sions of present popular incompetency, to be gradually gained upon by education, will go the length of telling the people what the good and noble, but exaggerated French heroine only thought about them. These are the men who love to get a few hundreds of uneducated persons together in a rotunda, or a few thousands in the open air, and 42 ULTRA RADICALISM. appeal to them (on political questions of grave importance, and at least some perplexity,) whether any opinion but their own ought to be listened to ; and whether they do not deem dissentients villains, and are not prepared to carry the speaker's propositions into effect at all hazards. Amongst Ultra Radicals are to be found no philosophers, no unpre- judiced men of intellectual power. The late idol of the party, Jere- my Bentham, though possessed of commanding talents for analysis, arrangement, classification, combination, and doubtless a conscien- tious, and, in many respects, an amicable man, was too full of prejudi- ces to take high grade in moral or political philosophy. There are though, in this Party, men of indisputably high endowments, short of a genuine and consistent philosophy. As a dialectician and wit. the Examiner is, perhaps, unrivalled ; but he has not the patience requisite for investigation, nor the temper to refrain from extravagant bitterness, and sweeping condemnations. There is sufficient evidence in his writings of a generous and disinterested devotion to the Poor Man's cause ; but he is utterly unable to decide, _with impartiality, between the upper and lower ranks. He would rather let a mob de- stroy a million's worth of property, than excuse a troop of dragoons, under command of a gentleman, for charging a mob to prevent such loss. In fact, though evidently a well intentioned man, he is a most heady and dangerous politician ; and, could he have his own way, would do more mischief, by over exciting the people, than could be repaired in a very long subsequent experience. The Examiner would tell you, (and almost argue you out of your senses in support of his assertion,) that he has never deserved such charges as we have made against him ; that he has always maintained the propriety of order and subordination, &c. &c. So indeed he has, here and there, con- descended to do obiter. But this order and subordination are, throughout his pages, supposed to be posterior to a general break-up and pell-mell conflict in behalf of the workies ; and it needs but little penetration, therefore, to discern, that for such gracious conde- scension to our orderly prepossessions, we do not owe this writer much gratitude or consideration, seeing we are not very likely to be- nefit by it. As one instance of the Examiner's Ultra Radicalism, we recollect he once objected to the establishment of a National Guard, to protect lives and property, till he had also institutions worth preserving, for fear the protection should be extended to our existing institutions ! As another instance we quote the following comment of the True Sun on Attwood of Birmingham, the hero of reform, copied into the Examiner of November llth. et This gentleman is one of the bubbles that are sure to be blown into a little brief existence by a great and imminent crisis, lie is one of those who would never make their way to renown through the ordinary crannies of the times, and who require a convulsion to throw them out of the crater. He is the child of eruption, the hot cinder of an hour. Mr. Attwood has made his little fire felt far and wide, and is now sadly afraid of going out altogether. He had con- trived to erect himself upon the throne of all the Unions, to establish ULTRA RADICALISM. 43 himself by dint of seeming one of the people, as one of the potentates. The royalty" of radicalism seemed embodied in his person. He was proclaimed to the world as the little king of Birmingham ; as a kind of ft Brummagem" Alfred the Great ! The Council of the Union constituted his privy council • the Union itself formed his parlia- ment,, whose business it was to vote supplies; and his people were the 200,000 necessary for his purposes at public meetings, to stand bare-headed at his beck, and to affix their signatures to any petitions that it might please his modesty to call upon them to sanction." Gentle readers ! True-hearted and consistent Radicals ! are you not amazed at this bitter and unsparing abuse of the very champion of reform ; but for whose resolute,, yet temperate and forbearing con- duct ; but for whose high and well-established character amongst the population of his crowded district ; but for whose unimpeachable addiction, at least, to the cause of the masses, the imposing attitude of the Birmingham Union would never have been assumed, nor its salutary influence felt, by the cause of reform ! You are doubtless anxious to know what can have excited in the organs of ultraism such immoderate rage and hostility against the late god of their idol- atry, and the acknowledged main instrument of our political regene- ration ! Shall we venture to disclose the awful secret ? Are your nerves strong enough to bear it all at once? We are positively heaving with the throes of approaching delivery ! " Parturiunt monies nascetur ridiculus mus." Mr. Attwood had ventured to speak reproachfully, but very temperately, and without the least abuse, of the inefficacious support of the Cockney workies to the Reform Bill. He had used the following words : — " Here are a million and a half of people who have done nothing, and yet they presume to send a deputation to teach us how to form Unions. The working men have neither wealth nor leisure to work in the cause — we have both. If they succeed, they will be certain to break up the political power in this town, and certain not to gain the liberty of the press (that is, its freedom from taxation). The old Radicals have been at work forty years, and have gained nothing." This specimen of consideration towards the man whose manly and temperate Unionists soon managed what the Cockney workies had no notion of, till they were shown it by him and his friends, is, we think, a complete index to the instincts and qualities of Ultra Radicalism. Tristius