HEADS OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 OR, 
 
 $Jortratts of the (English; 
 
 SV KINN'Y 
 
 WITH ORIGINAL KSSAYS BY DISTINGC1SHED WRITER*. 
 
 LONDON: 
 WILLOUGHBY & Co., 22, WARWICK-LANE, & 26, SMITHFIELD
 
 
 t 
 
 HE design of the projectors of this work is 
 now completed. The "Heads of the 
 People," thus struck off, are respect- 
 fully laid at the feet of the People. 
 
 All these sketches, "miscellaneous 
 and multifaced," with the pencil and 
 with the pen, have been intended as 
 Popular Portraits; the aim, in each 
 instance, being to concentrate in in- 
 dividual peculiarity the characteristics 
 of a class. Their success must depend 
 of course on the degree of fidelity with 
 which this object has been accom- 
 plished. They may be entertaining 
 or edifying it is naturally hoped they 
 are; but the question will be asked, 
 Are they like? Do they remind you of what they profess to represent? 
 Do they impress ycu with a sense of general resemblance to the object 
 sought to be delineated? 
 
 It is a common remark, that few persons are quite pleased, perfectly 
 satisfied, with their own portraits; it may be no less frequently noted, thnt 
 our friends find faults and pick objections which we <lo not. U the portrait 
 be a perfect likeness, there is something in it unpleasant to us; if it be a flat- 
 tering representation, it is defective in other eyes. A man does not object 
 to his own picture because it is too handsome, but because it is unlike; 
 and his friend does not object to it as unlike, but as too complimentary. 
 
 Our "Heads" may be subject to these objections, as well as to others. 
 The " trade, calling, or professirn," whose representative is delineated, may 
 think the features harshly drawn, the lines overstrained, the effect nnna- 
 tural; while the class that comes as its next neighbour muy consider the 
 likeness flattering, and the charge of exaggeration apposite only in its own 
 case. It will be sufficient if both allow for the difficulty of always assimi- 
 lating the views of artist and author when treating of the same subject; and 
 for the impossibility of any one man's seeing with another man's eyes, or
 
 rom precisely the same point of view. The utter and confounding contra- 
 dictions that are to be met with, not merely in the same class of persons, 
 but in the same character, will also be recognised as creative of a per- 
 plexity in the execution of such an attempt as this, that asks indulgence ; 
 and the unwillingness to spoil what has the chance of becoming " a picture," 
 by a too rigid and literal adherence to the lines of the original, will also be 
 allowed for as a natural feeling in artists as well as writers. 
 
 Enough then, if the general effect the family-likeness be satisfactory. 
 The critic shall object to the colour of the hair ; he shall protest against 
 the expression of the eyes ; we give him up the nose I frankly ; the drawing 
 of the mouth he shall entirely condemn if he will ; we surrender the chin 
 and cheeks to his censure without scruple, nay, he shall cavil up to the 
 ears, and no offence in the world ; but only let him admit and it is all we 
 implore that there is something in the air, the turn of the head, the con- 
 tour of the face, that strikes him as being not absolutely unlike ; and at all 
 events, whether like or unlike, interesting, honest, companionable ; stamp- 
 ing it as worthy of being placed among the portraitures of his pleasant 
 familiar acquaintances. 
 
 It is hoped at least that the " People," whose heads are now laid before 
 them, will find in this second volume every characteristic that pleased them 
 in the first. The one desire of all parties concerned in it has been, that 
 ihere should be no lack of generous sentiment, good-humoured endeavour, 
 and cheerful appreciation of the socialities and charities of life, in their 
 attempts to delineate its characters.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAO 
 
 THE CHAPERON AND DEBUTANTE MRS. GORE 1 
 
 THE MONEY-LENDER .... DOUGLAS JERROLD .... 14 
 
 THE OLD SQTJTRE WILLIAM Howrrr .... 25 
 
 THE BALLET MISTRESS . . . DOUGLAS JERROLD .... 33 
 
 THE MUTE MRS. GORE 38 
 
 THE WHIG AN M.P -. 49 
 
 THE FARMER ALICE 57 
 
 THE COUNTRY SCHOOLMASTER . WILLIAM Ho WITT .... 65 
 
 THE FASHIONABLE AUTHORESS . WILLIAM THACKERAY . . 73 
 
 THE BASKET WOMAN .... MRS. S. C. HALL .... 85 
 
 THE LODGING-HOUSE KEEPER . PAUL PRENDERGAST ... 95 
 
 THE BRICKLAYER'S LABOURER . MRS. S. C. HALL. . . . 101 
 
 THE DEBTOR AND CREDITOR . DOUGLAS JERROLD. . . . 109 
 
 THE YOUNG SQUIRE .... WILLIAM HOWITT . . . . 121 
 
 THE BUM-BOAT WOMAN . . . CAPTAIN GLASCOCK, B.N. . 129 
 
 THE POOR CURATE .... JAMES SMYTHE, JUN. . . 137 
 
 THE QUACK DOCTOR .... PAUL PRENDERGAST . . . 145 
 
 THE PAWNBROKER DOUGLAS JERROLD. . . . 153 
 
 THE ARTISTS MICHAEL ANGELO TITMARSH 161 - 
 
 THE SOLICITOR LEJIAN EEDE 177 
 
 THE DOWAGER A BACHELOR OF ARTS . . 184 
 
 THE TORY AN M. P 193 
 
 THE COLLEGIAN A BACHELOR OF ARTS . . 198 
 
 THE CAPITALIST . F. G. TOMLTNS 208
 
 Vl CONTENTS. 
 
 MM 
 
 THE WAITER P. LEIGH ...... 216 
 
 COACHMAN AND THE GUARD NIMROD 225 
 
 THE POLICEMAN P. LEIGH 249 
 
 THE PARISH CLERK .... P. LEIGH 257 
 
 THE SPITALFIELDS WEAVER . . ARTHUR ARMTTAGE . . . 265 
 
 THE SPORTING GENTLKMAN . . NIMROD 273 
 
 THE BARRISTER LAMAN BLANCHARD . . . 285 
 
 THE JUDGE LAMAN BLANCHARD . . . 294 
 
 THE BISHOP LAMAN BLANCHARD . . . 304 
 
 --THE JOCKEY NIMROD 313 
 
 THE BRITISH SOLDIER . . . R. H. HORNE 324 
 
 THE CHELSEA. PENSIONER . . R. H. HORNE 333 
 
 THE BRITISH SAILOR . . . . E. HOWARD 341 
 
 THE GREENWICH PENSIONER. . E. HOWARD 348 
 
 THE RADICAL M. P AKOLOUTHOS . . 354 
 
 CORPORATION HEADS . LAMAN BLANCHARD 361
 
 THR DEBUTANTE. 
 
 The world is aii before her, where to choos?. 
 
 M1LT..J*.
 
 
 THE CHAPERON. 
 
 The old weather-beaten, she-dragon, " who guards you." 
 
 SHEHIPAN.
 
 HEADS OF THE PEOPLE: 
 
 portraits of t^e 
 
 BY MHS. OORE. 
 
 IT is a curicms fact, that almost all the by-words we have borrowed 
 from the French language, have ceased to be used in a similar sense 
 in their own country. The designation debutante, for instance, 1 * is 
 only applied in France to first appearances at the theatre ; and the 
 word chaperon is nearly obsolete. In the higher classes of Parisian 
 society, unmarried girls are so rarely to be seen (never, unless under 
 the protection of a parent), that an occasion seldom presents itself 
 for the use of the terms chaperon and debutante. 
 
 Among ourselves, meanwhile, they have become naturalised. 
 Among ourselves where marriage, instead of being " dealt with by 
 attorneyship," and, consequently, placed within every one's power of 
 attainment, is, as well as entering a business or a profession, the 
 result of preference or caprice young ladies are introduced into 
 society, in all the innocence of ringlets and white muslin, as soon as 
 they are able to distinguish a quadrille from a galoppe orgeat from 
 lemonade ; and, whereas, at the same tender years, their youthful 
 minds might not be equally skilled to discriminate between the good 
 match and the pitiful younger brother the gentleman with serious 
 intentions, and the mere ball-room flirt the " wisdom of our ances- 
 51
 
 2 THE OHAPERON AND THE DEBUTANTE. 
 
 tors" provides them with a female friend or relative a temporary 
 guardian of their person a full dress governess under whose tur- 
 ban is supposed to reside as much knowledge as under the wig of 
 the Lord Chancellor , under whose starched draperies is concen* 
 trated all the discretion of a Mrs. Chapone. 
 
 In contemplating the soft, blushing, trembling, smiling Debu- 
 tante, tricked up from head to foot as though she had just stepped 
 out of a Journal des modes, ready to sink into the earth with con- 
 fusion, under the gaze of the profane, we are tempted to exclaim 
 with the poet, 
 
 " Was ever thing so pretty made to stand? * 
 
 But a prosaic parody on the line suggests itself, the moment we 
 turn towards her obligato accompaniment, the officious, lynx-eyed 
 Chaperon ; till we can scarcely resist murmuring 
 
 44 Was ever thing so fussy made to stand still f" 
 
 One of the peculiar faculties of the experienced Chaperon is 
 ubiquity. She is in all places at once ; beside the refreshment 
 table; in the card room, watching the dancers; nay, retreat into the 
 furthermost and most flirtiferous corner of the ball-room, with the 
 Debutante leaning on your arm behind a door, a screen, a curtain, 
 a rose-tree and on looking up, you will find the piercing grey 
 eyes of the Chaperon fixed enquiringly upon your manoeuvres. 
 They can penetrate, like Perkin's steam gun, through a six-inch 
 iron plate ; and as to common deal, it becomes diaphanic as gauze 
 whenever the Chaperon approaches. Damask hangings are mere 
 air when interposed between her and the object of her solicitude j 
 and, like hunger, she can eat through a stone wall, if divided, for 
 nefarious purposes, from her kitling. Parents and guardians, 
 nurses, governesses, turnkeys, keepers, inspectors of police, are not 
 to be compared, in point of vigilance, with the Argus-like zeal of 
 an accomplished Chaperon. 
 
 The Chaperon is usually a spinster, having much leisure and 
 little superfluity of coin ; or a widow, without offspring of her own, 
 or a matron, who having married off her own daughters, is desirous 
 to benefit the rising generation with the results of her experience. 
 The mother, accompanying her own children into society, and ex- 
 ercising her maternal solicitude in their behalf, does not come under 
 the denomination of Chaperon. It is usually with interested views 
 that the gratuitous office is undertaken, The Debutante in want of
 
 THE CHAPERON AND THE DEBUTANTE. 8 
 
 a Chaperon, is often the daughter of a widower, to whom it is good 
 to make apparent that so tender and valuable a protectress would 
 be still tenderer and more valuable as a step-mother. In other 
 instances, the office is assumed by the prudent spinster, having no 
 equipage of her own, with a view of being franked to the various 
 fetes for which she has secured invitations. By a spinster still fur- 
 ther removed from the world's favour, the post of Chaperon to an 
 attractive Debutante is actually sought as a letter of introduction 
 to the pleasures of society. Miss Clarissa Spyington, for instance, 
 being well aware that the rich and lovely Helena Lennox will be 
 invited to all the best balls of the season, prevails upon the young 
 lady's guardian, her cousin, Sir Paul Spyington, the wealthy banker 
 of Portland Place, to institute her Chaperon to the heiress. In 
 order to do honour to her office, she even stoops to assume brevet 
 rank ; and, thenceforward, prints herself upon her cards " Mrs. 
 Spyington." The matronly designation invites confidence, and 
 repels raillerj 
 
 Sir Paul is certainly so far justified in his election, that the 
 maiden lady, whether a Miss or Mistress, is admirably qualified for 
 the discharge of her duties. Having simpered away the days of 
 her own debutancy at Bath, so long ago, that the memory of her 
 charms has passed away with that of the beauship of Nash or 
 Tyson, she has since successively paraded the parades of all the 
 watering-places in the three kingdoms. The pantiles could swear 
 to the tread of her Spanish leather slipper the Steyne prate of 
 her whereabout : Cheltenham, Malvern, Leamington, Harrowgate, 
 Weymouth, Ramsgate, nay, even the esplanade of Beulah Spa, 
 have their tales to tell of the marchings and counter-marchings of 
 the un-fair Clarissa. 
 
 In the course of these transitions, Mrs. Spyington has neces- 
 sarily picked up useful knowledge, " as pigeons peas." She has 
 the peerage, baronetage, ay, and even the voluminous records of 
 Burke's landed gentry at her fingers' ends ; with all their family 
 histories, genealogies, arms, and emblazonments. Let not, there- 
 fore, the partner aspiring to the hand of the charming Helena 
 Lennox in the waltz, presume to give himself to be understood as 
 one of the " Heathcotes of Rutlandshire ;" Mrs. Spyington will 
 detect his vain pretences ; Mrs. Spyington will put him in his 
 place. Before he had been twice in company with the Debutante, 
 Mrs. Spyington managed to ascertain that he was only a young bar- 
 rister, the son of "people in Baker Street; " people without a coun- 
 try seat, whom she remembered in cheap lodgings at Broadstairs ;
 
 4 CHAPERON AN'D THE DEBUTANTE. 
 
 people comprised under the comprehensive designation of " the 
 Lord knows who." It was not for such a man to be seen dancing 
 a second time in the course of the evening with the heiress of the 
 late Sir Hector Lennox, of Lennox Castle. 
 
 But it is not alone with the name and nature of the Debutante's 
 partner she is conversant : the Chaperon is familiar with the birth, 
 breeding, and history of everybody, in every room she enters ; not 
 a carriage drives along Portland Place but, from the arms and 
 livery, she can predicate concerning the names and fortunes of its 
 owners, as a gipsy reads them in the lines of a hand that has been 
 duly crossed with silver or gold. Nay, when at fault concerning the 
 features of some consequential dowager, the Chaperon is able to 
 identify her by her very diamonds. " That must be the Dowager 
 Marchioness of Methuselah ; I remember her at Queen Charlotte's 
 Drawing Rooms, in the early part of the present century, when I 
 always had a Star Chamber ticket from a friend in the Board of 
 Works. Lady Methuselah was then a very sweet woman ; I have a 
 perfect recollection of her in that very aigrette and bouquet, in a 
 yellow crape hoop, looped up with white acacias and Roman pearls. 
 It was just when there was the talk of an invasion. The mar- 
 chioness's charming daughters were at that time unmarried ; Lady 
 Maria and Lady Harriet. Lady Maria is now the Duchess of 
 Dunderhead ; but Lady Harriet made a poor match Lady Harriet, 
 poor thing, is only Lady Harriet Titmouse. The Titmouses have a 
 fine estate in Essex, but they are no great things. Between our- 
 selves, I have heard it whispered in their neighbourhood, that the 
 grandfather of the present Titmouse was a sheriff of London, citizen 
 and cordwainer, or some dreadful thing of that description. But 
 the marchioness, of course, knows not a syllable of the matter. The 
 marchioness, like all those belonging to that venerable old court of 
 Queen Charlotte, is exceedingly nice on such points. Any one 
 may perceive with a glance that the marchioness is a conservative. 
 She has not varied so much as the set of her diamonds for the last 
 fifty years. In these fantastical days, it is not so easy to identify 
 a woman by her jewels. Reform, reform, reform, in every direc- 
 tion : and pray admire the result ! All the beautiful old breast- 
 knots and stomachers, which were shamefully transformed into 
 aigrettes, buckles, and broaches a few years ago, are actually being 
 converted into stomachers again ; and family diamonds are treated 
 with as little reverence as a close borough or a sinecure. Ah ! 
 things would be very differently managed if we had a few more 
 such women in the world as the Marchioness of Methuselah."
 
 THK CHAPERON AND THE DEBUTANTE. 5 
 
 At first, the Debutante is charmed with the loquacity of her 
 Chaperon, which serves as a cover to her timidity. By degrees, 
 she learns to prize it on other accounts. While Mrs. Spyington 
 gabbles on about the marchioness, of whom she knows nothing, 
 Miss Lennox is enabled to give her attention to the Mr. Heathcote 
 of whom her Chaperon wishes her to know nothing ; and who pro- 
 fits by the monologue of the lady in the turban, to place himself in 
 Paradise close at the ear of Eve. But it is not so easy to deceive 
 the vigilance of the professional dragon. Though the Chaperon, 
 like the " blind mole, hears not a footfall," she has an intuitive sense 
 of the approach of danger ; and, even as a hen gathers her chickens 
 under her wings, long before the hovering hawk is perceptible to 
 human eyes, Mrs. Spyington, though the son of the " people in 
 Baker Street" is still invisible, crooks her arm like the pinion of a 
 well-trussed fowl, twitches olf the Debutante into a less dangerous 
 neighbourhood, and plants her on a bench of dowagers, unapproach- 
 able by anything short of the Duke of Wellington or the con- 
 queror of the Hesperides. Whenever a tender Debutante is seen 
 thus guarded round with turbans, ruffs, ruffles, and India shawls, 
 let it be understood she is in limbo in durance, not vile, but illus- 
 trious ; a sort of honorary ward in chancery ; like the crown jewels 
 in the Tower of London, seen by candlelight through a grating. 
 
 It is a curious branch of ball-room science to examine, step by 
 step, the mental progress of the Debutante of another class Miss 
 Tibbs. At her first ball, her perceptions are vivid, her impulses 
 natural. Enchanted to have escaped from the school-room, Mrs. 
 Marcel's rational conversations, Herz's exercises, roast mutton and 
 rice pudding ; to have exchanged jacconot or merino for silk or tulle, 
 and the heavy morocco slipper for one of sandalled satin ; the first 
 twang of Weippart's harp, as she enters the dancing-room, 
 
 " Takes her imprison'd soul, 
 And laps it in Elysium." 
 
 The clustered lights of the chandeliers and girandoles dazzle her un- 
 practised eyes ; the glitter of jewels, the gleam of satins, the glow 
 of flowers, excite the flutter of her girlish spirits. The very heart 
 within her twitters as she hears her name announced, and sees a 
 hundred admiring eyes directed towards her new dress ; with how 
 different a pulsation, alas ! from the tender anxieties she is likely to 
 experience in re-entering the same scene six months afterwards. 
 
 Unless provided with a Chaperon of real and acknowledged 
 merit, that is, of extensive connexions and persevering officious-
 
 THE CHAPERON AND THE DEBUTANTE. 
 
 ness, the young lady, at her first entree, trembles for her chance 
 of a partner. What if all the pains bestowed upon her well- 
 starched petticoat, her satin slip and aerophane tunic, her trans- 
 parent stocking, close-fitting shoe, and still closer-fitting glove (for 
 to be lien gante is beginning to be an article of ball-room religion 
 in London, as it has always been in Paris) ; what if the anxious 
 care bestowed by Monsieur Rigodou for the last ten years on her 
 feet, and by Monsieur Nardin for the last half-hour on her head, 
 in order that the bandeaux of the one may be as exquisitely smooth 
 as the pas de bourrees of the other, should end in her being fated 
 to sit still all the evening, and write herself down " a bencher of 
 the inner temple" of Terpsichore ! 
 
 Agitated by these misgivings, she wonders to see her Chaperon 
 take her place deliberately in the card-room, as though there were 
 no such things as quadrilles and waltzes in the world as though 
 people came to a ball to shuffle their cards instead of their feet. 
 She is so placed, however, as to command a view of the dancing- 
 room ; and, by dint of edging forwards her seat (to the indignation 
 of a corpulent gentlewoman, into whose knees she carelessly inserts 
 the angular corner of the chair she is coaxing, edgeways, to the 
 front rank), manages to place herself within view of the young 
 gentlemen lounging up and down, in order to pass in review the 
 belles of the evening, for the election of partners. One or other of 
 them, she fancies, cannot fail to be struck by the elegance of her 
 costume and manners. But her great difficulty consists in pre- 
 serving the downcast air, insisted upon by her Chaperon as indis- 
 pensable to the character of a Debutante, and keeping sufficiently 
 on the alert to ascertain whether anything eligible in the way of 
 partnership is approaching. 
 
 During the first five minutes, she is convinced that every young 
 gentleman in a white cravat, waistcoat, and kids, with varnished 
 pumps and cobweb stockings, long straight hair and short curled 
 whiskers, who looks a second time at her, has " intentions." But, 
 alas ! they pass and make no sign ! " Another and another still 
 succeeds ;" the fiddles quavering, the violoncello grunting, the harp 
 twanging, the flageolet squeaking invitingly all the time still, alas ! 
 no partner ! 
 
 At length, one of those who had gazed most fixedly upon her 
 charms (a slim adolescent, in a flashy waistcoat and black cravat, 
 against whom, the moment she caught sight of him, she decided hi 
 the negative, as " a shocking style of man" ), accosts the lady of 
 the house ; and. while directing her observation toward? the corner
 
 1THE CHAPfcROJJ AND THE DEBUTANTE. 7 
 
 Where the hapless Debutante is ensconced, is evidently asking an 
 introduction to " the lovely creature in white crape with pink 
 roses." The breath of the Debutante comes short : she is unde- 
 cided what to do. He is certainly ill-calculated to make a figure 
 in her journal. She fears he will not do to write about in her 
 next letter to dear Matilda, at Brighton. Ten to one his name is 
 Smith " JOHN SMITH! " or he's an ensign in a marching regiment, 
 or a banker's clerk, or a clergyman's younger son ! She has half 
 a mind to decline dancing altogether. Still, it seems ill-natured 
 to refuse a young man who means well, and has done nothing to 
 offend her ; and, after all, an indifferent partner is better than no 
 partner at all. Moreover, when once seen figuring in an " en avant 
 deux," she is sure of having crowds of eligibles at her feet. On 
 the whole, therefore, she thinks it better to be placable ; and, as 
 the lady of the house advances towards her, followed by the agi- 
 tated youth, kneading in his hands the edges of his new silk hat, 
 by way of keeping himself in countenance, she looks the other way, 
 and tries to appear as unconcerned as she can. Fancying that the 
 eyes of the whole room are upon her, the elated Debutante trembles 
 lest her perturbation should be too plainly visible through the folds 
 of her lace tucker. 
 
 The lady of the house is now opposite, bending towards her, as 
 well as a hard steel busk, and a corset as rigid as a bench of Mid- 
 dlesex magistrates, will admit, till all the feathers of her satin hat 
 are set a-nodding by the discomposure of her equilibrium. The 
 Debutante, meanwhile, feels her colour rising with contending 
 emotions : but it rises still higher, when she hears her corpulent 
 neighbour addressed by the lady of the house with, " Will you give 
 me leave, my dear Mrs. Hobbleshaw, to present to you the only son 
 of your old friend, Lady Pinchbeck ? Sir Thomas is a stranger in 
 town, and vastly desirous of the honour of your acquaintance." 
 Whereupon the young gentleman in yellow kids bows awkwardly, 
 and, taking his station behind the chair of the corpulent gentle- 
 woman, commences an interesting dialogue, and turns his back upon 
 the Debutante for the remainder of the evening. 
 
 The poor girl is ready to cry with vexation. She would not 
 have come to the ball, had she expected to be so treated ! Nor does 
 her irritation diminish when her Chaperon turns towards her, at the 
 close of the third rubber, with an enquiry of " Miss Tibbs, my love ! 
 havn't you been dancing ? Dear me, how provoking ! It is all on 
 account of your hiding yourself in that foolish corner. Would u't 
 yo\i like to take some refreshment?" Cramped with sitting three
 
 THE CHAPERON AN1> THE DEBUTANTE. 
 
 hours and a-half upon a cane-bottomed chair, the Debutante is 
 right glad to hook herself to the Chaperon's arm, elbow her way 
 into the refreshment-room ; and, while waiting half an hour for her 
 turn to approach the table, and feeling the roses of her trimming 
 crushed flat as crown pieces in the throng, she accepts the offer of 
 some vanille ice, receives it over the head of a squat lady at the 
 risk of dislodging it into her neighbotir's turban or her own bosom ; 
 and, after soiling her gloves with a wet spoon, and getting her 
 elbow jogged at every mouthful, to the imminent risk of her white 
 satin slip, is anxious to crush her way back again into the dancing- 
 room. The Chaperon, however, is still diligently at work on an 
 overflowing plate of lobster salad, to which tongue and chicken, or 
 a slice of galantine, are likely to succeed. She has managed to 
 obtain a snug berth for herself at the supper table ; and is en- 
 sconced, with a glass of champagne at her right hand, a tumbler of 
 sherry and water at her left, without any idea of giving in for 
 twenty minutes to come. The Chaperon has, constitutionally, an 
 untirable voracity : she is the shark of the female world. Like her 
 prototype, the Dragon of Wantley, she is able to devour houses and 
 steeples (of spun sugar and Savoy cake), and wash them down with 
 an ocean of Roman punch. Throughout her six rubbers per night, 
 she continues to imbibe, every ten minutes, glasses of negus in win- 
 ter of ice in summer ; solidified by basketsful of sponge biscuits and 
 maccaroons, which disappear as if thrown into a limekiln, and leave 
 not a trace in her recollection. The Debutante, on the contrary, 
 " scarcely confesses that her appetite is more to bread than stone." 
 Like other humming birds, she is nourished upon saccharine suc- 
 tion. It suffices for her to look once a day at a spoonful of minced 
 veal ; and, like the boa constrictor, to make a heavy meal once a 
 month, on the wing of a partridge. Unless caught at her private 
 luncheon time, the Debutante was never seen to eat ! 
 
 At the close of the Chaperon's prolonged repast, feeling tho- 
 roughly restored, she observes aloud to her charge, " Well, now that 
 we have made ourselves quite comfortable again, I am sure, my dear, 
 you would like to dance." The nine-and-sixpence she has netted, 
 inclines her to return to the card-table ; and as the Debutante, 
 who is musing over the destruction of her ball-dress in the crowd, 
 remains pensively silent, the Chaperon sidles up to their hostess, and 
 executes a mysterious whisper, to which the weary lady in the hat 
 and feathers, who has been courtesying for the last three hours and 
 three-quarters, with various signs of condescension, replies by an 
 assenting nod. The result of this diplomatic conference becomes
 
 THE CHAPERON AND THE DEBUTANTE. 9 
 
 apparent, when, five minutes afterwards, the lady brings up for 
 judgment a genteel youth in nankeen pantaloons, an inch or two 
 of whose meagre wrists are perceptible between the dress-coat he 
 has outgrown and the overgrown gloves which wrinkle down over 
 his thumbs ; and whose straight, yellow hair is combed up, tent- 
 wise, on the top of his head, like the brass flame with which the 
 gas manufactories crown the ornamental bronze vases on their gate- 
 posts ; a shapeless booby, whose only care is not to giggle during 
 the presentation. " You must dance with him it is her own 
 nephew ;" whispers the Chaperon, foreseeing the refusal of her 
 charge ; and with indignant soul, accordingly, poor Adeliza Tibbs 
 deposits her fan and bouquet, and stands up, for the first time of 
 her life, in the most insignificant corner of the most insignificant 
 quadrille that has been danced in the course of the evening. 
 
 Nevertheless, the display, poor as it is, revives her spirits. 
 She sees a tall, distinguished-looking young man, her vis-a-vis^ 
 enquire her name, and decides that he intends to invite her for the 
 next dance ; she is sure he is meditating an introduction. Pre- 
 vious, however, to the final chasse croise of the odious set into 
 which she has been betrayed, the Chaperon glides insidiously 
 towards her with the intelligence that " the carriage has been 
 waiting for the last hour ; that her papa is terribly particular about 
 his horses; and that she faithfully promised Mr. Tibbs not to keep 
 either his coachman or daughter out after two o'clock." The boa 
 and mantle, pendent upon her skinny arm, attest the firmness 
 of her sinister intentions ; and the poor Debutante, having no 
 engagements to plead in opposition, is muffled up, and carried 
 off in triumph. Not choosing to confide the mortifications of the 
 evening to the attendant by whom she is disrobed, she is forced to 
 pretend fatigue as the origin of her fallen countenance ; when her 
 mangled ball-dress is held up to her commiseration, with an excla- 
 mation of " Lauk, Miss ! how~you must have danced, to have been 
 squeedged to pieces in this way ! " 
 
 Three months afterwards, the Debutante, even when no* endowed 
 with the weighty attractions of a Miss Helena Lennox, has, probably, 
 contrived to recommend herself so far to the civilities of the dancing 
 world, as to be sure of partners to her heart's content. The finest 
 optical glass in Dollond's shop would not now enable her to dis- 
 cern the hapless youth in the nankeen continuations, although he 
 contrives to cross her path fifty times at every ball, and to obtrude 
 as her vis-a-vis whenever she has the misfortune to undergo a part- 
 ner not sufficiently adroit, to provide one of her own selection. The 
 52
 
 10 THE CHAPERON AND THE DEBUTANTE. 
 
 Debutante has become fine, choice, exclusive. She has no further 
 objection to the permanent establishment of her Chaperon in the 
 card-room ; having succeeded in persuading that august functionary 
 that the crowd in the doorway often renders it impossible to rejoin 
 her between the dances. She is engaged three deep both for waltz 
 and quadrille ; and, lest she should be missed by her cavalier at the 
 moment the dance is making up, contrives to be passed from part- 
 ner to partner, throughout the evening, like an Irish vagabond 
 handed from parish to parist, alJ Jie way from Dover to Holyhead. 
 You see her smiling in succession upon the arm of every beau in 
 the room. Majors, captains, lieutenants, cornets, ensigns ; " the 
 three black graces law, physic, and divinity;" raw baronets, and 
 hobble-de-hoy heirs-apparent, claim her successively as their own. 
 
 'Tis, "Si, signer;" 
 
 'Tis, " Ya, mein herr;" 
 
 'T is, " S' il vous plait, Monsieur." 
 
 To all, and each, she utters the same emphasised fractions of com- 
 mon-place, broken up with a view to sweeten polite conversation. 
 The room is shockingly hot, or dreadfully crowded. Strauss's last 
 waltz is infinitely prettier than all the rest ; or, she really wonders 
 even the arm-chairs can stand still, when Weippart is playing 
 Musard's enchanting new set of quadrilles from " La reine d' iin 
 jour." To fifteen partners an evening does she shew her teeth, 
 her wit, and the point of her white satin slipper. The captain, 
 who has the misfortune to snap the encrusted sticks of her fan, a la 
 Louis XIV. , is now a " horrid creature ;" the major who procures 
 her tickets for the rehearsal at the opera, a "charming man." When 
 hurried into her father's carriage at the close of four hours' inces- 
 sant flirtation and salutation, the Debutante is as much elated with 
 her conquests, real or imaginary, as the Chaperon with the solid 
 gains bagged in her card purse. 
 
 Three months after this, another change has corne over the 
 spirit of her dream. The major is now a "horrid creature;" and 
 she will hear of nothing included in the pages of the army-list, 
 under a G.C.B. She can recognise a younger brother by the sit 
 of his coat, and prattles of " scorpions" and " detrimentals" like the 
 worst of them ; is shocked at the idea of labouring through a 
 quadrille more than once or twice in the course of the evening; 
 and is sure to be engaged for the two first waltzes before she enters 
 the ball-room. Instead of casting down her eyes, as at first exacted 
 by her Chaperon, her enfranchised looks challenge every living soul
 
 THE CHAPERON AND THE DEBUTANTE. 11 
 
 around her ; and the finical Adeliza has even mounted an eye-glass, 
 through which, with a scornful smile, she scrutinises the Dison's lace 
 of fat Mrs. Hobbleshaw. She lias actually refused Sir Thomas 
 Pinchbeck ; and is suspected of a design upon the hand of the 
 Honourable Henry Hottentot. 
 
 While the Debutante has been thus progressing in her accom- 
 plishments, the Chaperon has not been inactive. It is owing to 
 her instructions that Miss Tibbs has acquired so precocious an 
 insight into the mysteries of the peerage, and such accurate powers 
 of detecting the " compliment extern" of a younger brother. It is 
 the Chaperon who has finessed for invitations for her ; and spread 
 advantageous rumours of the amount of her father's fortune ; to 
 which (sinking the claims of two brothers at Rugby, one at the 
 Naval College, and another at Woolwich, all of whom the Chaperon 
 ellipticaliy passes over) she is nearly the heiress. Nor is there a 
 numeration table sufficiently comprehensive for the number of Miss 
 Tibbs's suitors and refusals. The Chaperon will not hear of her 
 settling at present. Having serious intentions of accompanying her 
 to Cheltenham for the autumn, and Brighton for the winter, she 
 suggests that it would be a pitiful thing to accept a Sir Thomas 
 Pinckbeck, a mere country baronet with a wretched two thousand 
 a-year, who would not be able to afford her so much as a box at 
 the opera. Better wait the result of " another season." Her dear 
 Adeliza's acquaintance is now so much extended, that there is no 
 surmising what might be the result of " another season." The 
 Chaperon has had a private hint of an Irish peer who is immensely 
 struck ; who is going to Cheltenham, in the express hope of meeting 
 the sweet girl to whom he lost his heart in a gipsy party at Beulah 
 Spa ; and who is exceedingly likely to make his proposals in form, 
 before the close of " another season." 
 
 The Debutante (who, thanks to the grandiloquence of her Cha- 
 peron concerning the ways and means of the house of Tibbs, has 
 now nine obedient humble servants in the household brigade, to say 
 nothing of lancers and light dragoons, an Irish member, and a saucy 
 clerk in the Treasury) is beginning to think imperial Tokay of her- 
 self, and will not hear of derogation. She treats her Chaperon like 
 a Turk ; comes and goes at the hours that suit her, without regard 
 to the horses or the lady in the turban. She insists upon the foot- 
 man serving her breakfast in gloves ; will not take a glass of water 
 from the hands of her maid, unless brought on a salver ; talks 
 politics with the Irish member ; is of opinion that Sir Robert is the 
 person to save the country ; calls the dear Duke " our own Corio-
 
 12 THE CHAPERON AND THE DEBUTANTE. 
 
 lanus ;" and is about as silly and conceited a little Miss as any in 
 her Majesty's dominions. 
 
 In a higher walk of life, the Debutante is a less specific person- 
 age. Lady Sophia (whose first appearance at Almack's, after her 
 presentation at Court, places her in a scarcely more public position 
 than she has been occupying, evening after evening, for four years 
 previous, at the country seat of her father, the earl) is a very different 
 person from the blushing, fluttering, giggling Miss Tibbs. All that 
 the Debutante of the middle classes is left to discover from personal 
 experience, she has learnt from the experience of others. In her 
 very cradle, she was too knowing to mistake a younger for an elder 
 son a new knight for an old baronet ; and as to showy officers, the 
 whole army-list figures, in her imagination, as a set of nobodies, not 
 worth a thought, till they attain the rank of generals of division ; 
 the army being an omnium gatherum, into which fathers of families 
 thrust their supernumerary sons, who are good for nothing else. 
 Lady Sophia does not vary her pretensions, or cast her nature twice 
 a-year, like the less illustrious Miss Adeliza Tibbs. 
 
 Blushes, God help you ! she has none to lose, sir ! She was 
 born self-possessed ; and never knew what it was to be flurried by 
 a partner or a declaration. Instead of humbly following in the 
 wake of fashion, she heads the procession ; invents flounces intro- 
 duces a new capote is great at private theatricals assumes to 
 herself, without apology, the part of Helen or Venus in a tableau 
 rattles through the chansonnettes of Levassor ; and all this with such 
 perfect ease of high-breeding and pretence at decorum, that 
 
 " The holy bishops bless her when she is riggish." 
 
 Lady Sophia has no fears concerning her settlement in life. The 
 Duke of Belton and her father have long arranged an alliance 
 between their respective children. But, even were she not tacitly 
 affianced to the marquess, one or other of her father's numerous 
 nephews, or guests, or constituents, would be readily attracted by 
 the merits of a damsel so well born, with a fortune of thirty thou- 
 sand pounds so well secured. " The Morning Post," and " The 
 Book of Beauty," take care that her claims to distinction shall not 
 be overlooked ; and she is as well advertised as Cox and Savory's 
 hunting-watches. Lady Sophia is one of those Debutantes who 
 have no chance of degenerating into Chaperons, unless to daughters 
 of their own. 
 
 Of Miss Tibbs, on the other hand, the destinies are less accu- 
 rately defined by fate. Like all Debutantes who fall into the frailty
 
 fHE CHAPERON AND THE DEBUTANTE. 13 
 
 of flirting, it is probable she will come in time to be opprobriated 
 as a coquette ; to be shunned as a jilt. The roses will shed their 
 leaves, and the thorns become apparent. The brothers at Rugby, 
 Woolwich, and the Naval College, will grow up : and, accompanying 
 her into society, supersede all false notions of her consequence, and 
 the services of the superannuated Chaperon. The Mrs. Hobble* 
 sha\v, whom she has quizzed, and the Sir Thomas Pinchbeck whom 
 she has rejected, will seize upon this moment for revenge. As 
 years progress with the mortified damsel, they will preserve a per- 
 petual memorandum of the date of her debut; thanks to which, the 
 world will privilege itself to discover that her bloom is less variable 
 than of old ; her ringlets less liable to the effect of damp than when 
 they were the native produce of her empty head. New Debutantes 
 will display their round fair forms in afflicting contrast with her 
 bony rectangularity. She will be set aside like a last year's alma- 
 nack ; an obsolete edition. The Chaperon to whom the worthy 
 Mr. Tibbs will, in his dotage, unite himself, in token of gratitude for 
 her extreme care of his daughter and coach-horses will now recom- 
 mend her to try a fresh line of business, and attempt a new debut, 
 as a blue, or a serious young lady, or a political economist, or some- 
 thing still more novel and original. But Adeliza will have grown 
 weary of her vocation. A second debut, she knows, is like a second 
 attack of small-pox invariably fatal ; and stranger things have 
 happened than her taking refuge from the ignominy of spinstar- 
 hood, under the wing of the quondam young gentleman of the 
 nankeens, now a thriving country banker, in drab shorts and ma- 
 hogany tops ; whose yellow crest has given way to a sober baldness, 
 highly becoming the position of a man well-to-do in the world. 
 
 It would have been a bold attempt, however, to hazard a pre- 
 diction of such a termination to her career, when she first blushed 
 her way into society, under the care of her CHAPERON as an aspiring 
 DEBUTANTE.
 
 THE MONEY-LENDER, 
 
 BY DOUGLAS JEEROLD. 
 
 " IF, sir, you persist in your course if you refuse me the mercy 
 of even six days " 
 
 " I do persist, and I do refuse ; and what then, sir ? " 
 
 " Then, sir, you will inevitably ruin me ! " 
 
 " Sir," made answer Mr. Bite, fixing his raven eye on the ago- 
 nised features of his supplicant, "sir, I ruin a man a week." And, 
 in this instance for we would do all justice to the Money-Lender 
 Mr. Bite uttered the stern, the simple truth. 
 
 "My good sir " 
 
 " Well, come, you shall have the time," said Mr. Bite. And let 
 the reader take this assurance ; we paint no shadow, but a real serf 
 of Plutus, a veritable Bite, even as he lived. " You shall have the 
 time, sir," and Bite's eye sparkled, and he leered like an ogre on his 
 prey. " We '11 call the five hundred, six hundred and fifty, and 
 
 " What, sir ! a hundred and fifty for one week ? you can't ask 
 it ! " exclaimed the victim, aghast. 
 
 " You want the accommodation, eh, sir?" meekly enquired Bite. 
 
 " It is life or death to me." 
 
 "I know that," said the flinty Money-Lender; "and, in such 
 cases, it is always my maxim to sell life as dearly as I can." 
 
 " But, Mr. Bite" 
 
 Mr. Bite coughed, took out his watch, and said, " Past ten o'clock." 
 
 To give the true expression of Bite's character, we are fain to 
 paint him in a family group : yes, to bring out all the peculiar attri- 
 butes of his mind and, we repeat, we deal not in fiction it is 
 necessary to place the Money-Lender in his old, familiar scenes. 
 Enter then, Bite's clerk, the managing harpy of the firm, to take 
 his daily lesson : 
 
 " If Mr. Firetop calls about his bill for two hundred " 
 " Mr. Firetop's bill," answers the Money-Lender, " is n't worth 
 a pipe-light : but. as he has some innocent, good men at the back
 
 THE MONEY-LENDER. 
 
 There is this difference between him and Judas -he wouid not have 
 old our Saviour so cheaply. 
 
 OLD MSS.
 
 THE MONBY-LENDEB. 15 
 
 of it, why, it may be done at ninety. Stop, you must put in six 
 dozen of the very small claret at the usual figure." 
 
 " Then there 's the widow Stokes, at the snuff-shop. That bill, 
 for seventy." 
 
 " Let me see," says the benevolent Bite ; " as she is a lone, un- 
 protected widow, why, we '11 say five yes, five per cent." 
 
 " Sir ! " and the clerk is all astonishment. 
 
 " But, as we 've yet plenty of Quarto's bankrupt-stock in the 
 store-room, the widow it 's for two months ? ha, well, she must 
 take ten pounds' worth of prayer-books." 
 
 " Then, sir, there 's young Sparkish, about his pictures. Will 
 you advance upon the Raphael and Titian ? " 
 
 " Humph ! the subjects are hardly proper for a respectable man ; 
 they are a little profane ; still, if he '11 throw in the Cuyp, that with 
 the three cows " 
 
 " Talking of the Cuyp, sir, Simpkins, the milkman, at Hoxton, 
 sir, has at last consented to let you have his stock at your own price. 
 And then, sir " 
 
 " Who 's that ? " cries Bite, listening to a voice in the passage. 
 
 " Mr. Charlesworth, sir, about the annuity." 
 
 "My chair!" exclaims the Money-Lender ; and the clerk wheels 
 the chair forward, Mr. Bite, senior, being suddenly taken very ill. 
 He sinks down, his hands drop, his legs are motionless ; and in his 
 vulture face there is an expression of extremest languor. Can the 
 good man be death-smitten ? 
 
 " Well, father," says Mr. Baptist Bite (who resembled his parent 
 as one hempseed resembles another), ushering in an unsuspecting 
 rictim, " I have been effecting a little business in which you are 
 concerned." 
 
 " I concerned ! " cries the elder Bite, feebly, his eyes half closed 
 and wandering ; " Ugh ! Concerned ! Well, what ? " 
 
 " Why, sir, a little transaction with this gentleman, Mr. Charles- 
 worth. We are to receive from him, by way of annuity, for the 
 thousand pounds, three hundred a-year during your honoured life." 
 
 " Life ! my life ! " wails old Bite ; " Ho, ho ! Are you mad, 
 Baptist ? My life ! I, who hav n't a month ? " 
 
 " Oh, sir," answers the filial Baptist, " many, many years, I 
 trust. I 'm sure, sir, if I thought otherwise, I 'd make no such 
 bargain ; 't would be presumptuous ; quite tempting Providence, 
 eir ! " 
 
 "It mus'n't be, it sha' n't be," cries old Bite; "it's giving a 
 thousand pounds away ; it sha' n't be," exclaimed the Money-
 
 16 THE MONEY-LENDER. 
 
 Lender, with an energy that quite exhausted him ; for he sank back 
 in the chair, and coughed alarmingly. 
 
 " I am very sorry, sir," said Baptist, " but my word is passed. 
 Mr. Toady has been two days at work on the deed ; and really, my 
 dear father, as men of honour " 
 
 " Well, well," answers Bite the elder, " if it's gone so far ; but 
 you '11 ruin yourself, Baptist. You are too rash for a man of busi- 
 ness. In a month, the gentleman Ha! sir; you have got a pretty 
 bargain out of my foolish son in a month you may ring the money 
 upon my tombstone ! " 
 
 (And certain we are, if aught could raise the dead, such ringing 
 would make Mr. Money-Lender burst his cere-cloths.) 
 
 " Don't talk in that way, father," said Baptist, his eyes moisten- 
 ing; " don't go on in that fashion. In this room, sir, if you please," 
 and Baptist shewed the fortunate gentleman into an adjoining apart- 
 ment. 
 
 Mr. Bite rose from his chair, took two or three strides, and, with 
 a look of vivacity, observed to his clerk, " Jones, I shall not come 
 to town to-morrow ; for I meet the hounds at Box-hill ; " Mr. Bite 
 adding to his many social accomplishments that of fox-hunting. 
 
 Mr. Bite was a man of the strictest conventional morals. His 
 orthodoxy was, in his own opinion, first-rate. This happy truth he 
 never failed to illustrate, at once to his own glorification and the 
 confusion of the heretic. " Well, sir ha ! I do n't know what to 
 say about these books, sir ;" and Mr. Bite, with his hands in his 
 pockets, doubtingly surveyed the library shelves of a hapless scholar, 
 fallen into the Money-Lender's web. " Books, sir" and he seemed 
 to sneer at the gilt Russia and Morocco bindings " are no security 
 at all ; quite a drug. Indeed, people have no business with any 
 book but one ; I never read any but one there is only one." 
 
 " You perceive, Mr. Bite," observed the victim, " that they are 
 the very best editions, and in the most costly bindings." 
 
 " I had much rather have any other security, sir. I do n't see 
 what I can do with books." 
 
 " At all events," replied the scholar, " they will more than treble 
 the amount of your claim upon me ; and, in a word " 
 
 " You 've no pictures no family plate no jewels ?" asked the 
 Money-Lender. 
 
 " Nothing, but my old friends there," answered the man of let- 
 ters ; his very heart-strings quivering at the anticipated separation. 
 
 " I 'm sure I do n't know what to do ! " cried Bite, helplessly ;
 
 THE MONEY-LENDER. 17 
 
 " books are of no use to me ; for, as I have said, there is only one 
 book " 
 
 " And that book," said the student, " I presume is the " 
 
 " Of course, sir; what other book could it be ? The Bible, sir : 
 no other. God help us ! no other." 
 
 " Well, Mr. Bite, you knew my resources : came, I thought, 
 prepared to conclude the business." 
 
 " I suppose I must," answered Bite ; " and yet it *s a terrible 
 risk for money. Let me see ; coin is very scarce : it must be at 
 ninety-five, with these things as further security." 
 
 " Ninety-five ! Ninety-five per cent ! Why, you said " 
 
 " I don't precisely recollect what I said; but, as a Christian, I 
 know it is impossible for me to oblige you on any lower terms. And 
 do, sir, understand me, it is all to serve you. I don't like such 
 security : in fact, I had much rather " and here Mr. Bite quickly 
 took his hat, and made towards the door. 
 
 " Mr. Bite," exclaimed his creditor, entreatingly, " I have de- 
 pended upon you, sir." 
 
 " Well, my word 's my religion ; " and Bite, relenting, ap- 
 proached the book-shelves. " What's here ? " and he took from the 
 shelf a superb copy of Gibbon. " Pah ! an infidel, sir ; an atheist, 
 sir, this Gibbon. I do n't wonder, sir, that you want money, if you 
 pass your time with such people ; I 'd have every book burnt but 
 one : and this book should be flung in the hottest eh ! what 's here ? 
 Hume ! Another infidel, another atheist ! God help you, I do n't 
 wonder that you 're a beggar." 
 
 " Sir!" exclaimed the student, and his face was crimsoned with 
 indignation. 
 
 " Don't wonder at all at it," repeated Mr. Bite, assuming a 
 higher tone ; whilst the companion of infidels, conscious that he was 
 in the fangs of the orthodox Money-Lender, bit his lips, and strug- 
 gled to keep down his passion, his contempt. " Providence," con- 
 tinued Mr. Bite, " can hardly bless people who lose their precious 
 hours in in eh? humph!" And the Money-Lender, with sundry 
 ejaculations, and many mumblings, continued to take volume by 
 volume from the shelves, now returning them to their places, with a 
 "Pish! pah! God help me! Of course, a beggar;" and now, 
 smiling, and eyeing with great complacency the beautiful bindings. 
 Whilst the Money-Lender was thus engaged, certain emotions, by 
 no means favourable to the safety of Mr. Bite, visited the owner of 
 the volumes. His heart fairly leapt, as old Bite would irreverently 
 close some long-loved book ; and with a " Pah ! pish ! " shove it be- 
 53 c
 
 18 THE MONEY-LENDER. 
 
 tween others. The student felt almost as a living father feels \vhen 
 he sees his child smitten by a ruffian blow : all his blood rushed to 
 his heart, and his fingers worked and itched to hook themselves in 
 the profane Money-Lender's collar, and twirl him into the street. 
 The contemptuous expressions of Bite appeared almost a personal 
 affront toward the much-loved companions of many noblest hours ; 
 hours made sacred by immortal visitings set apart from way- 
 faring life; and giving wisdom, strength, and meekness in their 
 golden fruits. 
 
 " Spenser ! " exclaimed Bite, laying his profane hand on a mag- 
 nificent " Faery Queen ; " " Spenser ! who ever heard of him ? Poetry, 
 it seems. Ha ! humph ! Sad stuff wretched nonsense ! No won- 
 der that you're a God help you ! As 1 say, there is but one book ;" 
 and with this, the " Faery Queen," not being the coin of the realm, 
 slipped from between the fingers of the Money- Lender, and fell 
 bruised at his feet. The student leapt forward, took up the book, 
 and Bite's better genius, Plutus, assuredly at that moment pro- 
 tected him, or he had fallen to the floor, levelled by the unknown 
 " Faery Queen." Eyeing him with little less disgust than the student 
 would have looked upon a cannibal, taken with his mouth full of a 
 shipwrecked purser, the worshipper of Spenser carefully wiped the 
 dust away, and returned the golden volume to its place. Mr. Bite 
 continued his inspection continued his criticisms. No reviewer ever 
 passed judgment more briefly, or with more authority ; even though, 
 like Mr. Bite, he saw little of the books beyond their covers. 
 
 " Oh ! ah ! come," and Mr, Bite, had evidently fallen upon an 
 author dear to his heart ; " Robertson ! that 's good ; a church- 
 man a worthy man ; heard a good deal of him of the established 
 church, I believe ; deserves, I think, considering how you have 
 used the atheists and infidels, deserves a little better binding." 
 And Bite, in his lively interest for the established church, looked 
 reproachfully at the man of letters. 
 
 "Swift! ha! another clmrchman. Great man, I've heard: he 
 might, too, have been more handsomely treated, considering. "What's 
 that? " and Mr. Bite pointed to a row of books, some seventy tomes, 
 rich and glittering in green Morocco and gold " What's that? By 
 the bindings, a churchman, I sincerely hope." 
 
 " That is, sir," the student felt literally humiliated as he paused 
 before orthodoxy at ninety-five per cent "that is, sir, the best 
 edition of Voltaire." 
 
 " What ! " cried Mr. Bite, retreating a step or two, " the the 
 French Voltaire?"
 
 THE MONEY-LENDER. 19 
 
 ' 1 have never heard of any other," answered the man of let- 
 ters. 
 
 ' God help us ! " exclaimed the Money-Lender, seizing his hat 
 and stick. 
 
 "You're not going, Mr. Bite?" 
 
 "I don't know, sir," answered Bite; at the same time laying 
 down his hat and cane, " that I ought to stay a moment here ; I 'm 
 not certain that I am safe, that the roof may n't fall in, with such 
 awful atheists about me. Read Voltaire ! " 
 
 " Did you ever read him ?" asked the student maliciously. 
 
 " Do you think, sir, that Providence would have blessed me as 
 it has, if I had ? Thank God, sir ! I could n't read a word of him. 
 And sir, I repeat, I never read but one book ; no man ought to read 
 but one book ; and that book is What ! twelve o'clock ! " cried 
 Bite, as he heard the chimes of a neighbouring church. " I can't 
 stay another minute ; I have a pressing engagement, that young 
 man," and Bite cast his eye towards the row of green and gold, 
 " I don't wonder that you 're a beggar." 
 
 " But, Mr. Bite," said the student, following the Money-Lender 
 from the room, " I may consider the business concluded ? You 
 make the advance, taking the library as security for " 
 
 " As for security, young man, the security is much less with 
 such atheists ; however, I yes, you may send the books ;" and 
 Mr. Bite departed. Three days elapse, and our student stands at 
 the hearthstone of the Money-Lender. 
 
 " Have you counted the books?" asked Bite of Jones, the clerk. 
 
 "Yes, sir; and here's the list, sir," answers Jones, giving a 
 paper. 
 
 " Why, sir," and Bite looks sharply at the borrower, " what do 
 you mean by this ? you know, I suppose, the engagement ? I am 
 to renew your bill, and advance you one hundred pounds, on a bill 
 for a hundred and ninety-seven " 
 
 " Ninety-five," observed the student. 
 
 " Ninety-seven, sir ; money 's money now ; it could n't be at less 
 interest. Ninety-seven ; I holding your library as further security." 
 
 " Well, sir ? " says the student. 
 
 " Well, sir ? the books were counted, as I understood ; but here 
 you bring me a list of seventy short," says Bite. 
 
 " I can easily explain that. Of course, I did not send the Voltaire." 
 
 " And why not, sir ? " asks the orthodox muckthrift. 
 
 " I understood you to say, that you did n't think yourself safe 
 under the same roof with it."
 
 20 Tn MONEY-LENDER. 
 
 " And so I did, sir; and what of that? Do you think, f'*>e niter 
 an out-house?" 
 
 Voltaire, in his green and gold, was added to Robertson, Sv/ift, 
 and his thousand former companions. Bite, though detesting the 
 principles of the " French Voltaire," had, nevertheless, with Doctor 
 Dibdin, a soul for " the superb tooling of Lewis." 
 
 " I 've no objection to the bill, sir ; none at all," said Bite, in 
 one of his best humours, to Mr. Canaan, a rigid methodist and gene- 
 ral dealer. " It's for fifty, I see ; yes, the usual consideration, and 
 you can have the cash." 
 