baud illis monstrum, nee ssevior ulla Pestis et ira deum Stygiis sese extulit undis. . In conclusion, we offer a few words to explain our preference of the Liberal Whigs, the Menders and Restorers, in'present occupation of the helm, to our own Altering and Improving Party, the Radi- cals : — The late break-up, and reduction of our political elements to a temporary chaos, necessarily brought many heterogeneous characters into conjunction. The immediate objects of Liberals, Whigs, Radi- cals, and Ultra Radicals, were identical ; and not only admitted of, but positively required a close and fraternal union. During this 44 ULTRA RADICALISM. confusion, many of the Radical Party, indeed almost all the promi- nent and most active spirits, were forced into political intimacy with the Ultras. It will take more than a little time ere the Radicals can graciously shake off this connection ; nor till they can do, and have done so, do we think they could occupy official station, without se- rious impediment to their effectiveness from the Ultra Parties. The Ultras, on either side, are voracious and insatiable as the abyss. They know not what it is to have enough. Such writers as the True Sim and Examiner, are, through instinctive good sense, deterred from ex- treme abuse of the present highly deserving ministry. They know the country feels they have done more than could be expected from essential Aristocrats ; and that the country is grateful to them ; and that they, the Ultra Organs, could not hope to materially impair their credit for principle and consistency. But, were Radicals now to come into power, turn illce turbos farent ! then what a clamour would the greedy Ultras raise ! how would they, like harpies, hover about, and pounce upon, and defile the banquets provided by the Radicals ! Not a sentiment would be uttered by a Radical ministry, or a measure proposed, but the flight of dire and obscene Ultras would intercept the popular gratitude, and mar its enjoyment. Nothing, however li- beral, which the Radicals could offer, would be enough. The quota- tions of Radical sentiments and assertions, under the excitement of fraternization with the Ultras, would be so heaped upon them, as to throw suspicion upon their integrity ; would destroy their credit with the lower orders, whilst the higher would be so totally estranged from them, as to leave no chance at all of their carrying their measures into effect. It is a further objection, with us, to the speedy admission of our own party to official power, that it would be subject to unduly rapid impulse from the Ultra Radicals. We feel conscious our own desire for alteration and improvement would expose us to grievous temptation to hurry onwards, had we the whip and reins in our hands ; and we would not trust any Radical, we know of, in a situation to be at once excited into vain-glory and over-confidence by the Ultras, and to have the power of pushing his intemperance to consummation. The systematic and unqualified perseverance against national opi- nions and wishes, of the unreformed government, was certainly grounded upon a false principle, namely, that nothing should be yielded as long as it could be maintained. This false principle is at an end ; but the wisdom of the trite old sayings of our school days, <( Est modus in rebus," — " Ne quid nimis, &c." is still unimpaired in the esti- mation of true philosophy. We maintain, that with our unexampled facilities for discussion, enlarged too, as they soon will be, and through the increasing intelligence of the masses, the country will be better managed by a government a little inclined to hold back, than to lead the way. The public want ministers who will be open to national convictions, not ministers who would force convictions on the nation. 45 THE LABOUR INSTITUTION. THE Labour Exchange, in the Gray's Inn-road, occupies at the present time a considerable share of the attention of the public, owing to the novelty of the institution, and the celebrity of its founder, Mr. Robert Owen, of philanthropic notoriety. The disappearance and dissolution of the multitude of the schemes of this gentleman, for the amelioration of the condition of the lower orders of this and of other countries, would argue an apparent defi- ciency of judgment or of perseverance in their founder ; and whether the present institution, for the removal of ignorance and poverty from the world, be destined to be longer lived than his preceding projects at New Harmony and Bagnigge Wells, would appear to be rather problematical. The institution has evidently been commenced with- out any definite or well-arranged plan of operations, much confusion and misunderstanding having already arisen in consequence ; and the quantity of poverty yet removed by Mr. Owen and his well-paid co- directors, is certainly very small. The chief features of the institu- tion are, the system of exchange or barter of commodities, and an attempt to supersede the use of gold and silver, as the instruments of exchange, by the substitution of labour notes. This, however, is a needless and nugatory attempt, for it will be difficult indeed to per- suade the industrious classes of the inutility of the usual money of the world, or of the superiority of the notes of Mr. Owen and the irre- sponsible directors of the Labour Bazaar. The labour notes are indeed themselves paper money, of a most expensive description, being engraved upon a steel plate, in the finest style of the art, and presenting a profusion of elaborate ornamental emblems of industry and plenty — a labour note for one hour, of the value of sixpence, being apparently worth that sum of money as a work of art. The labour notes being also exchanged for silver and gold, at the institu- tion itself, it appears that this portion of the project is at best an expensive and ridiculous singularity. The other departments of the institution are also conducted upon an expensive scale, the rent of the building alone amounting to the sum of 1200/. per annum, and the various expences for management, with the many hazards, from the inability or want of integrity of the numerous persons engaged in conducting so extensive a concern, will probably be found to be fatal to the project. Many opponents have already appeared against the system — the political leaders of the industrious classes objecting to the principle of the plan, upon the ground of its rejection of politics, and its sub- missive tendency to patience under the distresses which undoubtedly arise from our system of national misgovernment, and which never can be remedied — but, on the contrary, will be very greatly aggra- vated— by the meekness and non-resistance of the plan of Mr. Owen. Certainly, the labour exchange presents no remedy for the many oppressions upon the industrious classes of this country ; for it is, on the contrary, a mere war upon one very large body of the industrious classes themselves — the small shopkeepers of this metropolis — who, 46 THE LABOUR INSTITUTION. in the words of Owen, will by the labour institution " be pursued to destruction." We cannot therefore applaud the establishment, by public sub- scription, of an institution which is thus avowedly to destroy the body of the smaller shopkeepers of London, who in these times of difficulty are already the most universally distressed and mentally uncomfortable of all the commercial classes of the country, requiring rather assistance, than the opposition of a large and monopolizing institution, such as that of Mr. Owen. We cannot indeed discern, how the removal of ignorance and poverty will ever be effected by the establishment of a monopoly of shopkeeping. Indeed, the views of this gentleman are somewhat confused and contradictory ; and though generally allowed to be benevolent in his intentions, we fear that not an inconsiderable portion of vanity and hungering after notoriety and power, are ingredients in his character. Thus his recent co-operative establishment, at Harmony in the United States, was dissolved by his own supercilious as- sumption of too great an appearance of wisdom and of power ; for we learn from a recent enlightened traveller, Mr. Ferral, that Mr. Owen could brook no distrust in the infallibility of his schemes, and the members of the society retired, universally disgusted with the man. Nor do we perceive why this man of benevolence should have refused, at a recent meeting, to vacate the chair upon any occasion whatever ; alleging himself the governor and founder of the institution. Whence he derives his title to the governorship, we know not, excepting by the doctrine of divine right ; but he is most assuredly not the founder of the institution in a pecuniary point of view, for the purchase of the building, and the other expences of the project, have been defrayed by the subscriptions of the public. Mr. Owen is thus at no hazard whatever ; but, on the contrary, we remember that at the meeting for the completion of the purchase of the building, a resolution was introduced, most strongly guarding him from all personal liability. In these times, when the self-election of boroughmongers and parish vestrymen is yielding to the principle of election by the people, we trust that Mr. Owen will not be the only personage to be tolerated as the perpetual governor of an institution supported by the subscriptions of the public. But the institution we consider nugatory and of no avail ; for al- lowing that the utmost extent of employment were afforded to me- chanics by the labour bazaar, still it is obvious that this merely displaces the same amount of labour in another situation ; for the unemployed shoemaker, who manufactures a weekly pair of shoes to be sold by Mr. Owen, causes another journeyman to be unemployed by the master shoemakers in the neighbourhood, which, therefore, is a tmere change of the person and the place of the want of employ- ment, and the consequent distress. But we find by a recent decision of the governor, that deposits are now refused of goods in value below one sovereign, a rule which apparently removes the institution beyond the reach of the unemployed of the working classes altoge- ther, since very few mechanics indeed can be possessed of materials THE LABOUR INSTITUTION. 4J to the value of twenty shillings upon any one occasion, and this pro- hibitory rule goes therefore to defeat the purpose for which the in- stitution was established. To fulfil the objects of the establishment,, the rule ought rather to have prohibited the deposit of goods in value exceeding the sum of twenty shillings, when the counters of the bazaar would no longer be loaded with the refuse stock of the metro- politan shopkeepers, to the exclusion of the produce of the labour of the mechanics, for whose benefit the subscriptions of the public have founded the Bazaar. We are of opinion, however, that persons engaged in the mecha- nical trades are not those who in reality require assistance from public institutions, such as this Labour Bazaar. For the condition of the operatives in towns is always immeasurably superior to that of labourers upon farms, on the roads, or in other agricultural employ- ments ; for there are few sober carpenters or smiths who even in these times of difficulty cannot be furnished with three times more of the comforts of existence than the mass of the agricultural labourers of England ; the anguish of whose condition has given rise to the incen- diary fires of the last three miserable years. We can venture to assure Mr. Owen that the project for the extensive employment of labourers of the country in cultivation by the spade, will be abund- antly more effective for the removal of poverty from the industrious classes, than the exchanging of shoes and waistcoats in the Gray's- Inn Road ; since the one would undoubtedly increase the solid produc- tions of the earth, and the real comforts of the labourer, whilst the other is a merely nugatory operation, attended with the disadvantage of " pursuing to destruction" one of the largest bodies of the indus- trious classes themselves. We consider the views of Mr. Owen upon the subject of spade-husbandry to be indeed the best and the only really advantageous portion of his scheme ; for the experiments of the last few years have abundantly proved, that the labour of man is in reality in this populous