 Mr. Canaan bowed benignly to the Money-Lender. 
 
 " Money, however, is very scarce ; very scarce," said Bite. 
 
 Mr. Canaan raised his eyebrows, drew down the corners of his 
 mouth, and looked pensive. 
 
 " Still, sir, as I said, you shall have the money. Pray, sir, what 
 do you think of the English Drama ? " 
 
 Mr. Canaan was not perfectly assured of Bite's meaning. 
 "Drama, sir?" 
 
 " The theatres, the playhouses ? " said Bite. 
 
 " I trust, sir, that, as a Christian, I have them in proper detestation." 
 
 " You never read play-books, then ? " Mr. Canaan cast a look 
 of horror all round the room. " Very right," said the cur of Plutus, 
 " very right. There is only one book that a man should read, and 
 that book is however, to return to business. I am sorry that your 
 religious scruples for my own part, I honour everybody's con- 
 science stand in the way of the present bargain." 
 
 " I trust not, sir," said Canaan ; " how, sir ? " 
 
 " You must perceive, sir, that my business is very extensive, and 
 very various ; that my money, the little I have, is locked up in many 
 strange places. Now, it so happens, that it will be impossible for me, 
 Mr. Canaan, to melt this little piece of paper for you, unless you 
 take fifteen pounds' worth of play-house tickets. You perceive, I 
 am, unfortunately, the proprietor of two or three private boxes to 
 be sure, they enable me to gratify my friends and the tickets, the 
 admissions to these boxes, I am, at times, compelled to put off in 
 little transactions like the present." 
 
 " Tickets, Mr. Bite tickets, to take me to a play-house ! " said 
 Canaan. 
 
 " You are not compelled to go yourself: you know, you can sell 
 them again " 
 
 " I would sooner burn them," cried Canaan.
 
 THE MONEY LENDER. 21 
 
 " As I said, I honour everybody's conscience," repeated Bite ; 
 "sell them, or burn them. By selling them, you would, no doubt, 
 realise a profit ; for, just now, the theatre is very much sought after, 
 is n't it, Mr. Jones ? " 
 
 " Very much," answered the faithful clerk. 
 
 " I thought so. By-the-by, what are they doing, Jones ? " 
 
 "'The Blood-stained Boot-jack' sir; 'or the Cruel Cobbler.' 
 Beautiful thing, sir," cried the waggish Jones ; " got up, sir, under 
 the superintendence of the man himself, sir, that did the murder." 
 
 " Impossible ! " cried Canaan. 
 
 "Quite true," said Jones; "moreover, there is a letter in the 
 play-bills, from the murderer to the manager, telling the public 
 that the play is quite as real as the murder itself. Beautiful thing, 
 sir ; and so moral." 
 
 Mr. Canaan was a stiff-necked man, and would not take tickets. 
 Happy, however, are we to state that he did not depart with his 
 bill uncashed. The father of Mr. Bite had, in his maturity, written a 
 book in contempt of riches, entitled " Dust in the Balance." In the 
 vanity of his heart, he had caused some ten thousand impressions to 
 be struck off; but, so perverse, so incorrigible is the world, not ten 
 copies were ever fairly circulated. The stock was inherited by Bite, 
 our hero ; and in his hands, it is our belief, did a world of good ; 
 for it had been for years his custom to discount certain bills at a 
 hundred per cent., including at least fifty, in fine hot-pressed copies of 
 " Dust in the Balance." (And this is a truth.) It is our hope that 
 Mr. Canaan, eschewing " The Blood-stained Boot-jack," was greatly 
 edified by " Dust in the Balance ! " 
 
 We have painted one Money-Lender not the mere sordid 
 muckworm of a century ago, but the man-eater of the present day. 
 There are, however, many varieties. There is the fashionable Money- 
 Lender, who wriggles himself into parties ; calls a broken lord or 
 two his friend ; gets himself enrolled at a small club, and dubs him- 
 self a gentleman. He has a great taste for the fine arts, visits the 
 opera, and thinks Bellini a most magnificent fellow. Two or three 
 popular authors are, if you will believe him, his most intimate ac- 
 quaintances ; and the leading actor, whoever he may be, dines with 
 him once a week. He is, moreover, a Liberal in his opinions ; at 
 least, he was, until Reform became vulgar, and a mild Whiggism 
 was voted the genteel thing. He is a man, on his own word, of the 
 very best society ; for he is, every season, one of the seven hundred 
 who feed at the Honourable Mrs. Rougepot's, the oriental dowager's.
 
 22 THE MONEY-LENDER. 
 
 It is at his club, and at such parties, that he makes friends, and 
 enlarges his connexions ; it is there that he spins his web, and 
 catches the "gilded flies" of fortune. 
 
 The legal Money-Lender is a harpy of the longest claws : he has 
 no more heart than a drum ; no more blood than a cricket. He is, 
 notwithstanding, a most respectable solicitor; as chary of his repu- 
 tation as a housewife of a favourite piece of cracked china ; and 
 resents the slightest insinuation of his infamy with even alarming 
 vigour. Now and then he is, poor man, grossly libelled by the 
 press ; whereupon, he becomes one of a society for the better pro- 
 tection of morals. Though steeped from head to sole in rascality 
 though a moral Ethiop under the benign protection of the law of 
 libel, he is the purest of the pure ; yea, one of the fairest of the sons 
 of men. It is ten to one that he has married prosperously has 
 caught a rich and inexperienced client perhaps one of three orphan 
 sisters ; and is, thereby, the friend and legal adviser of the unpro- 
 tected. As such, he absorbs the whole of their substance, enmeshes 
 them in the nets of his craft, and the process is rapid they are 
 beggars. That the children of affluence should have nothing to 
 remind them of their past condition that nothing tangible should 
 remain to them to awaken recollections of happier days, the money- 
 lending lawyer has been known to remove from them every painful 
 memento, even though it were a harp or a piano. He is, never- 
 theless, a most respectable man ; has very handsome chambers, 
 keeps a score of clerks, and lends money from eighty to cent, per 
 cent. His face we draw from the life would be inexpressive as a 
 stale muffin, were it not for the two cat-like eyes, and thin, cruel, 
 lips, that redeem it from utter blankness. He moves stealthily as an 
 ogre ; as though haunted by the memory of a thousand acts that 
 have written him down in the private memoranda of Lucifer. He, 
 the Attorney Money - Lender, is admirably fitted to display the 
 wisdom and philanthropy of the English laws. Had he lived in 
 Spain, he would have made an excelling familiar of the Inquisition ; 
 would, with demoniacal complacency, have applied the thumbscrew, 
 the burning pincers, and the molten lead. Born in England, bred 
 an attorney, and adding to his professional cares the anxieties of 
 Money-Lender, he is yet enabled to satisfy his natural and acquired 
 lust of evil, and he therefore gets up costs. He has never stood at 
 the bar of a police-office, and yet his hands are dyed with the blood 
 of broken hearts. Under cover of the law, armed with its curious 
 weapons, he lives a life of rapine, hoards wealth, passes for a most
 
 TI1K MOXKY-L-XBLR. 23 
 
 respectable man for he never had a bill protested, and owes no 
 man a shilling and, when he dies, a tombstone will record his apo- 
 cryphal virtues for the example of a future generation. Yet is not 
 the wretched Money-Lender all to blame ; his iniquity, base as it 
 is, is assisted by bad laws. The wisdom of the legislature has made 
 poverty punishable ; and putting the scourge, iniquitous costs, into 
 the hands of the attorney, he wields the knout for his own especial 
 benefit, to the torture, and sometimes death, of the suffering. 
 "Death!" exclaims the reader, "what exaggeration! Is it possible 
 that so respectable a man as " Quite possible ; worse, quite true. 
 Our hero, soft-spoken as a maid, and sleek-looking as a beaver, has 
 dabbled in blood, but only in the way of the law. The bow-string 
 is unknown in free and happy England ; but, be sure of it, innocent 
 reader, red tape has its daily victims. 
 
 Then, there is the benevolent Money-Lender. The animal that, 
 whilst he devours his man, drops crocodile tears; and, in the act 
 to pounce upon his victim to feed at his very throat looks blandly 
 in his face and cries, " What can / do ? " 
 
 There is the humorous Money-Lender. The frank, jovial, com- 
 panionable fellow, who a?ks sixty seventy a hundred per cent, 
 with a horse-laugh, and thinks the hardest usury the finest joke. 
 
 The bacchanal Money-Lender is a common animal. He lends 
 half in gold, and half in poison : so many pounds sterling, and so 
 much bad vinegar, that, having been kept near port, must, as he 
 conceives, have a vinous flavour. 
 
 There is the military Money-Lender. He is a captain, whose 
 name and rank have never appeared in " The Army List." Never- 
 theless, he is a man of most refined honour, and robs with the highest 
 sense of a gentleman. He has a country-house, somewhere ; but 
 generally has his letters directed to a tavern, where it will some- 
 times unfortunately happen he has either just been, or just coming, 
 or where he will not return for many days, as circumstances may 
 direct. He is very often the jackal, the mere hunter, for the greater 
 carnivora; and, as an " agent" is not called upon to blush for another 
 party, he will look in your face, and ask your permission to eat you, 
 with eye unblenched, and cheek untinged. He has great connexions ; 
 and it is, therefore, a condescension in him to pillage what he deno- 
 minates a common person ; he has, however, if strongly pressed, no
 
 2-t THE MONEY-LENDER. 
 
 invincible repugnance to make a meal of a tradesman, though his 
 fure, when he can choose it, is generally noblemen in their minority. 
 Nothing so succulent as a peer under age, to be eaten in due time 
 with post obit sauce. 
 
 Jew Money-Lenders are numerous as the hairs in Aaron's beard ; 
 and, for the most part, all alike. They have no variety of character, 
 and have lost the picturesque villany of former centuries. We could 
 feel a degree of sympathy for the outraged Hebrew the branded, 
 despised, insulted wretch taking his slow and sure revenge of the op- 
 pressors. We could follow him with interest to his coffers, where the 
 despised vagabond, day by day, hoarded power and strength ; where 
 he amassed the means of authority ; where he built an altar at which 
 even the rigid Christian should be made to bow down and worship. 
 Persecution has ceased, and the Jew Money-Lender is merely ? 
 vulgar, ravenous, sordid thing a horse-leech among leeches. 
 
 The Money-Lender and his victims ! If the reader would behold 
 their types, let him wend to the Zoological Gardens, and politely ask 
 to be shewn the remarkably fine hoa-constrictor at present adorning 
 the collection of reptilia. Shut up in the box with the boa, the 
 reader will perceive some half-dozen pigeons. Innocent, guileless 
 things ! They perch on the scaly folds of the monster ; they pick 
 up peas near his horrible jaws ; and so, dreaming not of the coming 
 day, they live for weeks and weeks. For all this, they are only 
 there to be swallowed. The boa is motionless as a coil of cable 
 but once in, say, three months, he stirs himself, and sure as sheriff's 
 officer, gorges his unsuspecting prey feathers, bones, and all. 
 
 Reader! starve, beg, or no, we must not say, rob but, what- 
 ever you do, eschew the Money- Lender. He who is bouud h: his 
 bills, though he may think himself a man, is, indeed, only a pigeon 
 a guinea-pig, a rabbit with, a torpid boa!
 
 THE OLD SQUIRE. 
 
 Now he the wonders of the fox repeats, 
 Describes the desp'rate chase and ail his cheats ; 
 How m' one day, beneath his furious speed, 
 He tired seven coursers of the fleetest breed. 
 
 GAY.
 
 THE OLD SQUIRE, 
 
 BY WILLIAM HOWITT. 
 
 THE OLD SQUIRE, or, in other words, the Squire of the Old School, 
 is the eldest born of John Bull ; he is the very " moral of him ; " as 
 like him as pea to pea. He has a tolerable share of his good qua- 
 lities ; and as for his prejudices oh, they are his meat and drink, 
 and the very clothes he wears. He is made up of prejudices, he is 
 covered all over with them ; they are the staple of his dreams, they 
 garnish his dishes, they spice his cup, they enter into his very 
 prayers, and they make his will altogether. His oaks and elms in 
 his park and in his woods, they are sturdy timbers, in troth, and 
 are knotted and gnarled to some purpose, for they have stood for 
 centuries : but what are they to the towering upshoots of his pre- 
 judices ? oh, they are mere wands. If he has not stood for centuries, 
 his prejudices have ; for they have come down from generation to 
 generation with the family and the estate. They have ridden, to 
 use another figure, like the Old Man of the Sea, on the shoulders of 
 his ancestors, and have skipped from those of one heir to those of 
 the next ; and there they sit on his own, most venerable, . well-fed, 
 comfortable, ancient, and grey-eyed prejudices, as familiar to their 
 seat as the collar of his coat. He would take cold without them ; 
 to part with them would be the death of him. So ! do n't go too 
 near, do n't let us alarm them ; for, in truth, they have had insults, 
 and met with impertinences of late years, and have grown fretful 
 and cantankerous in their old age. Nay, horrid Radicals have not 
 hesitated, in this wicked generation, to aim sundry deadly blows at 
 them, and it has been all that the Old Squire has been able -to do to 
 protect them. Then 
 
 " You need not rub them backwards, like a cat ; 
 If you would see them spit and sparkle up : " 
 
 You have only to give one look at them, and they will be all in 
 bristles and fury, like a nest of porcupines. 
 54
 
 26 THE OLD SQUIRE. 
 
 The Old Squire, like his father, is a sincere lorer and a most 
 hearty hater. What does he love? Oh, he loves the country 'tis 
 the only country on the earth that is worth calling a country ; and he 
 loves the constitution. But don't ask him what it is, unless you 
 want to test the hardness of his walking-stick : i.t is the constitution, 
 the finest thing in the world, and all the better for being, like the 
 Athanasian Creed, a mystery. Of what use is it that the mob 
 should understand it? It is our glorious constitution that is 
 enough. Arn't you contented to feel how good it is, without going 
 to peer into its very entrails, and, perhaps, ruin it, like an ignorant 
 fellow putting his hand into the works of a clock? Arn't you con- 
 tented to let the sun shine on you ? Do you want to go up and see 
 what it is made of? Well, then, it is the constitution, the finest 
 thing in the world ; and, good as the country is, it would be good for 
 nothing without it ; no more than a hare would without stuffing ; or a 
 lantern without the candle ; or the church without the steeple and the 
 ring of bells. Well, he loves the constitution, as he ought to do ; 
 for, has it not done well for him and his forefathers ? And has it not 
 kept the mob in their places, spite of the French Revolution ? And 
 taken care of the national debt ? And, has it not taught us all to 
 "fear God and honour the King;" and given the family estate to 
 him, the church to his brother Ned, and put Fred and George into 
 the army and navy ? Could there possibly be a better constitution, 
 if the Whigs would but let it alone with their Reform Bills ? And, 
 therefore, as he most reasonably loves the dear, old, mysterious, and 
 benevolent constitution to distraction, and places it in the region of 
 his veneration somewhere, in the seventh heaven itself, so he 
 hates everybody and thing that hates it. He hates Frenchmen 
 because he loves his country ; and thinks we are dreadfully dege- 
 nerated that we do not, now-a-days, find some cause, as the wisdom 
 of our ancestors did, to pick a quarrel with them, and give them 
 a good drubbing. Is not all our glory made up of beating the 
 French and the Dutch ? and what is to become of history, and 
 the fleet, and the army, if we go on in this way ? He does not 
 stop to consider that the army, at least, thrives as well with peace 
 as war ; that it continues to increase ; that it eats, and drinks, and 
 sleeps as well, and dresses better ; and lives a great deal more 
 easily and comfortably 5n peace than it did in war. But then, what 
 is to become of history, and the drubbing of the French? who, 
 however, may possibly die of " envy and admiration of our glorious 
 constitution."
 
 THE OLD SQUIRE. 2? 
 
 The Old Squire loves the laws of England : that is, all the laws 
 that ever were passed by King, Lords, and Commons, especially if 
 they have been passed some twenty years, and he has had to admi- 
 nister them. The Poor Law, and the Game Laws, the Bastardy 
 Law, the Impressment Act, the Riot Act, the Law of Primogeniture, 
 the Law of Capital Punishments ; all kinds of private acts for 
 Enclosure of Commons ; Turnpike Acts, Stamp Acts, and acts of all 
 sorts ; he loves and venerates them all, for they are part and parcel 
 of the statute law of England. As a matter of course, he hate. 
 most religiously, all offenders against such acts. The poor are a 
 very good sort of people, nay, he has a thorough and hereditary 
 liking for the poor, and they have sundry doles, and messes of soup 
 from the hall, as they had in his father's time, so long as they go to 
 church, and do n't happen to be asleep there when he is awake him- 
 self; and do n't come upon the parish, or send bastards there; so 
 long as they take off their hats with all due reverence, and open 
 gates when they see him coming ; but if they presume to go to the 
 Methodists' meeting, or to a Radical club, or complain of the price 
 of bread, which is a grievous sin against the Corn Laws ; or to 
 poach, which is all crimes in one ; if they fall into any of these sins, 
 oh, then, they are poor devils indeed ! Then does the worthy Old 
 Squire hate all the brood of them most righteously : for what are 
 they but atheists, revolutionists, jacobins, chartists, rogues, and 
 vagabonds ? With what a frown he scowls on them, as he meets 
 them in one of the narrow old lanes, returning from some camp- 
 meeting or other ; how he expects every dark night to hear of ricks 
 being burnt, or pheasants shot. How does he tremble for the safety 
 of the country while they are at large ; and with what satisfaction 
 does he grant a warrant to bring them before him ; and, as a matter 
 of course, how joyfully, spite of all pleas and protestations of inno- 
 cence, does he commit them to the treadmill, or to the county gaol, 
 for trial at the quarter sessions. He has a particular affection for 
 the quarter sessions, for there he and his brethren all put together, 
 make, he thinks, a tolerable representation of majesty ; and thence 
 he has the vast satisfaction of seeing all the poachers transported 
 beyond the seas. The county gaol and house of correction are 
 particular pets of his. He admires even their architecture, and 
 prides himself especially on the size and massiveness of the prison. 
 He used to extend his fondness even to the stocks ; but the treadmill, 
 almost the only modern thing which has wrought such a miracle, 
 has superseded it in his affections, and the ancient stocks now stand 
 deserted, and half lost in a bed of nettles ; but he still looks witk a
 
 28 THE OLD SQUIRE. 
 
 gracious eye on the parish pound, and returns the pinder's touch of 
 his hat with a marked attention, looking upon him as one of the most 
 venerable appendages of antique institutions. 
 
 Of course the Old Squire loves the church. Why, it is ancient, 
 and that is enough of itself; but, besides that, all the wisdom of his 
 ancestors belonged to it. His great, great uncle was a bishop ; his 
 wife's grandfather was a dean : he has the presentation of the living 
 which is now in the hands of his brother Ned ; and he has all the 
 great tithes, which in the days of popery belonged to it, himself. He 
 loves it all the better, because he thinks the upstart dissenters want 
 to pull it down ; and he hates all upstarts. And what ! Is it not the 
 church of the Queen, and the ministers, and all the nobility, and of 
 all the old families ? It is the only religion for a gentleman ; and, 
 therefore, it is his religion. Would the dissenting minister hob-nob 
 as comfortably with him over the after-dinner bottle as Ned does, 
 and play a rubber as comfortably with him, and let him swear a com- 
 fortable oath now and then ? 'Tis not to be supposed. Besides, of 
 what family is this dissenting minister ? Where does he spring from ? 
 At what university did he graduate ? 'T won't do for the Old Squire. 
 No ! the clerk, the sexton, and the very churchwardens for the 
 time-being, partake, in his eye, of the time-tried sanctity of the good 
 old church, and are bound up in the bundle of his affections. 
 
 These are a few of the good Old Squire's likings and antipathies, 
 which are just as much part of himself as the entail is of his inherit- 
 ance. But we shall see yet more of them, when we come to see 
 more of himself and his abode. The Old Squire is turned of three 
 score, and everything is old about him : he lives in an old house, in 
 the middle of an old park, which has a very old wall, and gates so 
 old that, though they are made of oak as hard as iron, they begin to 
 stoop in the shoulders, like the old gentleman himself; and the car- 
 penter, who is an old man too, and has been watching them forty 
 years, in hopes of their tumbling, and gives them a good lusty bang 
 after him every time he passes through, swears they must have been 
 made in the days of King Canute. The Squire has an old coach, 
 drawn by two, and occasionally four, old fat horses, and driven by a 
 jolly old coachman, in which his old lady and his old maiden sister 
 ride ; for he seldom gets into it himself, thinking it a thing only fit 
 for women and children, preferring, infinitely, the back of Jack, his 
 old roadster. 
 
 If you went to dine with him, you would find him just as you 
 would have found his father ; not a thing has been changed since his 
 days. There is the great entrance-hall, with its cold stone floor and
 
 THE OLD SQUIRE. 29 
 
 its fine 'all-backed chairs, and an old walnut-tree cabinet; and on 
 the wells, a puantity of stags' horns, with caps and riding-whips 
 hung on them ; and the pictures of his ancestors, in their antiquated 
 dresses, and slender, tarnished, antiquated frames. In his drawing- 
 room, you will find none of your new grand pianos, and fashionable 
 couches and ottomans ; but an old spinet, and a fiddle, another set 
 of those long-legged long-backed chairs, two or three little settees, a 
 good massy table, and a fine large carved mantel-piece, with bright 
 steel dogs, instead of a mere modern stove, and logs of oak burning 
 if it be cold. At table, all his plate is of the most ancient make ; 
 and he drinks toasts and healths in tankards of ale that is strong 
 enough to make a horse reel, but which he continually vows is as 
 mild as mother's milk, and wouldn't hurt an infant. He has an old 
 rosy butler ; and loves very old venison, which fills the whole house 
 v.ith its perfume while roasting; and an old double Gloucester 
 cheese, full of jumpers and mites ; and after it a bottle of old port, 
 at which he is often joined by the parson, and always by a queer, 
 quiet sort of a tall thin man, in a seedy black coat, and with & 
 crimson face, bearing testimony to the efficacy of the Squire's port 
 and " mother's milk." This man is always to be seen about, and 
 has been these twenty years : he goes with the Squire a coursing and 
 shooting, and into the woods with him ; he carries his shot-belt and 
 powder-flask, and gives him out his chargings and his copper caps. 
 He is as often seen about the steward's house ; and he comes in and 
 out of the Squire's just as he pleases, always seating himself in a par- 
 ticular chair near the fire, and pinches the ears of the dogs, and gives 
 the cat, now and then, a pinch of snuff, as she lies sleeping in a 
 chair ; and when the Squire's old lady says, " How can you do so, 
 Mr. Wagstaff ?" he only gives a quiet chuckling laugh, and says, 
 " Oh, they like it, madam ; they like it, you may depend." That is 
 the longest speech he ever makes, for he seldom does more than say 
 " Yes " and " No " to what is said to him, and still oftener only 
 gives a quiet smile, and a sort of little nasal " hum." The Squire 
 has a vast affection for him, and always walks up to the little 
 chamber which is allotted to him, once a week, to see that the maid 
 does not neglect it ; though at table he cuts many a sharp joke upon 
 Wagstaff, to which Wagstaff only returns a srnile and a shake of the 
 head, which is more full of meaning to the Squire than a long 
 speech. Such is the Old Squire's constant companion. 
 
 But we have not yet done with the Squire's antiquities. He has 
 an old woodman, an old shepherd, an old justice's clerk, and almost 
 all his farmers are old. He seems to have an antipathy to everything
 
 30 THE OLD SQUIRE. 
 
 that la not old ; young men are his aversion ; they are such 
 coxcombs, he says, now-a-days. The only exception is a young 
 woman. He always was a great admirer of the fair sex ; though 
 we are not going to rake up the floating stories of the neighbourhood 
 about the gallantries of his youth; but his lady, who is justly con- 
 sidered to have been as fine a woman as ever stepped in shoe-leather, 
 is a striking proof of his judgment in women. Never, however, does 
 his face relax into such pleasantness of smiles, and humorous 
 twinkles of the eyes, as when he is in company with young ladies. 
 He is full of sly compliments and knowing hints about their lovers, 
 and is universally reckoned amongst them, a " dear old gentleman." 
 When he meets a blooming country damsel crossing the park, or as 
 he rides along a lane, he is sure to stop and have a word with her. 
 " Aha, Mary ! I know you there ! I can tell you by your mother's 
 eyes and lips that you 've stole away from her. Ay, you 're a pretty 
 slut enough, but I remember your mother : gad ! I do n't know 
 whether you are entitled to carry her slippers after her ! But never 
 mind, you 're handsome enough ; and I reckon you 're going to be 
 married directly. Well, well, I won't make you blush so ; good bye, 
 Mary, good bye ! Father and mother are both hearty eh ?" 
 
 The routine of the Old Squire's life may be summed up in a 
 sentence. Hearing cases, and granting warrants and licences, and 
 making out commitments, as justice ; going through the woods, to 
 look after the growth, and trimming, and felling of his trees ; going 
 out with his keeper, to reconnoitre the state of his covers and pre- 
 serves ; attending quarter sessions ; dining occasionally with the 
 judge on circuit ; attending the county ball and the races ; hunting 
 and shooting, dining, and singing a catch or glee with Wagstafi' and 
 the parson, over his port. He has a large dingy room, surrounded 
 with dingy folios and books in vellum bindings, which he calls his 
 library. Here he sits as justice ; and here he receives his farmers on 
 rent days, and a wonderful effect it has on their imaginations ; for 
 who can think otherwise than that the Squire must be a prodigious 
 scholar, seeing all that array of big books ? And, in fact, the Old 
 Squire is a great reader in his own line. He reads " The Times," 
 daily, and he reads " Guillam's Heraldry," " The History of the 
 Landed Gentry," " Rapin's History of England," and all the works 
 of Richardson, Fielding, and Sterno, whom he declares to be the 
 greatest writers that England ever produced, or ever will produce. 
 
 But the Old Squire is not without his troubles. In his serious 
 judgment, all the world is degenerating. The nation is running head- 
 long to ruin. " Lord, how different it was in my time !" is his con-
 
 THE OLD SGblRE, 81 
 
 tinual exclamation. The world now is completely turned topsy-turvy. 
 Here is the Reform Bill, the New Poor Law, which, though it does 
 make sharp work amongst the "rogues and vagabonds," yet has sorely 
 shorn the authority of magistrates. Here are the New Game Laws ; 
 new books all trash and nonsense ; and these harum-scarum 
 railroads, cutting up the country, and making it dangerous to be 
 riding out anywhere. " Just," says he, " as a sober gentleman is 
 riding quietly by the side of his wood, bang ! goes that ' hell-in- 
 harness,' a steam engine, past ; up goes the horse, and down goes 
 the rider to a souse into the ditch and a broken collar-bone." 
 
 Then, all the world is running now all over the continent, learning 
 all sorts of Frenchified airs and fashions, and notions, and beggaring 
 themselves into the bargain : he never set foot on the d d beg- 
 garly frog-eating continent, not he ! It was thought enough to live 
 at-home, and eat good roast beef, and sing " God save the King," 
 in his time ; but now, a man is looked upon as a mere clown who 
 has not run so far round the world that he can seldom ever find his 
 way back to his estate again, but stops short in London, where all 
 the extravagance and nonsense in creation is concentred, to help our 
 mad gentry out of their wits and their money together. The Old 
 Squire groans here, in earnest ; for his daughter, who has married 
 Sir Benjamin Spankitt, and his son Tom, who has married the Lady 
 Barbara Ridemdown, are as mad as the rest of them. 
 
 Of Tom, the young squire, we shall take a more complete view 
 anon. But there is another of the Old Squire's troubles yet to be 
 noticed, and that is in the shape of an upstart. One of the worst 
 features of the times is the growth and spread of upstarts. Old 
 families going down, as well as old customs, and new people, who 
 are nobody, taking their places ; old estates bought up, not by the 
 old gentry, who are scattering their money in London, and amongst 
 all the grinning Monsieurs, Mynheers, and Signores, on the frogified 
 continent, but by the soap-boilers and sugar-bakers of London. Ask 
 him, as you ride out with him by the side of great woods or vene- 
 rable parks, "What old family lives here?" "Old family!" he 
 exclaims, with an air of angry astonishment, " old family ! Where 
 do you see old families now-a-days? That is Sir Peter Post, the 
 great horse-racer, who was a stable-boy not twenty years ago ; and 
 that great brick house on the hill there, is the seat of one of the 
 great Bearrings, who have made money enough among the bulls and 
 bears to buy up the estates of half the fools hereabout. But that is 
 nothing : I can assure you men are living in halls and abbeys in this 
 part, who began their lives in butchers' shops and in cobblers' stalls,"
 
 32 . THK OLD SQU1RB. 
 
 It might, however, be tolerated that merchants, and lawyers, 
 stock-jobbers, and even sugar-baliers and soap-boilers, should buy 
 up the old houses ; but the most grievous nuisance and perpetual 
 thorn in the Old Squire's side is Abel Grundy, the son of an old 
 wheelwright, who, by dint of his father's saving and his own sharp- 
 ness, has grown into a man of substance, under the Squire's own 
 nose. Abel began by buying odds and ends of lands and scattered 
 cottages, which did not attract the Squire's notice ; till, at length, a 
 farm being to be sold, which the Squire meant to have, and did not 
 fear any opponent, Abel Grundy bid for it and bought it, striking 
 the old steward actually dumb with astonishment ; and then it was 
 found that all the scattered lots which Grundy had been buying up 
 lay on one side or other of this farm, and made a most imposing 
 whole. To make bad worse, Grundy, instead of taking off his hat 
 when he met the Old Squire, now began to lift up his own head very 
 high ; built a grand house on the land, plump opposite the Squire's 
 hall gates ; has brought a grand wife, a rich citizen's daughter ; set 
 up a smart carriage ; and, as the Old Squire is riding out on his old 
 horse Jack, with his groom behind him, on a roan pony, with a 
 whitish mane and tail, the said groom having his master's great coat 
 strapped to his back, as he always has on such occasions, drives past 
 with a dash and a cool air of impudence that are most astonishing. 
 
 The only comfort the Old Squire has in the case is in talking of 
 the fellow's low origin. " Only to think," says he, " that this fellow's 
 father had n't even wood enough to make a wheelbarrow till my 
 family helped him ; and that I have seen this scoundrel himself 
 scraping manure in the high roads, before he went to the village 
 school in a morning, with his toes peeping out of his shoes, and hb 
 shirt hanging, like a rabbit's tail, out of his ragged trowsers ; and 
 now the puppy talks of 'my carriage,' and 'my footman," and 
 says that ' he and his lady purpoze to spend the winter in the 
 Town,' meaning London ! " 
 
 Wagstaff laughs at the Squire's bitter criticism on Abel Grundy, 
 and shakes his head ; but he cannot shake the chagrin out of the old 
 gentleman's heart. Abel Grundy's upstart greatness will be the 
 death of the OLD SQUIRE.
 
 THE BALLET-MISTRESS. 
 
 Twisting, Twirling, body bending, 
 On the light, fantastic toe. 
 
 KILLING NO MURDER.
 
 THE BALLET-MISTRESS. 
 
 BY DOUGLAS JERKOLD. 
 
 VENUS and Mars Cupid and the Graces Zephyrs, Naiads, Hama- 
 dryads, Gnomes, Elfs, with all the host of Fairy-land are the daily 
 and nightly familiars of the Ballet-Mistress. To the unreflecting, 
 she may, indeed, be no other than plain Madame Proudfoot ; but a 
 due consideration of her functions invests her with the highest 
 romance. All her thoughts like the thoughts of the episcopacy 
 are to raise her followers as high above the earth as it is permitted 
 to the flesh to mount ; and when, indeed, her pupils tread terra firma, 
 they walk it mincingly, delicately ; like pouter pigeons, they are to 
 seem as though a word, a sound, were all-sufficient to startle them 
 into the blue serene. 
 
 The Ballet-Mistress lives by " the shores of old romance." She 
 may, indeed, have lodgings in a street out of the Strand, but the 
 abode of her spirit is in mossy dells by haunted streams in the 
 soft solemnity of classic groves in fairy rings in wild, enchanted 
 fastnesses ; now with the spirit of some Rhine-valley, and now with 
 Pan, piping in Arcadia. 
 
 " How is this possible?" asks the reader. "What! Madame 
 Proudfoot the portly, mundane, cosey Madame Proudfoot, with an 
 invincible yearning for hot suppers, and a constitutional regard for 
 Burton ale she an inhabitant of the realms of fairy ? she a dweller 
 in the land of romance ?" Truly, yes : how, indeed, as the reader 
 shall confess, should it be otherwise ? 
 
 Observe, sir, that score of little spirits. The youngest may, 
 perhaps, be five years old, and the most aged eleven. They are 
 clothed in fragments of white clouds, here and there edged with a 
 bit of blue. They advance with a wonderful unanimity of leg and 
 arm ; they jump three paces forward three back three to the 
 right three to the left ; as, it is well known, spirits are wont. 
 Now, sir, these joyous creatures albeit their faces are fixed as fac%{ 
 of wax are no other than a part of the train of the Queen ef the 
 55 E
 
 34 THE BALLET-MISTRESS. 
 
 Coral Lake : her watery kingdom being situated some thousand 
 leagues beyond the territory of her rival, the Queen of the Valley of 
 Topazes. All these spirits are the offspring of Madame Proudfoot : 
 not, indeed, her children in the vulgar, caudle-cup sense ; but the 
 babes of her mind the creatures of her imagination the progeny 
 of her immortal essence. She has taken mortal flesh and blood, 
 mere clay, and has etherealised the earthy substance into spirits. 
 Little does an unreflecting (may we add an ungrateful ?) public 
 regard the labours of Proudfoot ! When troops of spirits are trip- 
 ping, or floating, or all serenely standing upon one leg before a 
 callous generation, how little is the magic of the Ballet-Mistress 
 considered how. little her benign influence, that, from the homeliest 
 materials, has raised and disciplined a glittering, volant body-guard 
 for a fairy queen ! 
 
 But the careless world shall be compelled to admit the claims of 
 the Ballet-Mistress on its gratitude its esteem. Be it our pleasant 
 task to make manifest her merits. Behold the first fairy some six 
 spans of humanity, with sloe^black eyes, glossy hair, and innocent 
 mouth : she is familiarly known amongst her late companions of 
 Martlett Court as Becky Sims ; Miss Sims in the theatre ; and, in 
 the play-bill, a fairy, or attendant spirit. What a promotion for 
 Miss Rebecca Sims ! What an elevation of thought what a glo- 
 rious region for her future days and nights. She descends from the 
 three-pair back room her mother, it may be, chars in the theatre, 
 and has, in a lucky hour, obtained the ear of Madame Proudfoot 
 to take upon her the dignity, and with it the fine clothes and gossa- 
 mer wings, of a fairy. Such, her happy destiny ; but with the hopes 
 of Becky Sims commence the labours of Madame Proudfoot. Is it 
 nothing, think ye, to take plebeian infancy, and instruct it in the 
 necessary elevation of toe, without which a dancer is of no more 
 account than a rheumatic grasshopper ? But here the consummate 
 skill, the triumph of the Ballet-Mistress. In a few weeks, and her 
 pupils are as completely fairies as though they had been born in a 
 hare-bell and nursed upon honey-dew. It is impossible to discover 
 in them Becky Sims, of Martlett Court Sally Jones, of Drury 
 Lane Rachel Lazarus, of Vinegar Yard and Ruth Moss, late 
 of the Minories. No: they are fairies, Arcadian villagers, sprites 
 of the lake, of the mine, or the mountain, as the call may de- 
 termine. 
 
 The Ballet-Mistress outlives many generations of her scholars, 
 spi ritualised as they may be. What bands of sprites has Madame 
 Proudfoot seen wax into mere women ! How many a sylph has she
 
 THE BALLET-MISTRESS. 35 
 
 known go to church with a masculine mortal ! How many who 
 ought to have wended thither, but never did ! How many a Cupid 
 has she lived to see with whiskers ! 
 
 The Ballet-Mistress is a person of extraordinary knowledge. She 
 has all the Pantheon, not only by heart, but at her toe. In a 
 trice she will make known to you the very step with which Venus 
 approached Adonis : will give you the retreating stride of the boar- 
 loving stripling, to be followed up by another step of the Queen of 
 Love, equally authentic with the firs 4 :, accompanied with a passionate 
 look, and arms eloquently wreathing ; the whole as acted, ages since, 
 in Greece, without the permission of the ill-used Vulcan. With 
 Diana and Endymion, the Ballet-Mistress is equally well acquainted ; 
 she can instruct the nymphs when to advance, and when to retreat, 
 with a precision, it would appear, only to be known by one who 
 had assisted at the original ceremony. 
 
 We will be sworn for it, that the English Ballet-Mistress never 
 read Apuleius ; yet, how knowing is she in the courtship of Cupid 
 in the wrongs and sufferings of the persecuted Psyche ! Hundreds of 
 times has she given us her own commentary on the fable; an igno- 
 rance of the fable itself a matter common with commentators 
 being no let or hindrance to her liberality. Hence, the Ballet- 
 Mistress is ennobled by the ethereal presences which are her hourly 
 ociety ; let her be naturally as prosaic as an apple-woman, it cannot 
 be but that the excellent company she keeps must have a deep 
 and subtle influence on her thoughts ; yea, even on her every-day 
 deportment. It is impossible, we think, to have an intimate ac- 
 acquaintance with gods and goddesses for twenty, five and twenty, 
 thirty years a privilege enjoyed by some Ballet -Mistresses 
 without shewing some of the benefits of society. If not, what, we 
 should like to know, does good company go for ? 
 
 There was Madame Etoile, a great Ballet-Mistress ; " great be- 
 cause so small." She had, in early life, met with a misfortune on 
 the London boards. "Let us not be mistaken. Madame Etoile was 
 even more fleshy than Juno ; and, on more than one occasion, 
 whilst performing a pas seul, the foot-lights were suddenly extin- 
 guished. It was but natural that Madame Etoile should charge all 
 the world that is, all the people in the theatre with a conspiracy 
 against her ! How, otherwise, was it possible that the stage-lamps 
 should go out? The manager, with that spirited alacrity only 
 known to managers, took up the quarrel : watch was set, but no one 
 approached the lights ; again, however, they went out. The truth 
 was promptly discovered by the lamp-lighter, who triumphantly
 
 36 THE BALLET-MISTRESS. 
 
 made known the mishap : Madame Etoile was become so heavy, 
 that, whenever she appeared in a pas seul, she, in the words of her 
 accuser, "danced the cottons dourn!" Being instantly discharged, 
 Madame Etoile indignantly threw up her engagement, retiring to 
 the rural districts. 
 
 Though Madame Etoile danced in many barns, she was still, 
 every inch, a Ballet-Mistress. Not one love had deserted her ; not 
 one grace but accompanied her to Reigate, and Pinner, and Boxhill, 
 and Cranbrook, and the " large room" at the Crown Tavern, and 
 the Assembly House at Barking. What London did after her de- 
 parture, we cannot imagine ; for she seemed to have brought away 
 with her all the importance of the metropolitan stage. Though her 
 foot might, on the testimony of the lamp-lighter, have been heavy, 
 no Ballet-Mistress ever had so light a heart. She was a worthy 
 companion for the actor in " Gil Bias ; " and would have eaten the 
 brook-steeped crusts as though they had been beccafichi ; which we 
 the more readily particularise, as our Ballet-Mistress was of Italian 
 descent, w'th a slight dash from Paris. We see her now, rouged as 
 if she " never would grow old." Her face, slightly picked with the 
 small-pox, powdered and reddened a fair quarter-inch thick, one 
 smile of reception ; her figure, short, and somewhat thickish, but 
 agile as a snake. Her walk was a succession of hops and curtsies. 
 She would fairly take the High Street of a country town, no one of 
 the inhabitants not even the attorney or surgeon's daughter dis- 
 puting the road. All the grace and glory of the Italian Opera 
 seemed to hover about her, and she knew it. Her bonnet, though 
 of commonest fabric, seemed perched upon her head for conquest : 
 her gown, though cotton, had a sweep, a fulness, a flutter, and an 
 airiness, that still took us to the ballet. It was impossible to consider 
 Madame Etoile an ordinary woman. There was, moreover, a mystery 
 about her early years. We have heard it stated, that her unfeeling 
 parents had, for some reason, destined her to become a nun. We 
 believe that she had amply revenged herself of any such intended 
 rigour. Her conversation was scarcely of this world, though made 
 up of not the very purest English, and worse French : still, at every 
 second sentence, she would conjure the divine powers to scatter all 
 sorts of blessings on the party she addressed, who, whether it were 
 a patroness of a benefit, or a laundress importunate for fourteen- 
 pence, was still " an angel of a woman," or " the most blessed of 
 reatures." It was also common with her to call grandmothers 
 " lovely maids," and even great-grandmothers charming virgins." 
 Poor Madame Etoile ! like a painted canoe in a storm, she seemed
 
 THE BALLET-MISTRESS. 37 
 
 to shoot through the troubles of life, with nought about her to 
 remind us of the hurricane. She lived amidst fairies, being herself 
 always the principal sprite. If not a fairy, she was, half the morn- 
 ing of rehearsal, and some part of the night, a village maiden of 
 the golden age, with muslin petticoats, pink-bound muslin apron, 
 and paste-board hat : her only care, that she could not have a 
 double-hornpipe with Colin, until the old woman, her grandmother, 
 was asleep ; and then she would dance only to be discovered, and, 
 finally, married to her lover. All this was the stuff which made the 
 life of Madame Etoile ; and though certain hours would intervene 
 between the theatre and the humble lodging, they were yet tinted 
 with the coming or the departed glory of the night. It is this con- 
 tinued call of the ideal on the player that renders actors less affected 
 than any other persons by the visitation of adversity. The man is 
 so often out of himself in the actor, that half his being is, in some 
 measure, ideal. He leaves a cold hearth, an empty cupboard, and 
 a frowning landlady ; he hies to the theatre, dons the robes of 
 Richard, and is raised beyond " the ignorant present" by applaud- 
 ing hundreds. The reaction may, we admit, be strong ; but actors 
 cannot certainly, they do not hug misery to them with so tena- 
 cious a grasp as other men. It was thus with Madame Etoile ; it 
 must be thus with your true Ballet-Mistress. She is away from 
 this dull world hours and hours out of the twenty- four, jigging 
 it with nymphs and fairies. Poor Madame Etoile ! Watteau might 
 have painted her there was in her such a mixture of the old- 
 fashioned, the picturesque, and the assumed poetic. Her end was 
 peculiar and significant (we write no fable). She became old five- 
 and-forty and, we will be sworn for it, without ever dreaming that 
 she had Venus for a pattern, positively united herself to a tinker. 
 
 The Ballet- Mistress must, by her calling, be a great reader. 
 Hence, she is acquainted with the precise steps danced in every 
 corner of the earth, from Kamschatka to the Ghaut mountains. 
 Look at Madame Proudfoot ! At this moment, she is instructing 
 four-and-twenty young ladies many with their hair in paper, most 
 of them with shawls, kerchiefs, tippets, or boas about their necks 
 in the true salutation due from Circassian slaves to the happy 
 native nobleman who has bought them. 
 
 Four-and-twenty ! No not so many ; for one fair Circassian 
 has shrunk from the sisterhood to eat some bread and cheese it is 
 " such a long rehearsal." 
 
 Let the reader, when he next beholds all the graceful mysterief 
 of a ballet, acknowledge the consequence of the MISTRESS.
 
 THE MUTE. 
 
 BY MRS. GORE. 
 
 L*EATH hath its vanities, and these are of them ! Which of us hath 
 not been startled, on some bright midsummer morning, when the 
 sunshine streams, as with a vengeance, on the glowing pavement 
 or on one of those still more gorgeous days of autumn, that seem 
 purposed to shed their rays on dahlias, sunflowers, hollyhocks, and 
 other gauds by the contrast of two masses of gloom, stationed 
 in stedfast sadness on either side the entrance of some human habita- 
 tion ; types of the sorrow that weepeth within ; or, it may be, 
 indications to the hearse and mourning coaches at what door they 
 are to stop, in order to receive as a senseless burden what was wont 
 to step forth animate and cheerful into the sunshine, over that 
 accustomed threshold ? 
 
 These sable statues are the Mutes of a funeral ceremony ! 
 Habited from top to toe in suits of sables, their faces composed to 
 decent sympathy with the lugubrious ceremonial of the day, they 
 assume their post shortly after daylight, in order to preserve tran- 
 quillity around the house of mourning ; an aim accomplished by 
 hanging out a banner of woe, which never fails to collect upon the 
 pavement before the door all the errand boys and idle apprentices 
 of the neighbourhood ; the young children to gaze with wondering 
 eyes upon those mysterious symbols of death the elder ones to 
 gossip over the name and nature, demise and sepulture, of the 
 defunct ; of what doctors he died, to what heirs his lands and 
 tenements are to descend. The milkwoman stands, open-mouthed, 
 to listen ; while into the basket of the transfixed greengrocer's boy 
 ^ whose eyes are fascinated by those living signposts of the dwelling 
 whose wine-cup is a chalice of tears) dive the cunning fingers of a 
 ragged urchin, in search of the sour plumbs and bruised apples, for 
 which half the cook-maids in the neigbourhood are waiting to com- 
 pound the confections of the day. The crowd thickens ; and a 
 squabble ensues between the juvenile delinquent and the careless 
 errand-boy ; who, hanging his basket of fruit and vegetables on the
 
 TI1K MUTE. 
 
 To do obsequous sorrow. 
 
 Sll A KSI'LKF.
 
 THE MUTE. 
 
 area rails, while he pursues his search for the stolen goods into the 
 pockets of the ragamuffin, is relieved, in the interim, by further pe- 
 culations, of a still heavier burden of his master's property. Some 
 of the bystanders take part with the victim, some with the thief. The 
 tender mother of the latter runs slipshod irom a neighbouring court 
 to protect the interests of her offspring ; but a handful of damsons 
 having been brought to light from the lining of his dirty jacket, she 
 proceeds to bestow a hearty cuffing on the criminal, who repays it 
 with a lusty roar. Again the crowd divides itself into factions ; some 
 quoting Solomon in favour of the mother, others quoting the Society 
 for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in behalf of the child. Like 
 the debates of a higher place, argument soon degenerates into vocife- 
 ration. All threaten, all bawl, all bellow. The tumult demands the 
 interference of a policeman. More disputes, more railing against 
 constituted authorities. And all this uproar, because the vain- 
 gloriousness of human nature requires that a door whence the dead 
 are about to be borne forth to decay, should be pointed out to 
 vulgar notice by the attendance of those twins of Erebus, a couple 
 of undertaker's Mutes ! 
 
 Yet, how wondrous the genius of these professionals ! Through- 
 out the street-brawl that grew, shouted, and subsided, before their 
 eyes, not a token of human ftailt} in their stedfast countenances! 
 True to their denomination, they breathed not so much as a word 
 of reprehension to the budding Abershaw, when they saw him in 
 the fact of abstraction ; not a word of entreaty to the enraged 
 mother, whose blows pommelled his head and shoulders with a 
 forty-horse power of maternal castigation. They took no part with 
 either the Capulcts or the Montagues of the mob ; the Neri, or 
 chimney-sweeps, the Bianchi, or bakers' boys. They looked on 
 unmoved, like marble effigies upon a tomb. Their eyes so much 
 as blinked not ; their very noses refrained from contemptuous 
 commentation : they kept silence, yea, even from good words 
 they were Mutes ! 
 
 Let it not be inferred, however, that Mutes are an inevitable 
 fringe upon the sable garment of death. On the continent of 
 Europe, their office is performed by proxy. On the day of burial, 
 funereal draperies (black or white, as the sex and age of the defunct 
 may be) are suspended, at early morn, across the ground floor of 
 the house of death ; which, being level with the causeway, and un- 
 divided from it by an area, is easily attainable. This drapery is of 
 srge or velvet, plain or garnished with silver, according to the 
 means of the family. For the noble, it is furthermore adorned witl>
 
 4Q *" THE MUTE. 
 
 heraldic ecutcheons ; by the opulent, it is even overscattered with 
 silver tears and palms of triumph. For though "dust to dust" is 
 the universal sentence of mortality, there is dust and dust! There is 
 the dust of Rothschilds, and the dust of paupers ; there was the dust 
 of Dryden, which was bandied about for burial between the poverty 
 of his family and the brutal jests of an insolent lordling ; there was 
 the dust of Frauenlob, the minne-singer, borne forth by the fairest 
 damsels, clad in white, chanting his own sweet songs to the place of 
 interment. There was the dust of Sheridan, snatched from the hands 
 of the bailiff to be escorted to the immortality of the Abbey, by dukes 
 and earls, eager to catch the reflection of the last gleam of his re- 
 nown : and there is the dust of those whose coffins are made the 
 rallying point of the seditious, who shake their clenched fists at 
 government and spit their venom at the throne, under sanction of a 
 hat-band and weepers. 
 
 But there is also the dust of the poor and nameless : people, 
 whose career on earth has been one of duty and submission ; people, 
 over whose casual coffin the hearts that loved them have not leisure 
 to break, lest those should starve who depend upon their labours 
 for daily bread. These must be thnist into the grave in haste. 
 These leave no memory to the multitude. In foreign lands, they 
 boast no drapery of the pompes funebres above their doorway ; at 
 home, no nodding plumes. No ragged throng gathers before their 
 threshold to see the coffin, covered with a parish pall, paraded be- 
 neath the lidless eye of heaven. The holiness of solitude is there, 
 even amid the crowded city. Nature herself hath stationed beside 
 their door, the unseen Mute. 
 
 It is often said that a man must be born an artist. Surely a 
 Mute also must be a Mute by imprescriptible right. There is no 
 accounting for tastes there is no accounting for trades. To be a 
 butcher, a dentist, a surgeon, a scavenger, may be " the gift of 
 fortune ;" but, to be a Mute at a funeral, must " come by nature." 
 What but the decree of Providence can create that rigid immo- 
 bility of feature that leadenness of eye that stoniness of brow 
 that more than military uprightness of deportment ; not altogether 
 like the African, " God's image cut in ebony," but an abstraction of 
 sable woe, scarcely vivified by the touch of life. A mummy has 
 more animation in it than the accomplished Mute in the discharge of 
 his duties ; and when stationed beside some aristocratic doorway in 
 St. James's Square (to bespeak reverence for the ennobled clay, 
 covered with crimson velvet glittering with cherubim of gold), the 
 black marble figure of a knight templar, upon his tomb in some
 
 THE MUTE. 41 
 
 mildewed cathedral, is not more rigidly unexistent than the well- 
 drilled Mute. 
 
 Accident, however, hath sometimes created the singular iqdi- 
 vidual which one might suppose a forethought of Providence. 
 
 In a cheerful, sunshiny cottage, on the Severn side, there once 
 rolled upon the floor a chubby child, whose skin was glossy with 
 healthfulness, whose eyes bright with joy, whose voice a carol, 
 whose cheek red as the apples clustering in the tree that spread its 
 knotty, shapeless branches beside the little homestead. Jem "Willett 
 was a pledge of joy to his parents, for he was a firstborn ; a ray of 
 the sun of promise, which, in the early days of matrimony, beams 
 alike for rich and poor ; and he was dandled by his father, and 
 hugged by his mother, till a little Jack came to claim a share in the 
 family endearments. Still, Jem was the favourite. He was the first ! 
 He was such a merry, lightsome-hearted, little fellow. Nor was it 
 till a whole tribe of Toms and Neds, Bets and Sals, put forth equal 
 rights with himself to slices of the brown loaf, that poor Jem's 
 humble garments were suffered to go ragged, and he was allowed to 
 crawl to bed with the rest, unblest by the caresses of a parent. But 
 what leisure had father or mother for domestic love ? Their bread 
 was embittered by its scantiness ; the staff of life was a slender staff 
 in their hands. Taxed to support the waste and wantonness of the 
 great castle whose towers were visible from their cottage door, the 
 loaf, which was their luxury, scarcely sufficed their wants : and how 
 could they be expected to love the children whose cries of hunger 
 distracted their poor hovel ? The caress became a cuff; the tender 
 word, a curse. The children were sent out to work. It was some- 
 thing that they were not sent out to beg ! 
 
 Yet, in spite of these clinging cares, there was an inborn joyous- 
 ness in poor Jem Willett's nature, that would not be repressed. 
 He seemed (o whoop and halloo the louder for his rags ; and even 
 want sat so lightly on him, that " his cheek so much as paled not." 
 A better fortune seemed reserved for him, than for his brother 
 and sister starvelings. While one or two were draughted into a 
 factory-team of drag-children, while Jack became a cow-boy, Bill a 
 climbing-boy, and Tom the drudge of a collier's barge, Jem (who 
 was growing up what the linen-drapers' advertisements call " a 
 genteel youth") was apprenticed to a carpenter : apprenticed by the 
 benevolence of the parish, which was now sole proprietor of Richard 
 Willett's lame widow and fifteen children, the husband and father 
 having fallen a victim to small gains and a large family, high rent, 
 
 and low fever. 
 