country more economical than the labour of the horse or the ox, whilst the annual crops of the country may be more than quintupled by the adoption of the spade. The small allot- ments of land which our alarmed aristocracy are now granting to the labourers of the country, will not only produce the most beneficial consequences upon the condition of our rural population, but will im- measurably increase the rental of the land, owing to the extraordinary increase of the crop — the result of garden cultivation. Thus we know an instance upon the estate of the Duke of B., where twenty- four acres have been recently subtracted from a farm paying a rental of only eleven shillings per acre, and are now subdivided into twelve small tenements of two acres each, for which the labouring occupants can very advantageously pay a rental of two pounds per acre. We can also testify to the sale of carrots to the value of seventy pounds from a single acre of land by spade cultivation. We trust, therefore, that these subdivisions of land are destined to become universal, assisted by the forthcoming change in the equalizing spirit of our reformed institutions, as exhibited by the abolition of the law of pri- mogeniture, and the other aristocratical portions of our legislation, 48 THE LA-BOUR INSTITUTION. which render the immense accumulations of property in few hands the peculiar curse of England. But even in this portion of his scheme we are obliged to correct Mr. Owen in his exaggeration of his facts. Not content to effect a moderate improvement in the condition of the labouring classes, he informs us that " Mr. Falla, of Gateshead, has made a fortune by spade husbandry." Now here Mr. Owen conceals the fact that Mr. Falla is a gardener and seedsman, celebrated for his plants over the whole of Scotland and the northern counties of England, and not certainly cultivator of wheat, barley, and oats — the crops of the ordi- nary farmer. Fortunes cannot, and if the fair remuneration of the labourer be paid, ought not to be made from the cultivation of the actual food of man, and upon the greatest-happiness-principle, the diffusion and not the gathering of wealth is the true source of national prosperity. We trust then that Mr. Owen will leave the theatre of the town, and the vain plaudits of the Gray's-Inn Road, for the green lanes and pleasant fields of rural tranquillity. The mechanics of the metropolis, redolent of Barclay and Perkins, will expel him from his self-elected chair; but his power will endure for ever amongst the grateful clod- poles of the valley. His own interest and the comforts of the labourer will be simultaneously consulted by an extensive introduction of culti- vation by the spade ; whilst he derives, we presume, no compensation from his present labours in the magistracy of the labour institution. It is, however, our happiness to remark, that the circumstances of Mr. Owen do not appear to be injured by his operations for the wel- fare of mankind ; for we find from the account of Mr. Ferral that the land and household property at New Harmony remain in his possession to the present time, and have been greatly improved in value by the resort of the population who composed his co-operative institution. This is certainly very good, for we should regret that schemes of benevolence should injure their projectors ; but charity vaunteth not itself, and we trust to see Mr. Owen retire from the im- practicable tailors of the Gray's-Inn Road to the more silent scenes of rural benevolence. Viewed in its present situation, we fear that much loss may eventually result to many poor individuals from the operations of the Labour Institution : and as its beneficial effects are so entirely visionary, we trust that the press will remove this stepping-stone to the personal vanity and frivolous ambition of a single individual. 49 THE PHRENOLOGIST. AN EXTRACT FROM THE " PRY CHRONICLES. r ON the second day of the first week in January, 1830, the lord and master of Occiput House was journeying, on foot, from Ariesport to his own mansion, late in the evening. By what designation this mansion was known, before it was the property of Dr. Kopfstirn, I never heard — nor is it matter of much importance. After the mature deliberation befitting a subject of such magnitude, he re-christened it, with all due ceremony, Occiput House; by the which name it is now known. It is an ancient edi- fice, modernized. Turrets, angles, and trivial conceits, are stuck upon and about the massy walls, wherein our warlike ancestors took delight. In the " days of former years," it was doubtless a castle ; but, as some of the lights of the world insist that human nature has degenerated, even so hath it fared with Kopfstirn's Castle. Its pre- sent appearance is that of a partly Chinese, partly Gothic erection ; which cannot fail to remind the contemplative traveller, that the baron's coronet has been judiciously replaced by the cap and bells, common to all ranks. This tasteful and elegant building stands within fifty paces of the lofty and precipitous cliff, about a mile east of Ariesport, a watering- place of repute, on the Kentish coast. It frowns not in the native majesty of strength and power, but resembles, more than any thing under heaven, a starving wretch, meditating the fatal plunge from the aforesaid cliff. The evening on which the Doctor is first introduced to the reader's notice, was precisely such a one as January often favours us with. The snow descended thick and fast ; and the keen north-east wind howled drearily around. But being profoundly wrapped up in his own cogitations, and, what was more to the purpose, on such a night, a coat that bid defiance to the cold, he plodded on his way, heedless of the tempest. He had traversed more than three parts of the distance which sepa- rates Ariesport from Occiput House, when he was startled from his reflective mood by a stifled groan. He stopped, drew in his breath, and assumed the attitude of one who listens ; but nought, save the dismal sighing of the wind, was audible. So firmly, however, was he impressed with the idea that a fellow-creature was near, and in distress, that, regardless of the inclement night, he remained station- ary, and called aloud. The howling of the blast was the only answer. Smiling at what then seemed an illusion, he was moving rapidly from the spot, when a second arid more distinct groan fell upon his ear. Although the night was one well calculated for the wanderings of a perturbed and miserable ghost, no such fancy dwelt on the worthy Doctor's mind ; but deciding, that the sounds he had heard were purely terrestrial, he commenced an examination on both sides of the fences which separated the road from the contiguous fields. M. M.