 56 F
 
 42 THE MUTE. 
 
 Jem was now the happiest of boys ; that is, he had as much 
 bread as he could eat, and a little more work than he could do. 
 But a humane, intelligent master put him in the way of doing it in 
 the best manner. He was an improving lad. By the time he was 
 out of his apprenticeship, he became a good workman. Bill had 
 been put out of his miseries by opportune suffocation in a narrow 
 flue, belonging to the county member, at Marrowbone Hall ; Tom 
 had fallen overboard, after a severe banging from his tyrant, and 
 was gone to feed the lampreys of the Severn ; Jack was becoming 
 almost as great a brute as the beasts he tended; and the factory 
 brother and sisters were slaved, gassed, and drubbed into a transfi- 
 guration tripartite of the yellow dwarf. But Jem was gay and 
 rubicund as ever ; well-grown, well-fed, well-taught, a good-hu- 
 moured, good-looking fellow as ever breathed. 
 
 Unluckily, the result of this even temper and comely aspect, 
 was an early marriage. On finding that he could earn eighteen 
 shillings a-week, one of the prettiest lasses in Gloucestershire per- 
 suaded him that it was too large a sum for his single enjoyment ; 
 and Jem Willett, like Richard Willett before him, became a father 
 at so early an age, that there was little chance of his surviving to 
 become a grandfather. He chose to gird on the crown of thorns, 
 without allowing time for the previous expansion of its roses. He 
 chose to jump from boyhood to middle age, without allotting a 
 moment to the pleasures of youth. 
 
 Nevertheless, the plane and the chisel sped prosperously. Jem 
 was never out of employ, never sick, never sorry. Children 
 came ; ay, and on one occasion, twins, who seemed to bring a 
 blessing with them ; for Jem Willett's household throve in pro- 
 portion to its increase. 
 
 But, alas! the sin which ere the foundations of this earth 
 were laid marred the harmony of primeval heaven, is still pre- 
 dominant below. The Willetts were ambitious ! Jem's pretty 
 wife had been three years in service in London, before a visit 
 to her friends in Gloucester converted her into the wife of the 
 handsome young carpenter. Poor Mary could not forget Cheap- 
 side ; and had a natural hankering after St. Paul's Church-yard. 
 The High Street of Gloucester was not worthy to hold a candle 
 to the Strand, among whose gay haberdashers' shops her green 
 and salad days had passed. In the clear atmosphere of her coun- 
 try home, she pined after the smother of the metropolis ; and, like 
 others of her sex, from Eve modernwards, contrived to win over 
 her partner to her fault. Her faithful Jem was taught to believe
 
 THE MUTE. 48 
 
 that there was no promotion for him in a country town ; that so 
 good a workman might enjoy, in London, the wages of a cabinet- 
 maker ; and that two days' journey with his family, in the Glou- 
 cester wagon, was all that was wanting to convert his eighteen 
 shillings per week into six-and-thirty. They were before-hand 
 with the world. They had seven-and-forty pounds to draw out of 
 the savings' bank, to establish them in London. It shewed a pool 
 heart, according to Mary Willett, to sit down contented with their 
 humble fortunes, when " happiness courted them in its best array." 
 In short, after some prudential misgivings on the part of Jem, the 
 woman persuaded him, and he did go. Their goods and chattels 
 were sold off at considerable loss, but still so as to add some pounds 
 to their capital ; and having put money in their purse, and stowed 
 away their five children under the awning of the wagon which was 
 to prove their chariot of fortune, away they snail's-paced it, along 
 that great western road, which has conveyed to Hyde Park Corner 
 so many aspirants after metropolitan promotion. 
 
 Few are destined to reach it in such piteous plight as Jem 
 Willett and his wife ! Within eight miles of London, thanks to 
 an insufficient lantern and inefficient wagoner, the huge vehicle 
 was overturned into a paviour's hole ; and Jem all but crushed into 
 nothingness, by the weight of a huge bale of merchandise. The 
 infant in his arms never breathed again ! The mangled father was 
 transported upon straw, in a light cart, to St. George's Hospital, with 
 his family, all of whom were more or less injured by the accident , 
 and, at the expiration of a year from their departure from the 
 country, the Willetts were settled in a squalid lodging of a by- 
 street in Chelsea, with three out of their five children remaining, 
 and two pounds ten, out of their forty-nine. 
 
 There was misery in the little household, past, present, and in 
 expectation. It was in vain that poor Mary cursed her restless 
 spirit as the cause of all. Her self-accusations yielded no fuel to 
 their empty grate ; no food to their hungry mouths. A severe 
 injury received by Jem in the right shoulder, at the time of his 
 accident, incapacitated him for the carpenter's bench, and all other 
 manual labour ; nor could the poor people devise any mode of gain- 
 ing a living for a man who was no scholar, and had not connexions 
 to back him in applications for employment, as light porter to some 
 house of business. 
 
 It was a sorry time. The winter was a hard one, their money 
 gone : even the last half-crown in their little treasury had been 
 changed to purchase provisions for the day. Mary was eager with
 
 44 THE MUTE. 
 
 her husband to make an application for parochial relief, such as 
 might be the means of getting them passed back into Gloucester- 
 shire. She knew that they should be no better off there than in 
 London. But it was their own place. They should hear familiar 
 voices ; their eyes would rest upon familiar spots ; their hands be 
 clasped in those of the humble friends of their childhood. There 
 would be somebody to look upon their half- starved babes, and say 
 " God speed them ! " 
 
 But Jem resisted. Though his early condition had familiarised 
 him with the shame of pauperism, yet the independence his own 
 exertions had since achieved, had taught him pride. It was plea- 
 santer to hope, it was almost pleasanter to starve, than to confront 
 that bitter tribunal, a Monday board. 
 
 Another day came ; and Mary, who had looked so wistfully upon 
 the last half-crown ere she could make up her mind to change it, 
 found herself looking, with exactly the same shuddering, upon their 
 last sixpence ! In the interim, their prospects had darkened. Jem 
 had been refused work in various quarters, where he had flattered 
 himself his crippled powers were still available. " You do n't look 
 strong enough," was the universal reply ; and on returning from a 
 grocer's, in Whitechapel, to whom he had taken a recommendation 
 for employment in his warehouse, he found the eldest girl, a delicate 
 slip of a thing, unable to bear up against the squalor and wretched- 
 ness with which she was surrounded, suffering under a violent attack 
 of ague ; the disease, of all others, requiring the administration of 
 wholesome nourishment. 
 
 " She will die ! She will follow her dear brother and sister ! " 
 faltered the poor fellow, rushing from the house, determined to seek 
 for his sick child the parochial aid he had been too proud to seek 
 for himself; and as he went along, the temptation was almost too 
 strong to escape from the slow agonies of life, by plunging himself 
 headlong into the Thames, that ran, temptingly, within reach. It 
 was December ; and the dingy waters rippled on, like the waves of 
 an unclean element, under a heavy autumnal fog that shut out all 
 prospect of the sky. How different from the dancing waters of 
 his own translucent Severn ; the friend and companion of his merry 
 childhood ! The reminiscence brought back careful thoughts of his 
 dead brothers , of his old mother, the inmate of a poor-house ; of 
 toil and sorrow, hunger and cold, till Jem Willett could not help 
 feeling that it was a sorry world for those who, like himself, were 
 born to work out the condemnation of the first human sin
 
 THE MUTE. 4,5 
 
 His eyes were red with unshed tears, his nose blue with heart- 
 chill and a north-west wind, his features pinched, his looks meagre ; 
 it might almost be added, his " bones marrowless his blood cold.*' 
 Yet a sort of fierce striving against evil fortune, caused him to 
 maintain a firm demeanour, and to erect his head to the utmost 
 stretch, as he was about to enter the workhouse gate. 
 
 Such was the origin of the after fortunes of Jem Willett ! Ere 
 he could cross the fatal threshold, he found himself civilly accosted 
 by a solemn individual, who announced himself as " Mr. Screw, the 
 eminent Knightsbridge upholsterer;" and the long rambling conver- 
 sation that ensued, ended in Jem Willett's quitting the premises, 
 " attached to the establishment" of his new acquaintance, at twelve 
 shillings a-week wages, and the promise of advancement. He was 
 about to be converted into a MUTE ! 
 
 Jem was to enter upon his functions on the morrow. He was 
 in fact as great an acquisition to Screw, as Screw to him. The 
 Knightsbridge upholsterer and undertaker having been bereaved 
 of one of his standard Mutes, by the great master and commander 
 of his gloomy trade, was sadly at a loss for a fellow of sufficiently 
 doleful countenance to match the fine funereal face of the survivor. 
 " Poor Bill Hobbs, who was dead and gone, was a treasure ; a man 
 whom it brought tears into the eyes of the multitude to look on. 
 He confessed he never expected to find an adequate substitute 
 for Bill Hobbs. All he could expect of his new adherent was, to 
 do his best, that is, look his worst; and if he gave satisfaction to 
 the customers, he might count upon eighteen shillings a-week, at 
 the close of the winter. Perhaps, if the influenza was about and 
 it proved a good burying season, something might be done sooner." 
 
 Poor Jem was beside himself with joy ! Such an unexpected 
 stroke of good fortune, such manna in the desert, such corn in 
 Egypt ! His wife wept for gladness when she heard of his pro- 
 motion. To be sure, it was not exactly the line of employment he 
 would have solicited ; not exactly the duty that the fair, chubby, 
 laughing Jem seemed brought into the world to perform. But 
 misery brings down the spirits to an incalculably low level ; and 
 Jem seemed to fancy it might be satisfactory to his poor disabled 
 frame, to array itself in a decent garb of woe, and stand sentinel at 
 the gates of death. 
 
 During the first week, he gave unqualified satisfaction. No 
 advance having been made to him by Screw, whose name was pro- 
 phetic of his nature, Jem had to endure the torment of taking up 
 his position of a foggy morning, without having broken his fast,
 
 46 THE MUTE. 
 
 after sitting up all night beside the pallet of his groaning child ; 
 and so piteous was his countenance, under sorrows and privations 
 thus accumulated, as to excite the envy of his sable brother, as 
 well as the admiration of his new master. Screw looked upon him 
 as a Mute of genius. His countenance was something between 
 that of Quixote, Reynolds's Ugolino, and the man who "drew 
 Priam's curtain in the dead of night." His stomach was empty ; 
 his heart sinking with the idea of the family affliction, of which he 
 was the outward and visible sign ; his soul sickening at the whis- 
 pered allusions of his professional brother on the opposite side the 
 door, to " stiff 'uns and black jobs, shrouds and winding sheets, pick- 
 axes and shovels ! " The last funeral in which Jem had borne a 
 part, was that of one of his own beloved babes ; and he could not 
 hear a coffin made a theme for jesting ! Mr. Screw and his men, 
 when they drew up the hearse and mourning coaches to the door, 
 were as much struck with the appropriate air and features of the 
 new Mute, as some might be by the proportions of the Venus de 
 Medicis. He was an honour to the profession ; tall and solemn as 
 a cypress ; a frontispiece, foretelling the nature of a tragic volume. 
 Screw went even so far as to advance him eight shillings, for 
 the use of his family, on the Thursday night ; an act of liberality 
 unprecedented in the annals of his establishment. Nay, as the 
 scarlet fever was rife in Chelsea, before the close of the month, 
 the new Mute was raised to the promised modicum of eighteen 
 shillings per week. 
 
 All now went well in his little household. The young ravens 
 were fed, and Mary's clothes gradually returned from the pawn- 
 broker's ; and though Jem's vocation was still loathsome to him, 
 though he could scarcely restrain his tears when he saw white fea- 
 thers nodding over the vehicle that bore forth the little coffin of 
 some only hope from the roof of its parents, to be cast into the 
 wintry earth, the sensibility which made his calling thus distasteful 
 rendered him invaluable to his master. While the Mutes of other 
 establishments, or former Mutes of his own, degraded their scarfs 
 and hatbands, by being seen tossing off a glass of gin, or a well- 
 crested pot of porter, with their insignia of office fluttering about 
 them, thereby bringing into discredit the pride, pomp, and circum- 
 stance of glorious undertakership, Jem was always dumb as death, 
 and moulded in clay that required no wetting. He was, in fact, a 
 model-Mute. 
 
 It is possible that the merits of the man contributed something 
 to the prosperity of the master ; for, in the course of a year or two,
 
 THE MUTF. 47 
 
 Screw removed from his suburban abode to one of the handsomest 
 streets at the west end ; set up a shop, with a gothic front, on 
 whose door, in lieu of panes, there figured two funeral escutcheons ; 
 with death's head, cross-bones, and " Resurgam" painted, achieve- 
 ment-wise, on one ; and a street-door, guarded by two Mutes, hold- 
 ing handkerchiefs to their eyes, on the other ; for the off-Mute of 
 which pictorial representation, Jem Willett was supposed to have 
 sat to the artist. Above the escutcheons, was inscribed, in letters 
 of gold, " Funerals Performed." PERFORMED ! ay, just as Macbeth 
 is "performed" by Macready, or Nicholas Flam by Farren. On the 
 other windows were pasted announcements of " Houses to Let ; 
 furnished or unfurnished ; " Mr. Screw having taken upon him- 
 self the trade of providing mansions for the quick, as well as for the 
 dead. 
 
 Upon his removal to this aristocratic warehouse, Screw felt in 
 conscience bound to raise the wages of his Mutes to the level of 
 those bestowed upon their black gentlemen by Gillow, Banting, and 
 other fashionable purveyors to the last wants of humanity ; and Jem, 
 in the enjoyment of thirty shillings per week, lost all recollection of 
 his former woes. "Who was it persuaded you to come to Lon'on, 
 I should like to know?" was now the favourite query of his wife. 
 " How would a workman, with his bread-winner disabled, have found 
 means of earning thirty shillings a-week, in Gloucester ? " And if 
 Jem refrained from replying that, had he never come to Lon'on, 
 his shoulder would never have been broken in the socket, when he 
 might have enjoyed the same wages, with a less noisome occupation, 
 it was because he was too good-natured to cause vexation to his 
 wife. The Willets had now their share of the good things of this 
 world. They ate, drank, and were merry. After burial-hours, Jem 
 might be seen taking his pipe and glass, in winter at " The Un- 
 dertakers' Arms," in summer at " The Adam and Eve" tea-gardens. 
 Care came no longer near him. He said to himself, " Soul, take 
 thine ease ! " and his soul did as it was bid ! 
 
 But, alas ! ruin was laying a train under his feet ! Amid ail 
 this jollification, his features lost their sharpness ; his complexion, its 
 pallor ; his limbs, their dignified gauntness. The ruddy tints of 
 his Severn days came back in undiminished brilliancy ; nay, his 
 very nose became " celestial rosy red."- An incipient paunch was 
 springing. Othello's occupation was gone! In the overflowing of 
 his heart, he could not forbear, now and then, a jovial word with 
 his brother Mute ; and, in the awful discharge of their duties at 
 the doors of defunct peers of the realm or ministers of state, he
 
 48 THE MUTE. 
 
 had even been betrayed, by absence of mind, into humming snatches 
 of a tune, haunting his imagination after the carouse of the pre- 
 ceding night. The starveling Mute was become a jolly dog! It 
 was no longer " Willow, willow," with him, but " Wine, mighty 
 wine ! " 
 
 Under such circumstances, it was scarcely wonderful that Screw 
 and Co. should require his resignation to be sent in. One Saturday 
 night, in Midsummer time (when the morning sun shines with tell- 
 tale brightness on the minutiae of the rites of sepulture), Willett 
 was requested to give his receipt in full, on receiving his final one 
 pound ten. The "establishment" required his services no longer. 
 He was superseded ; not superannuated, but super-gladdened. The 
 foreman said to him, like Apollo, in the song, to " Voice, fiddle, and 
 
 flute, 
 
 Ao longer be Mute!" 
 
 His jolly face reflected discredit on the house. At a funeral, he 
 was the impersonation of a practical joke ; a figure of fun ; a 
 parody upon the tragedy; a jest upon a grave subject. He was 
 like ^Esop's weasel in the meal-tub ; the only difference, that Jem 
 was turned out of his luxurious berth, while the weasel was forced 
 to remain in. Though twice the man he was when taken into 
 Screw's establishment, he was not half so good for the under- 
 taker's purpose. He was as much out of place as a fat harlequin, 
 or gouty rope-dancer. He was a merry Mute ! 
 
 Poor Jem is, at this moment, looking out for a new place. 
 He is too tender-hearted for a beadle, though the gold-laced 
 hat would mightily become him. "But our friend is xmconsciously 
 dwindling into such a condition, as may entitle him, a second time, 
 to the honours of Muteship. As Napoleon became a second time 
 Emperor, it is by no means impossible, that the now sorrowing 
 father of four needy children may shortly return to the establish- 
 ment of Messrs. Screw and Company, well-qualified to become 
 anew a. MUTE !
 
 THE WHIG. 
 
 We live hardly anywhere else than in St. Stephen's. 
 
 SPEECH OF D. \V. HARVEY. Ea.
 
 THE WHIG. 
 
 BY AN M. P. 
 
 AMONG the " HEADS OF THE PEOPLE," our members in both Houses 
 of Parliament surely deserve a place. Without being a very great 
 politician, one may naturally feel a little desire to know something 
 of the structure of those wise heads, the contents of which exercise 
 so very great an influence on our fortunes, as theirs occasionally 
 do. Not that I think, with the Chartists, that we depend entirely on 
 acts of parliament for our food and clothing. I believe that much 
 less depends on our legislators than many of them would be inclined 
 to allow. Still they can do us some good, and a great deal of harm. 
 Many of us know, to our costs, that the maggot in a member of 
 parliament's head is oftimes a very dangerous insect. 
 
 I am tempted, therefore, to take a sketch of one or two speci- 
 mens of the varieties of this genus; and, as the "HEADS OF THE 
 PEOPLE" will most assuredly outlive the British constitution, we may 
 serve our posterity by letting it know what kind of folks the rulers 
 of Great Britain were in 1840. And I shall begin with the Whig, 
 because that is a species of which I had better lose no time in 
 catching the features, ere they pass, as they bid fair very soon to do, 
 entirely out of the political world. 
 
 The Whig party, unfortunately for itself, is not only very small, 
 ^>ut it daily becomes. smaller. Like all other parties, it has its divi- 
 sions. There are old Whigs and new Whigs ; moderate Whigs and 
 decided Whigs ; and the party suffers by defalcations from each 
 extremity. The old and moderate Whigs are constantly passing 
 into the ranks of the Conservatives ; the decided Whigs daily 
 become more and more Radical : and the supply of Whiggism is 
 directed into one or other of these two channels by the Tory educa- 
 tion of the Universities, and the tendency of the times towards move- 
 ment politics. Small, however, as the party is, it possesses, from 
 57
 
 50 THE WHIG. 
 
 mere historical and personal associations, considerable attractions 
 for the observer. The Whig party has, since the American war, 
 been a mere coterie, which might, almost every day of the season, 
 be found divided among five or six dinner-tables. But the suc- 
 cessive members of that coterie have been the most distinguished 
 public men of their time ; and the privilege of dining at these par- 
 ticular tables, has been handed down so long from Whig father to 
 Whig son, that it has all the interest of ancient hereditary rights. 
 The houses of the great Whig aristocracy are connected by con- 
 tinual associations with the great men of past times. You sit at 
 the table at which Fox enjoyed and imparted a social relaxation 
 from the toils of the senate, and at which Burke rolled forth his 
 didactic eloquence of conversation ; your laugh wakens the echoes 
 of the very walls that rung with the mirth which Sheridan pro- 
 voked : the portraits of bygone statesmen hang around you ; trifling 
 articles of what was once their property, are treasured as the most 
 valuable of gifts ; and amid the inanimate memorials of their exist- 
 ence, you talk with some old gentleman, whose pride it is to tell 
 you how, at that very table, he used to sit with those very men ; 
 or, sometimes, you listen to one of those statesmen who were their 
 colleagues in opposition, or in power, and who boast that they 
 are now the consistent depositories of their tenets, and representa- 
 tives of their policy. 
 
 Of the party thus linked together by old recollections and per- 
 sonal associations, there are yet some fine specimens left in the 
 House of Commons. Your pure old Whig is generally old in the 
 literal sense of the word. He came into the House at the end of the 
 last, or the beginning of the present, century. He proved his devo- 
 tion to his party, during many long years of opposition, by sticking 
 to it in divisions, and contesting his county, or his borough, most 
 gallantly at successive elections. He thinks that, by all this, he 
 has merited well of his country ; and as he holds that patriotism, 
 like all other virtues, should have its reward, he is strongly of 
 opinion that his former sacrifices should be rewarded by the honours 
 of the peerage, and the solid gifts of the Treasury. Still his predo- 
 minant motive in coming up from the country, at the call cf the 
 whipper-in, and for sitting up, night after night, in order to vote, 
 is the pure desire of supporting those whom he calls " his friends." 
 HU attendance is a personal service of personal friendship. Not 
 that he do n't feel very public spirited ; but he feels that his first 
 Jmblic duty is that of keeping Lord John Russell in office.
 
 THE WHIG. 5j 
 
 I think, Indeed, that the old Whig's objects in politics may best 
 be described by saying, that he is a supporter of Lord John Russell. 
 1 won't impugn his allegiance to Lord Melbourne. He does not wish 
 to turn him out ; he likes him ; he will make great sacrifices to keep 
 him in. But Lord Melbourne once lapsed into heresy ; he followed 
 Canning, and remained in office with the Tories, after the other 
 Whigs went into opposition, in '28. His Whiggism is tainted by 
 this falling off; whereas Lord John's is pure and unsullied. A 
 Whig from his entrance into parliament, he has never for a moment 
 renounced the name of Whig, or separated his fortunes from those of 
 his party, in order to ally himself with either Tory or Radical. He 
 is the idol of your pure Whig. While he is speaking, the old Whig 
 listens in a deep attention, of which the silence is only broken by 
 his occasional hearty cheers ; and for the rest of the evening he 
 expatiates in praise of his speech, which is just as enthusiastic, 
 whether his lordship spoke, as he often does, with great effect, or 
 whether he happened to speak ill, which, like other mortal men, he 
 is apt, sometimes, to do. I do n't think any other of the cabinet 
 ministers are particular favourites with the old Whig, except Lord 
 Morpeth, who stands next, and is destined to succeed him ; and the 
 old Whig likes to hear Macauley, and cheers him loudly when he 
 sits down. But Lord John is the main object of his thoughts. He 
 doesn't call him by his title; not from any affectation of familiarity, 
 but because the calling him " John Russell" indicates the personal 
 friendship which, with all his deference, he loves to express. Some 
 even say " Johnny ;" but I think this heretical, and should say that 
 it savours of Radicalism, or Toryism. Your old Whig says " John 
 Russell." 
 
 The whole political conversation of the Whigs is singularly 
 tinged with this amiable personal feeling ; and they, oddly enough, 
 manage to speak of all poh'tical incidents and conduct, as if they 
 were matters that merely concerned individuals. If a Liberal mem- 
 ber happens to vote against ministers ; or if a Radical, in perfect 
 sincerity of political deference, chances to say something cutting, 
 respecting the ministerial policy ; it is always treated by the Whigs 
 as a sin against the party leaders ; and the offending member is 
 remonstrated with, for the unkindness of his act. He is asked 
 why he " says things that give John Russell pain ? " and, above all 
 he is severely rated for " giving those d d fellows (pointing to 
 the Tories) a triumph :" for, next to the amiable feeling towards the 
 hereditary leaders of the party, comes, in the heart of your olo
 
 52 THE WHIG. 
 
 Whig, a very great hatred to the Tories. However the chances of 
 politics may bring the Whigs into very frequent fellowship with the 
 Tories in divisions, there rankles in the minds of all of them a very 
 deep and bitter recollection of the long triumph of the rival party, 
 and their own long exclusion from power. Whigs meet Tories 
 in society ; they are connected by blood, and marriage, and social 
 intercourse : but when they speak of each other as party oppo- 
 nents, there is hardly any bad feeling, or bad conduct, which they 
 won't impute to the other party in the lump. One of the strangest 
 things in the world, is the entire distinction which English gentle- 
 men manage to keep up, between public and private conduct ; and 
 the way in which you may see a man maintaining the most intimate 
 intercourse with those who are active members of a party, the 
 whole conduct of which, in elections, and in parliament, he will not 
 hesitate to accuse of the grossest immorality. The public are apt 
 to laugh at the parliamentary explanation, which wipes off all inten- 
 tion of offence, by the assertion that the lie was given, and the 
 baseness imputed, "in a parliamentary sense;" inasmuch, as it 
 appears to plain folks, that if a lie is told, or a dirty action done, it 
 does n't make the turpitude of either a wit less, that it was told or 
 done in respect to some political matter. But members of parlia- 
 ment think otherwise ; and you must n't be surprised if the old 
 Whig, who has walked down very amicably with his Tory friend, 
 should tell you that the part taken that very day, by that very 
 friend, among others, was the very shabbiest that he ever had any 
 conception of. 
 
 Your old Whig, nevertheless, prizes himself on his fairness 
 towards his political opponents. He likes, every now-and-then, to 
 pay them compliments. He thinks it right, on questions that con- 
 cern his own neighbourhood, to bear his testimony, that " a more 
 honourable man, or one more incapable of the act attributed to him, 
 does n't exist than" Mr. Such-a-one, who has been accused of some 
 roguery or oppression. In his speeches in the House, he even 
 thinks it right to speak fairly of the " other side." Nay, he will 
 sometimes give them a cheer, when they are not attacking his 
 " friends." He can find one or two merits in Peel : will often 
 praise his speeches, even when they tell against the government ; 
 and sometimes wonder how a man of such good sense should n't 
 regularly act with "us." He has a sneaking kindness for Lord 
 Stanley, though he severely rates his "bad taste," whenever he 
 attacks his former colleagues : and he hates Sir James Graham 
 pretty much as he would the Devil.
 
 THE WHIG. 5i> 
 
 But, on the other hand, he is by no means perfectly satisfied 
 with all those who sit on his own side of the House. He does n'l 
 at all like finding his friends so entirely dependent on the votes of 
 the Radicals. Since so many good Whigs, of the best antiquated 
 purity, have voted for the Ballot, your old Whig does n't absolutely 
 quarrel with a man for voting for the Ballot, but he respects all 
 who do ; and if he happens to have become a convert himself, to 
 that Radical doctrine, he half suspects himself. He has grown 
 greatly reconciled to the " Tail," since it has attached itself to the 
 ministerial extremities ; and he begins to look even with some 
 favour on " Dan." He is tolerant of Wakley ; rather dreads the 
 sight of Harvey getting up; and views "Joey" Hume with a good 
 deal of mild contempt. On the whole, however, he can bear the 
 opposition of Radicals, as long as they keep themselves in a duly 
 insignificant minority ; but when they put the Tories in a majority, 
 he looks upon them as very heinous traitors. 
 
 The political opinions of the old Whig, I will trouble the reader 
 very little with describing, because that is a purely political topic ; 
 and, besides, all that need be known about them, is it not written 
 in " The Edinburgh Review," and " The Chronicle," and " The 
 Globe ? " The old Whig is a zealous supporter of the constitution ; 
 and of all such of our ancient institutions as work well for the hap- 
 piness of the Whigs. His loyalty to the Queen is perfectly 
 enthusiastic ; he loves her as the mainstay of the present ministry. 
 He carries back this loyalty to the first two sovereigns of the House 
 of Brunswick ; for whom, with the principles that placed them on 
 the throne, he constantly expresses the warmest attachment after 
 dinner : but between the death of George II., and the accession of 
 Victoria, there is a great gap in his loyalty ; and I rather think that 
 he is puzzled to make out how the deuce those said principles came 
 to place the intervening members of the House of Brunswick on the 
 throne. Of the " good old King" he has a very hearty detestation. 
 George IV. he considers in the yet more odious light of a kind of 
 traitor to the Whigs ; and though he cannot but recollect with 
 gratitude all that William IV. did, in the first two years of his 
 reign, he reflects, with all the soreness of recent disappointment, on 
 the foolish courses into which his late Majesty fell in his latter days. 
 
 The old Whig is by no means for destroying the House of 
 Lords ; but he finds it so terribly in the way of ministers, that he 
 really thinks something must be done with it ; though what that 
 something should be, he can by no means say. I should say, 
 that his general opinion is, that there remains no other remedy for 
 c 3
 
 54 THE WH10. 
 
 ministers, than to go on making peers till his own turn comes, and 
 then stop. 
 
 The old Whig loves the church ; but it is a very abstract love, 
 and by no means extends to the clergy. Ever since the Revolu- 
 tion of 1688, the clergy of the Church of England and the Whig 
 party have been constantly opposed to each other ; and the quarrel 
 is just now rather more bitter than ever. 
 
 On these points, there are a few, and very few, young Whigs, 
 who take after the old race. Of this select body, some dozen are 
 in office ; and a very red-tapish, under-secretaryish air they hare 
 managed, in their short apprenticeship of office, to pick up. About 
 the same number are very innocuous country-gentlemen, or very 
 aspiring lawyers, or would-be lords of the treasury. Then, as 
 many more are young lords and honourables ; elder and younger 
 sons of ministers, and ministerial peers ; little to be distinguished 
 from the same noisy set of animals on the other side with whom 
 they come down to the House, about ten or eleven on great nights, 
 and never on others except that they cheer those whom the Tory 
 lordlings hoot, and hoot those whom the Tory lordlings cheer. For, 
 the only purpose for which our young nobility appear to have been 
 sent into parliament, or, indead, into the world, is that of making 
 inarticulate noises, and going out into one lobby or the other. 
 There is no more striking feature in the political state of this coun- 
 try, at the present moment, than the utter dearth of rising talent, 
 among either of the aristocratic parties ; and the young Whigs are 
 not, in this respect, a bit better than their hereditary antagonists. 
 
 Neither old nor young W T higs are by any means broken in to the 
 altered habits of the House in modern times. They come down 
 about five to hear questions asked of ministers, and their replies; 
 talk very loudly for the next half-hour ; then go and make a noise 
 at the bar, for another half-hour, in trying to get a pair ; and about 
 half-past six, or seven, go off to dine. Then the House is quit of 
 them till nine or ten, when they drop in again, and listen to the 
 speaking (if it be such as it is possible to listen to) till about eleven, 
 when the " dinner-men" begin to get very noisy, and cluster at the 
 bar, and interrupt the speeches ; or gather behind the Speaker's 
 chair, and bray and shout, while some few ensconce themselves in 
 safe nooks in the galleries, and sleep ; and a still smaller number 
 while away their time with a book in the library. It is, generally 
 speaking, however, rather a hard process for the whipper-in to get 
 his Whigs to the House, and very difficult to keep them there,
 
 THE WHIG. 55 
 
 when once got. When they are there, to be sure their votes are 
 pretty well to be depended on ; and that is no bad, or common 
 quality in these strange times. 
 
 On the whole, take them altogether, the Whigs, old and young, 
 are by no means a bad set of fellows ; and, as individuals, they form 
 rather the pleasantest society that you meet with among political 
 men. The Whig party is the only party that uses society as a 
 really efficient political engine ; and though there are certainly a 
 great many more fine houses in London, to which the Tories have 
 access, yet there are none of them to be compared with the leading 
 Whig houses ; and not only is this the case, but the Whig aristo- 
 cracy apply their great houses, and great dinners and assemblies, 
 much more effectually to political purposes. People in the country 
 have strange notions on this subject. They read in the Tory papers 
 that the whole aristocracy is Tory ; and that every well-dressed man 
 and woman in England is Conservative. They get a vague notion 
 that the Liberal members of both Houses live in garrets and cellars ; 
 and eat their beef-steak and potatoes, or potatoes without the beef- 
 steak, in the solitude of a box in some second-rate eating-house. 
 When a simple country gentleman or still simpler inheritor of a 
 mercantile fortune, has got into parliament, with a profession of 
 those Conservative politics, which he has thus been taught to con- 
 sider a passport to every good house in town, and comes up to 
 enjoy his senatorial gentility, he must find himself most wofully 
 taken in. The unhappy Tory must find that he has come into a 
 party, with which he is to meet only in the House of Commons ; 
 while his Whig neighbour is received at once into the fellowship of 
 Whig dinners and entertainments. He finds that social habits are 
 not the fashion of his political chiefs ; that their hospitality extends 
 only to the dull formality of one or two great dinners ; and that 
 for the Tories, there is no Holland, or Lansdowne, or Devonshire 
 House. These are joys reserved for Whigs alone. And though 
 wise men may wonder at there being any little man, to whom such 
 objects are great, you may depend upon it that members of parlia- 
 ment are a kind of people, on whose senses, and even votes, a good 
 dinner, and a grand house, exercise a very great influence. 
 
 Another great joy reserved for Whigs alone, is one of which, I 
 hiust confess that, the enjoyment is wholly incomprehensible by 
 me. The reader will see that I can be no Whig, when he finds that 
 1 speak thus sceptically of "Brookes's." Do you know "Brookes's?" 
 It is that loW, dingy-looking club-house, about half-way on the left
 
 ao THE WHIG. 
 
 side, going down St. James's Street. Conducted on the most anti- 
 quated principles of the old style of clubs, it affords no earthly 
 accommodation, or amusement, except fires, chairs, and sofas, news- 
 papers, and the society of Whig gentlemen. You can get a dinner 
 there, if you have a particular fancy for eating a solitary dinner, at 
 about double the expense for which you would get a better one any- 
 where else. But no one ever dines there, except at their occasional 
 house dinners, which serve the purpose of semi-public entertain- 
 ments. Suppers are gone out of fashion ; gambling is monopolised 
 l>y " Crockford's ;" and "Brookes's" doesn't any longer furnish 
 even a rubber. At about twelve o' clock in the day, you begin to 
 see the straggling quidnuncs of the party drop in, and pore over the 
 papers, or gaze out of the windows into St. James's Street. About 
 four or five, the attendance begins to get numerous. Whig lords 
 and gentlemen drop in at the beginning or close of their rides ; and 
 all the rumours and news of the morning pass rapidly about. But 
 even a more favourite hour for " Brookes's," is late in the evening, 
 after dinner. If you meet two or three old Whig gentlemen at 
 dinner, ten to one but, when your party breaks up about eleven, 
 you will hear them say that they are going down to " Brookes's." I 
 mean, of course, on Saturdays, or Sundays ; or when the Houses of 
 Parliament, which supply the place of all clubs, are not sitting. On 
 these occasions, the congregation of " Brookes's" assembles from all 
 quarters of London, between eleven and one, to hear the complete 
 news of the twenty-four hours ; and, by this solemn rite of Whiggism, 
 to finish their Whig-spent day. There may be great enjoyment in 
 all this ; but, for the life of me, I cannot comprehend how anybody 
 can find it half so agreeable as going to bed.
 
 <y 
 
 THE FARMER. 
 
 A better Farmer ne'er brushed dew from lawn. 
 
 BYRON.
 
 THE FARMER, 
 
 BY ALICE. 
 
 OF the very many pursuits that in this age of busy industry engage 
 the attention of man, that of agriculture, whether as regards its 
 antiquity, its utility, or its rationality, deserves to rank the highest. 
 When man first stood forth a living soul beneath the hand of his 
 Creator, it was to the cultivation of the earth that his attention was 
 directed ; and although the Divine malediction, which the subse- 
 quent disobedience of our great progenitor called down upon it, 
 has not ceased to operate, causing the thorn and the thistle to 
 spring forth spontaneously, and Adam's posterity literally to eat 
 bread in the sweat of their brow, yet has the judgment been so 
 tempered with mercy, that the arts of agriculture have, in all ages 
 of the world, been held in the highest estimation. 
 
 All the great and good men who figure in the earlier pages of 
 Scripture history, followed, in some of its various branches, the same 
 vocation ; and whether we consider it as sanctified by the example 
 of the patriarchs, ennobled by the practice of the Roman dictator, 
 selected as the favorite amusement of a British king, or, in its hum- 
 bler capacity, chosen as a means of subsistence by the English 
 Farmer, it is equally worthy of our respect and veneration. Form- 
 ing, as it does in this country, one of the principal sources of our 
 national wealth, and the great fountain of all our materials for 
 commerce, few will, we think, attempt to question the good policy 
 of promoting its interests, and yielding to the cultivator of the soil 
 the high and gradually rising position which he occupies. 
 
 Of all the changes which the rapid march of improvement has 
 effected in our social system within the last half-century, none is 
 greater than that which has taken place in the character and con- 
 dition of the Farmer ; and though the few who remain of a gene- 
 ration fast passing away, look back with regret to those days of good 
 old English hospitality, when he feasted his guests at one end of the 
 board, and his labourers at the other (a custom, it must be owned, 
 in strict conformity with the manners of the patriarchal ages), yet, 
 58 H
 
 58 THE FARMER. 
 
 as society is now constituted, it may be doubted whether the moral 
 and intellectual improvement that has resulted to the employer from 
 a somewhat less unrestrained intercourse with the employed, and 
 the consequent change in his tastes and habits, may not in the end 
 be productive of good to both. There are, we know, some who 
 hold a contrary opinion; and who wish, at formerly, to regard the 
 Farmer as a mere animal, whose only business it is to raise the 
 fruits of the earth, and whose sole pleasure, as these persons seem 
 to think, consists in devouring them ; whence, we suppose, the pro- 
 verb, to " eat like a Farmer." But we own we cannot see why 
 a man, because he has made choice of a calling which we have 
 proved to be honourable, should be unfitted for a participation in 
 those enjoyments which tend to raise his species to its proper place 
 in the scale of creation. Happily, these unworthy prejudices are 
 fast wearing away : a bookish Farmer is no longer a term of re- 
 proach ; and the honour of being regarded as a " fine hearty fellow* 
 (for which read one whose convivial qualities constitute his only 
 recommendation) has ceased to be the highest to which the brother- 
 hood may aspire. A young Farmer may now, instead of spending 
 his evenings at the market-table, or the village club, and returning 
 to his family in a state of inebriation, as was formerly too often the 
 case, devote them to the enlightened pages of Sir Humphrey Davy ; 
 and go forth in the morning to test the theories contained therein, 
 while watching the progress of his crops, or enquiring into the 
 qualities and capabilities of his soil, without exposing himself to the 
 sarcasms of any save the vulgar and the illiterate. Yet would we 
 not, on any account, detract from the merits of our respectable 
 forefathers ; most fully do we appreciate their genuine hospitality, 
 for which the cold and superficial politeness so called of the pre- 
 sent day forms but a poor substitute ; their warmth of feeling, their 
 liberality to the poor, and the honest pride which disdained to make 
 even wealth a stepping-stone to raise them to a station for which 
 they were, both by education and habits, disqualified. 
 
 The Farmers of England, in the present day, may be divided 
 into three classes ; and we will take a sketch from each, as we see 
 them hastening towards their place of general rendezvous, the 
 weekly market. The first in advance, both as regards the time of 
 day, and his time of life, is the respectable occupier of from fifty 
 to a hundred acres of land, in addition to which he fills thg office of 
 bailiff to a neighbouring gentleman, who professes to farm his own 
 estate, but who, having been brought up to the good and lucrative 
 trade of sugar-baking, and passed the greater part of his life in a
 
 THE FARMICK. .^9 
 
 London warehouse, has but a very slight acquaintance with country 
 matters ; and, therefore, wisely leaves all, save the financial depart- 
 ment, to his deputy ; he (the bailiff, not the master, who though a 
 large cultivator, must not be regarded as a fair specimen of the 
 genus English Farmer) partakes rather of the characteristics of the 
 old than the new school, inasmuch as he wears a shabby fustian 
 coat, a hat browned by age, and bared by exposure ; rides in an 
 old-fashioned taxed cart, with his name, residence, and calling set 
 forth thereon in large white letters, and has by his side his portly 
 and well-looking wife, her business at market being indicated by 
 the presence of a large basket of fowls, and a smaller one of eggs, 
 swinging beneath the cart. This worthy couple, as they go shaking 
 along in their uncouth vehicle, passing their harmless jokes on the 
 less fortunate pedestrians whom they overtake, present a true pic- 
 ture of rustic felicity. Their good-natured faces beam with health, 
 and the easy nod of recognition with which they salute the owners 
 of the more dashing carriages that pass by them, prove them to be 
 in possession of that independence which honesty, integrity, and 
 (alas ! that it must be added) a well-filled purse, can alone secure. 
 They are going early to market ; but we will not undertake to 
 predict the hour at which they will return, for these weekly migra- 
 tions constitute their only holidays, and as they are all in the way 
 of business, an extra hour or two may be fairly allowed them. 
 Besides all will go on well at hom in their absence : the brick 
 floor will be cleanly swept, and the long oaken board duly spread ; 
 for they have a large family of boys and girls, all brought up to 
 work hard, to whose care the farm, the dairy, and even the bailiff- 
 ship may be very safely intrusted. 
 
 Following closely upon the couple we have described (for he, 
 too, must be early at his post) comes the thrifty, money-saving, tho- 
 rough-paced man of business ; he of the high price and short credit 
 school, who prefers a canvass purse to a silk one because it will hold 
 more money ; and, for some equally cogent reason, never gives away 
 silver when copper will answer as good a purpose. Formerly he 
 rode on horseback, and the pockets of his sprucely-cut green coat 
 were made sufficiently capacious to contain the large sample bags of 
 corn, which it was necessary to take with him ; but latterly he has 
 grown too stout for an equestrian, and a something between a chaise 
 and a cart a sort of connecting link between the two, as he himself 
 is between the past and present race of farmers has been invented 
 for his use. To avoid the tax (for he is far too good a judge to let 
 hifl pride gjet the better of his prudence), he also has his name and
 
 60 THE FARMER. 
 
 dwelling set forth ; but the large capes of his driving coat, now ren- 
 dered otherwise useless by the impertinent innovations of the Mack- 
 intosh, are cleverly disposed, so as to hide them from public view. 
 Being of a social disposition, he generally offers his nearest neigh- 
 bour a ride, which civility he fully expects to be reciprocated the 
 following week ; and if we may judge of the conversation between 
 them by the signs and gestures that accompany it, vre should con- 
 jecture that it turned principally on the state of the crops, and the 
 prospects of the next harvest, varied occasionally by a dispute, 
 backed most likely by a wager, as to the qualities of their respective 
 samples. The Farmer of this class is good-tempered, convivial, and 
 apt to be rather boisterous in his mirth ; yet, even in his gayest mo- 
 ments, there is an expression of care lurking in his eye, that seems 
 to indicate an undue anxiety after the things of the world ; and 
 though he is far too honest intentionally to overreach in driving a 
 bargain, yet he is, to use a phrase common amongst them, " a hard 
 man to deal with." 
 
 The third and last Farmer who makes his appearance on the 
 road is a young and good-looking man, whose high-spirited horse 
 and dashing gig, together with his own dress as far removed from 
 the vulgar foppery of the ultra-fashionable, as from the slovenly 
 indifference that formerly distinguished those of his own caste 
 betray, perhaps, a somewhat too great desire to step out of his 
 sphere, and often lay him open to the charge, even from the elders 
 of his own fraternity, of getting above his business. Disdaining the 
 use of his whip, which hangs carelessly over his shoulder, he prides 
 himself on passing everything on the road, and feels, it must be 
 owned, far greater pleasure in discussing the merits of his own 
 horse than his neighbours' crops ; yet, when arrived at market, and 
 engaged head and hand in business, he proves himself no whit 
 behind his more experienced brethren in the arts and mysteries 
 belonging to his craft : and it is to him, the young and rising 
 Farmer, that we shall hereafter look, when time has sobered him 
 down into a contempt for those youthful vanities, from a love of 
 which so few of any class are exempt, to prove that a good edu- 
 cation, a cultivated mind, and, unless carried to an unbecoming 
 excess, refined tastes, are by no means incompatible with the 
 activity, zeal, and ability, necessary to make a skilful Farmer , a 
 good master, and an honest and respectable tenant. 
 
 We will now accompany the Farmer to his home, as the scene 
 where his character may be studied to greater advantage, and its lights 
 and shadows more carefully noted. Here he is a busy and a bustling
 
 fHE FARMER. 61 
 
 man, especially during hay-time and harvest : woe to the unhappy 
 wight under his control, who presumes to feel either hunger, thirst, 
 or i'atigue, except at stated hours, during these seasons ; yet better, 
 fur better, were it for him to endure these throe craving evils united, 
 than to be caught away from his post while the sky is lowering and 
 the corn unearned ; even the female inmates of the farm-house 
 (though, in these degenerate days, they have little to do with the 
 operations going on without) are expected to assume an unwonted 
 air of business ; and they can hardly be guilty of a greater offence 
 against the code of laws drawn up by the Farmer for the regulation 
 of his own establishment, than to require the aid of either man or 
 boy in the home department during the harvest month. There is 
 something very agreeable in the aspect of a farm at this season ; and 
 its master, while watching the ingathering of the precious fruits of 
 the earth, may well seem an object of envy to those whose lot is cast 
 within the murky walls of a great city ; and this is the reason, we 
 suppose, why so many who have acquired property in trade, risk 
 and (as harvest does not last all the year) too often Jose it in farming. 
 Yet iV ^ ie F armer ' s temper often severely tried ; for it requires no 1 
 1'ttle nhilosob V ' v ^ ^ e a ^ e * cons l e himself with the belief that the 
 
 t* i '- destroying his wheat, is benefiting his turnips; 
 heavy rain, which is . * 
 
 c "^aid is often filled and emptied ere the 
 ;and the canvass purse afoiv.. 
 
 . , , " , ,, , -v stacked. It is not much the 
 
 corn is housed, and the hay sait,.^ 
 
 ,. , . , , ^ ^nt his own shoulder to the 
 
 fashion, now-a-days, for the .farmer to \>. 
 
 , f i_ _ Actual labours of the 
 
 wheel, or, in other words, to take part in tne - 
 
 day ; but if he does, by chance, for an hour or so, it \ 
 what feats he will perform; the strongest and most efficient labourer 
 has no chance with him ; indeed, we have his own authority t. 
 stating that he, himself, can do the wo/k of two able-bodied men. ^ 
 
 The Farmer boasts of enjoying considerable influence in his 
 parish; on him the chief of the parish offices devolve: he w 
 churchwarden, overseer, surveyor, and a i>ndred other things in 
 turn, all calculated to increase his importa n ~ e ' in P reclsel 7 l 
 same ratio that they diminish his comfort. 1 ' h " n his y a . rd ' 
 grand emporium from whence *]! the edibles, S essent1 ^ 
 carrying on of vulgar, every-day life, find their w a ^ t 
 of his richer neighbours ; nay, he is fond of remindh. A & y o1 
 supply of the giant city itself depeno> on him, and . fa . cet ' y 
 marks that even the palace of royalty is indebted for muc 
 internal comfort and external popularity ta his & ^i*- , 
 
 " 
 
 his vicinity are all more or less connected fr,V v., 
 urchin of five years old, who trudges forth > \a
 
 f2 THE FARMER. 
 
 veteran labourer who, after having toiled through three score years 
 and ten, i? too often reduced to receive from his hand the scanty 
 pittance \vhich the parish allows him. An undue severity in his 
 intercourse with the poor, and an aptitude to overlook their past 
 services when old age comes upon them, are charges that have, and, 
 we fear, with too much reason, been brought against the Farmer ; 
 how far the fault may have originated in a defective law, causing the 
 poor to weigh too heavily upon him, it is not for us to determine ; 
 but we hope a better order of things is at hand ; and we hail, with 
 sincere pleasure, the attempts that are being made in many counties 
 by the farmers themselves, headed by certain patriotic and amiable 
 noblemen, to amend the condition of the agricultural labourer ; they 
 have our warmest wishes for their success : in the mean time, a 
 word in season, how good is it ! and many an opportunity has the 
 Farmer of speaking that word to his labourer ; of leading him while 
 breaking up the soil, or committing to its bosom the tender grain 
 so soon to spring forth with new life to look, through Nature, up to 
 Nature's God : on him, his temporal master, no less than on his 
 spiritual pastor, does the duty of directing his thoughts to another 
 state of existence devolve. The Farmer is seldom niggardly in 
 administering to the temporal wants of the px 101 ' around him ; as 
 freely hath he received, so freely doth he give, and it should be so ; 
 of the fruits of the earth, and the firstlings of the flock, he is no 
 longer, as in the earlier da,y> of agriculture, required to yield sacri- 
 fice, yet ought he still to " cast forth his bread upon the waters, that 
 it may return to him after many days." 
 
 The politics of the tenant were formerly those of his landlord; 
 and though, in this more enlightened age, he has learned to think 
 and act for himself, he generally makes a point of voting on the same 
 side, if he can do so without any violent compromise of his principles. 
 We have even known him refrain from exercising his highly prized 
 elective franchise, rather than oppose the family under whom his 
 grandfather, his father, and himself, had rented. The Poor-laws 
 and the Corn-laws are the great objects of his political watchfulness ; 
 and to the repeal of the latter, he is firmly, and we really believe, 
 conscientiously opposed; being convinced that irretrievable ruin 
 not only to the agriculturist, but, through him, to the community at 
 large mus t ensue. Except on these two points, his fervour as a 
 politician by no means equals that of the Farmers of the old school ; 
 for well do we remember sitting open-mouthed, our infant senses 
 lost in bewilderment, at the blindness and inefficiency of the then 
 monarch and his ministers, as set forth by a coterie of country poll-
 
 THE FARMER. 
 
 ticians ; and deeply did we wonder why men so very capable of 
 governing, as those to whom it was our high privilege to listen, were 
 not immediately placed at the head of affairs, in order to the salva- 
 tion of our unhappy country from the dangers that hung over it. 
 
 The Farmer loves his country ; and imagines that freedom and 
 domestic comfort, those two essentials to happiness, are not to be 
 met with out of it ; nor is the " roast beef of Old England " for- 
 gotten in his catalogue of the advantages it possesses over its conti- 
 nental neighbours, whose ragouts, fricassees, and omelets, he holds 
 in the most unqualified contempt. Yet his patriotism rests on 
 higher grounds than these : he loves the land of his birth for its own 
 sake ; he values its laws and institutions ; is proud of its political 
 importance, and loves to talk of its widely extended dominion. 
 That he is ready to fight for it, he has proved ; that he would die 
 for it, if necessary, we firmly believe. The narrow-minded and un- 
 worthy prejudice which he entertains against foreigners, merely a* 
 such, is a defect in his character, which nothing but that increased 
 intercourse with them, which the nature of his occupations almost 
 precludes, can remove. 
 
 The Farmer is a keen sportsman, and his favourite diversion is 
 fox-hunting. He is seldom better pleased than when riding forth, 
 booted and spurred., on his gallant grey, or bonnie brown ; his spirits 
 high, his cares laid aside ; indifferent whither he goes ; unknowing 
 when he shall return ; anxious only that his favourite animal should 
 acquit itself well in the day's chase. It is astonishing, on these 
 occasions, with what a total recklessness of consequences he gallops 
 across his own and his neighbours' fields, forgetting, in the ardour 
 of the pursuit, the destruction that follows on his horse's heels, 
 alive only to the gratification of the moment : can he be the same 
 man who, at a later period of life, when his increased bulk, or his 
 increased cares, or a union of both, have compelled him to relin- 
 quish the sport, stands pointing, with angry gestures, to a party of 
 fox-hunters, and wonders that any man, that farmers especially, can 
 be so cruelly thoughtless as to " destroy the young corn after that 
 fashion ; " an ebullition of displeasure that generally terminates 
 with a threat (never put in execution, however) to prosecute fa- 
 damages. 
 
 If it be a weakness, it is certainly a pardonable one the vene- 
 ration with which the Farmer generally regards the person, and 
 even the family of " my lord," especially if the connexion between 
 them has been of long standing ; but their intercourse is not now 
 marked by that haughtiness on the one side, and servility on thi
 
 64 THE FAKMER. 
 
 othr. which formerly characterised it ; the tenant no longer looks 
 up to his landlord as if he were the only person who wears a coro- 
 net and makes long speeches in parliament ; and the latter has 
 ceased to regard the respectable man, who pays him a fair and 
 liberal rent for his land, as a feudal dependant, from whom the laws 
 of custom, if not those of the country, justify him in exacting an 
 updue and unworthy homage : they meet not, indeed, as equals ; 
 that the inbred dignity of the one would not permit, nor the good 
 sense of the other desire ; but as persons connected together by a 
 tie, which, if the relative duties that it enjoins are strictly performed, 
 is equally honourable to both : the lord well knows how to con- 
 descend ; and if the Farmer be not uncommonly deficient in tact, 
 he knows how to receive such condescension. When they meet in 
 their rides or walks, his lordship will often linger behind his family, 
 to exchange a few words on parish or other matters with his tenant ; 
 or he occasionally joins him in his fields, and solicits from him a 
 lesson in practical farming, taking care to impart a little of his 
 theoretic knowledge in return, to make the balance of obligation 
 even, we suppose. The Farmer always makes a point of attending 
 public meetings and dinners, whenever his landlord takes the chair ; 
 for he argues, that if great men, whose natural sphere is the court 
 or the cabinet, trouble themselves with country matters, it is a shame 
 not to support them. 
 
 On rent-day, he finds it consistent both with his pride and policy 
 to present himself early at the steward's room ; for, besides the " look 
 of the thing," which goes very far with him, all questions of reduc- 
 tions, deductions, and repairs, stand a much better chance of obtain- 
 ing a favourable hearing then, than at a later hour. At the dinner 
 which follows, who so ready to do honour to the toasts of " Queen, 
 Church, and State," as tiie Farmer ? who so loyal in sentiment, who- 
 so vehement in expression ? Yet not in word only is he so ; he 
 knows himself to be the link uniting the rich and poor together, 
 which, if it be snapped, both classes must fall to the ground ; with 
 proud confidence, therefore, he looks for the support of his Queen 
 and his country, and feels at the same time that, if (which Heaven 
 avert 1) danger should threaten either, though all else forsook them, 
 thp British Yeoman would stand by them to the last
 
 THE COUNTRY SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 The village all declared how much he knew : 
 'Twaa certain he could write and cipher too. 
 