— No. 85. E 50 THE PHRENOLOGIST. His exertions were soon crowned with the success they deserved. He perceived an object on the ground, close to one of the fences : it was the body of a human being, whose garments were thickly be- sprinkled with snow, as if it had lain there some time. The stranger was as motionless and insensible, as if the spirit which once animated him had parted from its temporary imprisonment with the last deep groan. And such was Dr. Kopfstirn's first impression; but having ascertained the heart's pulsation, and being a powerful man — possessed of the will as well as the means — he lifted him up, and conveyed him to his own house. The usual restoratives in such cases were applied, which, in a short time, rewarded his active be- nevolence with the desired conclusion. Slight convulsive motions about the eyelids and lips, proclaimed the return of suspended ani- mation. Presently, a pair of black, but lustreless eyes stared vacantly around. In a few minutes they assumed something of intelligence. By slow degrees entire consciousness was restored ; and the patient, looking steadily at Dr. Kopfstirn, inquired, in a low, feeble tone, where he was ? " The guest of Dr. Kopfstirn," replied he to whom the question was addressed. te But you must remain quiet for the present, and all will soon be well. I will leave you in excellent hands." And, turning to his housekeeper, an ancient crone, of exaggerated features and forbidding aspect, desired her to watch by the bed-side of the stranger, and left the room. " Th' owld man's gone clane daft," — so she grumbled the moment his back was turned, — " to pick up a beggar, or, may be, a thief — the Lord presarve us ! — out o* th' snow, as he says. How long I may keep my head on my owld shouthers, who may tell, if our house is to be turned into a lodging for every strolling pedlar, or worse, that happens to take the snow for his bed — an' he has one ?" Without being aware of the amiable feelings thus vented in indis- tinct mutterings, the stranger presently fell into a disturbed slumber. Fever was apprehended ; and the event verified the prognostication. - During this interval, we shall have time for a word or two about the owner of Occiput House. He was indebted, partly to the bounty of nature, and partly to a good appetite ?nd excellent digestive organs, for an ample rotundity of figure ; which, however, was no incumbrance to his activity. His extension of body, and length of sinewy arms, seemed as if originally intended for a man, at the very least, six feet high ; and his legs, for one, of not more than half that height. His head was certainly be- tween his shoulders; but how it was fixed there might puzzle a con- juror ; for of neck he had none — that is, none visible. It was a round, snipe-like head, covered with long, straight, light-coloured hair, surmounting an equally round, but good-humoured face. Its expres- sion was peculiar, being derived from two animated, sparkling, gray, wise-looking, little eyes ; which had acquired an almost perpetually twinkling motion, especially when either angry, or descanting on a favourite topic. His usual dress was a brown coat, abundantly capacious — it would have enveloped the persons of Daniel Lambert and an alderman joined together. His waistcoat evinced a propensity to dandyism. THE PHRENOLOGIST. 51 It was of black velvet, ornamented with gold embroidery. The rest of his habiliments were of leather, which had seen too many annual revolutions of the sun to have retained their original appearance. His shoes were full three inches wide at the toes, and fastened at the instep, with enormous silver buckles. Now imagine this figure, bearing on its head a clerical hat, a thick oaken cudgel in its hand, and perched on the back of a lazarus-like horse, seventeen hands high, and you have his complete picture as frequently seen riding down the principal street of Ariesport. Our doctor was a native of that land of wild story — Germany ; and a cottage, about ten miles from Francfort, at the foot of the adjacent lofty mountain, Der Alte-Konig, or, the old king, was the little man's residence for the first fifteen years of his life. On the summit of Der Alte-Konig stand the ruins of an ancient castle. To this point would the young Kopfstirn often climb his laborious way for the solace of solitary contemplation. His constant habit of frequenting the ruined old castle, in addition to his peculiar conformation, acquired for him the appellation of Der Alte-Konig, — and The Dwarf of Der Alte-Konig was perpetually sounding in his ears. Late in the evening of the first of May, 17 — , the persecuted dwarf, bitterly galled by the taunts and jeers he had that day endured, bounded up the steep acclivity with the speed and agility of the chamois. Arrived at his favourite haunt, amid the dilapidated towers of former strength, he seated himself on a little knoll, close to the ruined fortress, and was soon immersed in reflections which exalted him far, very far above the dust and drudgery of this world. He spurned the earth ; he spurned the sons of earth ; and, ascending on the eagle wing of fancy, looked down with sovereign contempt on many a little planet, as it lay stretched out beneath his feet, a mere speck in boundless space. Gradually his mind reverted to himself and his fellow-men. He cast his eyes on the ruins around, and thought on antiquarian fame. He looked up to heaven, and the astronomers' celebrity rose before him. He bent his gaze on the earth, and dwelt on t the labours of the naturalist. But his mind was yet a mere collection of rude