 GOLDSMITH.
 
 THE COUNTRY SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 BY WILLIAM HOWITT. 
 
 THE COUNTRY SCHOOLMASTER is one of the most marked character* 
 of the country. Spite of the tingling remembrance of his blows, 
 we have a real love for him, and sympathise with him in his sense 
 of neglect. He complains, and justly too, that he has had the first 
 moulding of the intellects of many of the greatest geniuses which 
 this country has produced, yet what genius in his glory has looked 
 back to his old dominie with a grateful recognition? The worthy 
 Sir Walter Scott is almost the only one. Dominie Sampson, Reuben 
 i'utler, Jedediah Cleishbotham, schoolmaster and parish-clerk of 
 vjaudercleugh, and Peter Pattieson, are delightful proofs of the 
 i'act. But Scott saw the world of peculiar character which lies in 
 l-he Country Schoolmaster, and disdained not to honour it as it 
 deserved. Beyond this, little renown, in faith, has the village 
 Dionysius won. Shenstone has done fitting honour to the village 
 schoolmistress ; but the master has been fain to shelter himself 
 under the sole bush of laurel which good-natured Oliver Goldsmith 
 has planted to his renown in " The Deserted Village." 
 
 But " past is all his fame," at least with this learned and march- 
 of-intellect modern public. We have got steam and railroads ; and 
 now there is a cry for a steam and railroad system of education. 
 Lancaster, and his rival, Bell, have turned the schoolmaster into a 
 sort of drill-serjeant, and marched the children of the poor by whole 
 troops and regiments into the mysteries of A, B, C. But beyond 
 the mysteries of A, B, C, they have not got them ; or if they have 
 taught them more than that, it is only to calculate how they can 
 cheat one another with the greater adroitness. By their A, B, C, they 
 are able to see further into mischief; their letters prove no lets to a 
 wider acquaintance with crime ; and their manceuvres within doors are 
 only the forerunners to manoeuvres without. The moral interior is found 
 to be yet untouched by the marching and manoeuvring machinery; 
 and there is now one wide outcry for a national, religious, moral, 
 and intellectual education, or all is declared to be over with us. 
 59 ,
 
 firt 
 
 THE COUMTllY SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 \Velt, success to the experiment ! Let Churchmen and Dis- 
 senters adjust their plans for carrying it on, without running foul ui.e 
 of another. Let us have a great national school in each parish in the 
 kingdom. It is easy enough to build when the funds are once got. 
 Plenty of children are ready to rush in as soon as the new doors are 
 opened ; but there is just one little difficulty which the sanguine 
 abettors of the scheme, amid all their valour by which they knock 
 down objections and dispose of difficulties as easily as Don Quixote 
 squandered the flock of sheep, never seem for a moment to dream 
 of and that is, Where are the schoolmasters to come from ? 
 
 Ay k where are the schoolmasters to come from ? A single 
 schoolmaster is not a thing which can be made in a moment. It he 
 vs to be good for anything, he is a work of toil and time ; how, then, 
 are you to come in a single day at at least ten thousand? for so 
 many are our parishes. From the days of Milton to the present, 
 what philosophers and statesmen have been labouring to devise a 
 perfect system of tuition ! Locke strove to unlock the mystery. 
 Bacon had tried it before him. Descartes, Rousseau, Miss E'.lg- 
 worth, Miss Hamilton, Hannah More, and a great many more, have 
 been at it since. Well, then, if we have not been able to discover 
 the true system, how are we to discover heigh presto the true men ? 
 Are the system and the men to work it to be created by the miracu- 
 lous powers of an act of parliament ? An act of parliament can decree 
 funds, and create a commission and branch of commissioners, I grant 
 you, and that is about all that the majority of our most zealous advo- 
 cates for government education seem to see. A commissionership, 
 with about eight hundred a year and a guinea a day for expenses, 
 is a particularly beautiful prospect, and to desire a commissionership 
 is certainly to desire a good thing. But will a board of commission 
 as a matter of course become a board of education ? By what en- 
 chanter's wand are Messieurs the commissioners to evoke, in one 
 hour, for the supply of all her Majesty's ten thousand parishes, aa 
 many schoolmasters, accomplished in all the knowledge, and the 
 moral fitness, and the practical skill, which are necessary to carry 
 into effect such a perfect system of popular education as the world 
 has not yet seen ? The system of Fellenberg is, perhaps, the very 
 highest approach to that system of literary, intellectual, and Christian 
 education, which we need ; but where are the men to direct even 
 Fttlleuberg's system ? Fellenberg, during a labour of forty years, 
 hag been compelled to begin by teaching himself, and to go on by 
 moulding a.ftd creating teachers to his mind. All those in England 
 who have assayed a better system of popular education, Lancaster, Bell, 
 Qf Edinburgh Captain Brenton ol Hackney, Lady Byron a$
 
 THE cot;::TKY s; :: JL.L:,:.V.,TER. G7 
 
 TV; ling, Lord Lovelace at Ocham, Dr. Hay at Norwood, Mrs. Tuck 
 fu id at Fill ford in Devonshire, have found that there were no such 
 ti.'ngs as masters ready made to carry on a truly effective system 
 of popular tuition. They all cry out, "We want masters." They 
 all declare, " There are no such things in existence as schoolmasters 
 qualified to administer a suitable education to the people." 
 
 Thus, they who are clamouring for an i:nmediate enactment 
 for a national system of education (and nr> man is more a:ixi ms 
 for a good, national system than I am), are calling for a :lock which 
 shall go without a pendulum, or mainspring ; a steam-engine without 
 pisro!> or cylinder ; or a coach without horses. They want, in fact, 
 a Fvstom superior to all that has yet been introduced, and ten 
 tl.ousand masters to work it, each individual man of whom must 
 be in himself the highest specimen of combined intelligence and 
 moral Uaining; in a word, the noblest achievement of modern 
 education, or he is not competent to the solemn dulies of his office. 
 The old race of schoolmasters cannot serve the need ; they are 
 declared to be ignorant pretenders, and on an erroneous system. 
 Here leave we then the flaming advocate of instanter reformation, 
 a national enactment, and ten thousand duly prepared and accom- 
 plished professors of the new system, to chew the cud over this one 
 little query, "Where are the schoolmasters to come from?" and 
 turn again to our master of the old school. 
 
 Poor fellow ! true enough are Oliver's words, " Past is all hl& 
 fame." He has had a quiet and a flattering life of it, for many a 
 generation ; the rustics have gazed and wondered 
 
 " That one small head coul.! carry all he knew." 
 
 But the innovations of this innovating age have reached even him 
 at last. He has built his cabin in an obscure hamlet, or, as in 
 Ireland, set up his hedge-school under some sunny hank ; he has 
 retreated to the remotest glens, and the fastnesses of unfrequented 
 mountains, but even there the moflern spirit of reform ha., found 
 him out. He sees a cloud of ruinous blackness collecting over 
 his head, out of which are about to spring ten thousand school- 
 masters of a new fungled stamp ; and he knows that it is all up 
 with him for ever. The railroad of national education is a 1 out 
 to run through his ancient patrimony, and he shakes his head as 
 he asks himself whether he is to come in for equitable compensation. 
 No, his fame is past, and his occupation is going too. He is to be 
 run down by an act of parliament, though he never asked for an 
 act of parliament to set him up. He was the selector of his own 
 location, the builder of his own fortunes. The <:ood old honest
 
 68 THF COUNTRY SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 stimulant of caring for himself led him to care for the education 
 of his neighbour's children : he needed no subscription to buy 
 land and^build a spacious school ; he opened his cottage door, and 
 in walked all the lads of the hamlet and neighbouring farms, with 
 slates slung round their necks, books under arms, and their dinners 
 in their bags. For fourpence a week, reading and spelling, and 
 sixpence for those who write and cipher, he gave them hard benches 
 and hard blows ; and when he had as many stowed into his little 
 house as were about enow to stifle him and one another, thought 
 himself a lucky fellow, and looked round on the whole horde, with 
 dirty faces and corduroy jackets and trousers, rough heads, and 
 white or blue pinafores, with a pride which saw the future neigh- 
 bourhood filled with clever fellows, all of his own drubbing. 
 
 Poor old schoolmaster ! little didst thou foresee these topsy-turvy 
 times when I used to sit amongst such a rustic crew, and achieve 
 pot-hooks and fish-hooks at that sorely blotted and lacerated desk ; 
 and saw thee sitting in thy glory, looking, in my eyes, the very 
 image of mortal greatness. Little, as we stole late into school, 
 having been delayed by the charms of birds'-nests or cockchafers, 
 and heard thee thunder forth in lion-tones, " Eh ! what's this? 
 
 ' A miller, a moller, 
 A ten o'clock scholar. 
 
 March this way, march this way ! " little, as we ran, wild truants, 
 through cowslip fields, and by sunny brooks, with hearts beating 
 with mingled rapture and dread of the morrow ; little, as we riot- 
 ously barred thee out for a holiday, did we ever dream that so dark 
 a day could come upon thee ! But, in faith, it is just at hand, and 
 if we are to preserve a portrait of the Country Schoolmaster, we 
 must sketch it now or never. 
 
 Oliver Goldsmith has hit off some of his most striking features. 
 The Country Schoolmaster, in his finest field of glory, the hamlet 
 where, except the clergyman, there are no higher personages than 
 old-fashioned farmers, who received their book-larning from himself 
 or his predecessor is a man of importance, both in his own eyes 
 and others. He yet makes the rustics stare at his " words of 
 learned length and thundering sound ; " he can yet dispute with 
 the parson, though he more frequently is the profound admirer 
 of his reverence : he looks upon himself as the greatest man in 
 the parish, except the parson, whose knowledge he extols to the 
 skies, and whose reading of the church serv ces he pronounce* tue 
 finest in the world. The villagers always link " our pardon and 
 our schoolmaster" in one breath of admiration. If the Schoolmaster
 
 THE COUNTRY SCHOOLMASTER. 60 
 
 can quote a sentence of Latin, wonderful is then their wonder of 
 his powers. He is always styled " a long-headed fellow, as deep 
 as the north star." As in Goldsmith's days, he can still often 
 guage, and is the land-measurer of the district. In the bright, 
 evening nook of the public-house, where the farmer, and the village 
 shopkeepers, and the blacksmith duly congregate, his voice is loud, 
 Js air is lofty, and his word is law. There he often confounds 
 their intellects by some such puzzling query as "Whether the egg 
 or the bird was made first?" "What man Cain expected to meet 
 in the wilderness before there was a man there ? " or, " Who was 
 the father of Zebedee's children ? " 
 
 If he be self-educated, as he generally is, he has spent the best 
 part of his life in studying Latin ; or he is deep in mathematics ; 
 or he has dived into the mysteries of astrology ; has great faith in 
 Raphael's annual prognostications, and in " Culpepper's Herbal." 
 His literature consists of a copy of verses sent now-and-then to the 
 neighbouring newspaper, or solutions of mathematical problems for 
 the learned columns of the same. Perhaps he adventures a flight 
 so high as one of the London magazines ; and if, by chance, his 
 lucubration should appear in the " Gentleman's," his pride is un- 
 bounded, and his reputation in his neighbourhood made for life. His 
 library has been purchased at the bookstall of the next market- 
 town, or he has taken it in at the door in numbers from the walking 
 stationer. " Rapin's History of England," " Josephus," and " Bar- 
 clay's Dictionary," in large quartos on coarse paper, and the histories 
 with coarse cuts, are sure to figure amongst them. He carries on a 
 little trade in ink, pens, writing paper, and other stationery, himself. 
 If he be married, his wife is almost sure to drive a still brisker trade 
 in gingerbread, Darby-and-Joans, toffy, and lollipops. As he is 
 famous for his penmanship, he is the great letter-writer of the neigh- 
 bourhood, and many is the love secret that is confided to his ear. 
 Nay, he letters signboards, and cart-boards, and coffin-plates ; for 
 who is there besides that can ? He makes wills, and has in former 
 days, before the lawyers hedged round their monopoly with the 
 penalty of illegality on such deeds, drawn conveyances, and was the 
 peaceful practitioner in all such affairs for his neighbourhood. 
 
 Oh ! multifarious are the doings of the Country Schoolmaster, 
 and amusing are their variety. What an air of pedagogue pomp 
 distinguishes him ; how antiquely amusing is his school costume 
 often , how much more amusing the piebald patchwork of his lan- 
 guage. His address has frequently no little of mine ancient Pistol 
 in it. But how uniquely curious is the Country Schoolmaster in 
 love ! I happen to have in my possession the actual love-letter of a
 
 O TftE COUNTRY SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 Country Sc-ltoolmastor, which, as a curiosity, is worth transcribing. 
 The Dominie has now long been married to his fair one, who is as 
 pretty a little Tartar as any in the country. He writes something 
 in the phraseology of a Quaker, but he is, in fact, the parish clerk. 
 In copying the letter, I alter not a word, except the actual names of 
 places: s - UTHUBSTj Nov lst , 816 
 
 " ESTF.EMED FRIEND, I embrace the pr-sent Opportunity of addressing 
 these few lines unto thee, hoping they will find th"e in good h?alth, which leaves 
 me the same, thank my God! Resnected P, I have o ten told thee I don't 
 much like illustrating my sentiments by correspondence, but I write with a 
 majestic air of animation and delicht when I communicate my thoughts to one 
 th-t I love beyond description; yes! to one that is virtuous innocent, and un- 
 blemishable ; which has a comely behaviour, a loving disposition, and a troidly 
 principle. And thou, the person ! charming fair one, which may justly boast o 
 thy virtue, and laugh at others 1 aspersion. Dear P., when I reflect on all thy 
 amiable qualities and fond endearments, I am chirmin^ly exilted, and amply 
 sntisfied. My senses are the more stimulated with love, and evry wish gives 
 th^e a congratulation. Amiable P., I've meditated on our former accompani- 
 ments, and been wonderfully dignified a* th : ne condescending graces. I, in 
 particular, admire thy good temper, and thn-e relentful forgiveness. For when 
 we hive partook of a walk together, some trifling idei h/>s exasperated my dis- 
 position, and rendered my behiviour ungenerous and d'sr j pntable. Thou, like 
 a benevolent friend, soothest the absurd incensement, and in^t^ntly resuscitated 
 our respective amourousness, and doubly exaggerated O'T lov'ng entmnurs. 
 "While, above all others, I thee regard, and whilst love is spontaneously im- 
 printed in our hearts, let it have its unbounded course. Loving Frend, I was 
 more than a little gratified that thou wrote to thy Mrs., which was thy duty, for 
 she has been thy peculiar friend, and gave thee competent admonition. She is a 
 f'ithful monitor, and a well-wisher to thine everhsting welfare. I was absolutely 
 grieved when I heard of thee not being well, and completely fretted that I was 
 aioof, and cou'd not sympathise with thy inconsolitary moments. I candidly 
 hope thy couh is better, and I earnestly desire that our absence may be imme- 
 diately transformed into lasting presence, that we may enjoy our fond hopes and 
 loving embraces. 
 
 " My Dear, the last Sundav night that T wis at Bevington, I parted with thee 
 about four o'clock ; and 1 stopped in the market-place looki"g at the sold'ers 
 pmading, and barkening the band playing, till at out six; then I proceeded on 
 my nightly excursion. I called at the public-house, and was spouting a little of 
 my romancing nonsense, and I instantly received a blo-.v from a person in the 
 adjoining company. I never retaliated, which was very surpiising, but a wisely 
 omission. I should not have troubled thee with this tedious explanation h?dst 
 tl.ou not been preposterously informed about the subject. Thy ingrateful 
 relations can't help telling thee of my vain actions, which is said purposely 
 to abolish our acquaintance. But we are so accustomed to their insinuating 
 persuasions and ambidextrous tales, that renders them unlikely to execute their 
 wishful designs. Our loves are too inflexible 'hin to be separated by a set of 
 contemntuous onfs. 
 
 " My dearest Dear, at th ; s present time I wish I had thee dandling between my 
 2rms. 1 would give that swf M moutl. tn thousand kises, for I preler thy well- 
 composed structure above all other secular beauties.
 
 THE COUNTRY SCHOOLMASTER, 71 
 
 "Louijg F- , I will positively come to fetch at the respective period, when 
 we can have a consolahle and delightful journey homewards, reanimate our 
 fond and innocent delights, salute at pleasure, and every kiss will sweeten our 
 progressive paths ; they will add delightfully to our warm affections, and in- 
 vigoiiUe us to perform our journey with the greatest facility. 
 
 " I thank thee for sending thy coinplimental love to me, which I conclude 
 with ten thousand times ten thousand respects. 
 
 " I remain, thine ever faithful and constant lover, 
 
 " S. G ." 
 
 But this ib only tne ludicrous side of the Country Schoolmaster : 
 he has another and a noble one. Much as we may now despise him, 
 and lightly as we may desire, by one sweeping act of parliament, to 
 consign him and all his compeers to instant ruin and a union work- 
 house finale, to him the country owes a large debt of gratitude. 
 Without aid of parliament, or parish, from age to age, he has opened 
 his little gymnasium, and tamed and civilised the Fauns and Satyrs 
 of the rural wilderness. What little light and knowledge have ra- 
 diated through our villages and fields, it is he that has kindled them. 
 It is he who has enabled the farmer, the miller, the baker, and every 
 little tradesman and mechanic to conduct his affairs, manage his 
 markets, and add to the capital of the nation. It is he who has 
 taught the rough cub of the hamlet to make his bow, to respect his 
 superiors ; in fact, to get a little glimmering of morals and manners, 
 and a passable shape of humanity. lV T ay, many of these humble men 
 have been clergymen, who have won honours at college, and have 
 been full of the fire of genius and the kernel of wisdom, but who, 
 having not the golden wings of this world, have sunk down into 
 obscure Thorpes and Wicks, and in far off fields and finest regions 
 have gone on their way like little unnoticed books, moaning over thei? 
 lot, yet scattering plenty and greenness around them. How many 
 such are there, at this day, sitting in uncouth garbs, in uncouth 
 places, on dreary moorlands, and amongst wild falls and mountains* 
 Such have I seen in various parts of these kingdoms, and wondered 
 at their patience and holy resignation. On the the tops of wildest 
 hills, by some little chapel like that of Fribunk, near Sedberg, in 
 Yorkshire, 1 have opened the door of a cabin which was filled with 
 * hum as with bees, and found a company of bare-legged boys and 
 girls round a peat-fire on the hearth ; and a young man, with the 
 air of a scholar and a clergyman, sitting as their teacher. Yea, in 
 many a bleak and picturesque situation, where the old school-bell 
 hangs in the old chesnut-tree ; in a little rude church, or chapel, 
 or ancient school-house, are such men as Wordsworth has described 
 \\\ Robert Walker of Cumberland still to be found What a picture
 
 72 THE COUNTRY SCHOOLMASTER 
 
 that of Robert Walker is ! " Eight hours in each day, during five 
 days in each week, and half of Saturday, except when the labours 
 of husbandry were very urgent, he was occupied in teaching. His 
 seat was within the rails of the altar ; the communion table was his 
 desk ; and, like Shenstone' s schoolmistress, the master employed 
 himself at the spinning-wheel, while the children were repeating 
 their lessons by his side." 
 
 This mountain patriarch, who never made any charge for teach- 
 ing, but took in all that came, and such as could afford gave him 
 what they pleased, not only performed service twice every Sunday, 
 but was the scrivener of the neighbourhood, writing out petitions, 
 deeds of conveyance, wills, covenants, &c. ; so that, at certain periods 
 of the year, he was obliged to sit up the greater part of the night. 
 Besides spinning at all possible hours, he also cultivated his garden 
 and a little farm, and assisted his neighbours in haymaking and 
 shearing their sheep. " I found him," said a stranger, " sitting at 
 the head of his table, dressed in a coarse blue frock, trimmed with 
 black horn buttons ; a checked shirt, a leathern strap about his neck 
 for a stock, a coarse apron, and a pair of great wooden-soled shoes, 
 plated with iron to preserve them ; a child upon his knee, eating 
 his breakfast ; his wife and other children wailing on each other, 
 or teasing and spinning wool. Every Sunday was served, upon 
 ihe long table, messes of broth for such of his congregation who 
 came from a distance, and usually took their seats as parts of his 
 household." And what was the value of his living ? 17 10s. a-year ! 
 
 It would be difficult, perhaps, to find exactly another Robert 
 Walker ; but men of like character and habits many a primitive nook 
 can yet shew us. It is under such men that Shaktpere, Burns, 
 Wordsworth, Newton, Crabbe, and many another noble genius, have 
 sate in their boyish days, and received from them the elements of 
 that knowledge with which they \vc,j afterwards to do such marvels 
 before aii mankind. We will warrant that such was the man 
 whom good-hearted Goldsmith first trembled at, and then immor- 
 talised. The Country Schoolmaster, indeed, has cause of high 
 pride ; and when we pass our act of parliament for our ten thousand 
 new schools and spic-and-span new masters, let us remember the 
 long reign, and the old glories, and the patient and ill-paid merits 
 of the old Country Schoolmaster, and " temper the wind to the 
 shorn lamb." Bitter will be that day of revolution to him, but we 
 can make it less bitter ; hard will be the fall, but kindness and 
 generous sympathy can break it, and dismiss tha picturesque, if 
 somewhat dogmatic, old man, to an old age of honourable ease.
 
 THE FASHIONABLE AUTHORESS. 
 
 How fluent nonsense trickles from her pen.
 
 THE FASHIONABLE AUTHORESS. 
 
 BY WILLIAM THACKERAY. 
 
 PAYING a visit the other day to my friend Timson, who, I need not 
 tell the public, is editor of that famous evening paper, the & , (and 
 let it be said that there is no more profitable acquaintance than a 
 gentleman in Timson's situation, in whose office, at three o'clock 
 daily, you are sure to find new books, lunch, magazines, and 
 innumerable tickets for concerts and plays) ; going, I say, into 
 Timson's office, I saw on the table an immense paper cone or 
 funnel, containing a bouquet of such a size that it might be called 
 a bosquet, wherein all sorts of rare geraniums, luscious magnolias, 
 stately dahlias, and other floral produce were gathered together 
 a regular flower-stack. 
 
 Timson was for a brief space invisible, and I was left alone in 
 the room with the odours of thi; tremendous bow-pot, which filled 
 the whole of the inky, smutty, dingy apartment with an agreeable 
 incense. " rus ! quando to aspiciam," exclaimed I, out of the Latin 
 grammar, for imagination had carried me away to the country, and 
 was about to make another excellent and useful quotation (frcm the 
 14th book of the Iliad, Madam), concerning "ruddy lotuses, and 
 crocusses, and hyacinths," when all of a sudden Timson appeared. 
 His head and shoulders had, in fact, been engulphed in the flowers, 
 among which he might be compared to any Cupid, butterfly, or bee. 
 His little face was screwed up into such an expression of comical 
 delight and triumph, that a Methodist parson would have laughed 
 at it in the midst of a funeral sermon. 
 
 " What are you giggling at?" said Mr. Timson, assuming a 
 high, aristocratic air. 
 
 " Has the goddess Flora made you a present of that bower 
 wrapped up in white paper, or did it come by the vulgar hands of 
 yonder gorgeous footman, at whom all the little printers' devils are 
 staring in the passage ?" 
 
 " Stuff," said Timson, picking to pieces some rare exotic, worth 
 at the very leatt fifteen-pence ; " a friend, who knows that Mrs. 
 60 K
 
 74 THE FASHIONABLE AUTHORESS. 
 
 Pimson and I are fond of these things, has sent us a nosegay ; 
 that's all. 
 
 I saw how it was. " Augustus Timson," exclaimed I, sternly ; 
 the Pimlicoes have been with you ; if that footman did not wear 
 the Pimlico plush, ring the bell and order me out: if that three- 
 cornered billet lying in your snuff-box has not the Pimlico seal to 
 it, never ask me to dinner again." 
 
 " Well, if it does" says Mr. Timson, who flushed as red as a 
 peony, " what is the harm ? Lady Fanny Flummery may send 
 flowers to her friends, I suppose ? The conservatories at Pimlico 
 House are famous all the world over, and the countess promised 
 me a nosegay the very last time I dined there." 
 
 " Was that the day when she gave a box of bonbons for your 
 darling little Ferdinand ?' 
 
 " No, another day." 
 
 " Or the day when she promised you her carriage for Epsom races ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Or the day when she hoped that her Lucy and your Barbara- 
 Jane might be acquainted, and sent to the latter from the former a 
 new French doll and tea- things ?" 
 
 " Fiddlestick !'' roared out Augustus Timson, Esquire ; " I 
 wish you wouldn't come bothering here. I tell you that Lady 
 Pimlico is my friend my friend, mark you, and I will allow no 
 man to abuse her in my presence: I say again no row;" wherewith 
 Mr. Timson plunged both his hands violently into his breeches- 
 pockets, looked me in the face sternly, and began jingling his keys 
 and shillings about. 
 
 At this juncture (it being about half-past three o'clock in the 
 afternoon), a one-horse-chay drove up to the 3f office (Timson lives 
 at Clapham, and comes in and out in this machine) a one-horse- 
 chay drove up ; and ?.midst a scuffling and crying of small voices, 
 good humoured Mrs. Timson bounced into the room. 
 
 "Here we are, deary," said she: "we'll walk to the Mery- 
 weathers ; and 1 've told Sam to be in Charles Street at twelve 
 with the chaise : it would n't do, you know, to come out of the 
 Pimlico box, and have the people cry, ' Mrs. Timson's carriage ! ' 
 for old Sam and the chaise." 
 
 Timson, to this loving and voluble address of his lady, gave a 
 peevish, puzzled look towards the stranger, as much as to say, 
 " He 's here." 
 
 " La, Mr. Smith ! and how do you do ? So rude I did n't 
 see you : but the fact is, we are all in inch a bustle ! Augustus has
 
 THE FASHIONABLE AUTHORESS. 75 
 
 orot Lady Pimlico's box for the Puritani to-night, and I vowed f'd 
 take the children." 
 
 Those young persons were evidently, from their costume, pre- 
 pared for some extraordinary festival. Miss Barbara- Jane, a young 
 lady of six years old, in a pretty pink slip and white muslin, her 
 dear little poll bristling over with papers, to be removed previous to 
 the play ; while Master Ferdinand had a pair of nankeens (I can 
 recollect Timson in them in the year 1825 a great buck), and white 
 silk stockings, which belonged to his mamma. His frill was very 
 large and very clean, and he was fumbling perpetually at a pair ol 
 white kid gloves, which his mamma forbade him to assume before the 
 opera. 
 
 And "Look here!" and "Oh, precious!" and "Oh, my!" 
 were uttered by these worthy people, as they severally beheld the 
 vast bouquet, into which Mrs. Timson's head flounced, just as her 
 husband's had done before. 
 
 " I must have a green-house at the Snuggery, that 's positive, 
 Timson, for I 'm passionately fond of flowers and how kind of 
 Lady Fanny ! Do you know her ladyship, Mr. Smith ? " 
 
 " Indeed, madam, I do n't remember having ever spoken to a 
 lord or a lady in my life." 
 
 Timson smiled in a supercilious way. Mrs. Timson exclaimed, 
 " La, how odd ! Augustus knows ever so many. Let's see, there 's 
 the Countess of Pimlico and Lady Fanny Flummery ; Lord Doldrum 
 (Timson touched up his travels, you know) ; Lord Gasterton, Lord 
 Guttlebury's eldest son ; Lady Pawpaw (they say she ought not to 
 be visited, though) ; Baron Strum Strom Strumpf " 
 
 What the baron's name was I have never been able to learn ; 
 for here Timson burst out with a " Hold your tongue, Bessy," which 
 stopped honest Mrs. Timson's harmless prattle altogether, and 
 obliged that worthy woman to say meekly, " Well, Gus, I did not 
 think there was any harm in mentioning your acquaintance." Good 
 soul ! it was only because she took pride in her Timson that she 
 loved to enumerate the great names of the persons who did him 
 honour. My friend the editor was, in fact, in a cruel position, 
 looking foolish before his old acquaintance, stricken in that unfor- 
 tunate sore point in his honest, good humoured character. The man 
 adored the aristocracy, and had that wonderful respect for a lord 
 which, perhaps, the observant reader may have remarked, especially 
 characterises men of Timson's way of thinking. 
 
 In old days at the club (we held it in a small public-house near 
 the Cuburg Theatre, some of us having free admissions to that
 
 76 THE FASHIONABLE AUTHORESS. 
 
 place of amusement, and some of us living for convenience in the 
 immediate neighbourhood of one of his Majesty's prisons in that 
 quarter) in old days, I say, at our spouting and toasted cheese 
 club, called " The Fortum," Timson was called Brutus Timson, and 
 not Augustus, in consequence of the ferocious republicanism which 
 characterised him, and his utter scorn and hatred of a bloated, 
 do-nothing aristocracy. His letters in " The Weekly Sentinel," 
 signed " Lictor," must be remembered by all our readers : he 
 advocated the repeal of the corn laws, the burning of machines, 
 the rights of labour, &c. &c., wrote some pretty defences of 
 Robespierre, and used seriously to avow, when at all in liquor, 
 that, in consequence of those "Lictor" letters, Lord Castlereagh 
 had tried to have him murdered, and thrown over Blackfriars Bridge. 
 
 By what means Augustus Timson rose to his present exalted 
 position it is needless here to state ; suffice it, that in two years he 
 was completely bound over neck-and-heels to the bloodthirsty 
 aristocrats, hereditary tyrants, &c. One evening he was asked to 
 dine with a secretary of the Treasury (the & is ministerial, and has 
 been so these forty-nine years) ; at the house of that secretary of the 
 Treasury he met a lord's son : walking with Mrs. Timson in the 
 park next Sunday, that lord's son saluted him. Timson was from 
 that moment a slave, had his coats made at the west end, cut his 
 wife's relations (they are dealers in marine stores, and live at 
 Wapping), and had his name put down at two clubs. 
 
 Who was the lord's son ? Lord Pimlico's son, to be sure, the 
 Honourable Frederick Flummery, who married Lady Fanny Foxy, 
 daughter of Pitt Castlereagh, second Earl of Reynard, Kilbrush 
 Castle, county Kildare. The earl had been ambasssador in '14 : Mr. 
 Flummery, his attache : he was twenty-one at that time, with the 
 sweetest tuft on his chin in the world. Lady Fanny was only 
 four-and-twenty, just jilted by Prince Scoronconcolo, the horrid man 
 who had married Miss Solomonson with a plum. Fanny had nothing 
 Frederick had about seven thousand pounds less. What better 
 could the young things do than marry? Marry they did, and in 
 the most delicious secrecy. Old Reynard was charmed to have an 
 opportunity of breaking with one of his daughters for ever, and only 
 longed for an occasion never to forgive the other nine. 
 
 A wit of the Prince's tune, who inherited and transmitted to 
 his children a vast fortune in genius, was cautioned on his marriage 
 to be very economical. " Economical ! " said he ; " my wife has 
 nothing, and I have nothing: I suppose a man can't live under 
 that!" Our interesting pair, by judiciously employing the same
 
 iHE FASHIONABLE AUTHORESS. 77 
 
 capital, managed, year after year, to live very comfortably, until, 
 at last, they were received into Pimlico House by the dowager 
 (who has it for her life), where they live very magnificently. Lady 
 Fanny gives the most magnificent entertainments in London, has 
 the most magnificent equipage, and a very fine husband ; who has 
 his equipage as fine as her ladyship's ; his seat in the omnibus, 
 while her ladyship is in the second tier. They say he plays a good 
 deal ay, and pays, too, when he loses. 
 
 And how, pr'ythee ? Her ladyship is a FASHIONABLE AUTHORESS. 
 She has been at this game for fifteen years ; during which period 
 she has published forty-five novels, edited twenty-seven new maga- 
 zines and I do n't know how many annuals, besides publishing 
 poems, plays, desultory thoughts, memoirs, recollections of travel, 
 and pamphlets without number. Going one day to church, a lady, 
 whom I knew by her Leghorn bonnet and red ribbons, ruche with 
 poppies and marigolds, brass ferroniere, great red hands, black silk 
 gown, thick shoes, and black silk stockings ; a lady, whom I knew, 
 I say, to be a devotional cook, made a bob to me just as the psalm 
 struck up, and offered me a share of her hymn-book. It was, 
 
 HEAVENLY CHORDS; 
 
 A COLLECTION OF 
 
 SELECTED, COMPOSED, AND EDITED, BY THE 
 LADY FRANCES JULIANA FLUMMERY. 
 
 being simply a collection of heavenly chords robbed from the 
 lyres of Watts, Wesley, Brady, and Tate, &c. ; and of sacred 
 strains from the rare collection of Sternhold and Hopkins. Out of 
 this, cook and I sang ; and it is amazing how much our fervour 
 was increased by thinking that our devotions were directed by a 
 lady whose name was in the Red Book. 
 
 The thousands of pages that Lady Flummery has covered with 
 ink exceed all belief. You must have remarked, madam, in respect 
 of this literary fecundity, that your amiable sex possesses vastly 
 greater capabilities than we do ; and that while a man is lying pain- 
 fully labouring over a letter of two sides, a lady will produce a dozen 
 pages, crossed, dashed, and so beautifully neat and close, as to be 
 well-nigh invisible. The readiest of ready pens has Lady Flummery ; 
 her Pegasus gallops over hotpressed satin so as to distance all 
 gentlemen riders : like Camilla, it scours the plain of Bath, and
 
 70 THE FASHIONABLE AUTHORESS. 
 
 never seems punished 01 fatigued ; only it runs so fast that it often 
 leaves all sense behind it ; and there it goes on, on, scribble, scribble, 
 scribble, never flagging until it arrives at that fair winning post 
 on which is written "FINIS," or, "THE END;" and shews that 
 the course, whether it be of novel, annual, poem, or what not, is 
 complete. 
 
 Now, the author of these pages doth not pretend to describe the 
 inward thoughts, ways, and manner of being, of my Lady Flummery, 
 having made before that humiliating confession, that lords and 
 ladies are personally unknown to him ; so that all milliners, 
 butchers' ladies, dashing young clerks, and apprentices, or other 
 persons who are anxious to cultivate a knowledge of the aristocracy, 
 had better skip over this article altogether. But he hath heard it 
 whispered, from pretty good authority, that the manners and 
 customs of these men and women resemble, in no inconsiderable 
 degree, the habits and usages of other men and women, whose 
 names are unrecorded by Debrett. Granting this, and that Lady 
 Flummery is a woman pretty much like another, the philosophical 
 reader will be content that we rather consider her ladyship in her 
 public capacity, and examine her influence upon mankind in general. 
 
 Her person, then, being thus put out of the way, her works, 
 too, need not be very carefully sifted and criticised ; for what is the 
 use of peering into a millstone, or making calculations about the 
 figure ? The woman has not, in fact, the slightest influence upon 
 literature for good or for evil : there are a certain number of fools 
 whom she catches in her flimsy traps ; and why not ? They are 
 made to be humbugged, or how should we live ? Lady Flummery 
 writes everything ; that is, nothing. Her poetry is mere wind ; 
 her novels, stark naught ; her philosophy, sheer vacancy : how 
 should she do any better than she does ? how could she succeed if 
 she did do any better ? If she did write well, she would not be 
 Lady Flummery ; she would not be praised by Timson and the 
 critics, because she would be an honest woman, and not bribe them. 
 Nay, she would probably be written down by Timson and Co., 
 because, being an honest woman, she utterly despised them and 
 their craft. 
 
 We have said what she writes for the most part. Individually, 
 she will throw off any number of novels that Messrs. Soap and 
 Diddle will pay for ; and collectively, by the aid of eelf and friends, 
 scores of " Lyrics of Loveliness," " Beams of Beauty," " Pearls of 
 Purity," &c. Who does not recollect the success which her " Pearls 
 of the Peerage" had ? She is going to do the " Beauties of the
 
 THE FASHIONABLE AUTHORESS. */0 
 
 Baronetage ;" then we shall have the " Daughters of the Dustmen," 
 or some such other collection of portraits. Lady Flummery has 
 around her a score of literary gentlemen, who are bound to her, body 
 and soul : give them a dinner, a smile from an opera-box, a wave of 
 the hand in Rotten Row, and they are hers, neck and heels. Fides 
 mi fili, fyc. See, my son, with what a very small dose of humbug 
 men are to be bought. I know many of these individuals : there is 
 my friend M'Lather, an immense, pudgy man : I saw him one day 
 walking through Bond Street in company with an enormous ruby 
 breast-pin. " Mac ! " shouted your humble servant, " that is a 
 Flummery ruby ;" and Mac hated and cursed us ever after. Pre- 
 sently came little Fitch, the artist ; he was rigged out in an illumi- 
 nated velvet waistcoat Flummery again " There 's only one like it 
 in town," whispered Fitch to me confidentially, " and Flummery has 
 that." To be sure, Fitch had given, in return, half-a-dozen of the 
 prettiest drawings in the world. " I wouldn't charge for them, you 
 know," he says, " for hang it, Lady Flummery is my friend." Oh 
 Fitch, Fitch ! 
 
 Fifty more instances could be adduced of her ladyship's ways 
 of bribery. She bribes the critics to praise her, and the writers to 
 write for her ; and the public flocks to her as it will to any other 
 tradesman who is properly puffed. Out comes the book ; as for its 
 merits, we may allow, cheerfully, that Lady Flummery has no lack 
 of that natural esprit which every woman possesses ; but here praise 
 stops. For the style, she does not know her own language, but, 
 in revenge, has a smattering of half-a-dozen others. She interlards 
 her works with fearful quotations from the French, fiddle-faddle ex- 
 tracts from Italian operas, German phrases fiercely mutilated, and a 
 scrap or two of bad Spanish : and, upon the strength of these mur- 
 ders, she calls herself an authoress. To be sure there is no such 
 word as authoress. If any young nobleman or gentleman of Eton 
 College, when called upon to indite a copy of verses in praise of 
 Sappho, or the Countess of Dash, or Lady Charlotte What-d 'ye- 
 call-'em, or the Honourable Mrs. Somebody, should fondly imagine 
 that he might apply to those fair creatures the title of auctrix I pity 
 that young nobleman's or gentleman's case. Doctor Wordsworth 
 and assistants would swish that error out of him in a way that need 
 not here be mentioned. Remember it henceforth, ye writeresses 
 there is no such word as authoress. Auctor, madam, is the word. 
 "Optima, tu proprii nominis auctor eris ;" which, of course, means 
 that you are, by your proper name, an author, not an authoress : the 
 line is in Ainsworth's Dictionary, where anybody may see it.
 
 80 THF FASHIONABLE AUTHORESS. 
 
 This point is settled then : there is no such word as authoress. 
 But what of that ? Are authoresses to be bound by the rules of 
 grammar? The supposition is absurd. We don't expect them to 
 know their own language ; we prefer rather the little graceful pranks 
 and liberties they take with it. When, for instance, a celebrated 
 authoress, who wrote a Diaress, calls somebody the prototype of his 
 own father, we feel an obligation to her ladyship ; the language 
 feels an obligation ; it has a charm and a privilege with which it was 
 never before endowed : and it is manifest, that if we can call our- 
 selves antetypes of our grandmothers can prophesy what we had 
 for dinner yesterday, and so on, we get into a new range of thought, 
 and discover sweet regions of fancy and poetry, of which the mind 
 hath never even had a notion until now. 
 
 It may be then considered as certain that an authoress ought not 
 to know her own tongue. Literature and politics have this privilege 
 in common, that any ignoramus may excel in both. No apprentice- 
 ship is required, that is certain ; and if any gentleman doubts, let us 
 refer him to the popular works of the present day, where, if he find 
 a particle of scholarship, or any acquaintance with any books in any 
 language, or if he be disgusted by any absurd, stiff, old-fashioned 
 notions of grammatical propriety, we are ready to send him back his 
 subscription. A friend of ours came to us the other day in great 
 trouble. His dear little boy, who had been for some months attache 
 to the stables of Mr. Tilbury's establishment, took a fancy to the 
 corduroy-breeches of some other gentleman employed in the same 
 emporium appropriated them, and afterwards disposed of them for 
 a trifling sum to a relation I believe his uncle. For this harmless 
 freak, poor Sam was absolutely seized, tried at Clerkenwell Sessions, 
 and condemned to six months' useless rotatory labour at the House 
 of Correction. " The poor fellow was bad enough before, sir," said 
 his father, confiding in our philanthropy; " he picked up such a deal 
 of slang among the stable-boys : but if you could hear him since he 
 came from the mill ! he knocks you down with it, sir. I am afraid, 
 sir, of his becoming a regular prig ; for though he 's a cute chap, 
 can read and write, and is mighty smart and handy, yet no one will 
 take him into service on account of that business of the breeches ! " 
 
 " What, sir ! " exclaimed we, amazed at the man's simplicity ; 
 "such a son, and you don't know what to do with him! ? cute 
 fellow, who can write, who has been educated in a stable-yard, and 
 has and six months' polish in a university I mean a prison and 
 you do n't know what to do with him ? Make a fashionable novelist 
 of him, and be hanged to you ! " And proud am I to say that that
 
 THE FASHIONABLE AUTHORESS. 81 
 
 young man, every evening, after he comes home from his work (he 
 has taken to street-sweeping in the day, and I don't advise him to 
 relinquish a certainty) proud am I to say that he devotes every 
 evening to literary composition, and is coming out with a novel, in 
 numbers, of the most fashionable kind. 
 
 This little episode is only given for the sake of example ; par 
 exemple, as our authoress would say, who delights in French of the 
 very worst kind. The public likes only the extremes of society, and 
 votes mediocrity vulgar. From the Author they will take nothing but 
 Fleet Ditch : from the Authoress, only the very finest of rose-water. 
 I have read so many of her ladyship's novels, that, egad ! now I 
 don't care for anything under a marquis. Why the deuce should 
 we listen to the intrigues, the misfortunes, the virtues, and conver- 
 sations of a couple of countesses, for instance, when we can have 
 duchesses for our money ? What 's a baronet ? pish ! pish ! that 
 great coarse red fist in his scutcheon turns me sick ! What 's a 
 baron ? a fellow with only one more ball than a pawnbroker ; and, 
 upon my conscience, just as common. Dear Lady Flummery, in 
 your next novel, give us no more of these low people ; nothing 
 under strawberry leaves, for the mercy of Heaven ! Suppose, now, 
 you write us 
 
 ALBERT. 
 
 OK, 
 
 WHISPERINGS AT WINDSOR. 
 
 BY THE LADY FRANCES FLUMMERY. 
 
 There is a subject fashionable circles, curious revelations, exclusive 
 excitement, &c. To be sure, you must here introduce a viscount, and 
 that is sadly vulgar ; but we will pass him for the sake of the minis- 
 terial portefeuille, which is genteel. Then you might do " Leopold; 
 or, the Bride of Neuilly ;" " The Victim of Wurtemberg ;" " Olga ; 
 or, the Autocrat's Daughter" (a capital title) ; " Henri; or, Rome in 
 the Nineteenth Century : " we can fancy the book and a sweet 
 paragraph about it in Timson's paper. 
 
 "HENRI, by Lady Frances Flummery. Henri! who can he 
 be ? a little bird whispers in our ear, that the gifted and talented 
 Sappho of our hemisphere has discovered some curious particulars in 
 the life of a certain young chevalier, whose appearance at Rome has 
 so frightened the court of the Tu-1-ries. Henri de B-rd ux is of 
 an age when the young god can shoot his darts into the bosom 
 with fatal accuracy ; and if the Marchesina Degli Spinachi (whose 
 61 L
 
 82 THE FASHIONABLE AUTHORESS. 
 
 portrait our lovely authoress has sung with a kindred hand?) be as 
 beauteous as she is represented (and as all who have visited in the 
 exclusive circles of the eternal city say she is), no wonder at her 
 effect upon the Pr nee. Verbum sap. We hear that a few copies 
 are still remaining. The enterprising publishers, Messrs. Soap and 
 Diddle, have announced, we see, several other works by the same 
 accomplished pen." 
 
 This paragraph makes its appearance, in small type, in the 
 3f, by the side, perhaps, of a disinterested recommendation of 
 bears' grease, or some remarks on the extraordinary cheapness of 
 plate in Cornhill. Well, two or three days after, my dear Timson, 
 who has been asked to dinner, writes, in his own hand, and causes to 
 be printed in the largest type, an article to the following effect : - 
 
 "HENRI. 
 
 BY LADY P. FLUMMERY. 
 
 " This is another of the graceful evergreens which the fair fingers 
 of Lady Fanny Flummery are continually strewing upon our path. 
 At once profound and caustic, truthful and passionate, we are at a 
 loss whether most to admire the manly grandeur of her ladyship's 
 mind, or the exquisite nymph-like delicacy of it. Strange power of 
 fancy ! Sweet enchantress, that rules the mind at will : stirring up 
 the utmost depths of it into passion and storm, or wreathing and 
 dimpling its calm surface with countless summer smiles (as a great 
 Bard of Old Time has expressed it) ; what do we not owe to woman ? 
 
 *' What do we not owe her ? More love, more happiness, more 
 calm of vexed spirit, more truthful aid, and pleasant counsel ; in 
 joy, more delicate sympathy ; in sorrow, more kind companionship. 
 We look into her cheery eyes, and, in those wells of love, care 
 drowns : we listen to her syren voice, and, in that balmy music, 
 banished hopes come winging to the breast again. 
 
 This goes on for about three-quarters of a column: I don't 
 pretend to understand it ; but with flowers, angels, Wordsworth's 
 poems, and the old dramatists, one can never be wrong, I think : 
 and though I have written the above paragraphs myself, and don't 
 understand a word of them, I can't, upon my conscience, help 
 thinking that they are mighty pretty writing. After, then, that 
 this has gone on for about three-quarters of a column (Timson 
 does it in spare minutes, and fiU it to any book that Lady Fanny 
 brings out), he proceeds to particularise, thus :
 
 THE FASHIONABLE AUTHORESS. 83 
 
 " The griding excitement which thrills through every fibre of the 
 soul as we peruse these passionate pages, is almost too painful to 
 bear. Nevertheless, one drains the draughts of poesy to the dregs, 
 so deliciously intoxicating is its nature. We defy any man who 
 begins these volumes to quit them ere he has perused each line. 
 The plot may be briefly told as thus : Henri, an exiled prince of 
 Franconia (it is easy to understand the flimsy allegory), arrives at 
 Rome, and is presented to the sovereign Pontiff. At a feast, given 
 in his honour at the Vatican, a dancing girl (the loveliest creation 
 that ever issued from poet's brain) is introduced, and exhibits some 
 specimens of her art. The young prince is instantaneously smittec 
 with the charms of the Saltatrice ; he breathes into her ear the 
 accents of his love, and is listened to with favour. He has, however, 
 a rival, and a powerful one. The POPE has already cast his eye 
 upon the Apulian maid, and burns with lawless passion. One of 
 the grandest scenes ever writ, occurs between the rivals. The Pope 
 offers to Castanetta every temptation ; he will even resign his 
 crown, and marry her: but she refuses. The prince can make no 
 such offers ; he cannot wed her : ' The blood of Borbone,' he says, 
 ' may not be thus misallied.' He determines to avoid her. Jn 
 despair, she throws herself off the Tarpeian rock ; and the Pope 
 becomes a maniac. Such is an outline of this tragic tale. 
 
 " Besides this fabulous and melancholy part of the narrative, which 
 is unsurpassed, much is written in the gay and sparkling style, for 
 which our lovely author is unrivalled. The sketch of the Marchesina 
 Degli Spinachi and her lover, the Duca of Di Gammoni, is de- 
 licious ; and the intrigue between the beautiful Princess Kalbsbraten 
 and Count Bouterbrod is exquisitely painted : everybody, of course, 
 knows who these characters are. The discovery of the manner in 
 which Kartoffeln, the Saxon envoy, poisons the princess's dishes, 
 is only a graceful and real repetition of a story which was agitated 
 throughout all the diplomatic circles last year. ' Schinken, the 
 Westphalian,' must not be forgotten; nor 'Olla, the Spanish Spy.' 
 How does Lady Fanny Flummery, poet as she is, possess a sense 
 of the ridiculous and a keenness of perception which would do 
 honour to a Rabelais or a Rochefoucault ? To those who ask this 
 question, we have one reply, and that an example : Not among 
 women, *t is true ; for till the Lady Fanny came among us, woman 
 never soared so high. Not among women, indeed ! but, in com- 
 paring her to that great spirit for whom our veneration is highest 
 and holiest, we offer no dishonour to his shrine : in saying that he 
 who wrote of Romeo and Desdemona might have drawn Castanetta
 
 84 THE FASHIONABLE AUTHORESS. 
 
 and Enrico, we utter but the truthful expressions of our hearts ; in 
 asserting that so long as SHAKSPEEE lives, so long will FLUMMERY 
 endure ; in declaring that he who rules in all hearts, and over all 
 spirits and all climes, has found a congenial spirit, we do but 
 justice to Lady Fanny justice to him who sleeps by Avon ! " 
 
 With which we had better, perhaps, conclude. Our object has 
 been, in descanting upon the Fashionable Authoress, to point out 
 the influence which her writing possesses over society, rather than 
 to criticise of her life. The former is quite harmless ; and we 
 don't pretend to be curious about the latter. The woman herself 
 is not so blameable ; it is the silly people who cringe at her feet that 
 do the mischief, and, gulled themselves, gull the most gullible of 
 publics. Think you, O Timson ! that her ladyship asks you for 
 your beaux yeux or your wit ? Fool ! you do think so, or try and 
 think so ; and yet you know she loves not you, but the # news- 
 paper. Think, little Fitch, in your fine waistcoat, how dearly 
 you have paid for it ! Think, M'Lather, how many smirks, and 
 lies, and columns of good three-halfpence-a-line matter, that big 
 garnet pin has cost you 1 The woman laughs at you, man ! you, 
 who fancy that she is smitten with you laughs at your absurd 
 pretensions, your way of eating fish at dinner, your great hands, 
 your eyes, your whiskers, your coat, and your strange north-country 
 twang. Down with this Dalilah ! Avaunt, O Circe ! giver of 
 poisonous feeds ! To your natural haunts, ye gentlemen of the 
 press ! if bachelors, frequent your taverns, and be content. Better 
 is Sally the waiter and the first cut out of the joint, than a dinner 
 of four courses, and humbug therewith. Ye who are married, go 
 to your homes ; dine not with those persons who scorn your wives. 
 Go not forth to parties, that you may act Tom Fool for the amuse- 
 ment of my lord and my lady ; but play your natural follies among 
 your natural friends. Do this for a few years, and the Fashionable 
 Authoress is extinct. O Jove, what a prospect ! She, too, has 
 retreated to her own natural calling, being as much out of 
 place in a book as you, my dear M'Lather, in a drawing-room. 
 Let milliners look up to her ; let Howell and James swear by her; 
 let simpering dandies caper about her car ; let her write poetry if 
 she likes, but only for the most exolusive circles ; let mantua-makers 
 puff her but not men: let such things be, and the Fashionable 
 Authoress is no more ! Blessed, blessed thought ! No more fiddle- 
 faddle novels ! no more namby-pamby poetry ! no more fribble 
 " Blossoms of Loveliness ! " When will you arrive, O happy 
 Golden Age ?
 
 THE BASKET-WOMAN. 
 
 These women are shrewd tempters with their tongues. 
 
 SHAKSPEHE.
 
 THE BASKET -WO MAN. 
 
 BY MRS. S. C. TIAI-t, 
 
 'fiou be wid ould times! Sure it makes altogether an ould fool oi 
 me to sec yer honour onc't more. Och, musha! musha ! God be wid 
 mild times ! whin the masth&r (God be good to him !) would say, 
 ' I '11 have no Basket- Woman but Katty Nowlan' and the blagards 
 trying to circumvint me, but no good to them. And may be it's 
 myself that wouldn't carry home the fruit for him illigent; and 
 then it 's he would drop the noble pay into my hand, and say, 
 4 Katty Nowlan,' says he, 'you don't brush the bloom off a plum, 
 nor the lafe off a rose' thim war his words. Och, the ould times 
 the ould times ! the ould times ! God be wid ould times ! " And 
 Katty Nowlan, one of the very few of her order who are now as 
 they were some eighteen years ago, knocked the ashes out of 
 her "National" pipe, stuffed the relics of tobacco tightly down with 
 her "middle finger, grasped the handle of her flat basket rirmly 
 within her hand, and then looked up into my face, her features 
 trained as a silent echo to her voice all submission and entreaty. 
 Having conquered her emotion, she drawled out, in a delicious 
 Minister brogue that wound round my heart at once, " I hope yer 
 honour wants a Basket-'Ooman to-day a Basket-'Ooman, plase 
 yer honour any weight any distance. I hope yer honour won't 
 forget the poor Basket-'Ooman." She certainly was a specimen- 
 portrait of her class : her age about fifty, to judge from the hard 
 lines graved by the iron pen of labour upon a broad and not un- 
 comely countenance ; her eyes were still bright and vigilant, and 
 the eyelashes and eyebrows still thick and dark. The Irish mouth, 
 though in wide defiance of all rules of beauty, is always expressive : 
 English mouths are cut to pattern ; they fit, if not well, neatly : 
 but the Irish mouth is eloquent, without the aid of words ; it is 
 large and loose ; the muscles dilate or compress without an effort ; 
 it has some sudden and quick communication with the heart, and 
 will not be controlled : the sneer of an Irish lip is bitter as hyssop ; 
 the smile of an Irish lip is sweet as honey. And Kattj Nowlan 3
 
 86 THE BASKET-WOMAN. 
 
 amile, without, in this instance, being the extreme of either the one 
 or the other, was insinuating : it did not amount to positive sweet- 
 ness when she proffered her usual petition, particularly when the 
 memory of "ould times" still caused her lip to quiver; but it was 
 was inimitable in its way. Her grey hair was almost entirely con- 
 cealed by a coloured silk 1 andkerchief, tied gipsy-fashion over her 
 head, and knotted beneath the chin. This characteristic head-gear 
 was surmounted by one of those nameless species of straw hats, 
 scorched brown by the sun, and completely flatted in the crown by 
 the pressure of her market-basket. Two or three strips of bass, 
 twisted together, might be termed a hatband to this strange tiring, 
 which looked picturesque amid well-ordered bonnets. Inside her 
 loose bedgown of striped linsey-woolsey, she wore a gay-coloured 
 cotton neckerchief, fastened at the throat by a large yellow-headed 
 pin. Her petticoat was short, and of black quilted stuff; her legs 
 covered by blue worsted stockings, knitted by herself; and her 
 brogues came high on the instep, and were neatly tied by a leather 
 thong. Her entire dress hung loosely over her strong and muscular 
 figure : her chest was broad, and her head and gait erect and firm, 
 except when she petitioned for employment ; then she curtseyed 
 deeply, and bent her body into the curve of humble service. Some- 
 times Katty sported a red stuff petticoat, and an open cotton gown 
 of a large chintz pattern, which was always looped up behind, and 
 secured from the muddy contaminations of the street by a "cork- 
 ing" pin. This dress, however, was seldom "sported" except on 
 Sundays and saints' days; so that the Covent Garden Basket- 
 Woman is more identified with the former habiliments than with the 
 latter. Take note, also, that her arms were muscular, not large- 
 boned nor fleshy, but rather as the arms of a man acquainted 
 with labour than those of a woman ought to be ; and her hands 
 those rude and sternly honest hands wrought into ridges and bony 
 knobs, how eloquent were they of the toils and endurings of a life 
 knowing no cessation from severe daily work ! 
 
 And yet what a world of mirthfulness laughs out at times from 
 those deep grey eyes ! "What real sparkling wit has bounded from 
 those indescribable lips ! What sudden and quick replies ! What 
 cutting sarcasms ! and when her days were not so many, and her 
 spirit youiger, I '11 not deny that the Covent Garden Basket- Woman 
 could defend her prerogative as well as any other person having 
 authority. Now, indeed, times are changed, though Katty still 
 stands as I have seen her stand in years gone by, before the market 
 was arched over, and, as she says, " rendered an aisy and genteel
 
 THE BASKET-WOMAN. 87 
 
 walk for such as never lay out a halfpenny in it ; only just come to 
 look at it for divarshun, or stand up in it for shelter from the rain, in 
 everybody's way bad cess to them ! " before it was improved, and, 
 consequently, despoiled of its original features. Though Katty 
 stands almost as erect as I have seen her long ago, still the spirit 
 within her is crushed : the world is changed the market spoiled! 
 Still she is a fine specimen of her people of her class ; a fine 
 specimen of a hard-working and high-spirited Irishwoman, who 
 would scorn a "dirty turn" or a "mane action," and share the 
 " last bit and sup she had in the wide world wid any poor traveller 
 or stranger from Ould Ireland, God be wid it ! " of that class, like 
 many others going out, who gave a distinctive character to a parti- 
 cular district of the original Covent Garden Basket- Woman 
 Katty, I repeat, is a fine specimen. Covent Garden Market, but for 
 its Irish Basket- Women, would have had nothing to distinguish it 
 from all the fruit and vegetable markets in Europe: their oddity, 
 drollery, humour, either good or bad, civility and persecutions 
 (I have seen my grandfather beset by seven or eight at a time, all 
 anxious to know if his honour wanted a basket, and claiming the 
 right to be employed on the grounds that they came from the same 
 parish, same county, or same kingdom, "any way," as "his honour") 
 were as peculiar and celebrated as the extraordinary eloquence of 
 their sisters of Billingsgate. 
 
 It was really fearful to see the loads they carried on their heads ; 
 but the lightness of their hearts buoyed them up, and they trotted 
 on in a sort of swing-trot patient, uncomplaining, and cheerful. 
 This was when the fashion existed for ladies and gentlemen to go to 
 Covent Garden, to buy and send home their " marketing ;" before 
 greengrocers hung out carrots and faded " savoys," as types of fresh 
 vegetables ; and women in what might then be truly called " the 
 happy" middle class, were neither too fine nor too foolish to ascertain 
 what a thing was to cost before it was purchased, and not too proud 
 to purchase themselves : before English housekeeping was done by 
 deputy ; in that same middle class, which constantly, as it is now 
 organised, calls to mind the story of the frog that would be an ox. 
 When the sun shone gaily over the fragrant market ; and, above all, 
 before poor plants were sent to wither on the hot leads of the 
 " Bedford Conservatory :" then the Covent Garden Basket- Woman 
 was, indeed, somebody. 
 
 I remember how delighted I was, when first I came to England, 
 to hear half-a-dozen of my countrywomen jabbering real Irish as 
 gaily as if they had never left the fertility of Munster, or the wilds
 
 88 THE BASKET-WOMAN. 
 
 of Connamara, shelling peas, or picking spinach, or, in the autumn 
 time, removing the green coating from the milky walnuts never 
 too much occupied not to have an eye on every passer hy, likely to 
 " Want a Basket-'Ooman, yer honour ;" ready, with a compliment or 
 a petition, to bewitch the money out of your purse ; or, " Is it a 
 shilling or a half-crown I '11 have the honour to rasave from yer lady- 
 ship by'n by, afther I have the pleasure to walk home afther ye 
 carrying what ye '11 be plazed to buy the best in the market I '11 
 go bail ;" or, " Oh, sure it is n't going out of poor ould Coven t 
 Garden yer honour would be, without laving a little tester for luck 
 among us, and we watching for yer smiling face this hour back :" 
 or, one addressing the other quite loud enough for the visitor to 
 hear: " Nelly Nell Gowrie, I say take yer eyes out of the bane 
 pods, and let 'em have a new lase o' their lives ; look ! well, it 's long 
 since sich a noble looking gintleman as that come into the market ;" 
 then turning to the stranger with an air of deferential admiration : 
 " May be yer honour wants a Basket-'Ooman to-day, sir, to carry 
 home some marketing to the happy lady that owns ye? If his ear 
 was deaf to the voice of the charmer, Nell Gowrie would be sure to 
 observe : " Ye did n't butther him enough, Peggy, honey ; the gin- 
 tlemen likes, it mighty thick. 
 
 These observations flowed on, if not harmoniously, abundantly. 
 In auld langsyne, Covent Garden Basket- Women were as nume- 
 rous as amusing ; but now the few who come, partake of the- 
 nature of the market they are remodelled. I saw one with 
 a well-shaped bonnet, and a black apron ! I do not think she was 
 genuine ; she only said, " Please ma'am, shall you want a basket ?" 
 That ' shall' settled the question ; an Irishwoman, though she might 
 have so far abandoned her vernacular as to say, " Please ma'am," 
 like a cockney housemaid, instead of " Plaze yer honor," never 
 would have substituted 'shall' for 'will.' Oh, Covent Garden! 
 Covent Garden ! improvement has destroyed thy originality ; thou 
 art no longer ALONE amid the gardens of Europe ; thou art but one 
 of many ! Let no one talk to me of thy shops, and fruits, and seeds, 
 and sweet herbs ; thy potatoes, in and out of the clay ; thy vegeta- 
 bles in all their abundant varieties. Where are thy Irish Basket- 
 Women? a few poor, heart-broken creatures linger in thy outskirts. 
 Katty Nowlan, and Nelly Gowrie are almost the only ones who 
 persist in walking under thy shadow : rival queens they always were, 
 until linked together by that which so often separates friends the 
 poverty that parts (according to the song) "good companie," has 
 united them,
 
 THE BASKET-WOMAN. 89 
 
 " Nelly, avourneen ! " said Katty, after she had knocked the 
 ashes out of her pipe, and, as she justly supposed, bespoke my em- 
 ployment, by the appeal I repeated at the commencement of this 
 paper. "Nelly, avourneen, there's the look of a job, pinching the 
 oranges, and feeling the pears at t' other end ; ye 'd betther have an 
 eye to her : half a loaf is betther than no bread." 
 
 " Bread ! " sighed Nelly, as she turned to take Katty's advice ; 
 " there 's nothing but mouldy bread going through the poor ould 
 market this many a day, that is, for the like of us. I think she 's 
 a school-misthress in disguise, buying the fruit chape, to sell to her 
 scholars." Notwithstanding this supposition, she did as Katty de- 
 sired ; her adviser stood by my side while I purchased a moss-rose. 
 A beautiful and bright complexioned girl a creature not town bred, 
 certainly who was buying flowers at the same stand, attracted 
 Katty's attention. I saw her eyes fixed upon her, as she bent her 
 head over my rose-tree. " I ax yer pardon, young lady," she said, 
 "but if it ! s plasing to ye, I'd thank ye to keep yer cheek away 
 from that rose : ye '11 put the lady out of consate with the colour 
 of her flower." Was not that exquisite ? as sweet as a line of old 
 Berrick's. The young girl felt it ; she blushed deeply, then taking 
 her purse, she said timidly, " I should like to give you something, 
 but it would seem paying you for a compliment." 
 
 " I 'm paid already," answered the Basket- Woman, looking with 
 an expression of respectful admiration into the cherub face of the 
 young English girl. 
 
 " Holloa ! " called a policeman to Katty Nowlan, " you '11 set the 
 market on fire some of these odd days with that trick you have of 
 knocking the fire out of your pipe look here." The embers were 
 certainly on the pavement, and the man placed his foot on them. 
 
 " Be dad ! its thanking me you ought to be, instead of blowing 
 me up before my customers. See what a beautiful extinguisher ye 
 make, misther. I ax yer pardon, but what 's yer name?" continuing 
 in a lower tone of voice ; " ye 'r known by your numbers, like the 
 blanks in a lotthery ; only whin onc't ye 'r baptised wid the Regula- 
 tion blue-bag, it would take cleverer than Katty Nowlan (the powers 
 sind her wit!) to know one from the other, of yer numerous family. 
 Ah, ye 'r a fine set o' boys yer are," she added, in a half mutter, 
 looking slyly after the lounging figure of the policeman, as he crossed 
 over to the piazzas, tired enough, poor fellow, of his labour in idle- 
 ness ; " you 're fine boy-, so you are ; but, bedad ! I know the boys 
 that would take the shine out of ye, fine as ye are whoo-rishe ! 
 May be I don't! Ah, thin, my lady, it's a poor case, so it is!" 
 62
 
 00 THE BASKET-WOMAN. 
 
 " What is, Katty ! " 
 
 " Whisht ! I '11 say it aisy ; for the people are such tame nagurs 
 here, that they 're never up to Bannagher ; but it 's a mighty poor 
 case, so it is, to be always behaving oneself." 
 
 " How do you mean, Katty ? " 
 
 " The quality do n't feel it, ye see, because whin they "re mighty 
 dull intirely in the time o' pace, they can horse-race, or fight a bit 
 of a jewel, or twinty little things that way for divarshun ; but it 's a 
 poor case intirely, that the likes of us poor people, and poor Irish 
 people especially, are so kep' down no divarshun at all for us. 
 Sure we used to say long ago, ' Niver mind how close they keep us 
 wid their law : we work hard, and we work fast ; we work early, and 
 we work late : the youth passes from us, ' like the sunbeam off the 
 sea,' laving no trace behind. But bother it all ! sure we have the 
 elections ! in the heart's blood of the market ! think of that, 
 and grow light-hearted. ' Girls alive ! ' I used to say to them, 
 keep aisy, sure we '11 have the election come it must ; and 
 then the fun ! the houstins ! the flags ! the music ! the spaking ! 
 Och, the beautiful spaking that you could n't hear a word of for 
 the noise ! and the noble fine gintlemin, all talking till they got 
 black in the face ! May be I do n't remember that long ould 
 gintleman, Sir Francis Burdett, and he thin so fresh and graceful ! 
 and the little travelled gintleman, Mr. Hobhouse, and Sir Murray 
 Maxwell. That was afore your time, but that was an election ! I 
 niver took a tack o' clothes off me for ten days ; becase, ye see, 
 they war so torn wid the scrimmage and the fun, that I knew I 
 could n't get them on again. But we carried the day ; we did 
 it ! we, the Covent Garden Basket- Women, returned Sir Francis 
 into pailiament ! We kept all the cabbage-stalks and pray tees, 
 and sometimes what was rayther stiffer, for Sir Murray's people 
 and our hearts and voices for Sir Francis. Och, musha ! musha ! 
 the day we returned him I climbed up the car myself that he was 
 chaired in, and whin all the rest war giving him roses and flowers, 
 ' Yer honour,' says I, ' there 's a bunch of shamrogues for yer 
 honour,' says I ; ' and I make bould to say,' says I, ' that the 
 Covent Garden Basket- Women did their duty,' says I, ' like pa- 
 thriots, as they are to a man,' says I. And wid that his honour 
 takes the shamrogues and presses them to his heart ; and thin 
 there was a pillalieu (i. e. shouting) that shook the houses to 
 the foundation all raised by the Irish ; and ' Hear him, hear him !' 
 shouts the English (they war jealous, d 'ye see, of the distinction 
 ' Ould Glory ' put upon the shamrogues), and the shouts of the Iriah
 
 THE BASKET-WOMAN. 91 
 
 war any thing but plisant to them they 've no natural taste for 
 music in 'em ; ' Hear him, hear him !' they calls out. ' Shout, boys,' 
 says I, waving my praskeen (i. e. apron) of true blue in the air; 
 ' shout ! for sorrow a word his honour is saying at all, at all : sure I 
 ought to know, and I here to the fore.' And wid that, God bless 
 him ! he puts a guinea into my hand. We 've had elections since 
 that, to be sure odds and ends heads and tails, or tails widout 
 the heads to 'em of elections ; things that last about as long as it 
 takes to put a sexton to his trade, or turn a melted butterman into 
 a fine blue and red beadle : no giving the people time to know what 
 they mane, or if there 's any maning in 'em ; no time for divarshun ; 
 a gintleman sent into Parliament as if he was nobody. Och, my 
 bitther grief! a Co vent Garden Basket- Woman is no more at a 
 Covent Garden election now, than if she was nothing but a stall- 
 keeper !" 
 
 Katty gave me no time to think over her opinions, when she 
 changed her heroic tone into one of confidential communication : 
 
 " Do n't have anything to say to thim artichokes avourneen ! 
 they 've stood the batther of the market these four days, and more 
 than that they can't be wholesome." 
 
 " Not wholesome ? Why ?" 
 
 " Whisht ! whisht ! but the man that owns them lets his own 
 ould mother lie in a workhouse, and he flashing about in a fino 
 taxed cart ! The very white-heart cabbages turn black on his 
 ground the unnatural baste !" 
 
 I could not help smiling at this genuine evidence of natural Irish 
 feeling. 
 
 Notwithstanding my old friendship with Mistress Catherine 
 Nowlan, if the proprietor of the artichokes had been a good instead 
 of a bad son, I suspect I should have been suffered to purchase 
 them, " batthered " though they were. Katty could not separate 
 the man's vegetables from his unnatural conduct to his mother. 
 How varied were the shades of character my poor countrywoman 
 had displayed in a few brief moments ! Why, I should not have 
 discovered so many in an Englishwoman in as great a number of 
 years ! First, there was the warm, the affectionate recognition, fol- 
 lowed as rapidly by the trick, the petition of her trade, given in the 
 rich Munster whine, which only my countryman, Power, can imi- 
 tate; then, the little bit of good-nature towards her countrywoman, 
 evincing how rapidly she observed ; the graceful and poetical compli- 
 ment to the lovely English girl ; her reply and taunt to the police- 
 man, so expressive of the national hatred which all the lower order of
 
 it'2 THE BASKET-WOMAN. 
 
 Irish entertain towards every public body, in and out of the country, 
 organised by law. Why such is the case, this is not the place to 
 ehew. But the panoramic view of her character was completed by 
 her reminiscence of the Westminster, or, as she called it, Covent 
 Garden election : this stirred her up, as an old war-horse is roused 
 by the sound of the trumpet ; and then, the excitement over, down 
 she came to her knowledge, not altogether of artichokes, but ef the 
 want of filial piety on the part of the man who had artichokes 
 to sell. 
 
 " And now, Katty," said I, " I want to buy a hedgehog for 
 my garden." 
 
 " A grassnogue is it ? Oh, madam dear, I must bespake that." 
 
 " Bespeak it ? Why there were plenty to be had at the bird- 
 stand." 
 
 " There were there was to be sure, long ever ago; not now, 
 lady ; it 'a a woful time ! not a linnet, nor a lark, nor a thrush, 
 nor a blackbird, to be had in the market for love or money ; not a 
 sign or mark of young life, barring a rose-bud, or young peas, or 
 things that way. Oh, thin, they might ha' left a bit o' natur, wid 
 their improvements ; sure, 1 thought my heart would break in two 
 halves when they did away with the bird-stall : it might litther the 
 market 1 11 not deny that ; but it was mighty pleasant to hear the 
 chirrup of a wild bird ; it was an hour's youth come back to our ould 
 age ; but sure I 'm a fool to be talking this way what is it all but 
 a drame ?" She turned to prepare her basket, a^d I thought her 
 eyes filled with tears. 
 
 After the lapse of an hour, the Covent Garden Basket- Woman 
 had discharged her cargo at my dwelling ; and here 1 must say, for 
 the honour of my country, that I never heard of one of the sister- 
 hood being guilty of the least act of dishonesty: neither do they 
 beg ; they hint perhaps that they are poor, and can be grateful ; 
 but that is the extent of their petitions. Before she returned to the 
 market, she had of course more than her fare ; and after expressing 
 her thanks, she said : " I 'm thinking yer honour thought me an 
 ould fool a while agone about the birdeens that they turned out of 
 the market ; but, my ! sure the gentry think because they see fine 
 flowers there, it 's always flowering time ! There 's many a scene of 
 bitther, heart-scaulding misery in that same market ! many a poor 
 craythur shelters there at night, who has no other home ! Och, 
 my ! those that wake and walk early see strange sights. It 's about 
 ten years agone, my lady, come Candlemas, that I was very, very 
 early in the market : trouble is a wonderful watchman ; and calls
 
 THE BASKET-WOMAN. 93 
 
 the hours and the huivus beltlier than a Charley, and louder than 
 St. Paul's : and it was just at that time that my husband left me 
 for nothing but what takes off many a man a younger face : and 
 1 could n't sleep, and used to get up and be in the market afore the 
 carts : well, wandering up and down, 1 heard a smothering cry, 
 like the cry of a young child ; and the moon and the morning war 
 striving together which had the most light : and at last I found the 
 cry, and looked, and there, in the heart of the market, with her 
 white face upturned to the starfull sky, and her thin arm pressing a 
 babby to her bosom, lay a woman, upon a heap of stalks and leaves. 
 I called : no answer. I laid my hand on her face : she was dead. 
 Lady ! there 's something frightful in the feel of death, even whin ye 
 have living faces to look upon ; but though I called loudly, no one 
 spoke ; and the glittering stars were shining on her large glazed 
 eyes ; and the babby wailing, and my own heart full of trouble. I 
 felt asier, and less tarrified, when I got the grawleen (infant) in my 
 arms : it was alive, anyhow ; and thin I found a watchman, and the 
 carte began to come. The Lord forgive that poor dead craythur ! 
 but they said she had took pisin. Myself found it hard to believe 
 that she could leave the craythur that smiled in my face ; but the 
 want of the fear of God, or of a proper trust in Him, drives many to 
 the last sin, for which there is no repintance. There was no mar- 
 riage lines in her pocket ; but there was a lock of strong curling 
 hair, tied wid a lover's knot (the babby's hair grew the same colour) ; 
 and the parish had her bones. I think the Almighty sent that babby 
 to save my sinses : it came to take my husband's place in my poor 
 bursting heart ; and I used to have it wid me, sometimes in my 
 basket, sometimes tucked in my gown-tail at my back." 
 " But what did you do with it when you got a job?" 
 " Oh, sure there would n't be a mother in the market that 
 would n't do a. hand's turn for a motherless babe : it was the 
 pet of the basket-women ; a little thing like a sun-twinkle here 
 and there and everywhere, and would foot a jig before she could 
 rightly walk across the flure : but above all, whin she could only 
 crawl, she 'd be at the bird-stand feeding the rabbits, watching 
 the young hawks, or chirping to make the nest-blackbirds open 
 their yellow throats. She seemed to have a natural knowledge about 
 tliim wild animals; and I took to be as fond of the stand as her- 
 self. Oli, dear ! the fourth year 1 had her before the birdeens of 
 that Spring that she took sich delight in war fledged my poor 
 orphin bird was fledged, and flitted ; the sun rose on her eyes, 
 bright as diamonds ; when it set, my little darling, the loan of the
 
 94 THE BASKET-WOMAN. 
 
 Lord, sint to me to keep my heart open, was in its own heaven. 
 Ah ! ma'am, dear, the breath of a child is as swift to pass from its 
 sweet body, as the scent from a rose. The parish, though," she 
 added, shouldering her basket, " had nothing to do with her funeral ; 
 I laid her dacently in the earth, and for ever so long I used to stand 
 gazing on tnim birds, and feeding thim, thinking of my poor babby, 
 and her loving ways, and innocent talk, until the birds war to me 
 (God forgive me) a'most like a child : ye see one must have some- 
 thing to love." 
 
 " Katty, what did you do when the birds were gone ?" 
 
 " Be dad, my lady, I was wearing to a skilliton, and would 
 have been in my grave, what wid the loss of the babby, and the 
 change over everything ; and no elections, and growing ould and 
 stiff; only " 
 
 (She paused, and commenced rubbing the fore-finger of her 
 right hand along the edge of her basket, with a perplexed air, as 
 if she did not know how to proceed rather an unusual dilemma 
 for an Irishwoman.) 
 
 " Only what, Katty ? " 
 
 " Why, my lady, only ye see : just thin, I was mighty lonesome 
 intirely ; and so I took up wid Larry." 
 
 " Larry ! who is Larry ? " 
 
 " My ould husband, Larry Nowlan, at yer sarvice, my lady," 
 she replied, curtseying, and looking very much ashamed of her 
 good-natured weakness ; " my ould husband ! He found the differ 
 betwixt a purty face and an honest heart, qn the long run, and 
 so he come back, jist as my heart was breaking, quite a pinitint ; 
 except whin he draws his pension (it 's a soldier he was a full 
 corporal) ; and thin, if he takes a drop too much, it gets into the 
 crack in his skull ; and if he had n't a bit of a row wid me, he 
 would wid some one else, and have to pay for it ; but, among 
 ourselves, it 's give and take, and no harm done ; so, except jist 
 thin, he 's a grate pinitent intirely." 
 
 I have not space to illustrate these fresh traits in my poor 
 country-woman's character ; they must speak for themselves. There 
 is much virtue clad in russet in old England still ; we have only to 
 
 separate the matter from the manner, and But Katty shoulders 
 
 her basket 
 
 " Well, God be wid yer ! and if yer honour, or any of yer 
 honour's frinds wants a Basket-'Ooman, maybe ye '11 be so kind 
 as to think of poor Katty Nowlan, the Covent Garden Basket- 
 'Ooman, plaze yer honour ! "
 
 THE LODGING-HOUSE KEEPER. 
 
 She let her second floor tc a very genteel n_an.
 
 THE LODGING-HOUSE KEEPER. 
 
 BY PAUL PRENDERGAST. 
 
 THE LODGING-HOUSE KEEPER is a person who, in more than one 
 sense of the phrase, lives by taking people in. This, perhaps, is the 
 best description of one that can be given ; for it is not enough to 
 snv that a Lodging- House Keeper is a person who lets lodgings. 
 There are many who do that because they have no other means of 
 eking out a subsistence : for instance, poor old maiden ladies ; widows 
 of physicians or of half-pay officers, left alone and unprovided for in 
 the world ; and other people who have seen better days ; about whom 
 we shall have nothing to say, there not being money-lenders, sharp 
 practitioners, or sheriffs' officers enough amongst our readers to 
 render such like characters generally diverting. The individual 
 with whom we have here to do, is the common, regular, or pro- 
 fessional Lodging- House Keeper. 
 
 The avocation of a Lodging-House Keeper is, for many weighty 
 reasons, one peculiar to women. Not only are there various nego- 
 ciations, best accomplished by a female diplomatist, to be carried 
 on in a lodging-house, as in all other houses, with the baker, grocer, 
 milkman, cobbler, and laundress, but there is also somewhat to be 
 done with regard to the lodgers themselves. They must be managed. 
 Now no one can do this so well as a woman. As far as all matters 
 of business are concerned, the daughters of Eve are most unde- 
 servedly termed the softer sex ; and were they not so fond of 
 making bargains as sometimes to buy a great deal more than they 
 want, linendrapers, jewellers, and upholsterers, would be much worse 
 off than they are. Being managed, means being induced to put up 
 with imposition ; in short, being humbugged. The attempt at this 
 sort of management is a perilous one to a male practitioner, who, if 
 a waiter or a footman, stands, in the event of detection, a good 
 chance of being exceedingly well cudgelled, or kicked downstairs, 
 according to circumstances. It is a point of honour not to allow 
 ourselves to be imposed upon by men ; acquiescence in being cheated 
 by them is akin to cowardice, and rather than be liable to such ar
 
 96 THE LODGING-HOUSE KEEPER. 
 
 imputation we would " cavil on the ninth part of a hair." But 
 averse as we all are to being defrauded, there is something or other 
 about womankind, independently of the properties of the nails and 
 tongue, which induces us to avoid collision with them. It is not 
 beauty, for it disinclines us to dispute, even with an unconscientious 
 apple-woman ; albeit it is much that a smile and soft answer, though 
 coming from an ugly mouth, can do in the way of pacification. For 
 aught we know it may be animal magnetism ; but, at all events, 
 it exists, and we need not confuse the Heads of the People by 
 speculating about its cause. One thing is certain, namely, that the 
 fairer part of our race often avail themselves of it to a great extent ; 
 and none of them more than the Lodging-House Keeper : not that 
 she is exactly fair in a general way, either in her person or her deal- 
 ings. Suppose, for example, that your tea-caddy feels suspiciously 
 light on your return home of an evening ; though you would hardly 
 scruple to say to a host, " Who has been at my cupboard ?" you 
 would hesitate in even hinting to a hostess your conviction that you 
 were an injured man : delicacy would restrain you. But even should 
 you be what is elegantly and appropriately termed " too far north," 
 and that weakness be a stranger to your nature, how would you 
 brook the endurance of such a tempest of exclamation as the follow- 
 ing : " La ! sir ; well, I 'm sure ! to think that any gentleman 
 should ever go for to dream of such a thing for an instant moment ! 
 There 's nobody in this house, sir, I '11 warrant, would touch a thing 
 belonging to a lodger. As for Sally, poor girl ! I 'm certain sure 
 you might trust her with untold gold, as the saying is : she 'd never 
 touch a pin, not she ; and as for me, 1 'd rather go without tea, or 
 sugar, or cream, or anything, from now till next July (and this here 
 is Christmas), before I 'd even borrow ever such a morsel, or bit of 
 anything in the world, even if people was n't no ways close ! Why, 
 sir, there 's Mr. Brown, him as lodges in the first floor front, he is a 
 gentleman, he is, and has been a living here these four year, and 
 always give the servant a suvring reg'lar as the time come ; and his 
 friends is highly respectable, and his eldest brother as used to lodge 
 here too, was as thick as thieves with the King of the Belgiums, and 
 he never once no, nor more did n't his brother, all the blessed time 
 they was here together never asked a single question, nor found 
 fault with anything : no, and did n't even look over a single bill, only 
 to see how much it come to ; nor did n't mind what they paid no 
 more than if they was a couple of princes ! I declare I would n't 
 have such a thing happen for all the worlxl ; and if I was a goin' to 
 die this moment, as I 'm alive this day, I would n't mind taking my
 
 THE LODOXNG-HODSE KEEPER. 07 
 
 oath that all the time I've been a housekeeper, and that's ten year 
 come next Lady-day, no gentleman ever suspected such a thing no 
 more they do n't now, I 'm sure, for no gentleman would ever think 
 of bothering, and poking, and looking, and lifting, to see if he 'd 
 lost three ha'porth of tea. But a farthing 's a great matter to some 
 people ! " Having thus added insult to injury, the enraged landlady 
 flounces out of the room, and slams the door after her, leaving you 
 to wish that you had swallowed your loss, and she the tea caddy and 
 its contents together, so that your ears had remained unwounded by 
 her oratory. 
 
 Here a question arises which it may be well to consider, even at 
 the risk of a short digression. How is such peculation as that above 
 adverted to, to be prevented ? It is needless to tell the reader, unless 
 his mind be of the complexion of a water-meadow in April, that 
 locking the cupboard door and pocketing the key is of no manner of 
 service ; on the contrary, distrust, when people are but indifferently 
 honest, is sure to confirm them in roguery, and precaution is the most 
 likely thing in the world to put those who are cunning on their 
 mettle. It is virtually defying them to do their sharpest. The case, 
 however, is not entirely hopeless : even animals may be cured of the 
 propensity to pilfer, by causing it, in a manner, to punish itself. A 
 oat is seldom caught twice misconducting herself in the larder, if, on 
 the commission of her first offence, she happened to be snared in a 
 gin. Perhaps the practical hint, contained !u the following narrative 
 may be useful to some of the victimised : 
 
 A Mr. Tompkins had resided for some time at No. , 
 
 Street, Square. Being a clerk somewhere in the City, he 
 
 was absent from home ever}- day un^il rather late in the evening. 
 He was not, on the whole, dissatisfied with his abode ; his landlady 
 was tolerably civil ; the servant-maid not intolerably dirty ; there 
 were no children scuffling and screaming in the passage ; nor was 
 there a foolish fellow, with a flute and heavy boots, making a worse 
 noise over head a nuisance particularly incidental to the ground 
 floor, that is, in technical language, the gentleman who lives there. 
 The beds were places of rest, not of suffering ; they contained no 
 entomological curiosities, and were provided with a sufficiency of 
 blankets. But word which (following praise or congratulation) is 
 the sure forerunner of a qualifying clause ; but some of the people 
 about the place were less honest than plausible. Mice do not eat 
 tea or sugar, and when they do eat cheese, they contrive to help 
 themselves without knives. When cupboards are shut and locked, 
 
 and provisions, which cannot evaporate, mysteriously decrease, t'inre 
 63
 
 98 THE LODGING-HOUSE KEEPER. 
 
 neither needs a ghost to say that a thief has been at work, nor a 
 conjuror to guess what sort of one. So thought Mr. Tompkins ; 
 but not wishing to indict all parties with the chance of wronging 
 some, and the certainty of not bringing any to justice, he devised 
 a plan by which, unaided either by judge or jury, steel trap or 
 spring gun, he might inflict, and that instantly on the perpetration 
 of the crime, condign punishment on the offender. He took a hand- 
 some tea-service, belonging to the house, usually kept on a tray in 
 another cupboard, and transferred it to that appropriated to the 
 eatables and drinkables, fastening the whole concern, by means of 
 a bit of string, to a nail on the inside of the cupboard door, which 
 he then shut and locked as usual. The consequences likely to befal 
 the crockery on an attempt to open the cupboard being made by any 
 one not acquainted with these arrangements, may be easily con- 
 ceived. Having finished setting his trap, Mr. Tompkins repaired 
 to his office. When he returned home, he found things in the 
 cupboard apparently in the state in which he had left them ; but 
 on closer inspection he discovered that a milk jug was missing, and 
 that the pattern of the cups and saucers was marvellously altered. 
 His landlady, too, kept out of his sight for a week, and when she 
 at last made her appearance looked monstrously red in the face. 
 After this affair, Mr. Tompkins lost no more tea. 
 
 Those who are fond of looking about them may derive a good 
 deal of amusement from a lodging-hunting expedition. You knock 
 at a door, on which, or in the adjoining window, you see, inscribed 
 on a card, " Apartments to let, furnished." A slip-shod slavey 
 answers the door, and almost before you have told her what you 
 want, an eager-eyed woman appears, all pelerine, cap and ribbons, 
 smiling with all her might, and rubbing her hands together as if 
 in the act of washing them. " DID you wish to see the rooms, sir ? 
 Walk this way, sir, if you please you'll find them very pleasant, 
 and quite genteel, I assure you, sir. Hann, go down stairs and 
 wash your face. Up stairs, sir, if you please : we 've had the car- 
 pets took up, you see, sir, because this is Friday, and that 's the 
 day that we always have a regular clear out, as I call it. There, 
 sir; these are the rooms, furnished quite elegant and complete, 
 with sofa, chairs, book-case, beautiful mogany table, and every- 
 think ; and this, look, sir, opens into the bed room, all clean and 
 comfortable and nice ; the last gentleman as slept there, sir, was 
 first cousin to a member of Parliament ; and he used always to 
 say he was such a funny gentleman 'Mrs. Miffin that was 
 just his way, air Mrs. Miffin, I tell you what; this is a very
 
 THE LODOINO-HOUSB KEEPER. 99 
 
 Cosy little place :' a nice gentleman he was, and I should have 
 had him now if he hadn't been sent out by the Government 
 somewhere to New South Wales, I think." The time occupied 
 by the foregoing speech has enabled you to glance your eyes 
 around the room. Perhaps you notice some defect, for in- 
 stance, that it is too dark, and express your opinion to that effect. 
 "Too dark, sir?" is the reply ; "Oh! dear me no, sir; you've 
 only just to draw this curtain aside, and the room is as light as 
 possible. See, sir : I had a very celebrated artist here once, sir, 
 and I 'm sure I would n't say so if I had n't, and he declared he 
 was never in such a room for painting in his life." " Very likely, 
 ma'am," you reply ; " what are your terms ? " " Is it for a per- 
 manency, sir, or tempory ? " " Why, perhaps I may be here six 
 months." "Oh! hem; well, sir, I should say partial board I 
 suppose, sir ? " " Yes." " Well then, sir, perhaps I ought to ask 
 three guineas a week, but as it is for a permanency, I think I may 
 make it two and a half, lodgings and attendance and all." The 
 bargain, in case you are disposed to strike one, now proceeds as all 
 bargains do, and ends, unless you are very inexperienced, in your 
 obtaining a further abatement of some eight or ten snillings. If 
 you feel an inward determination to have nothing to do with the 
 ' place, you put on a look of reflection, and intimate that perhaps 
 you may call again. 
 
 We have always been at a loss to know where a Lodging- House 
 Keeper lives : ground floor, first floor, second floor, and two pair 
 back, are either let or to be let, in all lodging-houses. As long 
 as even an attic is unoccupied, there is a bill to be seen in the 
 window. Sometimes there is a queer-looking place out in the 
 yard where the landlady may dwell ; her habitation, if not in the 
 back settlements, would seem to be under ground ; and one of the 
 tribe, under whose roof we formerly sojourned, really used, when 
 suddenly summoned to our aerial citadel, to look as if she had just 
 come out of the coal-hole. 
 
 It is equally difficult to judge from the appearance of the 
 Lodging-House Keeper whether she is maid, wife or widow. On 
 enquiry, it is usually found that she is married ; her husband, it 
 may be, has run away from her ; sometimes he is a butler in a 
 nobleman's family, or a copying clerk in a lawyer's office ; and 
 almost always has some occupation which takes him a great deal 
 from home. He is often a mysterious personage, whose visits 
 occur at long intervals, and late in the evening ; are announced 
 by a stealthy ring at the door, and attended, in a few minutes,
 
 100 THB LODGING-HOUSE KEEPER. 
 
 with a strong smell of fried liver and bacon. Occasionally, you 
 may meet with a Lodging-House Keeper who has a small family ; 
 a boy, perhaps, who might serve for a living illustration to one of 
 Doudney's advertisements, and a girl who looks like a juvenile 
 performer on the tight rope. These children are usually spoilt, 
 troublesome, and noisy in the extreme. They go every morning 
 to a neighbouring day school, and on their birth-days, which are 
 regularly and duly celebrated, a few of their " young friends" are 
 invited to partake of a grand " jollification" in the nether regions, 
 should the house be full, or in the room of any lodger who may chance 
 to be absent. On these occasions, the recitation of various selections 
 from " Enfield's Speaker," and the performance of a pas seul by each 
 of the prodigies, in the presence, and for the gratification of, the 
 surrounding relatives and friends, are sure never to be omitted. 
 
 Be cautious how you entrust yourself to a landlady who has a 
 grown up daughter. From inattention to this point, a friend of 
 ours, a gentleman of the name of Smith, who, although no Captain, 
 yet " lived in country quarters," was nearly meeting with a serious 
 accident. While rusticating, he was taken ill, and so pointed were 
 the attentions paid him, during his sickness, by the daughter of his 
 hostess a young lady, he confessed, of some personal attractions, 
 that it was only by great prudence and self command that he was 
 rescued from an untimely marriage. Remember that there is a 
 dilemma which it is easier to get into than it is to get out of; 
 with Matrimony and its terrors for one horn, and Law with its 
 damages for the other. 
 
 We have here an important remark to make. The late alarm- 
 ing increase in the number of marriages must fill every thinking 
 mind with apprehension and alarm. No doubt there are many 
 other causes predisposing to the rash act ; but we are certain that 
 young men are often driven to the commission of wedlock by that 
 want of comfort which they endure" in a lodging-house. It is high 
 time that a " Bill for the Amendment of Lodging-House Keepers" 
 should be brought forward in Parliament. It is clear on what 
 foundation such a Bill should be based. Exalt the Lodging- 
 House Keeper's morale; supply her with sound principles; in 
 short, educate her. By these means, her conduct will be im- 
 proved ; and many a young man, now discontented with his apart- 
 ments and condition, will then, happy in the enjoyment of domestic 
 quiet and cleanliness, regard his lodgings as a home ; and, existing 
 really in a state of single blessedness, be no longer tempted to ex- 
 eliange it for one discountenanced by the laws of his country, and 
 justly punishable in a workhouse.
 
 THE BRICKLAYER'S LABOURER. 
 
 Young Ambition's ladder. 
 
 SH AV.r< LRE.
 
 THE BRICKLAYER'S LABOURER. 
 
 BY MRS. S. C. HALL. 
 
 MOST people have heard the story of the Bricklayer's Labourer, 
 who laid a wager with a "a boy" in the same "trade," that he 
 would carry him, on his hod, to the summit of a five-storied house 
 in perfect safety. The feat was accomplished ; and the delighted 
 carrier capered with glee at his triumph. "Ah, be dad!" exclaimed 
 the carried, who most unquestionably would have been dashed to 
 atoms if the other had made a false step ; " Ah, be dad ! I had grate 
 hopes once, whin, a little more than half way up, ye made a stum- 
 ble!" It is impossible not to laugh at this recklessness of conse- 
 quences, so very characteristic of my poor countrymen. The story 
 may be called "a Joe" or "a jest;" but there is no mistaking 
 the nationality of its detail and its moral. Paddy's whole body 
 and mind is imbued with a love of "fun:" no matter what the 
 hazard may be, he will have his fun out ; he never could, never 
 can, never will, trim his barque carefully, and sail quietly down the 
 stream of life. Not he, indeed ! He will feather his oar with the 
 breakers a-head ; and mingle death and laughter together. Not 
 that he is unfeeling ; oh, no ! When away from the influence of 
 either of the three excitements that, united, may be termed the 
 Black Shamrock of Ireland the excitement of whiskey, sectarianism, 
 or politics Paddy's heart is full of the most generous sympathies 
 and affections. He will weep at the misfortunes of others, but 
 laugh at his own. I remember once hearing of a young country- 
 man, Alick Grace by name, who had lost his all by the failure of 
 a provincial bank. A gentleman overtook him as he was returning 
 to his farm, and perceived that he was labouring under some strong 
 feeling : he was running, springing and whirling his shillala ; at 
 lait, his animal spirits sunk ; and, leaning his head against a tree, 
 the poor fellow burst into tears. " For shame, Alick ! " exclaimed 
 the gentleman : "for shame ! bear up against your troubles like a 
 man : you have youth, health, strength, and a good character ; 
 there is no fear of your doing well, Alick Grace none in the 
 world."
 
 102 THE BRICKLAYER'S LABOURER. 
 
 "The devil a fear, sir; I know that, now that I come to tlitJ. 
 of it : but sure it 's little right that a gorsoon like myself would 
 have to think of himself, and trouble over the poor cabin-keeper 
 like a thundercloud powering down destruction on him and his : 
 and the thing that crushes my heart most, is the picture of Mary 
 Mulvany God look down on her! standing like a statue opposite 
 the bank door, pressing her small children to her bussum, and "the 
 thrifle her young husband left gone, and nothing but the road to 
 take to. I never thought of my own share when I looked at her, 
 until I thought if I had it back, it's to her I'd give it the 
 darlint ! " 
 
 " Marry her, Alick," said the gentleman. 
 
 " Be dad, I would, sir ! and take poor Larry's children into the 
 bargain ; but I would n't distress her feelings by naming the like 
 in her hearing ; for well I know her heart's in her husband's grave! 
 I wonder at ye, sir, to think Alick Grace could cry for the loss 
 of his own money ! " 
 
 This little episodic may, perhaps, be considered out of keep- 
 ing where it is the writer's duty to pourtray but one object ; a 
 thing I find it difficult to do when treating of the inhabitants of 
 the " green isle," because obliged to select out of an abundance, 
 not a dearth, of subjects. At least, forty Bricklayers' Labourers 
 pass our garden- gate every morning and evening ; the sound of 
 their brogue ascends, though there is neither mirth nor quarrelling 
 amongst them ; for the Bricklayer's Labourer is a peaceable person, 
 except, perhaps, on Sundays ; when he loses his identity, exchanges 
 his cap for a hat, his jacket for his national long coat, his hod for a 
 shillala, and becomes, instead of an up-going, down-coming, mortar- 
 making machine, a genuine son of the sod ! Dwelling, most likely, 
 in the neighbourhood of Saifron Hill, Seven Dials, Paddington, or 
 Jew's Row, Chelsea, there, on a Sunday morning, he sometimes 
 indulges in certain outbreaks which invariably create much amuse- 
 ment in the police-offices: except then, he is a well-ordered 
 machine as to his labour, careful and circumspect, well knowing 
 that his lot is cast in an enemy's country ; knowing that every 
 labouring Englishman would be most happy that he remained in 
 his own island to starve, so he did not trench upon what he con- 
 siders his exclusive property. The Bricklayer's Labourer lives 
 upon one-third of what is required to support an Englishman, 
 and he does a third more work ; he eats his mid-day meal, brought 
 to him by a fair-haired colleen or a rosy boy, under the wall he is 
 building ; he does not heed the weather ; he does not, if he can
 
 THE BRICKLAYER'S LABOURER 103 
 
 help it, heed the reproaches flung in his teeth by those who feed 
 on bread and bacon, while he is content with a herring and pota- 
 toes ; he sacrifices (without thinking it a sacrifice) a portion of his 
 earnings to keep his old mother from the parish. His charities are 
 voluntary : an Irishman, no matter how poor, is generous ; if he 
 has not money to bestow, he gives his sympathies, his time, his 
 affections ; his heart is never closed, though his pocket may be 
 empty. There is Lawrence Larkin, or, as he is called, Larry 
 Larkin I cannot select a better specimen than Larry whom I 
 have known long, and whose virtues I honour I do not care 
 whether a man's shoulder bears an epaulette or a hod, if he has a 
 generous and feeling mind I honour it, and not the badge he 
 wears. Larry, in his calling, is a genuine Bricklayer's Labourer ; 
 a creature perpetually moving between earth and heaven, conti- 
 nually ascending and descending ; whose existence depends on the 
 soundness and safe placing of a ladder, and the balancing of a hod. 
 See him as he stands in the very act of preparing for his ascent, his 
 hod heavily laden with its usual freight ; he rubs his hands together 
 to rouse their dormant circulation ; then weighs it, as it were, but 
 the motion is to ascertain if the bricks are securely in ; and then, 
 having found all right, places it on his shoulder, which he jerks so 
 as to fit on the hod as if it were a -part of his dress: all this is 
 done carefully, treating the hod as if it were a badge of honour ; and 
 so it is, Larry the badge of honourable industry. 
 
 The hod being fixed, up he goes, firmly and lightly, rapidly 
 too, considering the load he carries and now observe him : his 
 figure is not very tall, but it is muscular and compact : has he 
 not less of the gay-hearted Irishman in his manner, while at his 
 work, than any other out door labourer ? those who labour within 
 doors are always more silent, more shut down, as it were, by the 
 roof that covers them less buoyant, less gleesome than those around 
 whom the fresh, free air, even of a city, blows, during the hours of 
 toil ; but Larry Larkin's business, though out of doors, is both 
 laborious and careful ; a false step, on the ladder, would be his 
 destruction, and he knows it ; he does not sing at his work, though 
 he is happy ; his jacket of white flannel is powdered with the 
 mingled dust of lime and brick ; his stockings are of white worsted, 
 similarly spangled ; his brogues, guiltless of blacking, and his cap, 
 a low, flat, round cap, of grey skin, does not descend low on tht 
 back of his head, so that you see his thick, bushy, lime-powdered 
 hair, curling beneath it ; his great bodily attribute is strength his 
 mental one, patience ; there is no variety in his occupation, no
 
 104 THE BRICKLAYER'S LABOURER. 
 
 change ; consequently the Bricklayer's Labourer is the most steady 
 of all Irishmen. Sometimes when the wind blows the smoke in an 
 opposite direction, and the clouds disperse, he leans his arms for a 
 moment on the hod which he has rested on the corner of the parapet 
 wall of that tall house, turns up his face to the clear, blue sky, and 
 fills his ample lungs with a long draught of heaven's elixir. Who 
 can tell, within the compass of a few moments, the torrents of ideas, 
 the floods of precious memories, that rush back into his heart ; he 
 does not know how they come those mysterious visitors but they 
 are there, winged by the western wind from his own isle : not re- 
 dolent of abundance, that idol of a mind more gross than the poor 
 Irishman's, but laden with dreams of the affections of his youth, 
 his mother's blessing, his father's advice, the parting words of some 
 " little Colleen," whom his own fagging, faithful Peggy would just 
 as soon he did not remember ; the dance, the jest, perhaps the fight 
 'at the last fair, or the memory of some love-lay rises above the tur- 
 moil of the noisy street, though the lips that breathed it may have 
 long been cold ; he gazes on the expanse of sky until his imagination 
 has converted the very smoke, hanging like a pall over the great 
 city of the world, into his native hills ; and if the notes of a captive 
 bird rise upon the air, his heart swells within his bosom : the carel 
 of the wild lark, the blackbird's whistle, the thrush's chaunt, the 
 plover's lonely pipe, the music of early peasant life, ring in his 
 ears and all this passes within the compass of a minute, before 
 you can read half what I have written : the dream of his country is 
 over, the romance is past ; he is the poor, patient, plodding, Brick- 
 layer's Labourer, descending with his hod, again to ascend, but not 
 again to dream ; those visions are " few and far between," but, like 
 the mountain rill, rushing into the bosom of the silent lake, though 
 its identity is lost in the tranquil waters ; it has purified, in some 
 degree, the stagnant pool ; it has disturbed the weeds ; it has 
 brought the freedom of the hill into the valley ; the spirit of the 
 poor man is revived within him, and his step, in descending, is more 
 firm, his eye more bright than it was. 
 
 I have observed that the relaxations of the country, the walk on 
 the hill side, away from town, the stroll in the fresh air, the game 
 of cricket on the broad green common, send men back to their work 
 with renewed cheerfulness, and an increased disposition to labour, 
 while they are at it ; but the feverish and unhealthy relaxations of 
 the town the pint and pipe of the hot tap-room, the fever of the 
 cheap theatre, dissipate without amusing. Our legislators would 
 do well to encourage the occasional migrations of our working
 
 THE BRICKLAYER S LABOURER. 105 
 
 classes to the neighbourhood of London ; where strictly rural 
 sports could be enjoyed under regulations conducive to health and 
 mental cheerfulness. 
 
 No one, I repeat it. was ever able to recognise a Bricklayer's 
 Labourer on Sunday : he casts his hod, his coat, and his carefulness 
 together, as a snake does his skin ; he is on Sunday like any other 
 Irishman, ready for a spree or a fight, a frolic or a quarrel. On 
 Sundays, even Larry Larkin is a complete Irishman ; on other days, 
 he is a Bricklayer's Labourer ! 
 
 Larry occasionally, when out of work, does a small job for his 
 neighbours : he will come over hours, repair a drain, mend a wall, 
 or even dabble in what he calls " Roman Cimint God bless it !" 
 The greenhouse flue has been " touched up" by Lawrence half-a- 
 dozen times ; and the last time he came " to look at it," he was 
 reproached with the fact, " that it smoked as much as ever that 
 the plants were suffocated ! " 
 
 "See that now!" he replied; "See that now! didn't I know 
 it ! I said to Peggy, ' Peggy,' says I, ' I 'm sent for to the Rosery, 
 and I '11 go bail it 's that vagabone flue again.' Sorra a plant 'ill 
 be alive with it by Lady Day ! " 
 
 " But that is your fault ; you assured me you would cure it." 
 
 "And so I did! but it's got bad again: it's had what the Doctor 
 calls a railapse, and how can it help it the craythur ! Sure the air 
 o' London would smotherificate any chimbley that ever was built : 
 has n't it smothered myself, and Peggy, and the childre all out 
 bad cess to it for air : sure its thick enough for mate and drink ; 
 though bad as times are, we're not behoulden to it, God be praised." 
 
 " Who do you work for now. Larry ?" 
 
 " A grate gintleman entirely, a grate builder, though onc't he 
 was n't much betther off than myself. I heard tell he come to 
 London with little to cover him but the care of the Almighty ; 
 and he wasn't altogether a gorsoon (little boy), but a fine lump 
 of a young man ; and he went to a gentleman, who (the heavens 
 be his bed !) was mighty good entirely to the poor Irish, and he 
 axed for work, and there was a big heap of stones at one corner 
 of the coort yard ; and the gentleman said, ' If ye want work, 
 my man, carry them stones to the opposite corner ;' and the poor 
 stranger set too and did as he was bid ; and when he had done, he 
 tould the masther, and axed him what he should do next ; and the 
 masther said, ' Take every one of the stones back to where ye found 
 them ;' and he did so, and tould the masther again when he had 
 done ; and the masther was plazed, ye see, becase he did exactly as 
 64 o
 
 106 THE BRICKLAYER'S LABOURER. 
 
 he was bid, neither more nor less, and axed no questiors ; and the 
 masther said, ' You '11 do for me,' and gave him constant employ ; 
 and from that day he riz, riz, riz, like a house a fire ; and grate 
 sense, and grate luck he had : he knew the ganeus of the English 
 quiet, hard-working, aisy going, and no bother, nor blarney." 
 During the latter part of these observations, Larry had been in- 
 vestigating the state of the flue, and, despite the air, again de- 
 clared he could cure it. 
 
 " For how long, Larry ?" 
 
 " Ah, thin, what doctor could answer such a question as that ? 
 we '11 get rid of the desease for the prisint, any how ; and then I 
 must go home, where I 'm wanting ; for ye see I 'm raythur tired 
 to-day, and I '11 tell ye how it was : When I quitted the sod (left 
 Ireland), I left no one at home with my poor mother but my little 
 brother, Barney, a slip of a boy, and her heart and soul was in the 
 child; but he turned out wild, and left the counthry. It's little I 
 could do for the poor lone mother ; and she so far off, but I often 
 thought of her, and would send her a thrifle now and again, and a 
 word, telling how I was treading the ladder of life now up, now 
 down, the same as the quality, who, many of 'em, are done up, like 
 the houses, with the Roman Cimint God bless it to look like what 
 they aint : but that's not my business; only there's nothing like 
 the rale lime and stone, afther all. Well, my wife says to me one 
 day, or raythur night it was of a Sathurday ; and I had earned 
 a power that week, for it was task-work, and I had slaved over- 
 hours, and felt wake in myself, and she was making me a sup of 
 punch, and I had taken out my money, and laid a couple of 
 shillings together for a throwel for the neighbour's jobs, and 
 another thrifle for a pair of shoes, besides the rint ; and there was 
 a little over, and Peggy says to me ' Larry,' says she, ' our 
 Heavenly Father's very good to us in a strange counthry,' says 
 she, -, (for she was always a God-fearing woman) ; ' and ye 'r a 
 good husband, and a good father, and the quietest man in or 
 out of Ireland, when the drop's not in,' she says (I'd be ashamed 
 to be praising myself, only them war the very words she spoke) ; 
 ' and I often see ye sit solid as a pillar, looking out of yer eyes, 
 straight forward, saying and seeing nothing, until yer eyes, avour- 
 neen, swim in tears ! and thin, Larry, I know you do be thinking 
 of your ould mother, and she alone in her latther days : and here,' 
 she says, taking out the rimnant of a leather apron, tied into a 
 bag, ' here is what will bring her over ; what I 've saved out of 
 my washing at the laundry ; and put that thrifle to it : I hav n't
 
 THE BRICKLAYER'S LABOURER. 107 
 
 touched a drop of beer, nor would n't, for the last four months ; 
 and ye '11 be happy all out then, Larry ; and we '11 make the ould 
 woman happy ; and sure she 'H take delight in the grand-childre. 
 Often, when I 've been putting the bread in my mouth, I 've 
 thought that your mother had nothing, may-be, but a wet payatee ! 
 And do, Larry, send for her, in God's name; we'll be nothing 
 the poorer for it, for a mother's breath is a blessing in a poor man's 
 house. Well, I had Peggy in her young days ; and at first her 
 two cheeks war like two roses, and now they 're as white as lime ; 
 but I thought I never see anything look so handsome as she did 
 then ; and while her poor, hard, slaving hand trembled in mine, 
 I could n't spake, but I hid my face in her apron, and cried as 
 much tears as would make a hod of mortar : the poor craythur ! 
 denying herself and for my mother ! 
 