ma- terials, unhewn, unpolished. Decision withheld her fiat. Visions of grandeur floated before his imagination ; baseless fabrics, unsubstan- tial and shadowy. He saw — but was condemned to the fate of Tan- talus. Plunged in these reveries — now unnaturally exalted, and now as unnaturally depressed, he noted not the lapse of time ; and night had thrown her starry mantle over the world before he became conscious of the transition. He then prepared to retrace his steps, exclaiming, as he felt the keen pang of disappointment, — " O that some power — whether fiend, devil, or angel, I care not — would but point out the path to celebrity !" " Thy call is obeyed !" rang among the ruins in a voice of thunder. The stout heart of the youthful Kopfstirn, though beating quicker than its wont, disdained to quail. Anticipated triumph flushed his brow and nerved his courage, and he stood erect and firm. E 2 52 THE PHRENOLOGIST. Now, whether the earth opened according to the most approved method in such cases, or whether the dwarf descended through a secret passage, the work of scheming mortality, I am not informed ; but in the space of a few minutes he found himself in a subterranean cave, or apartment, brilliantly illuminated. Whence the light pro- ceeded was a mystery. No torch was visible ; and the damp of fear stood, for the first time, on the adventurer's brow. The walls, the roof, and the floor were of solid rock, bearing the marks of having been rudely torn asunder by the effect of some mighty power, rather than the systematic workmanship of mortal agency. But the daring Kopfstirn had little time to remark the peculiarities of the cavern's construction, for almost at the moment of his introduction his guide vanished, and from the further extremity of the apartment came a figure which could not fail to appal. Not, unhappily, pos- sessed of Milton's sublimity, I must content myself by saying, that the tail and head gear of this being proclaimed him the dread Prince of Darkness. Kopfstirn no longer felt any difficulty in solving the problem whence the mystical illumination of the cave proceeded. Our youthful hero, however, contrived to retain possession of his senses. The fearful apparition of him of the cloven foot had not the power, or exercised it not, of reducing him to mere unintelligent matter. He was, therefore, perfectly aware of the whole proceedings, which, for the benefit of the curious in demonology, we have faith- fully, but briefly, chronicled. The ruler of the nether regions advanced to the centre of the in- fernal cave, followed by a multitude of the most extraordinary and grotesque forms man ever looked upon, and lived to describe. There were witches with their broomsticks ; wizards with their wands ; and all kinds of fantastic spirits, with heads and without heads, with tails and without tails. These were succeeded by the terrific and gigantic form of the demon of the Hartz mountains, at the head of another motley group of infernals, bearing his uprooted pine for a walking-stick. These elements resolved themselves into a dance. Perhaps none of my readers ever had an opportunity to witness such an exhibition as a dance of giants and witches. If not, let them imagine Stonehenge and a few scattered hamlets suddenly animated by the music of a volcanic eruption, and frisking about in all the exuberant joy of stones and houses liberated from their thraldom. The Devil is certainly a gentleman conversant in the ways of the world, and, in the present instance, a copier thereof; for, after the ball, a sumptuous entertainment was spread for their strange guests. Whether his Infernal Majesty's favourite dish — a roasted hippopota- mus, garnished with young tigers, was one of the solids of this feast, Ernest Kopfstirn could not ascertain. English gin and porter was handed about, and seemed to be a favourite drink, and divided the palm with brimstone and vitriol. Mirth, revelry, and noise, now triumphed; which, after considerable duration, was suddenly suc- ceeded by the silence of the grave. But as the piercing light, which had hitherto illumined the cavern, began to wane, the stillness was broken by the daemon of the Hartz mountains, who, rearing his gigantic height far above his compeers, and leaning on his pine-tree, THE PHRENOLOGIST. 53 delivered the following prophecy, in a voice that vibrated through every fibre of Ernest Kopfstirn's frame. " When the Dwarf of Der Alte-Konig shall have been a student at Gottingen, an infant science shall spread abroad its branches, and flourish through the earth." A wild cry of joy burst from the deepest recess of Ernest's heart, which made every eye turn to the spot where he stood. A commo- tion arose, the light vanished ; fear and trembling came over him, and he saw nothing more of this superhuman assembly, but found himself, he was ignorant how, in the same place where he had first heard the voice from the ruins. There is a tradition current in Germany, that at the castle of Der Alte-Konig, on every successive May-day, the Devil holds a convoca- tion of all the witches and wizards in the German empire ; that he inquires how they had performed their several parts since the last meeting, and concludes his catechizing, by giving them a splendid entertainment. Though Ernest Kopfstirn retained the firm convic- tion he had been bodily present at one of these convocations, as just related, yet many shook their wise heads and avouched that he merely fell asleep among the old ruins. This may be the most rational way of accounting for it, but assuredly not the most German. Whether Ernest Kopfstirn dreamed the scene I have described, or not, I leave the learned to decide. Be the decision as it may, his future life was materially influenced by the occurrence ; for, within a few days, he left the home of his friends and journeyed on foot to Gottingen, where, adventureless, he arrived, elate with hopes, glo- rious hopes of future celebrity. Here he studied hard, possibly stimulated by his adventure at Cronenburg, and acquired a very creditable share of learning. He applied, nor went application unrewarded. The mine was opened ; he saw the glittering and precious ore, and he laboured incessantly to make it his. When, therefore, he received his degree, it was not bestowed on ignorance, to the prejudice of the profession. His labours were not, however, confined wholly to the useful. He was an enthusiast ; everything breathes enthusiasm at a German Univer- sity, and dearly did he love the abstruce and the fanciful. At one time he devoted himself to certain wild theories, bearing on the state of his native country ; a subject started and pursued with mad eager- ness by German students in general, — while at another time he was involved in the entangled meshes of the alchymical web. Yet, al- though the words of the prophecy frequently recurred to his me- mory, he could not persuade himself that alchymy was the infant science alluded to. At length, felicitous thought! phrenology presented itself to his mind ; and, with the enthusiast's quickness, he decided that, therein he should rise pre-eminent, therein " live a life in others breath/' according to one of the definitions of fame. Eternity of fame is an alluring bait, and the incipient Phrenologist redoubled his exertions. Bumps and organs, and their develope- ment, were his study by day, and his vision by night. Henceforth, nor bird, nor beast, nor mortal, ever came in his way that escaped his scrutiny. His whole energies were directed toward this single pur- suit, and, in process of time, he shone forth a most remarkable speci- 54 THE PHRENOLOGIST. men of the craniological genus. When he quitted the University of Gottingen, he had the reputation of a, clever man led astray, by the ignis fatuus of an idle fancy, and devoted to the illustration of eccen- tric theories, to the neglect of those nobler branches of science, which his strong mind was fully capable of advancing. Having spent some short time in Italy and France, he arrived in England ; having, reaped golden opinions from all sorts of men, and, despite of his devotion to one absorbing subject, found time to fall in love with, and marry the sister of Sir William Desmond. Sir Wil- liam's indignation — in such cases, commonly called pride — conquered the affection he bore his sister ; and she was treated as an outcast from the family, a disgrace to the blood of Desmond. The Doctor,, however, proved an affectionate husband. But, unfortunately, after they had been married about four years, Kopfstirn heard that the skull of a mammoth had been found in America. An examination of this skull was, of course, decided upon. Himself, his wife, and only child, sailed to the land of mammoths; found the story of the skull nothing but a story, and returned, as many other sight-seekers have returned, with an added portion of the acerbity of disappoint- ment in their compositions. But this was not all ; he suffered by his voyage. When within sight of the white cliffs of Old England, the vessel was wrecked, and Ernest Kopfstirn returned to Occiput House, a solitary mourner. His wife and child had perished ; and, when he alluded to this circumstance he would turn to the windows and look mournfully at the ocean-grave of his loved ones ! But we must now return to the incident, with which our tale opened. Humanity dwelt in the bosom of Dr. Kopfstirn, and he failed not to watch over the stranger, whose life he had saved, with the utmost assiduity. In a month, he was sufficiently recovered to leave his room, and four dreary weeks had they proved ! The couch of sick- ness is ever sad, but when the sting is pointed by an affli ction be- yond the reach of art to alleviate — affliction of the mind — illness is exasperated into its sharpest poignancy. That his mind was not free from oppression, the gloom settled on his expansive brow too plainly indicated. The stranger was a dark-haired, handsome-featured man ; by his looks, something more than five-and- twenty ; though recent fever, and a sadness that belongs not to the spring of life, might unite to make him appear older than he was. He had certainly the conver- sation and easy bearing, which may either be expected to accompany a greater age, or much familiar intercourse with the world. Though mild and affable, he was frequently abstracted, and a degree of con- tradiction and irresolution marked his conduct. The first time he appeared out of his sleeping apartment was one day, a short time before dinner, and after the doctor had congratu- lated the patient on his recovery, he was anxious to try his attain- ments, and was leading him directly to his favourite subject, the only subject, in fact, worth discussing — phrenology. Fortunately for the stranger, and perhaps equally, or more so, for the reader, dinner was at that moment announced ; which abruptly THE PHRENOLOGIST. 55 cut short the learned Doctor's intended dissertation, and he led the way to the dining-room, exclaiming — " There is no true happiness in this world !" — so said Quin, when he had procured some delicious fish, and the sauce was made with bad butter. " Something or other," added the dwarfish craniologist, " is ever impertinently intervening to mar our happiest moments." The dinner was discussed after the fashion of most other dinners, save that the os frontis of an unhappy whiting served as the theme for a quarter of an hour's harangue, wherein it was clearly shewn the fish was predestined to be caught and devoured. Immediately after the repast, and with a little circumlocution, Kopfstirn, who was not to be put off, said — (t You have not seen my sanctum yet, young gentleman : after our wine, I shall have much pleasure in shewing you a few curiosities which I have had the hap- piness to collect/' The stranger acquiesced, and almost immediately followed his impatient host through sundry dark and narrow passages, until they arrived at a massive oaken door, studded with immense nails. This door was secured by a couple of patent locks, of intricate machinery, to guard the treasures within. When opened, the visiter beheld a small triangular apartment, furnished with an octagon table, two arm- chairs, covered with dog-skin, and a number of shelves stuck against the bare walls. The back of each chair was ornamented with the representation of a skull, carved with