 " Well, the ould woman came, and we would have been very 
 happy, only the poor mother could not forget Barney, the boy 
 that left her ; and this very morning, we war mighty busy en- 
 tirely with the new houses and the masther gives a hand's turn to 
 many a boy (God bless him for it!) and I see two or three 
 strangers among them the labourers, I mane and one poor look- 
 ing fellow ; and I observed him mighty wake. ' My man,' says 
 I, ' do n't fill the hod ; for you '11 not be able for it ; and keep 
 steady,' I says, ' and 1 11 go behind ye.' With that, he shoulders 
 it mighty awkward, like a young soldier with his musket on first 
 drill, and with a laugh. ' I never could keep steady,' he says. 
 Well, the laugh, and the look of his pale, rowling, but bright eyes, 
 dull and starved looking, made my flesh creep. Death is bad 
 enough to look at when it is could and stiff; but just so much 
 life left as keeps fire in the eye, while everything else is all as 
 one as dead, is shocking to see ; arid somehow, as I followed him 
 up the ladder, I felt as if I was following a corpse. 
 
 " He had not gone up six rungs of the ladder, when he stum- 
 bled; but I let my own load go, and cotched him just as he went 
 over the side. I carried him down ; he was as light as a child of 
 two years ould no weight in him. With that, one of your half 
 gentlemen, who was passing, looks at him : ' He's drunk,' he says 
 I co>nld n't make him no answer, for I was choked with the injustice 
 of the world (the boy's breath had been on my cheek not three minutes 
 before, and was as innocent of spirits as a new born babe's} ; but 
 Jerry Clure a fine tongue has Jerry, when he lets it go, and 
 fine edication makes answer, 'He is drunk from the fulness of 
 want : sorra a bit or sup has passed his lips these twenty-four 
 hours : and it is a sin and a shame for the likes of you, who have
 
 108 /HE BRICKLAYER'S LABOURER. 
 
 plenty, to turn such a word on a stranger. If a poor boy reels 
 with the wakeness of starvation, he is drunk ; if a rich one reels 
 afther a dinner that would satisfy a wife and five children, he is 
 excited' them war his words: and at the same time, just as we 
 war all gathered about him, one with wather, another with whiskey 
 all according to their ability my poor mother comes np with 
 the bit of dinner. ' What 's the matter ? ' she says ; and some one 
 tould her : and with that, she makes into the throng ; for she 's a 
 feeling woman. ' Give him air,' she says ; and as they drew back, 
 she looked in his face ; and then my grief ! the shriek of her 
 would pierce a heart of stone. She just threw up her arm in the 
 air, with one wild cry, and fell upon the poor stranger. 
 
 " I knew who it was then" said Larry, turning away to conceal 
 an emotion which does honour to a man, and which, nevertheless, 
 he is always ashamed of; "I knew the poor boy was MY OWN 
 BROTHER!" He paused, and then added, "I wonder has any of 
 the grate people made out, in these improving times, what it is 
 that draws people's hearts together without a rason or a knowledge. 
 I 'm too ould to take much to strangers ; but I felt my heart turn 
 to that boy from the minute I seen him a something stir in my 
 breast to him little thinking what it was. It 's natur', I suppose ; 
 turn it which way they will, it 's natur' ; they can't go beyond it, 
 nor get past it, with all their laming ; it will have its own way 
 why not ? " 
 
 I asked how he was. 
 
 " A wild life, ma'am ; but I hope the end will be paceful ; 
 he can't live, he 's too far gone : but sure his mother and people 
 are with him and the Lord is marciful ! " 
 
 Lawrence Larkin shouldered his hod the usual steady ex- 
 pression of his features returned he, as I have said, shouldered 
 his hod, and departed. Few, if any, who pass him in the street 
 will vouchsafe a thought upon him. During the week, he is a 
 Bricklayer's Labourer ; a creature born to the destiny of carrying 
 a hod and making mortar and that is all ! on Sunday, he is 
 confounded amid the hosts of " poor Irish," " disorderly Irish," 
 * labouring Irish ; " " dirty Irish ! " hated with a bitter, but most 
 unworthy and undeserved, hatred by his own class of English 
 fellow-subjects, while the more refined consider him as a disorderly 
 being, to be either feared or laughed at. 
 
 Does Larry Larkin, the Bricklayer's Labourer, deserve to be 
 so looked upon ? Believe me, English reader you with whom 
 justice is always a duty believe me, amongst the class you either 
 overlook or despise, Larry is by no means an uncommon character.
 
 THB DEBTOR. 
 
 In a bondman's key, 
 
 Wi-ii 'bated breath, and wruapermg humbleness.
 
 THE CREDITOR. 
 
 .Murder a man's family, and ne may brooK it, 
 But keep ycur hands out of his breeches' pocket. 
 
 BYKON.
 
 THE DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 
 
 BY DOUGLAS JRIIOLD. 
 
 WE have heard of men who would boast that they " never had an 
 hour's illness never owed a shilling in their lives." Let us not be 
 thought so credulous as to believe that the world abounds with 
 such people ; by no means : we hear of them with a like sense 
 of curious wonder awakened by tidings of a spotted boy, the 
 horned woman, the pig-faced lady, or any other human marvel 
 that Nature, in her sport or idleness, deems good to send among 
 us. The man who has never known sickness has, we fear, a verj 
 irreverential notion of the delicacy, the subtleties of his anatomy 
 and, with a certain senatorial philanthropist, may question the wise 
 utility of hospitals. The man who has never owed a shilling 
 cannot, we opine, have a just apprehension of the horrors of debt, 
 and may look on prison walls with a deep and sweet conviction of 
 their social worth and excellence. These people, however the 
 sacred few exempt from the apothecary and the attorney are the 
 precious babes of Fortune ; dipped, heels and all, in Styx ; powdered 
 with gold, and swathed in finest linen. Our purpose is not with 
 thetn ; it is enough that we have glanced at their strange existence ; 
 that we have pointed at these monsters of felicity these paragons 
 of luck. The comprehensiveness of our theme embraces the whole 
 world ; for where, where is the man who, though he may never 
 have had an hour's illness, has, at the same time, never owed a 
 shilling ? where, where the man equally exempt from rhubarb 
 and from writs ? 
 
 It is, we hope, obvious that our present paper touches onlj 
 the Debtor and Creditor as flourishing under the British consti- 
 tution. We speak only of national evils and national remedies. 
 Every land has, we believe, its own mode of recovery ; in every 
 nation, the Debtor meets with a peculiar attention ; the Creditor, 
 in the pursuit of his claim, conforming to the legislative genius of 
 his maternal country. We would not, were we sufficiently scho- 
 larly, enumerate the different modes of different nations, detaining
 
 110 THE DEBTOR AMD CREDITOR. 
 
 the reader with a description of the thousand various processes to 
 which the Debtor is subjected, in order to make him satisfy his 
 lordly master ; for, be sure of it, the Debtor, let him hold up his 
 head and ruffle it as he will, is the bondman the serf of the 
 Creditor. We will not attempt a circumnavigation of the globe, 
 to shew how Carib recovers of Carib ; by what refined process the 
 Patagonian is compelled to disgorge to his fellow ; or how the 
 men of Labrador recover of one another. This is a theme too vast 
 and comprehensive for our purpose. We will take it for granted 
 that, in some barbarian lands, the Debtor is doomed to servitude ; 
 in some, he suffers mutilation ; in some, he is impaled ; in some, 
 branded. We will not dispute the stories of travellers who have 
 printed as much. In England, Hesperian soil ! the Debtor wears 
 no slavish yoke, loses no limb, is fixed on no stake, bears no igno- 
 minious impress. No, in this our happy country, where law is the 
 bright babe begotten by Wisdom upon Justice, the Debtor is only 
 skinned alive ! 
 
 The reader, of course, perceives that we speak of the Debtor 
 in extremis, when reduced to the last consolations of law. It is 
 then that we recognise the wisdom and philanthropy of British 
 legislators, who, imitating the benevolent example of Nature, that 
 has expressly created certain food for the sustenance of meanest 
 insects, make the offending culprit the lawful morsel of litigation 
 providing the Debtor as a dinner for the attorney. 
 
 How innocent, how guileless is the man who never dreams 
 that there are cannibals in London ! Why, society is beset by 
 anthropophagi. One cannot walk the streets without rubbing coats 
 with men-eaters ; cannibals duly entered ; consumers of human 
 flesh and blood according to the statutes. They are to be known 
 to the man who reads human faces known as truly as the family 
 of honey-feeders is known to the naturalist. They have, for the 
 most part, a certain cadaverous aspect, a restless, wily, eye, with 
 a sneaking cruelty about the lips. Some few there are with full, 
 rosy faces, and sleek, satin skins, a plethoric variety of the race. 
 And these have, times out of mind, fed upon the Debtor, duly 
 provided for them by gracious law-givers. Like the ogre of our 
 childhood, they have 
 
 " Ground his bones to make their bread." 
 
 The Debtor is, therefore, to be considered as he exists in himself, 
 and as he lives for his consumers. He is, in the strongest and 
 most significant sense, a national portrait ; for in his person, au4
 
 THE DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. Ill 
 
 in his experiences, are illustrated the social excellences of legis- 
 lation. As a kitten suffering in an air-pump, or a 'dog with its 
 arteries laid bare by the knife of the speculative anatomist, illus- 
 trates a certain principle in science, so does the Debtor, in the 
 fangs of the sharp attorney, illustrate the delegated wisdom of the 
 community. He proves the ignominy of poverty. The varlet who 
 steals " some eightpenny matter," is sentenced to be whipped ; the 
 wretch who owes forty shillings is handed over to the attorney, 
 who, the appointed officer to punish the iniquity of debt, in a trice 
 doubles the amount, thus justly punishing the pauperism of the 
 pauper. The hangman flourishes his whip ; the attorney scourges 
 with costs. 
 
 The philosophy of the law of Debtor and Creditor demonstrates 
 that to be poor is to be punishable. Hence, certain instruments 
 not, indeed, the thumb-screw, the rack, or the strapado, but engines 
 almost equally sanguinary have been invented, and placed at the 
 will of the legal executioner, wherewith, for his own especial ad- 
 vantage, he may torture the offender. It is not the Creditor for 
 whom the law has shewn its most paternal care, but the lawyer. 
 It is not justice that is to be vindicated, but litigation that is to 
 be gorged. It is to this wise and goodly end that costs are not 
 limited to shillings, but swollen to pounds. Justice might, indeed, 
 be cheaply satisfied ; but the attorney has a maw insatiate. Again, 
 to make justice cheap, would doubtless make her contemptible : she 
 is, therefore, dignified by expense ; made glorious by the greatness 
 of costs. 
 
 What a forlorn animal is the Debtor ! See him hovering about 
 
 yonder door. That, reader, is the office of Mr. , a sharp 
 
 practitioner ; a person who, to the utmost, avails himself of the 
 benevolence of law-makers, and never spares the criminal in debt. 
 It is that office, that den of tape and parchment, 
 
 "Where half-starved spiders prey on half-starved flies," 
 
 thafthe Debtor would seek for mercy : he comes to beg for time , 
 to supplicate that he may not be swallowed whole by law, but 
 mercifully consumed by mouthfuls. He will sign any bond, he 
 will pay any costs ; all that he wants is time ; and he, therefore, 
 with the deepest humiliation, entreats that he may only be devoured 
 piecemeal. Look at the man, gentle reader, and shudder at debt : 
 what self-abasement is in his mien ' what an expression of anguish 
 darkens his face ; and now what a blush of shame ! He crawls to 
 the door ; lingers at its step ; his eye runs down the strips of
 
 112 THE DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 
 
 names painted at the door-post he has read them a dozen time* 
 to find the whereabout of the gentleman who has sued him ; 
 and he mounts the stairs with less alacrity than many a wretch 
 has mounted Tyburn ladder. His debt is not of crushing amount ; 
 he could, in a little time, satisfy his Creditor ; but then the costs 
 have doubled the sum, and how to appease the lawyer ? Well, the 
 attorney has relenting bowels : yes, for see with what a gladdened 
 face, with what lightened step, the Debtor, after half an hour's 
 delay, descends the stairs, having, as he for the time believes, 
 comfortably settled everything. Yes, he has signed a certain in- 
 strument, another wicked profit to the attorney, and he is graciously 
 permitted to linger on to the exclusive profit of the compassionate 
 lawyer. The Debtor owed five pounds, and with a benignity highly 
 honourable to the professional philanthropist, he has been allowed 
 a certain number of weeks to pay ten. 
 
 With what a mixture of pity and disdain do we contemplate 
 the idols of the heathen ! How we at once mourn and marvel at 
 the darkness, the self-abasement of poor human nature, making its 
 offerings of blood and violence at the shrine of superstition. We, 
 who shrug our shoulders at Mumbo Jumbo ; we, who turn with 
 loathing from the blue monkey ; we, who in the self-glor.ification 
 of reason, in the pride and fulness of civilisation, laugh and spit 
 at the ape with the golden tooth ; alas ! have we no idols ? have 
 we set up no fantastic image worship ? have we erected no Moloch, 
 to the profit of its high priests, and the suffering of thousands ? 
 Have we built up no idol, that with the mask of an angel has the 
 claws of a harpy? Have we no shrine, at which multitudes, 
 gathered in the name of justice, are despoiled and stripped by the 
 murmuring priesthood of the law ? Do we call for no offerings to 
 ignorance, and craft, and legal lying ? And by a strange and 
 wicked superstition, do men not band themselves together to per- 
 oetuate the ill to keep up the guilty farce acted in the outraged 
 name of reason to do the grossest wrong in the name of public 
 right ? Let him who would call this a rhapsody take his station at 
 an inn of Court ; let him watch the priesthood, glossy as ravens ; 
 let him mark the anxious faces, the distracted looks of the daily 
 scores who do bleeding sacrifice to them. Let the unbeliever read 
 the Debtor's bill of costs ; and when he has marked the prices of 
 the articles issued in the name of justice, let him conscientiously 
 make answer, if crape and pistols, though most dangerous and 
 jgnominious, are, in very truth, the most dishonest instruments 
 empioyea by reasoning man.
 
 THE DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 113 
 
 Do we blame the attorney ? Do we condemn meek Mr. Lambs- 
 heart, of Chancery Lane, with his country-house and pinery in 
 Maida Vale? Do we cast invective upon him, who has lived and 
 grown sleek and rich upon the very marrow of the Debtor ? By no 
 means : we would as soon think of chiding a crow for feeding upon 
 carrion. " The law allows it." He has been the child, the nursling 
 of the system. To him, for thirty years, parchment has been daily 
 bread ; he is only just as bad as the law enables him to be, but is 
 ready to be worse with any alteration of the statutes. This is merely 
 human nature ; and even Mr. Lambsheart, though a sharp attorney, 
 is a reasoning animal, an excellent judge of port wine, and, indeed, 
 in many other respects, a man. 
 
 We have considered the Debtor in what the state evidently con- 
 siders to be his most important relation ; as, in fact, so much food 
 for the law : as a thing to be eaten clean up, if he be a very poor 
 and small Debtor ; or to be taken, as we have already inferred, 
 mouthful by mouthful, according to the natural benignity of the 
 priests of the mystery. We have next to consider him as in the 
 immediate thrall of the Creditor, before delivered over to the mercies 
 of sharp or gentle practice. And here we would fain set ourselves 
 right with the reader, lest he should conceive that we hold every 
 Debtor to be a person of interest, an unfortunate creature, calling 
 loudly for our best sympathies. Some there are to whom debt 
 seems their natural element; they appear to swim only in hot 
 water. To owe and to live, are, to them, terms synonymous ; the 
 ledger is their libra d'oro ; the call of the sheriff no more than the 
 call of a friend. There are Debtors who, for their reckless sins, 
 deserve flaying at the hands of law ; but in the daily skinning that 
 takes place, there is, unhappily, no distinction there can be none. 
 The law makes all eels that come to net, and all are flayed under 
 one sentence. 
 
 There was Jack Brassly. We verily believe that his first debt 
 commenced in his fourth year, for marbles. Certain it is, that the 
 disease had attacked him when very young, and clung, increasing, 
 to him through a long and various life. Yet, how airily would he 
 plunge into debt ! In the enlargement of his heart, he looked upon 
 all mankind as brothers, and therefore never hesitated to put in a 
 fraternal claim to a portion of their goods and chattels. The world, 
 however hard-hearted world ! did not reciprocate the kindly feel- 
 ing of Jack ; hence, he became known to every bailiff in London, 
 and could, we honestly believe, give the exact dimensions of every 
 sponging-house in the bills of mortality. What a sight was it to 
 65 P
 
 114 THE DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 
 
 see Jack in prison ! Ho\v* loftily, yet withal, how graciously, he 
 suffered durance. Sir Thomas More and Sir Walter Raleigh in 
 the Tower, let them have braved it as they might, must have been 
 sneak-ups to Jack. With what a majestic condescension would lie 
 address the menials of the gaol ! The very pot-boy felt elevated. 
 Guileless youth ! Was it for nothing, think ye, that Jack Brassly 
 pitched his silveriest tones to the carrier of malt ? The coalman, a 
 very Caliban, stood, with open mouth, fascinated by the dulcet voice 
 and honied smile of Brassly ; and the third half-bushel shot into the 
 cupboard, departed, still unpaid. As for the laundress, week after 
 week did Brassly smile away her lengthy bill ; still the woman 
 continued to wash, albeit, in her own equivocal words, " there was 
 no end to Mr. Brassly's shirts." It was thus Jack wound himself 
 about the heart of man and woman : everybody trusted him ; he paid 
 nobody, yet everybody conspired to declare that he was such a gen- 
 tleman ! Let it be confessed, no man better understood the graces 
 of life ; no man was more fully impressed with the necessary dignity 
 of a dinner. He had been in gaol two months. A friend called, 
 and, to his surprise, found Jack considerably agitated. " Bless me, 
 Brassly ! what 's the matter ? any new trouble ?" " Very much an- 
 noyed, indeed," answered Jack. " I see how it is : a new creditor, 
 
 I suppose has" " Not at all," interrupted Brassly ; " creditor 
 
 pooh! creditor." "Well, then," cried the friend, preparing himself 
 for the worst, " put me out of suspense : what is it ?" Brassly, 
 after an effort, and laying his hand upon the arm of his friend, 
 began his tale. " You see, my dear fellow, I am going up to- 
 morrow ; I shall be out the next day." " Perhaps," observed the 
 friend, "if Dodgby, and Winkman, and Cramp, " "Oh, I have 
 renewed all their bills," said Brassly ; " they have withdrawn their 
 opposition, and I shall be sure to be out : but to the matter." 
 "Aye, the cause of your anxiety; what is it?" "Before I went 
 out, I wished to have a few friends to dine with me ; there 's 
 fourteen of 'em kind souls ! coming ; I have a pretty little 
 summer banquet ; but what annoys me past expression, is this : 
 although I have sent a mile about the neighbourhood yes, at 
 
 least a mile " " Well ? " "I can't offer what money I will 
 
 get any ice-powders for the wine." Poor Brassly! 
 
 Everybody persisted in calling Brassly a gentleman ; and we 
 will do him the justice to avow, that let his difficulties be what they 
 might, he never forgot the reputation thus forced upon him. He 
 never condescended to any plebeian usage, if, by any importunity, 
 he could obtain the means of passing gentility. " My dear Framp-
 
 THE DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 115 
 
 ton, it was Providence that sent you in my path," cried Brassly, 
 addressing a portly gentleman in the street, squeezing his hand, 
 and then looking with sorrowful eyes and depressed mouth into 
 his face. "What's the matter, Brassly?" For some seconds, 
 Brassly was too much overcome to speak ; at length, he cried, 
 " For heaven's sake, lend me a sovereign!" 
 
 " A sovereign ! " 
 
 " A sovereign. I have not a penny in the world I cannot 
 tell you now ; you shall know all some day ; but I have a pressing 
 (pressing, did I say ?) nay, a sacred, a holy call for a sovereign. 
 A shilling less will not do ; it must be a sovereign." 
 
 " Well," said Frampton, with the face and air of a man to 
 whom the incident was not altogether new ; "well;" and he slowly 
 drew forth his purse, took out the coin, and, evidently as if bidding 
 an eternal farewell to it, placed the money in the hand of Brassly. 
 " There it is," said Frampton, with great Christian resignation. 
 
 " Thank you," mildly replied Brassly ; " much obliged to you. 
 Here" and to the consternation of Frampton, he saw Brassly 
 lift his finger heard him raise his voice: "Here, cab!" The 
 charioteer drove his cab to the kerb, and Brassly, not having a 
 penny in the world except the sovereign, for every farthing of 
 which he had a sacred, a holy use, was, bowing and smiling gra- 
 ciously to the lender, whirled away ! 
 
 Years passed, and Brassly became the borrower of shillings ; 
 nevertheless, his strong sense of all the proprieties of a dinner 
 remained with him ; that, with all his losses, continued to dignify 
 his squalor. With Brassly, there was only one snuff shop in 
 London, only one butcher, only one vendor of oysters, and so forth. 
 This prejudice even the bitterest poverty failed to cure in him. 
 There were, to be sure, thousands of retailers of snuff and tobacco, 
 thousands who cut up sheep and oxen, thousands who dealt in 
 shell-fish ; yet to Brassly there was but one of each : the snuff 
 of all others was fiery dust ; the mutton, tasteless ; the oysters, 
 poisonous. Beautifully did Brassly illustrate this, his potent belief. 
 He had borrowed ten shillings ; he was living at the time in a 
 wretched nook in the suburbs of the town, with wife and five 
 children. Ten shillings ! and there was promise of a dinner. 
 Airily did Brassly sally forth to purchase that, to a starving family, 
 delicious luxury. A long walk lay before him ; yes, it was two 
 
 miles at least to the shop of Mr. , the only butcher in London. 
 
 Brassly entered the shop; after much pondering, made purchase of a 
 most sapid leg of mutton ; and then (for Brassly was a gentleman,
 
 THE DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 
 
 and could not be seen in the company of a leg of mutton in the public 
 street), with one of the only legs in London, took his seat in a 
 hackney-coach, and drove, in " measureless content," to his alley 
 home. He alighted at his door ; and, having paid ready money for 
 the mutton (a virtue he was wont to dwell upon when promissory 
 payment was out of the case), having settled the fare of the coach- 
 man, Brassly congratulated himself on the wise economy of his 
 dealing ; for he had absolutely saved from the borrowed ten shil- 
 lings sixpence-halfpenny for potatoes ! Brassly lived and died a 
 Debtor ; but it is not for the large family of the Brasslys that we 
 ask the sympathy of the reader. 
 
 Of what a hideous progeny of ill is debt the father ! What lies, 
 what meannesses, what invasions on self-respect, what cares, what 
 double-dealing ! How, in due season, it will carve the frank, open 
 face into wrinkles; how, like a knife, 'twill stab the honest heart. 
 And then, its transformations ! How it has been known to change 
 a goodly face into a mask of brass ; how, with the " damned 
 custom" of debt, has the true man become a callous trickster ! A 
 freedom from debt, and what nourishing sweetness may be found 
 in cold water ; what toothsomeness in a dry crust ; what ambrosial 
 nourishment in a hard egg! Be sure of it, he who dines out of debt, 
 though his meal be biscuit and an onion, dines in " The Apollo." 
 And then for raiment : what warmth in a threadbare coat,, if the 
 tailor's receipt be in the pocket ; what Tyrian purple in the faded 
 waistcoat, the vest not owed for ; how glossy the well-worn hat, if 
 it cover not the aching head of a debtor ! Next, the home-sweets, 
 the out- door recreation of the free man. The street-door knocker 
 falls not a knell on his heart ; the foot on the staircase, though he 
 live on the third-pair, sends no spasm through his anatomy ; at the 
 rap at his door, he can crow forth "come in," and his pulse still 
 beat healthfully, his heart sink not in his bowels. See him abroad. 
 How confidently, yet how pleasantly, he takes the street ; how he 
 returns look for look with any passenger ; how he saunters ; how, 
 meeting an acquaintance, he stands and gossips ! But, then, this 
 man knows not debt ; debt, that casts a drug into the richest wine ; 
 that makes the food of the gods unwholesome, indigestible ; that 
 sprinkles the banquets of a Lucullus with ashes, and drops soot 
 in the soup of an emperor : debt, that, like the moth, makes 
 valueless furs and velvets, enclosing the wearer in a festering prison 
 (the shirt of Nessus was a shirt not paid for) : debt, that writes 
 upon frescoed walls the handwriting of the attorney ; that puts 
 a voice of terror in the knocker ; that makes the heart quake at
 
 THE DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 117 
 
 the haunted fire-side : debt, the invisible demon that walks abroad 
 with a man ; now quickening his steps, now making him look on 
 all sides like a hunted beast, and now bringing to his face the ashy 
 hue of death, as the unconscious passenger looks glancingly upon 
 him ! Poverty is a bitter draught, yet may, and sometimes with 
 advantage, be gulped down. Though the drinker make wry faces, 
 there may, after all, be a wholesome goodness in the cup. But 
 debt, however courteously it be offered, is the cup of a syren, and 
 the wine, spiced and delicious though it be, an eating poison. The 
 man out of debt, though with a flaw in his jerkin, a crack in his 
 shoe-leather, and a hole in his hat, is still the son of liberty, free as 
 the singing lark above him ; but the Debtor, though clothed in the 
 utmost bravery, what is he but a serf out upon a holiday a slave 
 to be reclaimed at any instant by his owner the Creditor ? 
 
 My son, if poor, see wine in the running spring ; let thy mouth 
 water at a last week's roll ; think a threadbare coat the " only 
 wear;" and acknowledge a whitewashed garret fittest housing-place 
 for a gentleman. Do this, and flee debt. So shall thy heart be at 
 peace, and the sheriff be confounded. 
 
 We have now to speak of the Creditor ; and, having read what 
 might well be termed " The Handbook of Debt,"* we can scarcely 
 sufficiently express our admiration at the nice positions of Debtor 
 and Creditor therein set down. Through the great public spirit 
 of Mr. TYAS, the Creditor may cheaply arm himself at all points 
 against the Debtor ; whilst, with a humanity no less distinguished 
 than the aforesaid public spirit, it is also shewn to the Debtor by 
 what means he may make his best defence against what we must 
 always consider our natural enemies, the men to whom we owe 
 money. Many and beautiful are the tricks and sleights of law ; 
 delicate, exquisitely subtle, the cobwebs, the fine, reticulated work 
 of senators, shewn and displayed in that small yet most significant 
 volume. Having laid every page of it to our enlightened heart, 
 we must confess that the law seems most especially solicitous for 
 the interests of persons too frequently regardless of themselves. 
 How often is the Creditor a self-doomed victim ! How often, here 
 in gorgeous London, 
 
 " Cotte ville, ple/ne d'or et de misere," 
 
 how often do we find the willing sufferer, pranked in smiles, all 
 self-complacency and condescension, yearning to be robbed yea, 
 
 * See " Handbook of the Law of Debtor and Creditor."
 
 118 THE DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 
 
 absolutely wooing destruction ? "I pray ye, take my goods ; let 
 me have thy name in my ledger ; make me happy be thou my 
 Debtor ! " How often does it demand a stoicism hardly to be ex- 
 pected since the days of sour-faced Cato, to be deaf to the appeal 
 of the tradesmen ! How many young gentlemen, with nothing but 
 their wits poor destitute fellows ! have been forced into debt by 
 the cordial manner, the gracious words of the man determined to be 
 a Creditor ! 
 
 In the present day, debt is made particularly easy to the lowest 
 capacity. It is we are convinced of the fact this delightful 
 facility of credit that has ruined thousands of fine spirited young 
 fellows, who never had a penny to peril. Let us consult those 
 social chronicles those histories of daily life the newspapers, and 
 we must inevitably come to the conclusion that your London shop- 
 keeper is the most ingenuous the most simple-hearted the most 
 innocent of mankind. Can there be a more powerful, a more 
 beautiful evidence of the philanthropic confidence of human nature, 
 than that every day exhibited by the fashionable London tradesman ? 
 What practical benevolence is constantly displayed by the tailor, 
 who, with the vaguest notions of the station and means of his cus- 
 tomer provided the future Debtor come to him in a coat of un- 
 exceptionable character clothes the son of Adam from the shoulders 
 to the heels ! He, the tailor the future despised, abused Creditor 
 puts no prying query, hesitates no frigid doubt; but with a sweet 
 alacrity pleasant to behold, and grateful to contemplate, measures 
 his man, and is forthwith doomed ! Nevertheless, is not this a 
 pleasing picture ? To the libellous, carking cynic, who sneers and 
 spits at human nature, should not this be a lesson of charity a 
 great moral teaching ? Here is practical philanthropy here the 
 kindliest operation of the social virtues; when a man his face 
 steeped with satisfaction, his words words of honey, and his whole 
 demeanour that of subdued felicity straightway gives a portion of 
 his goods to the stranger within his parlour ; to a man he has never 
 seen before, and whom it is more than likely he may never see or 
 hear of again. 
 
 " Good heavens !" exclaimed Mr. Rigid, a most punctilious gen- 
 tleman a man of all the proprieties, that of ready money included 
 " Good heavens, Augustus ! why, yes you have only been a 
 twelvemonth in London, and you already owe three thousand pounds. 
 Explain, sir how came this about? Explain, sir; I command 
 you." 
 
 " Only three thousand?" asked young Rigid.
 
 THE DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 119 
 
 "Only ! and how dare you owe so much how dare you get into 
 debt?" 
 
 " Upon my soul, father," answered Augustus, " I could n't help 
 it ; it was so devilish easy ! " 
 
 Many a fine young fellow, condemned to the limited area of 
 St. George's Fields, has bitter cause of complaint against the 
 Creditor ; whose innocence, whose unsuspicious nature, and unso- 
 phisticated determination to become what he is, has compelled the 
 young gentleman to take advantage of suffering goodness ; the 
 temptation was too strong for the resolution of youth, and the 
 willing tradesman became a Creditor. If the reader conceive that 
 we paint the Creditor in too amiable colours ; if he doubt the ex- 
 ceeding benevolence of fashionable tradesmen towards the dashing 
 destitute, let him wear out a day or so in any office of police, and 
 have his soul instructed. He will there perceive that of all animals 
 the fashionable tradesman, the incipient Creditor, is easiest to be 
 taken : no eider-duck suffers itself to be despoiled of its down with 
 less resistance. 
 
 However, ere we quit the fashionable tradesman, we must do 
 this justice to his natural and improved acuteness. He is not to 
 be taken by shabby appearance. He is a fish that bites only at 
 the finest flies. It is, therefore, highly essential that the would-be 
 Debtor should appear before him bearing all the external advan- 
 tages of Mammon. Then will the tradesman open his books to the 
 stranger, and rejoice in his orders. 
 
 As a man is known by his associates, so we think may the 
 character of the Creditor be known by his attorney : the sharp 
 employ the sharp. 
 
 Mr. Macwriggle (we write a bit of real life) was a small trades- 
 man, and had given credit to John Junks ; the debt was demanded, 
 sued for, and resisted. The cause came into court, and Macwriggle, 
 for once having full justice on his side, was flushed with the con- 
 fidence of victory. Already he felt the amount of the bill jingling 
 in his pocket. Evidence was called to prove the delivery of the 
 goods: nothing could be more plain the delivery was certain: 
 but what was the astonishment of Mr. Macwriggle to find witnesses 
 in the box who, without prevarication, swore to being present at 
 the payment of Junks's bill ; Macrwiggle having solemnly promised 
 to forward a receipt for the same ! Macwriggle passed with the 
 world for a religious man ; therefore, thinking of his bill and costs, 
 he stood in a cold sweat listening to the perjury of his fellow- 
 creatures. The cause was soon over verdict for the defendant.
 
 120 THE DEBTOR AND CREDITOR. 
 
 Mr. Crooks was the adroit attorney for John Junks ; and it was 
 about eleven o'clock on the morning following the trial, when Mr. 
 Crooks, seated in all legal serenity in his private room, was visited 
 by the hapless plaintiff, Andrew Macwriggle. 
 
 " Your name is just Crooks ? " asked Macwriggle, and the 
 attorney, with slight dignity, bowed. 
 
 " My name is Macwriggle ;" and the bearer of the name paused. 
 
 " Oh ! indeed," observed Mr. Crooks. 
 
 " It appears, sir, that you were the attorney in the case of that 
 infernal scoundrel " 
 
 " I beg your pardon, sir," said Crooks, " I know no scoundrels 
 as clients." 
 
 " No matter for that," said Andrew, " you acted for John Junks ?" 
 
 " I had that honour," replied Crooks. 
 
 Macwriggle advanced into the middle of the room, and clench- 
 ing his fist, and casting his eyes towards a top row of " The 
 Abridgment of the Statutes," he began, almost at a scream, "If 
 there was ever a scoundrel, if there was ever a villain a thief 
 a pickpocket " 
 
 " Really sir," said Crooks, rather uncertain as to whom Mac- 
 wriggle applied the epithets, and not quite convinced that Andrew 
 had not a horsewhip under his coat, " I cannot suffer this abuse. 
 I insist, Mr. Macwriggle " 
 
 " But no, sir," said Andrew, in a composed tone, and smiling, 
 "that's not what I came for. Mr. Crooks, you were the attorney 
 for Junks ; you conducted his case ; you know how it was got up." 
 
 " I conducted his case," said Mr. Crooks ; " and what, sir, do 
 you wish to say to me ? " 
 
 " This, sir," answered Macwriggle ; " that you 're just the very 
 man I 've been looking for all my life : here 's all my papers all my 
 business ; for the man who could get off Junks, is the very man for 
 Andrew Macwriggle's attorney." 
 
 We have said it; the sharp employ the sharp. 'Verily, e. man 
 is known by his attorney.
 
 THE YOUNG SQUIRE. 
 
 By smiling Fortune blessed 
 
 With large demesnes, hereditary wealth. 
 
 SOHERVILLK.
 
 THE YOUNG SQUIRE 
 
 BY WILLIAM IIOWITT. 
 
 THE old squire and the Young Squire are the antipodes of each 
 other. They are representatives of two entirely different states of 
 society in this country : the one but the vestige of that which has 
 been ; the other, the full and perfect image of that which is. The 
 old squires are like the last fading and shrivelled leaves of autumn 
 that yet hang on the tree. A few more days will pass ; age will 
 send one of his nipping nights : and down they will twirl, and be 
 swept away into the oblivious hiding-places of death, to be seen no 
 more. But the Y r oung Squire is one of the full-blown blossoms of 
 another summer. He is flaunting in the sunshine of a state of 
 wealth and luxury which we, as our fathers in their day did, fancy 
 can be by no possibility carried many degrees further, and yet we 
 see it every day making some new and extravagant advance. 
 
 It is obvious that there are many intermediate stages of society 
 amongst our country gentry between the old squire and the young, 
 as there are intermediate degrees of age. The old squires are those 
 of the completely last generation, who have outlived their contem- 
 poraries, and have made a dead halt on the ground of their old 
 habits, sympathies, and opinions ; and are resolved to quit none of 
 them for what they call the follies and new-fangled notions of a 
 younger and, of course, more degenerate race. They are continually 
 crying, " Oh, it never was so in my day ! " They point to tea, and 
 stoves in churches, and the universal use of umbrellas, parasols, 
 cork- soled shoes, warming-pans, and carriages, as incontestible proofs 
 of the rapidly increasing effeminacy of mankind. But between 
 these old veterans and their children, there are the men of the 
 middle ages, who have, more or less, become corrupted with modern 
 ways and indulgences ; have, more or less, introduced modern fur- 
 niture, modern hours, modern education and tastes, and books ; and 
 have, more or less, fallen into the modern custom of spending a 
 certain part of the year in London. With these we have nothing 
 whatever to do. The old squire is the landmark of the ancient 
 66
 
 THE YOUNG SQUIRE. 
 
 state of things, and his son Tom is the epitome of the new ; all be- 
 tween is a mere transition and evanescent condition. 
 
 Tom Chesselton was duly sent by his father to Eton as a boy ; 
 where he became a most accomplished scholar in cricket, boxinjr, 
 horses, and dogs, and made the acquaintance of several lords, who 
 taught him the way of letting his father's money slip easily through 
 his fingers without burning them, and engrafted him besides with 
 a stock of fine and truly aristocratic tastes which will last him his 
 whole life. From Eton he was as duly transferred to Oxford ; 
 where he wore his gown and trencher cap with a peculiar grace, 
 and gave a classic finish to his taste in horses, in driving, and in 
 ladies. Having completed his education with great eclat, he was 
 destined by his father to a few years' soldiership in the militia, as 
 being devoid of all danger, and, moreover, giving opportunities for 
 seeing a great deal of the good old substantial families in different 
 parts of the kingdom. But Tom turned up his nose, or, rather, his 
 handsome upper lip, with a most consummate scorn at so grovelling 
 a proposal, and assured his father that nothing but a commission in 
 the Guards, where several of his noble friends were doing distin- 
 guished honour to their country by the display of their fine figures, 
 would suit him. The old squire shrugged his shoulders and was 
 silent, thinking that the six thousand pounds purchase-money would 
 be quite as well at fifteen per cent, in consul shares a little longer. 
 But Tom luckily was not doomed to rusticate long in melancholy 
 under his patrimonial oaks ; his mother's brother, an old bachelor of 
 immense wealth, died just in time, leaving Tom's sister, Lady 
 Spankitt, thirty thousand pounds in the funds, and Tom, as heir-at- 
 law, his great Irish estates. Tom, on the very first vacancy, bought 
 into the Guards, and was soon marked out by the ladies as one of the 
 most distingue officers that ever wore a uniform. In truth, Tom was 
 a very handsome fellow that he owed to his parents, who, in their 
 day, were as noble looking a couple as ever danced at a country ball, 
 or graced the balcony of a race-stand. 
 
 Tom soon married ; but he did not throw himself away senti- 
 mentally on a mere face ; he achieved the hand of the sister of one 
 of his old college chums, and now brother officer, the Lady Barbara 
 Ridemdovvn. An earl's daughter was something in the world's eye ; 
 but such an earl's daughter as Lady Barbara was the height of 
 Tom's ambition. She was equally celebrated for her beauty, her 
 wit, and her handsome fortune : Tom had won her from amidst the 
 very bla^e of popularity, and the most splendid offers. Their united 
 fortunes enabled them to live in the highest style. Lady Barbara's
 
 THE YOUNG SQUIRE. 123 
 
 rank and connexions demanded it, and the spirit of our Young 
 Squire required it as much. Tom Chesselton disdained to be a 
 whit behind any of his friends, however wealthy or highly titled. 
 His tastes were purely aristocratic : with him, dress, equipage, and 
 amusements, were matters of science. He knew, both from a proud 
 instinct and from study, what was precisely the true ton in every 
 article of dress or equipage ; and the exact etiquette in every situa- 
 tion. But Lady Barbara panted to visit the continent, where she 
 had already spent some years, and which presented so many at- 
 tractions to her elegant tastes. Tom had elegant tastes too, in his 
 way ; and to the continent they went. The old squire never set his 
 foot on even the coast of Calais : when he has seen it from Dover, 
 he has only wished that he could have a few hundred tons of gun- 
 powder, and blow it into the air ; but Tom and Lady Barbara have 
 lived on the continent for years. 
 
 This was a bitter pill for the old squire. When Tom purchased 
 his commission in the guards, and when he opened a house like a 
 palace, on his wedding with Lady Barbara, the old gentleman felt 
 proud of his son's figure, and proud of his connexions. "Ah," 
 said he, " Tom is a lad of spirit ; he'll sow his wild oats, and come 
 to his senses presently." But when he fairly embarked for France, 
 with a troop of servants, and a suite of carriages like a nobleman, 
 then did the old fellow fairly curse and swear, and call him all the 
 unnatural and petticoat-pinioned fools in his vocabulary, and pro- 
 phesy his bringing his ninepence to a groat. Tom and Lady Bar- 
 bara, however, upheld the honour of England all over the continent. 
 In Paris, at the Baths of Germany, at Vienna, Florence, Venice, 
 Rome, Naples, everywhere were they distinguished by their fine 
 persons, their fine equipage, their exquisite tastes, and their splen- 
 did entertainments. They were courted and caressed by all the 
 distinguished, both of their own countrymen and of foreigners. 
 Tom's horses and equipage were the admiration of the natives. 
 He drove, he rode, he yachted to universal admiration ; and 
 meantime his lady visited all the galleries and works of art, and 
 received in her house all the learned and the literary of all 
 countries. There you always found artists, poets, travellers, critics, 
 dilettanti, and connoisseurs, of all nations and creeds. 
 
 They have again honoured their own country with their pre- 
 sence ; and who so much the fashion as they ? They are, of course, 
 au fait in any matter of taste and fashion ; on all questions of 
 foreign life, manners, and opinions, their judgment is the law. 
 Their town house is in Eaton Square ; and what a house is that !
 
 124 THE YOUNG SQUIRE. 
 
 What a paradise of fairy splendour ; what a mine of wealth, in 
 the most superb furniture ; in books in all languages, paintings, 
 statuary, and precious fragments of the antique, collected out of 
 every classical city and country. If you see a most exquisitely 
 tasteful carriage, with a more fascinatingly beautiful lady in it, in 
 the park, amidst all the brilliant concourse of the ring, you may 
 be sure you see the celebrated Lady Barbara Chesselton ; and you 
 cannot fail to recognise Tom Chesselton the moment you clap eyes 
 on him, by his distinguished figure, and the splendid creature on 
 which he is mounted to say nothing of the perfection of his 
 groom, and the steed which he also bestrides. Tom never crosses 
 the back of a horse of less value than a thousand pounds ; and if 
 you want to know really what horses are, you must go down to 
 his villa, at Wimbledon, if you are not lucky enough to catch a 
 sight of him proceeding to a levee, or driving his four-in-hand to 
 Ascot or Epsom. All Piccadilly has been seen to stand, lost in 
 silent admiration, as he has driven his splendid britchzka along it, 
 with his perfection of a little tiger by his side, and such cattle as 
 never besides were seen in even harness of such richness and ele- 
 gance. Nay, some scores of ambitious young whips became sick 
 of sheer envy of his superb, gauntlet driving-gloves. 
 
 But, in fact, in Tom's case, as in all others, you have only 
 to know his companions to know him ; and who are they but 
 Chesterfield, Conyngham, D' Orsay, Eglintoun, my lord Waterford, 
 and men of similar figure and reputation ? To say that he is well 
 known to all the principal frequenters of the Carlton Club ; that 
 his carriages are of the most perfect make ever turned out by 
 Windsor ; that his harness is only from Shipley's ; and that Stultz 
 has the honour of gracing his person with his habiliments ; is to 
 say that our Young Squire is one of the most perfect men of 
 fashion in England. Lady Barbara and himself have a common 
 ground of elegance of taste, and knowledge of the first principles 
 of genuine aristocratic life ; but they have very different pursuits, 
 arising from the difference of their genius, and they follow them 
 with the utmost mutual approbation. 
 
 Lady Barbara is at once the worshipped beauty, the woman of 
 fashion, and of literature. No one has turned so many heads by the 
 loveliness of her person, and the bewitching fascination of her 
 manners, as Lady Barbara. She is a wit, a poet, a connoisseur in 
 art ; and what can be so dangerously delightful as all these cha- 
 racters in a fashionable beauty, and a woman, moreover, of such 
 rank and wealth ? She does the honours of her house to the mutual
 
 THE YOUNG SQUIRE. 125 
 
 friends and noble connexions of her husband and herself with a per- 
 petual grace ; but she has, besides, her evenings for the reception of 
 her literary and artistic acquaintance and admirers. And who, of 
 all the throng of authors, artists, critics, journalists, connoisseurs, 
 and amateurs who flock there, are not her admirers ? Lady Bar- 
 bara Chesselton writes travels, novels, novellets, philosophical reflec- 
 tions, poems, and almost every species of thing which ever has been 
 written, such is the universality of her knowledge, experience, and 
 genius : and who does not hasten to be the first to pour out in 
 reviews, magazines, daily and hebdomedal journals, the earliest and 
 most fervent words of homage and admiration ? Lady Barbara edits 
 an annual, and is a contributor to " The Keepsake ;" and, in her 
 kindness, she is sure to find out all the nice young men about the 
 press, to encourage them by her smile, and to raise them, by her 
 fascinating conversation and her brilliant saloons, above those de- 
 pressing influences of a too sensitive modesty, which so weighs on 
 the genius of the youth of this age, so that she sends them away all 
 heart and soul in the service of herself and literature (which are 
 the same thing) ; and away they go, extemporising praises on 
 her ladyship, and spreading them through leaves of all sizes, to the 
 wondering eyes of readers all the world over. Publishers run with 
 their unsaleable MSS., and beg Lady Barbara to have the goodness 
 to put her name on the title, knowing by golden experience that 
 that one stroke of her pen, like the point of a galvanic wire, will 
 turn all the dulness of the dead mass into flame. Lady Barbara is 
 not barbarous enough to refuse so simple and complimentary a 
 request : nay, her benevolence extends on every hand. Distressed 
 authors, male and female, who have not her rank, and, therefore, 
 most clearly not her genius, beg her to take their literary bantlings 
 under her wing ; and, with a heart as full of generous sympathies 
 as her pen is of magic, she writes but her name on the title as an 
 " Open Sesame ! " and, lo ! the dead becomes alive, her genius 
 permeats the whole volume, which that moment puts forth the wings 
 of popularity, and flies into every bookseller's shop and every circu- 
 lating library in the kingdom. 
 
 Such is the life of glory and Christian benevolence which Lady 
 Barbara daily leads, making authors, publishers, and critics all happy 
 together, by the overflowing radiance of her indefatigable and inex- 
 haustible genius, though she sometimes slyly laughs to herself, and 
 says, " What a thing is a title ! if it were not for that, would all 
 these people come to me ?" while Tom, who is member of parlia- 
 ment for the little borough of Bearish, most patriotically discharges
 
 126 THE YOUNG SQUIRK. 
 
 his duty by pairing off, visits the classic grounds of Ascot, Epsom, 
 Newmarket, or Goodwood, or traverses the moors of Scotland and 
 Ireland in pursuit of grouse. But once a year they indulge their 
 filial virtues in a visit to the Old Squire. The Old Squire, we are 
 sorry to say, has grown of late years queer and snappish, and does 
 not look on this visit quite as gratefully as he should. " If they 
 would but come," he says, " in a quiet way, as I used to ride over 
 and see my father in his time, why I should be right glad to see 
 them ; but here they come, like the first regiment of an invading 
 army, and God help those who are old and want to be quiet." 
 
 The old gentleman, moreover, is continually haranguing about 
 Tom's folly and extravagance. It is his perpetual topic to his wife, 
 and wife's maiden sister, and to WagstafF. Wagstaff only shakes his 
 head, and says, " Young blood ! young blood !" but Mrs. Ches- 
 selton and the maiden sister say, " Oh ! Mr. Chesselton, you do n't 
 consider : Tom has great connexions, and he is obliged to keep a 
 certain establishment. Things are different now to what they were 
 in our time. Tom is universally allowed to be a very fine man, and 
 Lady Barbara is a very fine woman, and a prodigious clever woman ! 
 a prodigious clever woman ! and you ought to be proud of 
 them, Chesselton." At which the old gentleman breaks out, if he 
 is a little elevated over his wine, 
 
 " When the Duke of Leeds shall married be 
 To a fine young lady of high quality, 
 How happy will that gentlewoman be 
 In his grace of Leeds' good company ! 
 
 " She shall have all that 's fine and fair, 
 And the best of silk and satin to wear; 
 And ride in a coach to take the air; 
 And have a house in St James's Square." 
 
 Lady Barbara always professes great affection and reverence for 
 the old gentleman, and sends him many merry and kind compli- 
 ments and messages ; and sends him, moreover, her new books as 
 soon as they are out, most magnificently bound ; but all won't do. 
 He only says, "If she'd please me, she'd give up that cursed 
 opera-box. Why, the rent of that thing, only to sit in and hear 
 Italian women, and men more womanish than any women, squealing 
 and squalling ; and to see impudent, outlandish baggages kicking 
 up their heels higher than any decent heads ought to be, the rent, 
 I say, would maintain a parish rector, or keep half-a-dozen parish 
 schools a-going." As for her books, that all the world besides are
 
 THE YOUNG SQUIRE. 127 
 
 in raptures about, the old squire turns them over as a dog would 
 a hot dumpling ; says nothing but a bible ought to be so extra- 
 vagantly bound ; and professes that " the matter may be all very 
 fine, but he can make neither head nor tail of it." Yet, whenever 
 Lady Barbara is with him, she is sure to talk and smile herself in 
 about an hour into his high favour ; and he begins to run about 
 to shew her this and that, and calls out every now and then, " Let 
 Lady Barbara see this, and go to look at that." She can do any- 
 thing with him except get him to London. " London ! " he ex- 
 claims, " no ; get me to Bedlam at once. What has a rusty old 
 fellow, like me, to do at London ? If I could find again the jolly 
 set that used to meet, thirty years ago, at " The Star and Garter," 
 Pall Mall, it might do ; but London is n't what London used to be ; 
 it's too fine, by half, for a country squire, and. would drive me 
 distracted in twenty-four hours, with its everlasting noise and 
 nonsense ! " 
 
 But the old squire does get pretty well distracted with the 
 annual visit. Down come driving the Young Squire and Lady Bar- 
 bara, with a train of carnages like a fleet of men of war, leading the 
 way with their travelling coach and four horses. Up they twirl to 
 the door of the old hall. The old bell rings a thundering peal 
 through the house. Doors fly open, out run servants down come 
 the young guests from their carriage ; and, while embraces and 
 salutations are going on in the drawing-room, the hall is fast filling 
 with packages upon packages ; servants are running to and fro along 
 the passages ; grooms and carriages are moving off to the stables 
 without ; there is lifting and grunting at portmanteaus and imperials 
 as they are borne upstairs ; while ladies' maids and nur^e-maids are 
 crying out, "Oh, take care of that trunk! mind that ban'-box! 
 oh, gracious ! that is my lady's dressing-case : it will be down, and 
 be ruined totally!" Dogs are barking, children crying or romping 
 about, and the whole house is in a most blessed state of bustle and 
 confusion. 
 
 For a week the hurly-burly continues : in pour all the great 
 people to see Tom and Lady Barbara. There are shootings in the 
 mornings, and great dinner parties in the evenings. Tom and my 
 lady have sent down before them plenty of hampers of such wines as 
 the old squire neither keeps nor drinks ; and they have brought their 
 plate along with them ; and the old house itself is astonished at the 
 odours of champagne, claret, and hock, that pervade, and at the 
 glitter of gold and silver in it. The old man is full of attention and 
 politeness both to his guests and to their guests ; but he is half-
 
 128 THE YOUNG SQUIRE. 
 
 worried with the children, and t' other half worried with so many 
 fine folks ; and muddled with drinking things that he is not used to, 
 and with late hours. Wagstaff has fled, as he always does on such 
 occasions, to a farm-house on the verge of the estate. The hall and 
 the parsonage, and even the gardener's house, are all full of beds 
 for guests, and servants, and grooms. Presently, the old gentleman, 
 in his morning rides, sees some of the young bucks shooting the 
 pheasants in his home park, where he never allows them to be dis- 
 turbed ; and comes home in a fume to hear that the house is turned 
 upside down by the host of scarlet-breeched and powdered livery 
 servants ; and that they have turned all the maids' heads with sweet- 
 hearting. But at length the day of departure arrives, and all sweep 
 away as suddenly and rapidly as they came ; and the old squire sends 
 off for Wagstaff, and blesses his stars that what he calls " the annual 
 hurricane" is over. 
 
 But, what a change will there be here when the Old Squire is 
 dead ! Already have Tom and Lady Barbara walked over the 
 ground and planned it. That " horrid fright" of an old house, as 
 they call it, will be swept as clean away as if it had not stood 
 there five hundred years. A grand Elizabethan pile is already 
 decreed to succeed it. The fashionable architect will come driving 
 down in his smart close cab, with all his plans and papers. A host 
 of mechanics will come speedily after him by coach or by wagon. 
 Booths will be seen rising all round the old place, which will vanish 
 away, and its superb successor rise where it stood, like a magical 
 vision. Already are ponderous cases lying loaded, in London, with 
 massive mantel-pieces of the finest Italian marble, marble busts, 
 and heads of old Greek and Roman heroes, genuine burial urns from 
 Herculaneum and Pompeii, and vessels of terra-cotta, gloriously 
 sculptured vases, and even columns of verde-antique, all from classic 
 Italy, to adorn the halls of this same noble new house. But, mean- 
 time, spite of the large income of Tom and Lady Barbara, the Old 
 Squire has strange suspicions of mortgages and dealings with Jews. 
 He has actual inklings of horrid post-obits ; and groans as he looks 
 on his old oaks as he rides through his woods and parks, foreseeing 
 their overthrow ; nay, he fancies he sees the land-agent amongst his 
 quiet old farmers, like a wild cat in a rabbit-warren, startling them 
 out of their long dream of ease and safety, with news of doubled 
 rents, and notices to quit, to make way for thrashing machines and 
 young men of more enterprise. And, sure enough, such will be the 
 order of the day the moment the estate falls to the YOUNG SQUIRE.
 
 THE BUM-BOAT WOMAN. 
 
 A name unmusical to the Volscians' ears. 
 
 SBAB.SPERE.
 
 THE BUM-BOAT WOMAN. 
 
 BY CAPTAIN GLASCOCK, R.N. 
 
 WHAT sounds fall so joyous on the naval ear, always excepting 
 the spirit-stirring cry of " an enemy in sight" as those which 
 announce the nearing of Bum-boat Bet, the pulling-off of Pilchard 
 Poll, or the coming alongside of Coaxing Kate?* Not that we 
 vould pay so poor a compliment to the craft, as to place in parallels 
 the friend with the foe of the fleet ; but extremes will meet, ay, 
 even in the teeth of the great mathematical saw. 
 
 It is true that in Johnson's voluminous work, the word " Bum- 
 boat" is permitted to appear. But, mark ! instead of the substan- 
 tive being made " to stand by itself the naval noun to float on its 
 own bottom, to swim freely, fitted and freighted the lexicographer, 
 in violation of all philological rule, exhibits it a shored-up uncom- 
 missioned craft, curtailed of its fair proportions, having for sup- 
 porters two such unsightly and anti-nautical things as a " Bum- 
 bailiff," and " a Bump."-j- Where was the " bump of order," when 
 the doctor had recourse to such uncongenial juxtaposition ? 
 
 Among other etymological matters, discussed over a strong Nor- 
 wester in the larboard fore- cockpit cabin, Pipes, the boatswain, who 
 was a man of letters (for a better A.B. was not borne on the books 
 of any of his Majesty's ships), would have set the lexicographer right 
 as to the due derivation of the title attached to the subject of our 
 present sketch. In his usual familiar and flowing strain, would he 
 thus have enlightened his plodding companion : " See here, old boy, 
 as regards what you calls the derrywation o' the word, but what / calls 
 the christ'nin' o' the craft; yer just like all the resto' the shore-going 
 tribe and that's preciously out in yer reck'nin' for you see that 
 warn't her first name she went by a name of another natur ; and, ye 
 
 * Celebrated Bum-boat beauties, 
 t Vide Johnson's Dictionary. 
 67
 
 130 THE BUM -BOAT WOMAN. 
 
 knows, as there's nothin' more nat'ral nor to give a name nearest to 
 the natur of the thing in trade, why, in course, as she never brought 
 nothin' aboard but buns, the craft was never no more nor a reglar- 
 built Bun-boat Woman. But you see, old gemman, as the people 
 afloat soon gets tired of buns, and wanted more substantialer stufY; 
 buns no longer was brought aboard. So when they begins to bring off 
 sogers,* sassingers, soft-tack beer, butter, soap, eggs, pipes, pigtail, 
 and such like sarviceable stuff, why, in course, 'twas no easy matter 
 to fix upon a name as would suit every article taken on tick : and, 
 as men-o'-war's-men, ye know, never do things hand over hand, in a 
 hurry, but always likes first to feel their way, why, they thinks they 
 cou'd'nt do better nor go grad'ally to work, throw the N out of the 
 name, taking the M as next above in lieu. By this, you know, 
 they could n't make matters worse, whilst, on the tother tack, they 
 was sarvin' she as sarved the fleet, by giving the craft a higher letter 
 at Lloyd's. -j- So you see, old boy, they turns it end for end, and 
 converts Bun-boat Woman into Bum-boat Woman ; and, after all, take 
 it by or large, it 's a better name it sounds more ship-shape less 
 mincing less young ladyish and sartinly, a rounder and fuller 
 mouthful in a seaman's mouth. There you has it, Doctor, short 
 and sweet you has it as / had it." And the Doctor would have 
 had it, as we had it in our youth, years ago. But with derivation a 
 truce. Proceed we with our sketch. We take as a sitter a sister 
 from the Sister Isle. 
 
 Reader, permit us to introduce to your favourable notice and 
 special protection, " Mother Donovan," of the Cove of Cork, part 
 owner (for the pig in the parlour pays the rint) of a much-fre- 
 quented mud edifice located in the East Holy Ground, a patch of 
 Paradise attached to the Great Island, and immediately facing the 
 Spit Sand and Isle of Spike. 
 
 Well, we can now take her in all her glory, for at this moment 
 a two-decker a crack seventy-four gun ship a stranger returning 
 from a foreign station, possibly short of provisions, or short of 
 water, is suddenly descried under a cloud of canvass, with a brisk 
 breeze, a flood tide, and a flowing sheet, between the towering 
 heads of the harbour's mouth. All Cove is already in a state of 
 excitement. Chaos is come again. Milesian sounds startle the 
 uninitiated ear, but the shriller tones of Mother Donovan outhowl 
 every other hoveller, of either Holy Ground, east or west. 
 
 * The name by which men-o'-war's-men designate red herrings. 
 f At Lloyd's, vessels are estimated by letters affixed to their several names. 
 The letter A stands highest in value.
 
 THE BUM-BOAT WOMAN. 13) 
 
 " Oh ! murdur, murdur," she exclaims, " if here is n't a big 
 baste of a man-o'-war, after comin' right into the Cove. Honor! 
 Honor ! be quick ! sack the praties, string the sassingers, and 
 basket the butter. Tim, be stirrin' yer stumps launch the whaler 
 where in the dickins is Paddy Molloy ? Could n't he be killin' the 
 ould gander ? For the lives o' yees, do n't be after lettin Mudder 
 Murphy bate us in gettin' the business aboord." 
 
 Some score of bustling competitors are now heard cheering their 
 Paddies, and hurrying their Honors (a name common in the south 
 of Ireland) in the shipment of their marketable goods. Pots, pans, 
 black jacks, red herrings, yellow soap, pails of sky-blue, and barrels 
 of brown stout, are seen descending, or rather bundling, over the 
 high and hanging cliffs, on their way to the boat on the beach. 
 
 Mother Donovan, who is a dame of double dimensions a sort 
 of Lambert in petticoats with Honor, her " nate niece" (for the 
 mothers afloat, like the fathers of the land, beget nieces rather than 
 daughters), seat themselves in the stern-sheets of a white whaler. 
 Both are clad in brown cloaks, called " jocks," with huge hoods 
 covering their unadorned heads for bonnets are held in utter con- 
 tempt by the fair of Cove. Honor is a bright brunette, with eyes 
 of hazel hue, flashing fire at every glance ; hair black, glossy, and 
 lank, like a skein of sable silk with a face and figure (saving her 
 feet) perfectly Spanish. And now, in the trying tug to fetch the 
 ship already anchored, may be seen the opposing Paddies, and con- 
 tending Tims, bending their broad backs to their huge unpliable 
 sweeps (for oars they can hardly be called), sending the salt spray 
 over the bows of their bounding boats, and drenching to the skin 
 the fair sitters abaft. See how the brine stiffens the playful muscles 
 of the mother's mouth, and still straightens the daughter's locks of 
 love ! After a tiring tug against wind and tide, the white whaler 
 reaches abreast of the towering liner, in all the busy bustle of 
 furling sails, and of squaring yards. There she is : the inner boat, 
 lying off on her oars. And now watch the " sheeps-eyes,." and implor- 
 ing glances which Mother Donovan throws at the first-lieutenant, 
 standing stiff as a steeple on the break of the poop, and who tries 
 hard to preserve his official station, and maintain the gravity of his 
 quarter-deck face. 
 
 " Honor, darlint ! Stand up foment him. Shew him you mane 
 to give him the news. Hould up, child, hould up, and shew him 
 the paper." 
 
 Honor does as desired ; and standing erect in the boat, her 
 dripping locks wafting in the wind, her anxious eyes following every
 
 132 THE BUM-BOAT WOMAN. 
 
 turn and tread of the first-lieutenant. At length, she catches his 
 glance, and extending a bare arm of symmetrical mould, holds in 
 her hand " The Cork Constitution, or Southern Reporter :" and 
 now, in bewitching accents, she exclaims, " Ah, now, that's a dear 
 jintleman do, do, let us in ah, now do is n't it the day's paper I 
 have here for ye ? Ah, be marciful ! the saa 's mighty salt ! mighty 
 try in to the eyes ! " 
 
 The eyes of Honor are more trying to the first-lieutenant : still, 
 he assumes no show of favour or affection, and, in a commanding 
 voice, he cries : " Keep off that boat, master-at-arms ; mind, no 
 muslin aboard till the yards are square, and every rope taut as a 
 harp-string." 
 
 " There 's the raal gintleman my blessin 's wid ye," ejaculates 
 the stout dame, implying by this loudly-delivered benediction di- 
 rected to silence the tiring entreaties of her trading opponents 
 that she is certain of " sarving the ship :" and so she is for the 
 word of admission is soon after given by the sentinel pacing his post. 
 " Up wid ye, child quick! there 's a darlint and, mind ye" (the 
 caution is loudly delivered), "for the life o' ye, don't part wid de 
 paper till ye place it in his honor's hands. The Lord love him, and 
 it 's himself that is the raal gintilman." 
 
 A tall topman jumps down the gangway steps, to lend Honor a 
 hand in ascending the side of the lofty ship. Her top-lights dazzle 
 the eyes of the tar, and all her upper works are suited to his taste ; 
 but as the giggling girl places her foot on the first step (and the 
 first step often mars a match), the conductor breaks out : " There 
 we have it all alike fine above, and full below." 
 
 " Ah now, mister sailor, lave off your ticklin' ;" (Jack 's only 
 playful nothing more than freshening her way aloft) ; " fait, I '11 be 
 missin' my futtin', so I will." But no such thing : Honor arrives 
 on the gangway ; and now to rnderf/o an overhaul from the master- 
 at-arrns. 
 
 " Nothing here, I hope ?" says the searcher, suiting the action to 
 the word. 
 
 " Hands off, i' ye plase ! " returns the indignant girl, keeping the 
 master-at-arms at arm's length. " It 's yer betters that darn't do the 
 likes o' that ! It's thrue for me who d'ye think ye got hould of? " 
 
 The man of feeling relents, and the charmer is permitted to pass 
 muster : and next comes, panting and blowing like a lady-whale, 
 the huge and unwieldy owner of the stock-in-trade. After no little 
 of exertion, she finds a footing on deck. She stops to regain her 
 breath, now throws her eyes aloft, now directs them on the deck,
 
 THE BUM-BOAT WOMAN. 183 
 
 expressing, by dumb gesticulations, the greatest surprise. Her 
 shoulders are up to her ears, and the elbows of her short arms are 
 pinioned to her side, as she claps, with seeming delight, her small 
 but fleshy hands. 
 
 " Oh, murdur ! murdur ! what a bu-tee-ful sight it is ! Och, 
 thin, is n't she a terrible size intirely !" (she had seen many ships 
 before of a similar size :) " oh, by de book, a big man-o'-war bates 
 every oder sight in nathur." 
 
 " Strange sights are sometimes seen in nature," says the official 
 feeler, taking the fair Fatima in hand, and deliberately pursuing his 
 system of search : " anything here ?" 
 
 " Is it game yer makin' of a body ? Sure, havn't I got quite 
 enough of my own ? Fait, my good man, there 's nothin' there but 
 raal, wholesome, solid nathur." 
 
 " Can't say; can't always trust to the loom o' natur tic'larly 
 about the cat-heads :" and so saying, the searcher satisfies himself 
 as to the reality of the trader's natural capacities. As there is nothing 
 contraband traceable about her portly person, she descends the 
 gangway ladder, following her marketable commodities, which are 
 hardly placed between the two allotted guns on the main-deck, ere 
 her baskets of bread, butter, eggs, sausages, apples, together with her 
 pails of milk, are beset by shoals of the younger middies, watering 
 at the mouth to taste the sweets of the sod. An elbowing and 
 scrambling scene ensues ; all are pushing for priority of purchase. 
 
 " Asy now, asy wid ye," ejaculates the portly purveyor, extending 
 her short arms to preserve her eggs, and prevent, if possible, a crash 
 of her crockery : " asy wid ye ; first money, first sarved that 's the 
 way we sarves the young gintry afloat." 
 
 The young gentry afloat are no sooner " sarved," than a missive 
 from the ward-room summonses the presence of the ladies abaft. 
 
 " Who, d' ye say, my good boy, does be wan tin' the Bum-boat 
 Woman ?" 
 
 This interrogation, delivered in accents mild as milk, is put to a 
 young urchin, who pertly replies, " The First Leaftennant." 
 
 " Honor ! Honor ! the Lord save us ! where 's the child got to ? 
 Honor!" again calls the startled dame, looking around for her lost lamb. 
 
 "Here am /, mudder aunt I mean;" (for sometimes the 
 outbursting of nature causes Honor to trip on the truth : a lapsus 
 linguae proclaims the parent, and identifies the daughter.) 
 
 " Well may the crathur call me mudder. It 's myself that 's been 
 more than a fader to all her mudder's childer. But sure," she adds, 
 taming to the master-at-arms, " doesn't all the world, ould and young,
 
 134 THE BUM-BOAT WOMAW. 
 
 be now afther callin' me mudder ? It's for all the world like puttin' 
 ducks' eggs undher a hin. The young ducklins think, from the care 
 the ould cackler takes of the web-footed crathurs, that the hin must 
 be their raal mudder, whin, at the same time, it's as plain as the nose 
 on yer face, the hin 's no more nor their nat'ral aunt : it 's tlirue 
 for me." The mother's art corrects the daughter's nature, and 
 now both " aunt" and " niece" are themselves again. 
 
 [But, on retiring to her hovel in the Holy Ground after driving 
 the pig out of the parlour for secrets are not to be uttered in the 
 presence of the porker she inflicts on the daughter a moral lec- 
 ture, upon the impropriety of " misnaming her afore the people 
 aboord." " Lucky for me, so it was, the first lift'nint did n't hear 
 the vice (voice) o' ye. Oh, Honor ! Honor ! what would he think 
 (an' he had the thought, if I had n't mended the matter) : ye 
 wasn't my nat'ral niece ? Mudder, mudder ; the dickens mudder 
 ye : do n't ye know well enough, the navy gintilmen think times is 
 bad wid poor people, when a body is obligated to bring a daughter 
 aboord a man-o'-war ? Now, for the futur, larn to call me aunt 
 wid a bould an' asy tongue, an" whinever mudder comes into yer 
 mind, hould yer prate, or muffle yer mouth !"] 
 
 " Come, child throw off the jock make yerself tidy, an' take 
 the laugh off yer mouth afore ye face the gintlemen. Come, be 
 stirrin'. Follow me I'll lade the way;" and aft walks the wad- 
 dling mother, followed by her uncloaked, unbonnetted, and all but 
 unblushing "niece." Aware that the ladies are allowed the entree, 
 the sentinel at his post throws open the ward-room door. 
 
 " Sarvint, gintlemen. Welcome all to Cove," cries the large 
 " lady," dropping in the door-way her best courtesy. " The biessins 
 on all yer bu-tee-ful, brown, sun-burnt faces ; sign for yees, ye 've 
 come from furrin parts." 
 
 " Good standing colour, old girl," returns the first-lieutenant. 
 " Come," he adds familiarly, " bring yourselves both to an anchor." 
 
 The chair of the old girl is soon filled, but the younger hiss 
 manifests a little of shyness in taking her seat. 
 
 " Come, young-un," cries the unsophisticated master, addressing 
 the still standing girl, " come, what are ye ashamed of? Look at 
 your mother." 
 
 " Ah, thin, it teas her mudder that never was ashamed of dacent 
 people " 
 
 " Why, are you not her mother ?" asks the first-lieutenant, throw- 
 ing at each female alternate glances. " Why, she witft be yours- 
 she's the tery picture of you."
 
 THE BUM-BOAT WOMAN. 135 
 
 "An" well she might; for it's myself that was the very pictur of 
 her mudder;'"' and here her broad and expansive bosom, like the 
 swell of the sea, heaves and sinks with a heavy sigh a sigh worthy 
 of a widow in her weeds. But suddenly and adroitly she turns the 
 subject. " Of coorse, gintlemin, ye '11 be afther wantin' yer linen 
 washed ? It's we that can get it up in illegant style. Yer things 
 we '11 blach for yees, whiter than the dhriven snow ; an' as for the 
 platin' may be all the bu-tee-ful ladies at the balls won't be axin' ye, 
 'Who plates yer bussoms, an' who pinches yer frills?' It's thrue 
 for me." 
 
 The plating of the bosoms, and the pinching of the frills, already 
 ensure her the officers' custom ; and now, under the influence of a 
 little "ship's" rum (which she "hears is good for the wind"), she 
 not only becomes the more loquacious, but also the more communi- 
 cative on local matters. She descants on the beauties of the river 
 no allusion to Honor but she breaks forth in a figurative strain on 
 the many " big bu-tee-ful sates on both banks of the Lee." 
 
 Honor, though less loquacious, is not the less bewitching. 
 " Lickor never lights on her lip," " The very smell of it always turns 
 her head," and " Tay is her strongest dhrink." But her naivete and 
 playfulness of manner amuses the " nice gintleman" seated by her 
 side, and the silken softness of her jet hair entices his fingers to set 
 right her drooping locks. 
 
 " Ah, now, be quiet wid ye ; keep yer fingers to yerself ; fait, 
 I '11 be afther lavin' ye, if ye do n't lave my hair alone. Ah, m " 
 
 The lapsus of mother had nearly escaped ; but it is promptly 
 caught, and the substitution of " aunt" amends the maternal appeal 
 to " make the gintleman behave himself." 
 
 But the mother's thoughts are otherwise engaged. The liberty 
 taken with her Honor's hair is not the " liberty given to broach the 
 beer." Besides, she has yet to feel her way touching the prudence 
 of giving the ship's company trust. 
 
 " May be yer honour," she says in an under tone, addressing the 
 officer possessing the power to favour her views, " may be yer 
 honour can be tellin' a body when the people 's comin' in coorse 
 o' pay ?" 
 
 " Why, they 've three years' whack due," returns the executive chief. 
 
 " Poor crathurs ! It's the likes o' they that is desarvin' o' 
 thrust ! May be it 's yer honour," she adds coaxingly, " 'ill be now 
 lettin' me broach the beer ?" A nod of assent ensues, and the fair 
 traders rise to depart the mother pouring down blessings on the 
 heads of the several officers assembled, and the daughter declaring,
 
 136 THE BUM-BOAT WOMAN. 
 
 in accents not intended to be lost, " that nicer-mannerea an3 gintaler 
 gintlemen was n't to be found in the grand fleet !" 
 
 And now comes on the tug of " tick." The cooks of the messes, 
 kid in hand, close round the flowing barrel, whilst Honor, as in 
 honour bound, checks the chalking score of the master-at-arms. 
 During each day's detention of the ship in port, the " stout" of the 
 stout dame flows to the same tune ; and this " serving" on the 
 score of " trust," serves as an after-claim for a passage to the port 
 at which the ship is ordered to be paid ; and then it is that the 
 mother-wit of the " mother" begins to tell. 
 
 On this side of the water, the fair traders afloat are craft 
 altogether of another kind. It is true that some partake of the 
 Dutch build are bluff in the bows, full abaft, and conveniently 
 formed for stowage : but, still, those who desire to stand well with 
 sea-faring folk, study symmetrical lines, fineness of form, and, parti- 
 cularly, neatness in the rigging, 'low and aloft. But, to drop 
 metaphor, the fair traders (and often the fairest afloat) of Gosport, 
 Portsmouth, and Plymouth, are perfectly aware of the nautical feeling 
 in favour of personal appearance. Hence the bumbastic conceit : 
 
 'T is the business of Beauty to become the beauty of Business. 
 
 In their mode of commanding success, the English Bum-boat 
 Women are perfectly opposed to the practice pursued by the sister- 
 hood of the sister isle ; and though, to attain their end, the British 
 fair seldom display flashes of wit, they nevertheless have always 
 their wits about them. In short, in the pursuit of business, they 
 adopt the " silent system," trusting more to the power of the eye, 
 than to the power of the tongue. 
 
 What an eye had Bumboat Bet ! Indeed did it " sound a parley 
 of provocation." Whether in anger or despair, the dropping of her 
 long-lashed lid, was alone sufficient to raise in her favour ten thou- 
 sand tongues ; and, as for Coaxing Kate, she had only to smile 
 display her bewitching teeth to command RED at the main, 
 aye, and obtain immediate admission, were even the fore-topsail 
 loose, and " Blue-Peter" flying at the fore.* And what might not 
 be said of their courage ? The weather they encounter, and 
 dangers they brave, in pursuing their work on the waters. But we 
 forget our sketch is confined to the fair of Erin. 
 
 When it be desired to intimate tha ship is about to depart, the fore- topsail 
 is let loose, and the flag, blue-pierced-white, is displayed at the fore.
 
 THE POOR CURATE. 
 
 Remote from towns he ran his godly lace, 
 
 Nor e'er had changed nor wished to change his pla.e.
 
 THE POOE CURATE 
 
 BY JAMES SMYTHE, JUN. 
 
 THE POOR CURATE is a phrase replete with sad meaning, ana when 
 or wheresoever spoken, the mind images to itself a painful portraiture. 
 " Love in a cottage " has a pretty sound : philosophy in a tub, bid- 
 ding royalty to desist from intercepting its darling sunshine, may 
 give us a lofty idea of what stern and stoical indifference to mundane 
 wealth the human mind is capable ; but, unfortunately, the existence 
 of the first is somewhat apocryphal (except in imagination or in the 
 pages of romance) ; and the "example of that testy old bachelor, 
 Diogenes, is far from a comforting precedent to our poor Curate, 
 who, be it remembered, is " Benedick, the married man," che- 
 rishing all the better feelings and refined affections of our nature, 
 and mingling with them those high and ennobling studies which are 
 not of the " earth, earthy ;" he has yet to bear with many of the 
 " thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to," and with a placid 
 mien, and beneath the garb of a gentleman, to mask a mind ill at 
 ease, and worn and wearied by its incessant struggles to keep up that 
 respectability, and maintain that demeanour, which befits his station 
 and holy office ; aye, and that too frequently with an income consi- 
 derably less than what a wealthy merchant would deem a fitting 
 remuneration for one of his junior clerks. 
 
 Admirable, indeed, must that system of things be, and recon- 
 cileable alone with the certainty of an hereafter " to justify the ways of 
 God to man," which assigns to the teachers of a divine philosophy, 
 whose origin is of the highest to men well-born, learned, and de- 
 vout a stipend barely adequate to supply them with their " daily 
 bread," and makes poverty the sole guerdon of very many of those 
 who teach " the labourer is worthy of his hire." 
 
 It was a forcible reproof from one of yore that sage, who, mant- 
 ling his aged head, and preparing himself for death, turned an 
 upbraiding look to his Athenian pupil, and said, " Ah, Pericles, 
 those that have need of a lamp, take care to supply it with oil!" 
 And well might modern divines, at least, those on whose shoulders 
 68 8
 
 138 THE POOR CERATE. 
 
 the greatest onus reposes, filled with a light the ancients wot not of. 
 thus reprove a wealthy world of hearers. 
 
 Pardon this digression, gentle reader : we will now revert to the 
 Poor Curate, se ipse, the individual instance of aggregate ill, the 
 living testimony to fortune's inequality. 
 
 In nine cases out of ten, he is a younger son of good family, a 
 family, perhaps, crippled in its income by the extravagance of some 
 thriftless ancestor, some ladye-loving gallant, who, like Sir Roger de 
 Coverley's forefather (that " time-honoured" name), " would sign a 
 deed that passed away half his estate with his gloves on ; " and now 
 its diminished rent-roll, shorn of its ancient glories, is transmitted 
 from sire to son, a genteel competence for the hereditary inheritor, 
 and nought for the younger branches, save the lean nope of place 
 from the patronage of a distant titled relative. 
 
 Our embryo parson hath early evinced a bookish taste, and 
 shewn a prepossession for those quiet pursuits which are usually con- 
 sidered as characterising the young student. The gloomy stillness 
 of his father's library, and the ancient tomes whose quaint bindings 
 adorned it, have had far greater attractions for him than the noisy 
 gambols of his brethren. He has there luxuriated in all the rich 
 fancies of Spenser, sighed over the plaintive lays of the noble Sur- 
 rey, and drawn "huge pleasaunce " from the " merrie conceits" of 
 Herrick ; Sir Philip Sidney has been his bosom friend, and Chan- 
 cellor More his chosen companion, while many a pearl has been 
 brought up from the profounder depths of Bacon's wisdom. And 
 well has he loved the giant trees which girdled the " ould house at 
 home ; " but loved them only for the deep shadow and the softened 
 light which their dense foliage would shed upon his book as he lay 
 stretched beneath their broad branches ; and that book, perchance, 
 some such a huge folio as old John Evelyn's, on. forest trees : 
 
 " His melancholy boyhood gone, 
 
 Youth, with its dreamy time, came on. 
 
 Our young hero's bibliomania has been noted, and the old squire, 
 with the exaggerating affection of a parent, has read therein an omen 
 of his future greatness ; and after having held divers family consult- 
 ations (privy councils of minor magnitude), has determined on the 
 church as the future arena for the display of his talents. 
 
 He is accordingly consigned to the oare and finishing tuition of 
 a neighbouring clergyman, and there committeth a most foolish act, 
 very natural to youth, but, as our elders say, not a whit the less re- 
 prehensible (we almost blush to record it) he falls in love with the
 
 THE POOR CURATE. 139 
 
 pretty, but dowerless daughter of his tutor ! True it is, she has a 
 bright eye, and a happy laugh, and a most fairy-like form, and pass- 
 ing fair are the pleasant visions tinted with all the glowing hues of 
 hope which these two lovers conjure up of the future. Many are the 
 twilight rambles, the starlight interviews, and the mutual pledges of 
 their troth and constancy ; but this is an old tale time will fly, and 
 our future Sir Reverend is at length entered at Oxford. 
 
 We will pass over his collegiate career ; his unremitting study ; 
 his excited hopes, kindled by the name and fame of those who have 
 trodden the self-same cloisters before him ; his successful poem and 
 his unsuccessful essays, together with all the fervent anticipations 
 peculiar to the ardent mind of an ambitious student : suffice it to 
 say, the ever-present image of a "certain fair and fairy one" has 
 proved a shield of defence against the powerful temptations of a 
 college life ; he has received ordination, successively appended A. B. 
 and A.M. to his name, accepted the curacy of , and, after wed- 
 ding the gentle object of his early love, is settled in his humble 
 domicile at , a Poor Curate. 
 
 Such is a brief outline of the summer of our hero's life, ere the 
 chilly winds and gloomy fogs of autumn have darkened its sunshine 
 or withered its flowers. Most old men can testify how great is the 
 fall from the airy cloud palace of Romance to the clay hovel of 
 Reality : all have experienced, more or less, at some period of their 
 lives, a chilling sense of the futility and fallacy of those hopes and 
 wishes which they clung to and cherished in their youth ; the free 
 heart is checked, and the open hand closed, by that most unromantic 
 of all monitors, worldly prudence ; philosophy is substituted for 
 poetry, and too many of their loftiest aspirations terminate like the 
 loftiest mountains, in vapour. 
 
 And thus it is with our Poor Curate. Conscious of the pos- 
 session of talent ; elated with hope ; cheered and animated in his 
 midnight studies by visions of a mitre and a stall, the reward, as he 
 fondly believed, of learning, rather than the result of interest and 
 party zeal ; what wonder if, after the fervour of affection had some- 
 what abated, and warm impulses subsided and settled down into a 
 fixed and steady principle ; what wonder if he should be tempted to 
 repine at what a more intimate acquaintance with the world, and a 
 more infirm confidence in the promises of men, have enabled him to 
 perceive must be his unchanging lot ? 
 
 An increasing family and a stationary income ; children which 
 reverse the instance of the banyan-tree, and ask for succour from, 
 instead of yielding support to, the parent stem, growing up like
 
 140 THE POOR CURATE. 
 
 " olive branches round about his table ; " these are matters of more 
 than trifling import, are they not, reader ? And so our Poor Curate 
 finds them. 
 
 The very grocer whom he favours with his scanty custom, and 
 who contrives to ken a pony and chaise, and live genteelly, is far 
 better off than our Pour Curate. His baker, who attends every 
 cricket-match and horse-race within twenty miles of the place, is in 
 much better circumstances than his spiritual pastor. The bluff 
 farmers, who respectfully doff their broad-rimmed beavers to " his 
 reverence," and who ride blood mares, and drink "potations pottle 
 deep" on each recurring market-day at the neighbouring town, at 
 least enjoy the otium, if denied the dignitas ; and their "rich peasant 
 cheeks of ruddy bronze" but too forcibly contrast with the wan 
 features of our Poor Curate and the pale aspects of his delicate 
 offspring. 
 
 Scanty are the oblations, whether of meat or drink, that are 
 paid to his household gods ; and very few the luxuries of this life 
 that fall to his or their share : nay, the bare necessaries are not 
 always procurable without difficulty. And why is this ? Appear- 
 ances must be kept up, and the credit of his family supported (a 
 family too poor to lend any efficient aid, and too proud to own their 
 poverty). How many little comforts are denied to purchase some 
 long-coveted work, without which he imagines his library would be 
 incomplete ! What sacrifices are made to attain some article of 
 dress, whose acquisition may be necessary ere his lady (?) can accept 
 the invitation of a neighbouring family to spend a week beneath 
 their roof! The replenishment of his own wardrobe is a thing of 
 unfrequent occurrence : that black suit, so threadbare, yet decent 
 withal, is as familiar to our vision as his own benevolent counte- 
 nance ; his linen, albeit, is faultless both in hue and texture. 
 
 Pitiable, indeed, would the condition of our Poor Curate be but 
 for the delicate benevolence of some two or three maiden ladies 
 whose venerable mansions grace his parish, and whose venerable 
 countenances solemnise his church : the liberal gift (offering) at 
 Easter, and the generous donative at Christmas, somewhat soften 
 the asperities of his lot. Still it is poverty genteel poverty ; and 
 many and bitter are the self-degrading comments which a com- 
 parison of his own lot with that of others will call forth, thrust, as 
 he is, into the society of those whose sole claims to rank with or 
 above him rest, not on their birth or education, but in their wealth. 
 
 There is nothing of imagination in this picture nothing beyond 
 mere matter-of-fact : the bright visions of his boyhood have faded ;
 
 THE POOR CURATE. 141 
 
 the glowing hopes of his youth have, one by one, been first chilled, 
 and then utterly repressed ; and now, in his " sear and yellow leaf," 
 our hero is still the Poor Curate, vegetating on his scanty income, 
 and fulfilling all the pious duties of his station with cheerfulness and 
 calm content. Nay, there are even occasional gleams of sunshine 
 scattered on his path. There are hours when, shut in his little 
 study, a communion with the mighty spirits of old time; a perusal 
 of the precious legacies which they have left to us, and which have 
 survived the very traces of the cities where they dwelt, have gone 
 far towards merging in oblivion the petty cares and anxieties of the 
 outer world. Then, too, there is much of consolation, much of the 
 approval of that " still, small voice " within, arising from scenes into 
 which the nature of his holy office will lead him. 
 
 To have soothed the last hours of a fellow mortal ; to have 
 gradually weaned his thoughts from earth, and fixed his hopes upon 
 a " better land," until, at length, the parting spirit yearned for its 
 eternal home ; to have dried up the tears of the mourner ; to have 
 led Charity to the homes of pining Want ; these will outweigh a 
 whole host of selfish troubles, and draw the veil of forgetfulness 
 over very, very many of the minor desagremens of our brief life. 
 
 " Ubi charitas, ibi humilitas, ubi humilitas, ibipax," is beautifully 
 exemplified in the cottage home of our Poor Curate ; a very atmo- 
 sphere of peace seems to surround and pervade it ; and though 
 Poverty is its indweller, yet she is arrayed in a trim garb, and her 
 aspect, it may be, even cheerful. And sooth to say, it is a pleasant 
 spot, enshrined (so to speak) in a very wilderness of sweet flowers, 
 which, together with its humble roof, are imaged in the clear waters 
 of a stream that runs rippling by, and whose low, silvery tones, 
 when heard in the stillness of a summer twilight, lull one into a 
 most dreamy reverie, and call up such vague, fairy-like thoughts, as 
 would, if indulged in, altogether unfit us for the commerce of this 
 work-a-day world. The hand of taste is visible within its walls ; 
 there are a hundred little trifles which evince its exercise, and innu- 
 merable evidences of the fond affection of the husband and the 
 father. 
 
 The various attributes of the gifted mind are here at issue with 
 poverty ; and where will not the former win for themselves a a 
 abiding place, softening, by their kindly influence, the ills incident 
 to those whose lot may be the latter ? 
 
 The framed drawings dependant from the walls the pictured 
 chess-table, whose every dark square hath some quaint device or tiny 
 portraiture impressed upon it the screens, with their rich groups of
 
 142 
 
 THK POOR CURATE. 
 
 flowers and birds are each and all home- wrought, and serve ns 
 pleasant links between the living tenants of the chamber and its 
 inanimate occupiers. Nor must we overlook one especial friend, 
 whose tones are ever welcome, whose voice ever kindly, and whose 
 companionship untiring music : our Poor Curate is a passionate 
 lover of song, and witching airs, " wedded to immortal verse," can 
 make that chamber like the enchanted island of Prospero, 
 
 " Full of noises, 
 Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight." 
 
 And in this home will his latter days be passed, and in the exer- 
 cise of those duties the closing years of his life will be spent. The 
 old age of men of letters (or, at least, of those who have not occu- 
 pied any prominent eminence in the republic), unlike that of others 
 who have played a busy part upon the great stage of life, is little 
 disturbed by those stormier recollections which occasionally harass 
 theirs. Nor is it a repose from toil or action ; their existence has 
 been rather like the course of a gentle river, mirroring the clouds 
 and sunshine of heaven, cognisant by reflection of what is passing on 
 its banks, with ever and anon some passing shower shattering its 
 clear surface, yet soon calm again, gliding on to the music of its 
 own waters, and at length stagnating into a quiet lake. 
 
 To such may we assimilate the life of our Poor Curate. We 
 will not deny but that ancient memories will sometimes haunt his 
 mind, and that dormant hopes will not occasionally be stirred within 
 him. But these gradually die away, his thoughts take a loftier tone, 
 his benevolence a wider scope, and his ambition, if not a higher, 
 yet a better aim ; and as he becomes more and more identified with 
 the interests and well-being of those around him the consoler of 
 their sorrows, the soother of their griefs, a messenger of peace and 
 good- will to all he finds in contentment the truest wisdom, and 
 that " he who winneth souls is, indeed, wise." And when he dies, 
 " late may it be," he will have " his grand-children's love for 
 epitaph," the sorrowings of many a poor man's heart for requiem, 
 and will be interred in the chancel of the village church, where a 
 small mural tablet will perchance record the obituary of " The Poor 
 Curate." 
 
 We have thus briefly pourtrayed some of the " lights and sha- 
 dows" of a poor clergyman's chequered existence a favourable 
 specimen of the class, we admit ; but upon the bright traits in such 
 a character the uncomplaining endurance of poverty unmerited, 
 the noble, self-sustaining sense of innate dignity, excellencies which
 
 THE POOR CURATE. 143 
 
 redeem much that is base in our fallen nature on these we would 
 much rather dwell, than note the darker features in another's. 
 That such there are men whose principles widely differ from their 
 professions, and whose lives but ill accord with the doctrines they 
 inculcate, we cannot deny ; but we leave the delineation of these to 
 the pen of the sectarian, or the morbid and gloomy pencil of the 
 misanthrope. 
 
 Thank God ! there are still many such as our Poor Curate located 
 in the midst of the village homes of "merrie England," in her towns 
 and in her cities, carrying with them the gentle influences of a pure 
 life and unassuming manners into the very heart of her busiest 
 scenes, and into the quiet hamlets of her most secluded vallies. 
 ******* 
 
 It may not be impertinent, in this place, to quote the following 
 homely, yet graphic description of the Poor Curate, as it appeared 
 in a work now but little known, and not easily consulted, called, 
 " The Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy inquired 
 to." The book appeared in 1670, and is attributed to the pen of 
 Echard. He says : " For where the minister is pinched, as to the 
 tolerable conveniences of this life, the chief of his care and time must 
 be spent, not in an impertinent inquiry, considering what text of 
 Scriptures will be most useful for his parish, what instructions most 
 seasonable, and what authors best to be consulted ; but the chief of 
 his thoughts, and his main business, must be to study how to live 
 that week ; where he shall have bread for his family ; \\hosesow 
 has lately pigged ; whence will come the next rejoicing goose, or 
 the next cheerful basket of apples ? How far to Lammas or offer- 
 ings ? When shall we have another christening, and cakes ? and 
 who is likely to marry, or die ? These are very reasonable consi- 
 derations, and worthy of a man's thoughts. For a family cannot be 
 maintained by texts and contexts ; and the child that lies crying in 
 the cradle will not be satisfied without a little milk, and perhaps 
 sugar ; though, perhaps, there be a small German system * in the 
 house. But suppose he does get into a little hole over the oven, 
 with a lock to it, called a study, towards the latter end of the week 
 (for you must know, sir, there is very few texts of Scripture that can 
 be divided, at soonest, before Friday night, and some there be that 
 will never be divided but upon Sunday morning, and that not very 
 early, but either a little before they go, or in the going to church) ; 
 I say, suppose the gentleman gets thus into his study, one may very 
 
 * The making of sugar-candy.
 
 H4 THE POOR CURATE. 
 
 near guess what is his first thought when he comes there, viz. that 
 the last kilderkin of drink is near departed ; and that he has but one 
 poor single groat in the house, and there is judgment and execution 
 ready to come out against it, for milk and eggs. Now, sir, can any 
 man that is thus racked and tortured be seriously intent half an 
 hour to contrive anything that might be of real advantage to his 
 people ? Besides, perhaps, that week he has met with some dismal 
 crosses and undoing misfortunes. There was a scurvy-conditioned 
 mole, that broke up his pasture, and ploughed up the best part of 
 his glebe ; and a little after that, came a couple of spiteful, ill- 
 favoured cows, and trampled down the little remaining grass. Ano- 
 ther day, having but four chickens, sweep comes the kite, and 
 carries away the fattest and hopefulest of all the brood. Then, 
 after all this, came the jack-daws and the starlings (idle birds that 
 they are), and they scattered and carried away from his thin thatched 
 house forty or fifty of the best straws ; and to make him completely 
 unhappy, after all these afflictions, another day, that he had a pair of 
 breeches on, coming over a perverse stile, he suffered very much 
 in carelessly lifting over his leg. * * * * He is not capable 
 of doing that outward good amongst the needy, which is a great 
 ornament to that holy profession, and a considerable advantage 
 towards the having his doctrine believed and practised in a degene- 
 rate world. If there comes a brief to town, for the minister to cast 
 in his mite will not satisfy, unless he can create sixpence or a shil- 
 ling to put into the box, for a state to decoy in the best of the parish : 
 nay, he that has but 20 or 30 per annum, if he bids not up as 
 high as the best of the parish in all acts of charity, he is counted 
 carnal and earthly-minded, only because he durst not coin, and 
 cannot work miracles. And let there come never so many beggars, 
 half of these, I '11 secure you, shall presently ask for the minister's 
 house. For ' God,' say they, ' certainly dwells there, and has laid 
 up a sufficient relief.' "
 
 THE QUACK DOCTOR. 
 
 What a. pestilent knave is this same ! 
 
 SHAKSPERE.
 
 THE QUACK DOCTOR. 
 
 BY PAUL PRENDERGAST. 
 
 THE APOTHECARY having already appeared in this work, it may. 
 perhaps, be thought unnecessary to exhibit the Quack. We grant 
 that these two artists have, in some respects, a strong mutual resem- 
 blance ; yet, notwithstanding the opinion of several judicious persons, 
 we cannot admit that they are as like one another as two peas. 
 Tii ere may be that sort of likeness between them which there is 
 between a bean and a pea or, as it is called, a family one ; but they 
 also differ in many important particulars. They both pursue similar 
 ends, real as well as apparent ; for each, while he professes to cure 
 diseases, is endeavouring to get money : but whereas the Quack is 
 governed in his choice of means by downright knavery, the Apothe- 
 cary is more than half influenced by the opposite cause of error. 
 The one is no philosopher at all, and he partly believes in specifics ; 
 the other is a natural philosopher, and believes in nothing of the 
 kind ; but not being, in a practical sense at least, a moral one also, 
 he does not hesitate to profess that he has discovered an universal 
 medicine. 
 
 The Quack sometimes calls himself a medical dissenter ; a term, 
 the meaning of which is rendered somewhat ambiguous, by certain of 
 his fraternity having of late thought proper to assume the title of 
 Reverend. The word dissenter does not, however, necessarily imply 
 that there is any peculiarity in his theological opinions, although 
 that, and a pretence to excessive sanctity, will do little harm to one 
 of his calling, either within or without the pale of the faculty. 
 Medical dissent is to be understood to mean, a departure from the 
 established faith as regards the art of healing ; what that established 
 faith is, and how much of truth there is in it to afford the champions 
 of freedom of thought matter for denial, we need not stop to enquire. 
 A belief prevails that there is something, at least, to dissent from ; 
 and the Quack, accordingly, obtains all due credit with a certain class 
 for strength of mind, and honesty of intention qualities from which 
 contempt for authority is commonly sunnosed to proceed. 
 69 T
 
 14fi THE QUACK DOCTOR. 
 
 It is gratifying to reflect upon what is called the moderi progress 
 of mind a topic which you will hardly find untouched even in a 
 preface to a cookery book. Formerly, a fanatic preaching in a tub, 
 could, by mere confidence and force of lungs, persuade the multitude 
 to believe whatever he pleased, and a vagabond medicine-vender, ha- 
 ranguing the crowd from a stage, succeeded equally well, with similar 
 resources. But now we have no leading by the nose, no wholesale 
 cramming down the throat nay, we have a praiseworthy disdain of 
 relying on the good faith of our betters. Our intellect must be 
 satisfied ; we must be argued with ; we must be convinced ; the 
 Ranter must reason ; the Quack must theorise. At present, we 
 have nothing to say of the logic peculiar to the first of these profes- 
 sors ; but it may be expected that we should give some notion of 
 the philosophy usually propounded by the latter. The physiological 
 and medical views of the Quack are sometimes set forth in a book, 
 but more generally in an advertisement, and are then expressed 
 much in the following manner : 
 
 Principiis Obsta. OVID. 
 
 "I^ITHEN we consider the multifarious relations which the co-existent 
 . peculiarities incidental to the human frame and to the external world neces- 
 sarily involve, we shall instantaneously perceive, that the physical mechanism of 
 Man is liable to numerous diseases. It is unnecessary to expose, to an enlight- 
 ened Public, the fallacies of a prejudiced faculty, in all their naked deformity ; 
 as the slightest reflection will immediately serve to exemplify their fatal results. 
 There is but one medical theory on which the suffering valetudinarian, and 
 reflective philanthropist, can repose with confidence and safety, and that one we 
 shall (from benevolence rather than gain), endeavour to unfold. Universal cor- 
 respondence to the characteristics of veracity is the only sure mark of truth ; 
 facts are stubborn things; and the never-failing success of the Universal Anti- 
 cacoethic Pills stamps the unerring fiat of certitude on the unquestionable deduc- 
 tions of reason. Experiment and observation are strongly recommended by the 1 
 illustrious Bacon; and, accordingly, a trial of the Universal Anticacoethic Pills is 
 earnestly solicited from all those who are labouring under any of those diversified 
 ailments which obnubilate the chequered path of life. Their composition is of the 
 most innocuous description ; the deleterious qualities of the destructive mineral, 
 and the baneful essence of the poisonous herb, are alike sedulously avoided ; and 
 the mild and genial operation of the salutiferous vegetable, is the gentle but irre- 
 sistible power by which they eradicate disease from the enervated system, restore 
 the tone of the most dilapidated stomach, and force conviction on the most sceptical 
 mind. According to the Anticacoethic theory, all diseases arise from the Cacoethes 
 fa term derived from the Greek, to some of the philosophers of which country it is 
 more than prob.tble that the secret was known), and until the Cacoethic virus is 
 expelled the system, vain are the efforts of the languishing sufferer to obtain a 
 cure an object which the Universal Anticacoethic Pills alone are the means 
 calculated to effect. To prove the inviolable correctness of the Anticacoethic 
 theory, it will be sufficient to remark, that chylification is universally admitted to
 
 THE QUACK C6CTOR. J47 
 
 be the sine qua non of the sanguiferous supply ; and the following letters from the 
 late distinguished surgeon, Mr. Abernethy, and his intimate friend, Dr. Bailiie, 
 preclude comment, and necessitate assent. 
 
 London, October 1, 1836. 
 
 MY DEAR DICKSON, I have tried your pills in a great variety of cases, and 
 .am fully confident that they form an admirable system for the cure of the majority 
 of diseases. I remain, &c-., yours truly, 
 
 To H. U. M. Dickson, Esq., the Anticacoethist. JOHN ABERNETHY. 
 
 London, July 4, 1820. 
 
 DEAR DICKSON, Your pills are capital. They beat all others I ever tried; 
 and I must beg you to send me another box, for I find them an invaluable trea- 
 sure to my wife and family. Believe me, very sincerely yours, 
 
 To H. U. M. Dickson. Esq. MATTHEW BAILLIE, M.D. 
 
 The subjoined acknowledgment, which, while it demonstrates the superior 
 efficacy of the Anticaeoethic Pills, is highly gratifying to the feelings of Mr. 
 Dickson, was last week received by Mr. D. 
 
 Southampton, March 3, 1840. 
 
 HONOURED AND .RESPECTED SIR, How shall I find adequate words to ad- 
 dress you? my truest friend my best benefactor the preserver of my darling 
 child ! Yes, sir, thanks to your inestimable discovery, my little Neddy is at length 
 restored to the almost blighted hopes of his anxious mother. But let me control my 
 feelings, to detail, for the benefit of the incredulous, the astonishing effects of the 
 Anticaeoethic Pills. My little cherub, who is now in his sixth year, was attacked 
 with a complaint in the inside, consisting of spasms, attended with the most 
 heart-rending convulsions that can be possibly conceived. I took him to all the 
 doctors I could think of, and had all sorts of things tried, but to no purpose; and, 
 in the meantime, poor Edward became daily worse and worse, till at last he was 
 so swelled, that he was nearly as broad as he was high, and his poor little eyes 
 turned in towards the nose in such a degree, that I thought he would have been 
 an object all his life ; his mouth, too, became so dreadfully widened and distorted, 
 that I have cried for hours at the thought of it. The doctors now gave him over, 
 aud declared nothing conld save him, when, as a last resource, I determined to 
 try the Anticaeoethic Pills. Finding that their immediate effect was a decrease 
 in the symptoms, I persevered in their use, and, at the end of a fortnight, my 
 little prattler had perfectly recovered. Oh! Mr. D., pardon a mother's fondness ; 
 but had you could you have witnessed the happy restoration of my beloved 
 child, what heartfelt satisfaction would have beamed in your features, at a sight 
 of so affecting a nature, and also at the splendid triumph of the Universal Anti- 
 caeoethic Pills, so unequivocally exemplified in the foregoing instance ! You are 
 at liberty to make whatever use you like of this communication ; and oh ! Mr. 
 Dickson, believe me to remain, with feelings of the liveliest gratitude, 
 
 Ever sincerely yours, 
 
 MARTHA STACEY. 
 
 To H. U. M. Dickson, Esq., inventor of the Anticaeoethic Pills. 
 
 Sold by H. U. M. Dickson, at the New Anticaeoethic Institution, Bridge- 
 street, Blackfriars, where also may be had the following works : Doctorial 
 Dulness, or a Fig for the Faculty ; The Life Preserver ; 'I he Rational Physician ; 
 The Triumph of Truth ; and various other productions by the same author.
 
 H8 THE QUACK DOCTOR. 
 
 Sold also at the Branch Institution, Red Lion Square, Holhorn ; and by all 
 respectable Medicine Venders in town and country. Be particular in asking for 
 Dickson's Universal Anticacoethic Pills ; none others are genuine ; and likewise 
 in observing the government stamp upon the box, to counterfeit which is felony. 
 Mr. Dickson attends daily at the Anticacoethic Institution, from 10 to 4, to 
 give gratuitous advice to the afflicted. All letters from the country, minutely 
 describing the case, and containing a remittance, punctually attended to. Medi- 
 cines forwarded to all parts of the world, and carefully packed and sealed, to 
 prevent observation. 
 
 ** A back door, and lights in the passage at night. 
 
 Swift, in describing the conversion of Mr. Edmund Curll to 
 Judaism, says, " They then spoke to him in the Hebrew tongue, 
 which he not understanding, it was observed, had great weight with 
 him." There is, even now, a sufficient number of such people as 
 Mr. Curll in the world, to make talking Hebrew to them, or what, 
 in effect, is much the same, abundantly worth the while of an im- 
 postor. The reasoning, too, which is least intelligible, is, of neces- 
 sity, the most unanswerable. Not that the Quack addresses, or would 
 be wise in addressing, utter and unmixed nonsense to his dupes. 
 Advertiser, writer, lecturer, or whatever he may be, he puts forward, 
 every here and there, some common-place truism, in such a form of 
 words that his meaning may just be guessed at, by which artifice he 
 gets credit for profundity with the vulgar, and, at the same time, 
 causes a great deal to be taken on trust which is either entirely false 
 and absurd, or else, which is more frequently the case, has no signi- 
 fication whatever. Nor is the Quack altogether a systematic coiner 
 of fine words. They seem natural to him, as, indeed, they do to all 
 his kindred, amongst whom advertising tailors and drapers may with 
 great propriety be reckoned. These glib and oily words these 
 " genteel expressions" in which we are sure that the swindler even 
 thinks, serve as effectually to conceal his knavery, as his "fashionable 
 exterior" does to disguise his person. Wherever we meet with them, 
 we suspect humbug, either wilful or involuntary. An advertisement 
 (now before us) about a cosmetic, describes it as " a mild and inno- 
 cent preparation, from beautiful exotics. It effectually eradicates 
 eruptions, tan, pimples, freckles, redness, spots, and all cutaneous 
 imperfections ; renders the most sallow complexion delicately fair, 
 clear, and delightfully soft imparting a healthy juvenile bloom, as 
 well as realising a delicate white neck, hand, and arm." Faugh ! 
 Another nasty puff, of the same kind, speaks of the nipping easterly 
 winds as being " so prejudicial to the hands of the superior classes." 
 The man must have licked the blarney stone to some purpose, to 
 write in this way
 
 THE QUACK. DOCTOR 149 
 
 The modern Quack is a great cultivator of manners and appear- 
 ance. Formerly, it was the custom of these gentry to dress like 
 scarecrows, in order that they might be taken for men of learning ; 
 but now their apparel, with the exception of some slight touch of 
 eccentricity such, for instance, as a fur collar, which gives them 
 what some folks are pleased to call a distingue appearance only 
 differs from that of the rest of the world in being rather more fine. 
 This is more especially the case with those who belong, as not a few 
 of them do, to the Israelitish persuasion, such Quacks being remark- 
 able, generally, at least, for large shirt pins, conspicuous watch- 
 guards, numerous finger rings, and polished boots. To this class 
 divers of the advertising " surgeon dentists" belong. 
 
 The Quack we are still speaking of the Medical Quack is not 
 always an inventor, compounder, or retailer of patent medicines. 
 He is sometimes a Homceopathist ; or a pretender to cure diseases by 
 Animal Magnetism ; or an itinerant lecturer on Phrenology ; or, it 
 may be, all three together, and, under the rose, an Astrologer into 
 the bargain, who describes characters and tells fortunes at so much 
 per booby, to the no small annoyance of all those who, with many 
 reasonable men, consider that the brain is something more than 
 mere stuffing, and would have no means neglected of discovering its 
 use. He is also pretty sure to entertain new views in morals, 
 whereof community of property (which would be a very convenient 
 arrangement personally to himself) is always one of the chief. 
 Moreover, he is an universal philanthropist, bitterly inveighing 
 against the oppression practised by those in power, and the igno- 
 rance and superstition of the clergy. When he has been shewn up 
 in a paper or a review, he takes great care to compare his own case 
 to that of various philosophers who have suffered for their opinions, 
 never failing to descant particularly on Galileo and the Inquisition. 
 This fellow is a genius a sort of Crichton in his way and is often 
 clever enough to pass himself off for a foreign count, rivalled though 
 he may be, in his respectable vocation, by some who have a real claim 
 to that dignity. 
 
 There is a certain saying about persons who deceive the public, 
 so old that we need only hint at it. We do not, however, imagine 
 that the Quack is, in any measure, the dupe of his own imposture, 
 unless when he arrives at extreme old age, a time when those who 
 have told lies all their lives, sometimes end by believing them. " If," 
 said a very celebrated one, and a foreigner to boot, " you wish to 
 succeed wid de English beeble, you must dell dem someding dat 
 common sense shew to e imbossible." In our opinion, the rogue
 
 150 "HE QUACK DOCTOR 
 
 concocts advertisements, forges commendatory letters, and fabricates 
 cases, on principles, and with feelings, precisely similar to those with 
 which an angler makes an artificial fly, or a schoolboy sets a springe. 
 The patients, of course, are the trout and woodcocks were it 
 sportsman-like to say so, we would rather call them gulls and 
 gudgeons : and be it observed, that a bread pill, in a literal sense, 
 is no bad bait for the latter. 
 