much cunning. The arms of the same were similarly decorated. On the shelves were displayed a vast number of skulls, large and small, round and oval, some human, some animal, some under glass cases, some not so distinguished; it was indeed a Golgotha — a place of skulls ! On the table were scat- tered a miscellaneous assemblage of books, pamphlets, and manu- scripts, with materials for writing. The stranger could not but admire the contrivance for holding ink — a china skull contained the immortalizing fluid. It had all the various organs distinctly marked, not according to either Spurzheim or Gall, but after a new system which boasted the Doctor as its inventor, and which he took infinite pains to reduce to the stranger's capacity ; but like many others, he had the art of amplifying to such an extent, and involving illustration within illustration, that what might have been previously comprehensible was so effectually ob- scured by his method of explanation, that not a glimpse of meaning remained. Having glanced at the characteristic appendages of the craniolo- gist's triangular study, the countenance of the stranger suddenly assumed an extraordinary appearance of emotion. The Doctor be- came alarmed. The stranger endeavoured to control it, but in vain. He sunk on a chair, and gave way to an uncontrollable burst of laughter. Two cats and a pug-dog were lying on the rug before the fire — with shaven crowns ! " Experiments for the advancement of science," said the Doctor, as both cause and effect manifested themselves, C( are not legitimate subjects for laughter;'' and he looked displeased. " I have operated on these animals myself, to the temporary destruction of their crinose honors, for the sake of a more minute examination/' 56 - THE PHRENOLOGIST. " And I hope your discoveries have amply rewarded you for the trouble/' remarked his companion, composing his face to serious- ness. " Truly they have, beyond my most sanguine expectations. I have detected an organ in the feline species which hath escaped all previous studiers of craniology — I mean the organ of reflectiveness." He was about to take up one of the cats, for the purpose of point- ing out this organ, when she unceremoniously launched forth a paw, and left deep marks of her indignation on the scientific man's cheek sinister. " That is odd," exclaimed he, with the utmost composure and most imperturbable gravity, "very odd. I do not recollect to have seen it, but it must be there." And in defiance of the cat's evident reluc- tance, he took her up, seated himself in one of the arm chairs, con- fined his victim in a sort of wooden cage, so contrived as to leave only the head at liberty, and patiently began a scrutiny. Long and carefully did Ernest Kopfstirn search. At last he tri- umphantly called out, " Well, I may exclaim with the heathen of old, ( Eureka ! I have found it !' Look here — observe this slight promi- nence. It is, though very faintly developed, a sufficient indication that this specimen hath a pugnacious propensity." " I was quite convinced of that before," remarked the stranger. "Thus ever judge the ignorant!" exclaimed Kopfstirn. "/ know it hath, not because I see the effect, but because I see the cause." The cat now liberated, screaming with rage and pain, forthwith dashed through a pane of the study window, followed by the pug and the other cat, while the doctor, fully satisfied with his investi- gation, without taking further notice of the malcontents, said, as he took an almost shapeless mass from one of the shelves, " This is the greatest rarity in my whole collection. It is invaluable. I pur- chased it from an indigent man, who dwells at Knaresborough, and who found it embedded in a calcareous substance. After having be- stowed the proper consideration due to such an important subject, no doubt remains on my mind but it is the skull of some antideluvian animal, genus not known. It is therefore valuable on that account. But what is the most remarkable — you see this organ ? — Well, Sir — this organ denotes, that the specimen belongs to conscientious irra- tionality! You may smile, Sir, but it is evidently a skull ; evidently not human. It consequently follows, that it must have appertained to the animal creation j and the organ, I have pointed out, is indica- tive of conscientiousness — a contradiction not easily reconciled, I grant. I am, however, commencing a treatise on the subject, which must carry conviction to the mind of the most hardened sceptic." Reader ! the treatise already extended to six hundred folio pages, closely written ! •' My dear Sir," said the stranger, who had been attentively exa- mining the specimen of conscientious irrationality, " this is no more a skull than a windmill!" and, before the horror-stricken phrenologist had time to exclaim against this heresy, he continued, " this iden- tical specimen was offered me last summer at Knaresborough as a specimen of the petrifying spring, and is nothing more than part of a duck's egg !" The indignation and secret dismay which the doctor THE PHRENOLOGIST. 57 felt at this blunt overthrow of his favorite theory he had great diffi- culty in restraining ; but, assuming a smile anything but humorous, he said, with forced composure, " Truly, my young friend, I admire your candour ; but I pity your discrimination. The glories of science are not yet made manifest to you : but let us change the subject. I have an affair to discuss with you on which we shall better agree. It strikes me we are not such strangers as I at first supposed. During your illness I observed the traces of a wound in your head with which I ought to be familiar ; and your features, though altered, I can surely recognize. If I do not deceive myself, you are the son of my friend and neighbour, Mr. Trevor." "' You are right, Sir, said the stranger, who seemed agitated by a variety of emotions ; tf I had no idea you would have recognized me. I intended, however, this very day, to have confided to you the reason of my present situation, and asking your assistance ; but I fear the reports which have doubtless reached this place to my preju- dice have already deprived me of your good opinion."