 We much regret that we are obliged to condense into so short 
 a space the interesting life and adventures of Mr. Jacob Diddams, 
 and to confine ourselves to a brief notice of their leading points. 
 Diddams was born in London, though in what alley we cannot take 
 upon ourselves precisely to say. It is certain, however, that his 
 father was a barber ; and that his mother, a Miss Jacob, was con- 
 nected with a very numerous, and somewhat ancient, family of that 
 name, many of the members of which had resided for some time in 
 the neighbourhood of the Commercial Road. It appears, also, that 
 soon after the birth of young Jacob, his parents became suddenly 
 possessed of some property, in consequence of the death of a relation 
 on his mother's side. He was sent, at the usual age, to school, 
 where, it is related of him, that he had a remarkable power of 
 persuading his playmates of the truth of the most evident falsehoods. 
 Amongst other things, he managed to make a thick-headed farmer's 
 son believe that he had a pop-gun that would carry a mile, and 
 further, to induce the lout to purchase the toy of him, at the 
 moderate price of five shillings. The circumstance which, there is 
 every reason to suppose, determined the bent of his genius, and 
 which took place before he had completed his twelfth year, deserves 
 to be recorded. He one day observed his father suffering severely 
 'from an attack of the gout, and on enquiring why he did not take 
 some drops then in much repute for the cure of that distemper, had 
 the nature of a quack medicine explained to him. " So, then," said 
 Jacob, "if I were to roll up so many bits of putty, and spend enough 
 money in advertising them, I should make my fortune." His future 
 course of life was settled on that day. 
 
 At the death of his father, which put him in possession of a 
 tolerable sum, Jacob Diddams had arrived at years which, were 
 honesty really the best policy, might have been called years of dis- 
 cretion. He was now enabled to carry his long-cherished scheme 
 into execution ; he did so ; he was successful ; and the elixir which 
 bore his name, or rather his assumed one, was held for a long time 
 in such estimation, as has not been since exceeded by any similar 
 compound.
 
 THE QUACK DOCTOR. 151 
 
 The pleasure derived from the practice of Quackery is not owing 
 merely to the emolument which it produces : the genuine Quack 
 delights also in his occupation for its own sake. Mr. Jacob Diddams 
 devoted those hours of leisure which were permitted to him by his 
 professional pursuits, to the amusement of field-preaching an exer- 
 cise in which he soon obtained great proficiency. For many years 
 he was well known (as a divine, not as a physician) on Kennington 
 Common. He is likewise said to have made considerable progress in 
 the unknown tongues, but to have desisted from the further culti- 
 vation of them, in consequence of their pretensions being exploded. 
 
 Mr. Diddams never had much more faith in Methodism than he 
 had in medicine, and he has lately not only renounced his former 
 creed, but also every other. He is now a lecturer at a Social Insti- 
 tution ; and, as he is somewhat advancing in years, it is probable 
 that he believes to a certain extent in the principles which he 
 expounds. He has not yet been called upon to contribute his pos- 
 sessions to the common stock, nobody having any suspicion of his 
 enormous wealth, which he is at much pains to conceal, never ven- 
 turing among his new disciples with anything on his back worth 
 stealing, or with more money in his pocket than the change for a 
 sixpence. 
 
 There is a question, often suggested by the advertisement sheet 
 of a newspaper to ourselves, which we would fain submit to the 
 reader. The government derives an immense revenue from the sale 
 of patent medicines: How many simpletons are there in the United 
 Kingdom ? But, we are now touching on a matter about which a 
 jest is out of place. Do we not continually meet, in the public 
 prints, with cases in which people are poisoned by the administration 
 of some pernicious nostrum, and that not at once, as in common 
 murders, but by slow, tedious, and painful degrees ? In what posi- 
 tion, then, do our legislators place themselves by the encouragement 
 which, in licensing cart loads of deadly rubbish, they persist in 
 giving to a set of wholesale corrupters of the public health nay, of 
 deliberate and sordid assassins for such are those, who, with their 
 eyes open to the consequences, scatter poison abroad for the sake of 
 gain ? Let us not be told that these compounds are ascertained to 
 be harmless before a sanction is given to their sale. No remedy 
 whatever is so, if injudiciously taken. Nothing but extreme and 
 deplorable ignorance can exonerate the patrons of quackery from the 
 guilt of participating in murder. Politics are, of course, excluded 
 from these pages, as they are from general society ; but, wherever 
 we may be, we have a right to complain of a public nuisance. The
 
 1^6 THE QUACK DOCTOR 
 
 most extreme Tory, and the most violent Radical, agree in a regard 
 for life and health. No honest man will dispute the assertion, that 
 the system of granting patents to the manufacturers of a parcel of 
 villanous trash, ought to be at once and totally abolished. The 
 protection afforded to these scoundrels, is injustice to the medical 
 profession injustice, which is only equalled by the imbecility of 
 extending it. What can possibly be the use of preserving the public 
 from the incompetent Physician, and of abandoning it, at the same 
 time, to the unprincipled nostrum vendor : of defending it from the 
 fool, and betraying it to the knave ? A man would do a wise thing, 
 indeed, in barring his windows against thieves, and leaving his doors 
 wide open. It is idle to plead the imperfect state of medicine, as 
 an excuse for the abominable indifference, on the part of the legisla- 
 ture, to the rights of its practitioners. That science is imperfect, 
 because its pursuit is discouraged. One thing, however, is certain ; 
 namely, that those whose calling it is should strenuously exert them- 
 selves to disprove the imputation on their skill, to which the patron- 
 age of empiricism by the state is equivalent. Another thing is 
 equally certain ; that there are quacks in the art of government, as 
 well as in other matters, and that the constitution of individuals is 
 not the only one which is tampered with. We hear much of re- 
 modelling institutions, reforming abuses, converting mechanics into 
 moral philosophers, charity-school boys into theologians, and black- 
 amoors into prodigies of piety ; and, in the meantime, here is a 
 crying and a flagrant nuisance unattended to, and almost unthought 
 of. The imaginations of our rulers are running riot amid the per- 
 fumed groves of Utopia, and there is a pig-sty under their noses. 
 Away with it ! It is now high time that law-makers should work, 
 instead of talking unless they are content to leave their craft still 
 open to the reproach cast upon it by Johnson, who said that politics 
 were now merely the means of rising in the world. Let them begin 
 with the reformation of their own fraternity ; let them get rid of 
 quack politicians, and we shall not much longer be troubled with 
 tbe Q.UACK DOCTOR.
 
 THE PAWNBROKER- 
 
 Thou art a merchant, and a monied man, 
 And 'tis thv money, Barabbas, we seek.
 
 THE PAWNBROKER. 
 
 BT DOUGLAS JERROLD. 
 
 THERE would seem a kind of ignominy in the calling of a Pawn- 
 broker. He is the rejected of all men. Albeit he may be a thriving 
 tradesman, a man of scrupulous dealing, and high moral purpose, 
 he nevertheless enjoys no part of that general respect, unaffec- 
 tedly and freely avowed by the customer towards other upright 
 dealers. There appears to be a tacit compact in society, to affect 
 an ignorance of the very existence of a Pawnbroker. His merits 
 are never canvassed no man has, or ever had, a personal know- 
 ledge of him. The reader shall confess to the truth of this. Men 
 are prone to vaunt the rectitude, the talents of their tradesmen. 
 " My wine-merchant," " My bootmaker," even " My attorney;" but 
 whoever yet startled the delicacy of a company, with "My Pawn- 
 broker ?" No ; it is the fate of our subject to do what good he does 
 unknown in gloomy precincts, and often with low, muttering 
 voice, to eke out his benevolence to the whispering, trembling, 
 broken-hearted, bronze-faced, desperate suppliants, that, by turns, 
 from the bolted privacy of his boxes miserable pulpits, whence 
 poverty and crime put up their prayers to Mammon beg and de- 
 mand the good man's courtesies. And save amongst the very poor 
 and of what worth are the praises of penury ? who trumpets forth 
 the conscience, the fair-dealing of the Pawnbroker ? " What a capi- 
 tal coat ! Who 's your tailor ? " This is frequent admiration, a 
 common query. But who, missing the diamond from the finger of 
 an acquaintance ; who, seeing not the yard of glittering gold chain 
 in its wonted place ; who, though at the time he may need the 
 services of a conscientious money-dealer, who thinks of venturing 
 to the late possessor of the ring, " who is your Pawnbroker?" 
 
 The Pawnbroker of our day, vulgar and common-place as he 
 is, has picturesque forefathers. The ancestry of Mammon is 
 
 " Mysteriously remote and high 
 
 There were Pawnbrokers in Thebes money-lenders, where now 
 the jackal prowls in Tadmor ; but they were the Pawnbrokers for 
 70
 
 1">4 THE PAWNBROKER. 
 
 the rich not the bankers for the poor : they in their houses 
 heaped 
 
 " pearls like pebble stones ; 
 
 Received them free, and sold them by the weight 5 
 
 Bags of fiery opals, sapphires, amethysts, 
 
 Jacinths, hard topas, grass-green emeralds, 
 
 Beauteous rubies, sparkling diamonds, 
 
 And seld' seen costly stones." 
 
 The ancient Pawnbroker was a human harpy, living on human 
 bowels : modern legislation hath pared his claws and cast about 
 his calling the cloak of respectability. Indeed, the money-lending 
 family have suffered great mutations, now trafficking openly with 
 princes, and now sneakingly, like spiders in dark corners, feeding 
 on their victims. Who that sees the smug, self-complacent modern, 
 the Peter Jones Pawnbroker of Seven Dials, thinks of his great 
 commercial ancestors, the Lombard merchants ? More than five 
 hundred years ago, they flourished in our city, and their name 
 musical as ringing gold the synonym of wealth, still gilds a city 
 quarter. They dispossessed the Jews heretofore the only money- 
 dealers of their exclusive traffic, and, specially recommended by 
 his Holiness Pope Boniface III. to Edward I. (see Rymer), 
 became the princely Pawnbrokers to our English nobility and 
 gentry; for there was then no "public in general." However, it 
 is not our task to write a history of pledges ; and having, in 
 justice to all present Pawnbrokers, briefly indicated the importance 
 and grandeur of their origin, we shall dwell not on their changes 
 in their descent, but endeavour to paint them as they are. 
 
 The Pawnbroker hath suffered from the civilisation of mankind. 
 Some century or two ago, and there was, indeed, a mystery in his 
 dealings ; now are they made open, exposed to the world by the 
 world's lanterns the two houses of Parliament. The time was, 
 when, at the mercy of the Levite, the poor man was eaten up at 
 leisure ; his poverty made him an outlaw, a vagabond to be de- 
 stroyed piecemeal by usury. Now he knows at least the extent of 
 his sacrifice, the loss defined and made manifest by the statutes. 
 There was a secrecy in the dealings of the by-gone money-lender ; 
 the tribe dwelt in holes and corners, carrying on their " dreadful 
 trade" in nooks and cellars. They wrote up no "Money Lent," 
 pave what avarice had written in their faces ; they exposed no 
 symbols of their calling, save their breathing carcases. They sa- 
 crificed to Mammon as it were a forbidden shrine, and, amidst the 
 world's distrust and bitterest contempt, filled their money-bags to
 
 THE PAWNBROKER. 15,5 
 
 bursting. Then the trade of the Pawnbroker, albeit the name was 
 not, was unrecognised by the law, and the rate of interest varied 
 with the mercy of the lender, who may have securely levied fifty, 
 seventy per cent., though every leaf of his ledger was (the pious 
 custom of the day) emblazoned with a Laus Deo! At length, the 
 law stepped in ; and in process of days the Pawnbroker became what 
 he now is, a respectable, though, as we have before hinted, an unac- 
 knowledged tradesman. He lives not in the allowance of the men 
 who compose what they call decent society ; whilst the excellent 
 people who wear diamonds, and dine off three courses, have never 
 heard of the Pawnbrokers save, indeed, in a novel or at a play- 
 house. No, though he may render the dearest service at the dearest 
 time ; though he may be the sole surviving, the only friend in 
 need, none but the poor acknowledge the acquaintance of the 
 Pawnbroker. Honest penury and careless vice feel no qualms, but 
 give a " good den" to the tradesman ; but a respectable man was 
 never yet discovered to have known him. Believe it, worldly re- 
 spectability may by accident have had acquaintainceship with con- 
 victed felony ; nay, may blush not to own a past connection with 
 some distinguished assassin, before the ferocity of the unfortunate 
 man was found out : there is no peril to a man's name in such 
 personal knowledge ; on the contrary, it may for a time invest him 
 with a very curious interest ; but to know a Pawnbroker is fatal 
 ignominy indeed. On this fact all men are so strongly united, that, 
 we repeat it, no prudent, respectable person can know a Pawn- 
 broker; for if he should confess to the knowledge, who, in the 
 name of all the divinities respectable, who would continue to know 
 him ? 
 
 The Pawnbroker being made a common-place by the law ; being 
 divested of all his ancient, picturesque mysteriousness, and com- 
 pelled by the unimaginative legislature, to carry on his calling in 
 the eye of the world we are rather to consider him rather as one 
 of a number, than as the sole object of our attention. He is only 
 to be viewed as affected by the variety of his customers, as a part 
 and portion of their necessities. 
 
 To the Pawnbroker, the civility almost essential to the thrift 
 of other tradesmen, is wholly superfluous. He places no quick- 
 eyed shopman at the door, no tenacious solicitor of the lingering 
 customer to enter and trade. Not he : he stands in his shop, 
 the deputy of Mammon ; his customers are not to be wheedled, 
 coaxed, grinned at, protested to ; he need not bow his back, or 
 crush his face up into smiling wrinkles, at the hesitating purchaser,
 
 156 
 
 THE PAWNBROKER. 
 
 No ; his customers the people who contribute to him thirty per 
 cent. for the most part address him with a respectful meekness ; 
 many with a shame-faced hesitation, as though they begged his 
 aid, the free-offering of his money, no pledge, no profitable hostage 
 left. Other tradesmen make it part of their craft to presume the 
 possession of wealth in their customers : to the Pawnbroker, they 
 come the best of them for the time, branded with the mark of 
 necessity. How different that face there, that one in the third 
 box from the door how different that sweet, meek countenance, 
 from the face of five years since ! It is a lady, a young creature, 
 with cankerous sorrow at her heart ; a fair thing, with that suf- 
 fering, yet resigned look of grief, more profoundly touching than 
 the wildest anguish. With the gentle, yet hesitating grace of the 
 lady, and a faint smile at her lip, she presents a small trinket to 
 the Pawnbroker : how different the money-lender's manner from 
 the oppressive obsequiousness of the jeweller who, five years since, 
 sold the locket to her ! The tradesman, with a cold eye, turns 
 over the trinket ; whilst the woman it is almost the last of her 
 few ornaments, and there is poverty, and hungry babes at home 
 finds herself waiting, with stinted breath, the sentence of the Pawn- 
 broker. At length he condescends to ask, " What do you want on 
 this ? " and God help her ! her heart is eased at the condescension. 
 
 The Pawnbroker may, from the independence of his calling, 
 by his exemption from the idle courtesies assiduously cultivated by 
 other tradesmen, be as jocular as his native wit will allow him with 
 many of his well-known customers. Again and again he may crack 
 joke upon the coat withdrawn on the Saturday for the Sabbath 
 wear, and duly returned to his safe guardianship on the Monday. 
 Coats will wear out, the nap will lose its gloss, and the Pawnbroker 
 will have his joke upon the frailty of broad-cloth, and, joking, 
 offer less and less upon the fading raiment. As for the wife, who 
 for the twentieth time hath left the coat in pledge, she must good- 
 humouredly fence with the wit of the Pawnbroker, who carries the 
 pleasantry just as far as suits his humour, ending the parley with an 
 emphatic avowal, not to lend a farthing more, gruffly bidding the 
 woman " take the rag away." He knows she cannot take it away ; 
 and, therefore, she resignedly receives both the impertinence of the 
 shopkeeper and the money he vouchsafes her. Strange, that trades- 
 men should so differ in manners ! How very civil was Lubin 
 Gosling, the tailor who made that coat ! 
 
 The Pawnbroker is a sort of King Midas in a squalid neighbour- 
 hood ; he is a potentate sought by the poor, who bear with his jests,
 
 THE PAWNBROKER. 157 
 
 his insolence, his brutality : who, in tatters, bow down to him ; and 
 with want in all their limbs, with empty bellies and despairing hearts, 
 make court to him, that he will be pleased to let them eat. What 
 offerings are made to him ! How is he prayed, implored, to see gome 
 value in that which he inexorably deems worthless ; to coin, for a 
 time, a shilling out of some miserable vestment, its owner stands 
 shivering in the box for the want of it ; to advance sixpence on 
 some household necessary. How can the Pawnbroker deal in the 
 courtesies of trade ? His daily petitioner is want, with tiger appetite, 
 reckless, abandoned, self-doomed vice, and moody despair. Life to 
 him is so often " turned the seamy side without," that he must needs 
 be made callous by the hard nature of his calling. How is it possible 
 to deal, to chaffer with hungry misery, beseeching for bread as 
 though it were immortal manna, yet keep alive the natural sensibi- 
 lities of the human heart ? How can we drive a bargain with despair, 
 turning the penny with the complacency of a stockbroker ? How 
 bate down wretchedness, how huckster with famine ? yet this is the 
 daily business of the Pawnbroker ! To him, 
 
 " The human heart is just one pound of fle?h." 
 
 The shop is thronged : every box save one is full ! What faces 
 stare upon the man of money : how entreatingly the shopmen are 
 besought, yet how noiselessly do they perform their duties ! An 
 hour may pass, and but a few low words spoken, with now and then 
 the sound of money on the counter. Hush! How quickly that bolt 
 was shot ! The last box is filled. A lady has entered it ; and it is 
 plain to be seen, that for the first time she is in the shop of a Pawn- 
 broker. Poor thing ! Affluence rocked her cradle ; fortune, as she 
 grew up, waited on her lightest wish ; the whole world was to her a 
 fairy-grcund. She never knew the touch of sorrow, and want was to 
 her but a sound. She is now a wife ; and comes, for the first time, 
 with a piece of plate, that for there is death hovering about her 
 hearth she may pay doctors' fees ! She feels, as she presents the 
 plate to the shopman, like a thief. The man glances at her. " Good 
 God!" she thinks, "can he suspect such a thing?" The Pawn- 
 broker gives the sum required, and the lady, with scorching face, 
 hurries from the shop. But, oh ! the feelings of shame and 
 degradation that possessed her in those brief minutes ! Terrible 
 things ha.ve been written on dungeon walls ; terrible, sickening 
 evidences of human misery and human vice ; but if on the par- 
 titions of these boxes could be writ the emotions of those who
 
 158 THE PAWNBROKER. 
 
 have waited near them, the writing would be no less fearful than 
 that traced in the Bastile, graven in the Piomhi. 
 
 If, however, poverty hard-ground, squalid want too often 
 make its offerings, put up its prayer at the shrine of the Pawn- 
 broker, the spirit of independence may also exhibit its bluff face, 
 utter its frank voice, from the boxes ! When friendship worldly 
 friendship, that like Briareus, with a hundred hands for a hundred 
 new comers pauses, and stammers at a loan, is there not the 
 Pawnbroker with ready money? There is Jack Pleasanton, one 
 of the most agreeable of fellows ; when he meets you, he will grasp 
 your hand till your wrist cracks, but he has so many engagements, 
 being so delightful a creature, is so much sought after he cannot 
 spare time to walk or ride a mile to see you, though you are groan- 
 ing at the gates of death. Excellent, light-hearted Jack ! he is 
 every man's friend ; every man has a note of praise for him ; he 
 is so vivacious, so liberal in his ideas nay, so philanthropic in his 
 opinions. You are convinced, for you have known him for these 
 seven years, that, when he has no engagement, he would do any- 
 thing to serve you. The frankness of his manner, the cordiality 
 of his grasp, assures you that Jack has a heart of gold. You want 
 ten pounds for as many days : how lucky ! for this way comes 
 Jack ; he is never without money. The radiancy of his smile 
 is the same ; the squeeze of his hand, if possible, more fervent 
 than usual ; and, with not a moment's hesitation for Jack is 
 such a good fellow you tell him of your passing necessity ; you 
 ask him for the loan of ten pounds. A slight shudder passes over 
 Jack's face, his mouth drops ; it is but for a moment, for again 
 he smiles, again he seizes you by the hand, again expresses his 
 willingness to do anything in the world for you ; " but unfortu- 
 nately it so happens that he never was so short." Syl- 
 labically doth he count forth his many deep regrets, and then smiling 
 and squeezing as before, passes airily over it; and, compared to Jack's 
 smiling face, how beneficently looks even the most stony-featured 
 Pawnbroker ; how cordial his voice to the hollow cheerfulness sound- 
 ing in the throat of Jack ! Is it not far better to leave your watch 
 with the man of the Lombardy Arms, than with the family of the 
 Pleasantons ? 
 
 That the Pawnbroker should fail to take rank with other trades- 
 men employed by the nobility, gentry, and public in general, arises 
 from the wholesome disgust implanted in us of a show of poverty. A 
 man may more safely confess to any moral want, than a want of money. 
 Therefore, the Pawnbroker, though so often a benefactor of his race,
 
 THE PAWNBROKER. lu'J 
 
 lives unthanked, unacknowledged, but, happily for him, not unre- 
 warded. Could the History of Pawning be faithfully written, and, 
 after the fashion of the times, duly decked with portraits illustra- 
 tive of the subject ; we doubt not that the world would stare at the 
 likenesses. How acquaintance might marvel at acquaintance ! and 
 how folks such respectable people, too would stand convicted of 
 the heinous crime of having sometimes wanted a guinea. 
 
 " I '11 tell you what we '11 do, love," said Mrs. Argent to her 
 husband ; in the world's opinion they were folks of the very first 
 respectability ; they were accustomed to give such charming din- 
 ners, such pleasant tasteful suppers " I '11 tell you what we '11 do, 
 when you get this little lump of money." " What shall we do, my 
 love?" asked the quiet Mr. Argent. "Why, my dear," replied 
 his politic wife, " it 's some time since we had anybody, and so I 
 propose, directly you get this money, that we take the plate out of 
 pawn, and give a party !" Could Harlequin, with a flourish of his 
 wand, change the wooden partitions of the Pawnbroker's boxes into 
 glass, how their tenants might stare at one another ! How the 
 thief, but newly escaped with the stolen watch, might leer at the 
 lady about to deposit her repeater how the fine gentleman start at 
 the costermonger. 
 
 If the Pawnbroker would dignify his calling ; if he would give 
 a triumphant proof of the utility of his services to the Christian 
 world, he has but to call up the shade of the great Isabella, who, 
 when Columbus vainly begged to be permitted to find a new world 
 for Spain, and, when wearied and repulsed, had turned his back 
 upon the Court, nobly avowed her determination to pawn her jewels 
 in the cause. " I undertake the enterprise for my own crown ot 
 Castile," said the queen, " and will pledge my jewels to raise the 
 necessary funds." What lady after this, in a temporary dilemma, 
 should hesitate to trust her diamonds with the Pawnbroker? " The 
 queen," says the historian, " despatched a messenger on horseback 
 with all speed to call back Columbus. He was overtaken ten leagues 
 from Granada, at the bridge of Pinos, a pass of the mountains, famous 
 for bloody encounters between the Christians and Infidels during the 
 Moorish wars. When the courier delivered his message, Columbus 
 hesitated to subject himself again to the delays and equivocations of 
 the court. When he was informed, however, of the ardour expressed 
 by the queen, and the positive promise she had given, he returned 
 immediately to Santa Fe, confiding in the noble probity of that 
 princess." If the Americans had duly reflected on this incident,
 
 160 THK PAWNBROKER. 
 
 they certainly, with the stars and stripes, had quartered the three 
 balls in their national flag. 
 
 The Queen of Navarre was another illustrious patroness of the 
 Pawnbrokers in a glorious cause. She pawned her jewels for the 
 Huguenots. " Two gentlemen," says the author of the recent " Life 
 and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham," " agents of the Prince of 
 Orange, came to this country to negociate this business in London, 
 and confided it to the experienced hand of Sir Thomas Gresham. 
 La Mothe writes, in the month of August, that while Queen Eliza- 
 beth was at Richmond, the Cardinal gave the Lord of the Council 
 a grand entertainment at his house at Sheen ; and, shortly after, 
 carried the jewels to court, where they were shewn to her majesty, 
 who was curious to see them. The goldsmiths who were called in 
 to value them, says La Mothe, considered them worth 60,000. 
 1 am told that the queen declines advancing any money upon them, 
 but the sum required will be sought among the merchants ; and it 
 seems that Sir Thomas Gresham, the greatest merchant in London, 
 and, at the same time, queen's factor, has undertaken to raise 
 30,000." 
 
 With these remarkable anecdotes of Pawnbroking, close we our 
 essay. 
 
 At the first blush, there seems some fear that a writer who 
 treats on this subject must suffer, in the world's opinion, from a 
 conviction of his personal experience in the matter ; but when it is 
 remembered, that pamphlets on " the Corn Laws, " the Currency," 
 &c., are every day published by men with no practical knowledge 
 whatever of the theme on which they treat, it is modestly hoped by 
 the writer of this paper that he shall be numbered amongst those 
 ingenuous individuals.
 
 RUBBERY. 
 
 For hi.ii light labour yields her wholesome store 
 Just gives what life requires, but gives no more-
 
 SEPIO. 
 
 Not worth a halfpenny ; sold for a guinea .
 
 THE ARTISTS. 
 
 BY MICHAEL ANGELO TITMARSH. 
 
 IT is confidently stated that there was once a time when the quarter 
 of Soho was thronged by the fashion of London. Many wide streets 
 are there in the neighbourhood, stretching cheerfully towards Mid- 
 dlesex Hospital in the north, bounded by Dean Street in the west, 
 where the lords and ladies of William's time used to dwell, till in 
 Queen Anne's time, Bloomsbury put Soho out of fashion, and Great 
 Russell Street became the pink of the mode. 
 
 Both these quarters of the town have submitted to the awful rule 
 of nature, and are now to be seen undergoing the dire process of 
 decay. Fashion has deserted Soho, and left her in her gaunt, lonely 
 old age. The houses have a vast, dingy, mouldy, dowager look. No 
 more beaux, in mighty perriwigs, ride by in gilded clattering coaches ; 
 no more lackeys accompany them, bearing torches, and shouting for 
 precedence. A solitary policeman paces these solitary streets, the 
 only dandy in the neighbourhood. You hear the milkman yelling 
 his milk with a startling distinctness, and the clack of a servant- 
 girl's pattens sets people a staring from the windows. 
 
 With Bloomsbury we have here nothing to do ; but as genteel 
 stock-brokers inhabit the neighbourhood of Regent's Park, as law- 
 yers have taken possession of Russell Square, so Artists have seized 
 upon the desolate quarter of Soho. They are to be found in great 
 numbers in Berners Street. Up to the present time, naturalists 
 have never been able to account for this mystery of their residence. 
 What has a painter to do with Middlesex Hospital ? He is to be 
 found in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square. And why ? Philosophy 
 cannot tell, any more than why milk is found in a cocoa-nut. 
 
 Look at Newman Street. Has earth, in any dismal corner of 
 her great round face, a spot more desperately gloomy ? The win- 
 dows are spotted with wafers, holding up ghastly bills, that tell you 
 the house is " To Let." Nobody walks there not even an old 
 clothesman ; the first inhabited house has bars to the windows, and 
 bears the name of " Ahasuerus, officer to the Sheriff of Middlesex ;" 
 71 v
 
 J f>2 THE ARTISTS. 
 
 and here, above all places, must painters take up their quarters, day 
 by day must these reckless people pass Ahasuerus's treble gate. 
 There was my poor friend, Tom Tickner (who did those sweet things 
 for " The Book of Beauty"). Tom, who could not pay his washer- 
 woman, lived opposite the bailiff's ; and eould see every miserable 
 debtor, or greasy Jew writ-bearer that went in or out of his door. 
 The street begins with a bailiff's, and ends with a hospital. I wonder 
 how men live in it, and are decently cheerful, with this gloomy, 
 double-barrelled moral pushed perpetually into their faces. Here, 
 however, they persist in living, no one knows why ; owls may still 
 be found roosting in Netley Abbey, and a few Arabs are to be seen 
 at the present minute in Palmyra. 
 
 The ground-floors of the houses where painters live are mostly 
 make-believe shops, black empty warehouses, containing fabulous 
 goods. There is a sedan-chair opposite a house in Rathbone Place, 
 that I have myself seen every day for forty-three years. The house 
 has commonly a huge India-rubber-coloured door, with a couple of 
 glistening brass plates, and bells. A portrait painter lives on the 
 first floor ; a great historical genius inhabits the second. Remark 
 the first floor's middle drawing-room window ; it is four feet higher 
 than its two companions, and has taken a fancy to peep into the 
 second-floor front. So much for the outward appearance of their 
 habitations, and for the quarters in which they commonly dwell. 
 They seem to love solitude, and their mighty spirits rejoice in vast- 
 ness and gloomy ruin. 
 
 I do n't say a word here about those geniuses who frequent the 
 thoroughfares of the town, and have picture-frames containing a little 
 gallery of miniature peers, beauties, and general officers, in the 
 Quadrant, the passages about St. Martin's Lane, the Strand, and 
 Cheapside. Lord Lyndhurst is to be seen in many of these gratis 
 exhibitions Lord Lyndhurst cribbed from Chalon ; Lady Peel, from 
 Sir Thomas ; Miss Croker, from the same ; the Duke, from ditto ; 
 an original officer in the Spanish Legion ; a colonel or so, of the Bun- 
 hill-Row Fencibles ; a lady on a yellow sofa, with four children in 
 little caps and blue ribands ; we have all of us seen these pretty 
 pictures, and are aware that our own features may be " done in this 
 style." Then there is the man on the chain-pier at Brighton, who 
 pares out your likeness in sticking-plaister ; there is Miss Cripps, or 
 Miss Runt, who gives lessons in Poonah-painting, japanning, or 
 mezzotinting ; Miss Stump, who attends ladies' schools with large 
 chalk heads from Le Brun or the Cartoons ; Rubbery, who instructs 
 joung gentlemen's establishments in pencil ; and Sepio, of the Water
 
 THE ARTISTS. 1>3 
 
 Colour Society, who paints before eignt mi pi 1 8 daily, at a guinea an 
 hour, keeping his own drawings for himself. 
 
 All these persons, as the most indifferent reader must see, 
 equally belong to the tribe of Artists (the last not more than the 
 first), and in an article like this should be mentioned properly. But 
 though this paper has been extended from eight pages to sixteen, 
 not sixteen pages, not a volume would suffice to do justice to the 
 biographies of the persons above-mentioned. Think of the superb 
 Sepio, in a light-blue satin cravat, and a light-brown coat, and yellow 
 kids, tripping daintily from Grosvenor Square to Gloucester Place ; 
 a small sugar-loaf boy following, who carries his morocco portfolio. 
 Sepio scents his handkerchief, curls his hair, and wears, on a great 
 coarse fist, a large emerald ring that one of his pupils gave him. 
 He would not smoke a cigar for the world ; he is always to be found 
 at the Opera ; and, gods ! how he grins, and waggles his head about, 
 as Lady Flummery nods to him from her box. 
 
 He goes to at least six great parties in the season. At the houses 
 where he teaches, he has a faint hope that he is received as an equal, 
 and propitiates scornful footmen by absurd donations of sovereigns. 
 The rogue has plenty of them. He has a stock-broker, and a power 
 of guinea lessons stowed away in the Consols. There are a number 
 of young ladies of genius in the aristocracy, who admire him hugely ; 
 he begs you to contradict the report about him and Lady Smigs- 
 mag ; every now and then he gets a present of game from a 
 marquis ; the city ladies die to have lessons of him ; he prances 
 about the park on a half-bred cock-tail, with lacquered boots and 
 enormous high heels ; and he has a mother and sisters somewhere 
 washerwomen, it is said, in Pimlico. 
 
 How different is his fate to that of poor Rubbery, the school 
 drawing-master ! Highgate, Homerton, Putney, Hackney, Horn- 
 sey, Turnham Green, are his resorts ; he has a select seminary to 
 attend at every one of these places ; and if, from all these nurseries 
 of youth, he obtains a sufficient number of half-crowns to pay his 
 week's bills, what a happy man is he ! 
 
 He lives most likely in a third floor in Howland Street, and has 
 commonly five children, who have all a marvellous talent for draw- 
 ing all save one, perhaps, that is an idiot, which a poor, sick 
 mother is ever carefully tending. Sepio's great aim and battle in 
 life is to be considered one of the aristocracy ; honest Rubbery 
 would fain be thought a gentleman too; but, indeed, he does not 
 know whether he is so or not. Why be a gentleman ? a gentleman 
 Artist does not obtain ^V wages of a tailor ; Rubbery' s butcher
 
 164 THE AETISTS. 
 
 looks down upon him with a royal scorn ; and his wife, poor gentle 
 soul (a clergyman's daughter, who married him in the firm belief 
 that her John would be knighted, and make an immense fortune), 
 his wife, I say, has many fierce looks to suffer from Mrs. Butcher, 
 and many meek excuses or prayers to proffer, when she cannot pay 
 her bill, or when, worst of all, she has humbly to beg for a little 
 scrap of meat upon credit, against John's coming home. He has 
 five-and-twenty miles to walk that day, and must have something 
 nourishing when he comes in he is killing himself, poor fellow, she 
 knows he is : and Miss Crick has promised to pay him his quarter's 
 charge on the very next Saturday. " Gentlefolks, indeed," says 
 Mrs. Butcher, " pretty gentlefolks these, as can't pay for half-a- 
 pound of steak ! " Let us thank heaven that the Artist's wife has 
 her meat, however, there is good in that shrill, fat, mottle-faced 
 Mrs. Brisket, after all. 
 
 Think of the labours of that poor Rubbery. He was up at four 
 in the morning, and toiled till nine upon a huge damp icy litho- 
 graphic stone ; on which he has drawn the " Star of the Wave," or 
 the " Queen of the Tourney," or " She met me at Almacks," for 
 Lady Flummery's last new song. This done, at half-past nine he 
 is to be seen striding across Kensington Gardens, to wait upon the 
 before-named Miss Crick, at Lament House. Transport yourself in 
 imagination to the Misses Kittle's seminary, Potzdam Villa, Upper 
 Homerton, four miles from Shoreditch ; and at half-past two, Pro- 
 fessor Rubbery is to be seen swinging along towards the gate. 
 Somebody is on the look-out for him ; indeed it is his eldest 
 daughter, Marianne, who has been pacing the shrubbery, and 
 peering over the green railings this half-hour past. She is with 
 the Misses Kittle on the " mutual system," a thousand times more 
 despised than the butchers' and the grocers' daughters, who are 
 educated on the same terms, and whose papas are warm men in Aid- 
 gate. Wednesday is the happiest day of Marianne's week : and 
 this the happiest hour of Wednesday. Behold ! Professor Rubbery 
 wipes his hot brows and kisses the poor thing, and they go in to- 
 gether out of the rain, and he tells her that the twins are well out of 
 the measles, thank God ! and that Tom has just done the Antinous, 
 in a way that must make him quite sure of the Academy prize, and 
 that mother is better of her rheumatism now. He has brought her 
 a letter, in large round hand, from Polly ; a famous soldier, drawn by 
 little Frank ; and when, after his two hours' lesson, Rubbery is off 
 again, our dear Marianne cons over the letter and picture a hundred 
 times with soft tearful smiles, and stows them away in an old writing
 
 THE ARTISTS. 105 
 
 desk, amidst a heap more of precious home relics, wretched trum- 
 pery scraps, and baubles, that you and I, madam, would sneer at ; 
 but that in the poor child's eyes (and, I think, in the eyes of One, 
 who knows how to value widows' mites, and humble sinners' offer- 
 ings) are better than bank-notes and Pitt diamonds. Oh, kind 
 heaven, that has given these treasures to the poor ! Many and 
 many an hour does Marianne lie awake with full eyes, and yearn for 
 that wretched old lodging in Rowland Street, where mother and 
 brothers lie sleeping ; and, gods ! what a fete it is, when twice or 
 
 thrice in the year she comes home. 
 
 * * ***** 
 
 I forget how many hundred millions of miles, for how many bil- 
 lions of centuries, how many thousands of decillions of angels, peris, 
 houris, demons, afreets, and the like, Mahomet travelled, lived, and 
 counted, during the time that some water was falling from a bucket 
 to the ground ; but have we not been wandering most egregiously 
 away from Rubbery, during the minute in which his daughter is 
 changing his shoes, and taking off his reeking Macintosh in the hall 
 of Potzdam Villa ? She thinks him the finest Artist that ever cut 
 an H.B., that's positive: and as a drawing-master, his merits are 
 wonderful ; for at the Misses Kitties' annual vacation festival, when 
 the young ladies' drawings are exhibited to their mammas and rela- 
 tives (Rubbery, attending in a clean shirt, with his wife's large 
 brooch stuck in it, and drinking negus along with the very best) ; 
 at the annual festival, I say, it will be found that the sixty-four 
 drawings exhibited, Tintern Abbey, Kenilworth Castle, Horse from 
 Carl Vernet, Head from West, or what not (say sixteen of each sort), 
 are the one exactly as good as the other ; so that, although Miss 
 Slamcoe gets the prize, there is really no reason why Miss Timson, 
 who is only four years old, should not have it ; her design being 
 accurately, stroke for stroke, tree for tree, curl for curl, the same as 
 Miss Slamcoe's, who is eighteen. The fact is, that of these draw- 
 ings, Rubbery, in the course of the year, has done every single 
 stroke, although the girls, and their parents, are ready to take their 
 affidavits (or as I heard once a great female grammarian say, their 
 affies davit) that the drawing-master has never been near the 
 sketches. This is the way with them ; but mark ! when young ladies 
 come home, are settled in life, and mammas of families, can they 
 design so much as a horse, or a dog, or a " moo-cow," for little Jack 
 who bawls out for them ? not they. Rubbery's pupils have no 
 more notion of drawing, any more than Sepio's of painting, when 
 that eminent Artist is away.
 
 jnr$ THE ARTISTS. 
 
 Between these two gentlemen, lie a whole class of teachers of 
 drawing, who resemble them more or less. I am ashamed to say 
 that Rubbery takes his pipe in the parlour of a hotel, of which the 
 largest room is devoted to the convenience of poor people, amateurs 
 of British gin ; whilst Sepio trips down to the club, and has a pint of 
 the smallest claret : but of course the tastes of men vary ; and you 
 find them, simple or presuming, careless or prudent, natural and 
 vulgar, or false and atrociously genteel, in all ranks and stations of 
 life. 
 
 As for the other persons mentioned at the beginning of this dis- 
 course, viz., the cheap portrait-painter, the portrait-cutter in stick- 
 ing-plaister, and Miss Croke, the teacher of mezzotint and Poonah- 
 painting, nothing need be said of them in this place, as \ve have to 
 speak of matters more important. Only about Miss Croke, or 
 about other professors of cheap art, let the reader most sedulously 
 avoid them. Mezzotinto is a take-in, Poonah-painting a rank vil- 
 lanous deception. " So is Grecian art without brush or pencils ;" 
 these are only small mechanical contrivances, over which young 
 ladies are made to lose time. And now having disposed of these 
 small skirmishers who hover round the great body of Artists, we are 
 arrived in presence of the main force, that we must begin to attack 
 in form. In the " partition of the earth," as it has been described 
 by Schiller, the reader will remember that the poet, finding himself 
 at the end of the general scramble without a single morsel of 
 plunder, applied passionately to Jove, who pitied the poor fellow's 
 condition, and complimented him with a seat in the Empyroean. 
 " The strong and the cunning," says Jupiter, " have seized upon 
 the inheritance of the world, whilst thou wert star-gazing and 
 rhyming : not one single acre remains wherewith I can endow thee ; 
 but, in revenge, if thou art disposed to visit me in my own heaven, 
 come when thou wilt ; it is always open to thee." 
 
 The cunning and strong have scrambled and struggled more on 
 our own little native spot of earth, than in any other place on the 
 world's surface ; and the English poet (whether he handles a pen or 
 a pencil) has little other refuge than that windy unsubstantial one, 
 which Jove has vouchsafed to him. Such airy board and lodging is, 
 however, distasteful to many ; who prefer, therefore, to give up 
 their poetical calling, and in a vulgar beef-eating world, to feed upon, 
 and fight for, vulgar beef. 
 
 For such persons (among the class of painters), it may be asserted 
 that portrait-painting was invented. It is the Artist's compromise 
 with heaven ; " the light of common day," in which, after a certain
 
 THE ARTISTS. 107 
 
 quantity of " travel from the East," the genius fades at last. Abbe 
 Barthelemi (who sent Le Jeune Anacharsis travelling through Greece 
 in the time of Plato, travelling throtigh ancient Greece in lace 
 ruffles, red heels, and a pigtail), Abbe Barthelemi, I say, declares 
 that somebody was once standing against a wall in the sun, and that 
 somebody else traced the outline of somebody's shadow ; and so 
 painting was " invented." Angelica Kauffmann has made a neat 
 picture of this neat subject ; and very well worthy she was of 
 handling it. Her painting might grow out of a wall and a piece of 
 charcoal ; and honest Barthelemi might be satisfied that he had here 
 traced the true origin of the art. What a base pedigree have these 
 abominable Greek, French, and High-Dutch heathens invented for 
 that which is divine! a wall, ye gods, to be represented as the 
 father of that which came down radiant from you ! The man who 
 invented such a blasphemy, ought to be impaled upon broken 
 bottles, or phot off pitilessly by spring-guns, nailed to the bricks like 
 a dead owl or a weasel, or tied up a kind of vulgar Prometheus 
 and baited for ever by the house-dog. 
 
 But let not our indignation carry us too far. Lack of genius in 
 some, of bread in others, of patronage in a shop-keeping world, that 
 thinks only of the useful, and is little inclined to study the sublime, 
 has turned thousands of persons calling themselves, and wishing to 
 be, Artists, into so many common face-painters, who must look out 
 for the " kalon," in the fat features of a red-gilled alderman, or, at 
 best, in a pretty simpering white-necked beauty from Almack's. The 
 dangerous charms of these latter, especially, have seduced away 
 many painters ; and we often think that this very physical supe- 
 riority which English ladies possess, this tempting brilliancy of 
 health and complexion, which belongs to them more than to any 
 others, has operated upon our Artists as a serious disadvantage, and 
 kept them from better things. The French call such beauty, " La 
 beaute du Diable :" and a devilish power it has truly ; before our 
 Armidas and Helens, how many Rinaldos and Parises have fallen, 
 who are content to forget their glorious calling, and slumber away 
 their energies in the laps of these soft tempters. Oh, ye British en- 
 chantresses ! I never see a gilded annual-book, without likening it 
 to a small island, near Cape Pelorus, in Sicily, whither, by twang- 
 ling of harps, singing of ravishing melodies, glancing of voluptuous 
 eyes, and the most beautiful fashionable undress in the world, the 
 naughty sirens lured the passing seaman. Steer clear of them, ye 
 Artists ! pull, pull for your lives, ye crews of Suffolk Street and the 
 Water-Colour gallery ! stop your ears, bury your eyes, tie your-
 
 16P THE ARTISTS 
 
 selves to the masts, and away with you from the gaudy, smiling 
 " Books of Beauty." Land, and you are ruined ! Look well among the 
 flowers on yonder beach it is whitened with the bones of painters. 
 
 For my part, I never have a model under seventy, and her with 
 several shawls and a cloak on. By these means, the imagination 
 gets fair phy, and the morals remain unendangered. 
 
 Personalities are odious ; but let the British public look at the 
 pictures of the celebrated Mr. Shalloon the moral British public 
 and say, whether our grand-children (or the grand-children of the 
 exalted personages whom Mr. Shalloon paints) will not have a queer 
 idea of the manners of their grand-mammas, as they are represented 
 in the most beautiful, dexterous, captivating, water-colour drawings 
 that ever were ? Heavenly powers, how they simper and ogle ! with 
 what gimcracks of lace, ribbons, ferronieres, smelling-bottles, and 
 what not, is every one of them overloaded ! What shoulders, what 
 ringlets, what funny little pug-dogs do they, most of them, exhibit 
 to us ! The days of Lancret and Watteau are lived over again, and 
 the court ladies of the time of Queen Victoria look as moral as the 
 immaculate countesses of the days of Louis Quinze. The last Pre- 
 sident of the Royal Academy is answerable for many sins, and many 
 imitators ; especially for that gay, simpering, meretricious look 
 which he managed to give to every lady who sat to him for her 
 portrait ; and I do not know a more curious contrast, than that 
 which may be perceived by any one who will examine a collection of 
 his portraits, by the side of some by Sir Joshua Reynolds. They 
 seem to have painted different races of people ; and when one hears 
 very old gentlemen talking of the superior beauty that existed in 
 their early days (as very old gentlemen, from Nestor downwards, 
 have and will), one is inclined to believe that there is some truth in 
 what they say ; at least, that the men and women under George the 
 Third, were far superior to their descendants in the time of George 
 the Fourth. Whither has it fled that calm matronly grace or beautiful 
 virgin innocence, which belonged to the happy women who sate to 
 Sir Joshua ? Sir Thomas's ladies are ogling out of their gilt frames, 
 and asking us for admiration ; Sir Joshua's sit quiet, in maiden 
 meditation, fancy free, not anxious for applause, but sure to com- 
 mand it ; a thousand times more lovely in their sedate serenity, than 
 Sir Thomas's ladies in their smiles, and their satin ball-dresses. 
 
 But this is not the general notion, and the ladies prefer the 
 manner of the modern Artist. Of course, such being the case, the 
 painters must follow the fashion. One could point out half a dozen 
 Artists who, at Sir Thomas's death, have seized upon a shred of his
 
 THE ARTISTS. 109 
 
 somewhat tawdry mantle. There is Carmine, for instance, a man of 
 no small repute, who will stand as the representative of his class. 
 
 Carmine has had the usual education of a painter in this country ; 
 he can read and write that is, has spent years drawing the figure 
 and has made his foreign tour. It may be that he had original 
 talent once, but he has learned to forget this, as the great bar to his 
 success ; and must imitate, in order to live. He is among Artists, 
 what a dentist is among surgeons a man who is employed to deco- 
 rate the human head, and who is paid enormously for so doing. 
 You know one of Carmine's beauties at any exhibition, and see the 
 process by which they are manufactured. He lengthens the noses, 
 widens the foreheads, opens the eyes, and gives them the proper lan- 
 guishing leer ; diminishes the mouth, and infallibly tips the ends of it 
 with a pretty smile of his favourite colour. He is a personable, 
 white-handed, bald-headed, middle-aged man now, with that grave 
 blandness of look which one sees in so many prosperous empty- 
 headed people. He has a collection of little stories and court gossip 
 about Lady This, and my particular friend Lord So-and-So, which 
 he lets off in succession to every sitter : indeed, a most bland, irre- 
 proachable, gentleman-like man. He gives most patronising advice 
 to young Artists, and makes a point of praising all not certainly 
 too much, but in a gentleman-like, indifferent, simpering way. This 
 should be the maxim with prosperous persons, who have had to 
 make their way, and wish to keep what they have made. They 
 praise everybody, and are called good-natured, benevolent men. 
 Surely no benevolence is so easy ; it simply consists in lying, and 
 smiling, and wishing everybody well. You will get to do so quite 
 naturally at last, and at no expense of truth. At first, when a man 
 has feelings of his own feelings of love or of anger this perpetual 
 grin and good-humour is hard to maintain. I used to imagine, 
 when I first knew Carmine, that there were some particular springs 
 in his wig (that glossy, oily, curl crop of chestnut hair) that pulled 
 up his features into a smile, and kept the muscles so fixed for the 
 day. I do n't think so now, and should say he grinned, even when 
 he was asleep and his teeth were out ; the smile does not lie in the 
 manufacture of the wig, but in the construction of the brain. 
 Claude Carmine has the organ of do n't-care-a-damnativeness won- 
 derfully developed ; not that reckless do n't-care-a-damnativeness 
 which leads a man to disregard all the world, and himself into the 
 bargain. Claude stops before he comes to himself; but beyond that 
 individual member of the Royal Academy, has not a single sympathy 
 
 for a single human creature. The account of his friends' deaths, 
 
 72
 
 170 THE ARTISTS. 
 
 woes, misfortune, or good luck, he receives with equal good-nature ; 
 he gives three splendid dinners per annum, Gunter, Dukes, Fort- 
 num and Mason, everything ; he dines out the other three hundred 
 and sixty-two days in the year, and was never known to give away a 
 shilling, or to advance, for one half-hour, the forty pounds per 
 quarter wages that he gives to Mr. Scumble, who works the back- 
 grounds, limbs, and draperies of his portraits. 
 
 He is not a good painter : how should he be ; whose painting as 
 it were never goes beyond a whisper, and who would make a general 
 simpering as he looked at an advancing cannon-ball ? but he is not 
 a bad painter, being a keen, respectable man of the world, who has 
 a cool head, and knows what is what. In France, where tigerism 
 used to be the fashion among the painters, I make no doubt Carmine 
 would have let his beard and wig grow, and looked the fiercest of 
 the fierce ; but with us, a man must be genteel ; the perfection of 
 style (in writing and in drawing-rooms) being " de ne pas en 
 avoir," Carmine of course is agreeably vapid. His conversation 
 has accordingly the flavour and briskness of a clear, brilliant, stale 
 bottle of soda-water, once in five minutes or so, you see rising up 
 to the surface, a little bubble a little tiny shining point of wit, it 
 rises and explodes feebly, and then dies. With regard to wit, 
 people of fashion (as we are given to understand) are satisfied with a 
 mere soupqon of it. Anything more were indecorous ; a genteel 
 stomach could not bear it : Carmine knows the exact proportions of 
 the dose, and would not venture to administer to his sitters anything 
 beyond the requisite quantity. 
 
 There is a great deal more said here about Carmine the man, 
 than Carmine the Artist ; but what can be written about the latter ? 
 Xew ladies in white satin, new generals in red, new peers in scarlet 
 and ermine, and stout members of parliament, pointing to ink-stands 
 and sheets of letter-paper, with a Turkey-carpet beneath them, a 
 red-curtain above them, a Doric pillar supporting them, and a tre- 
 mendous storm of thunder and lightning lowering and flashing in 
 the back ground, spring up every year, and take their due positions 
 " upon the line" in the academy, and send their compliments of 
 hundreds to swell Carmine's heap of Consols. If he paints Lady 
 Flumme:.-y, for the tenth time, in the character of the tenth muse, 
 what need have we to say anything about it ? The man is a good 
 workman, and will manufacture a decent article at the best price ; 
 but we should no more think of noticing each, than of writing fresh 
 critiques upon every new coat that Nugee or Stultz turned out. 
 The papers say, in reference to his picture, " No. 591. ' Full-length
 
 THE ARTISTS. 171 
 
 portrait of her Grace the Duchess of Doldrum. Carmine, R.A.' 
 Mr. Carmine never foils ; this work, like all others by the same Artist, 
 is excellent :" or, " No. 591, &c. The lovely Duchess of Doldrum 
 has received from Mr. Carmine's pencil ample justice ; the chiaro 
 svuro of the picture is perfect ; the likeness admirable ; the keeping 
 and colouring have the true Titianesque gusto ; if we might hint a 
 fault, it has the left ear of the lap-dog a " little" out of drawing ?" 
 
 Then, perhaps, comes a criticism which says : " The Duchess of 
 Doldrum's picture by Mr. Carmine is neither better nor worse than 
 five hundred other performances of the same artist. It would be very 
 unjust to say that these portraits are bad, for they have really a consi- 
 derable cleverness ; but to say that they were good, would be quite as 
 false : nothing in our eyes was ever further from being so. Every ten 
 years Mr. Carmine exhibits what is called an original picture of three 
 inches square ; but beyond this, nothing original is to be found in him : 
 as a lad, he copied Reynolds, then Opie, then Lawrence ; then having 
 made a sort of style of his own, he has copied himself ever since," ^c. 
 
 And then the critic goes on to consider the various parts of Car- 
 mine's pictures. In speaking of critics, their peculiar relationship 
 with painters ought not to be forgotten ; and as in a former paper we 
 have seen how a fashionable authoress has her critical toadies, in like 
 manner has the painter his enemies and friends in the press ; with 
 this difference, probably, that the writer can bear a fair quantity of 
 abuse without wincing, while the Artist not uncommonly grows mad 
 at such strictures, considers them as personal matters, inspired by 
 private feeling of hostility, and hates the critic for life who has 
 ventured to question his judgment in any way. We have said 
 before, poor academicians, for how many conspiracies are you made to 
 answer ! We may add now, poor critics, what black personal ani- 
 mosities are discovered for you, when you happen (right or wrong, 
 but according to your best ideas) to speak the truth ! Say that 
 Snooks's picture is badly coloured. " Oh, heavens !" shrieks Snooks, 
 " what can I have done to offend this fellow ?" Hint that such a 
 figure is badly drawn arid Snooks instantly declares you to be his 
 personal enemy, actuated only by envy and vile pique. My friend 
 Pebbler, himself a famous Artist, is of opinion that the critic should 
 never abuse the painter's performances, because, says he, the painter 
 knows much better than any one else what his own faults are, and 
 because you never do him any good. Are men of the brush so 
 obstinate? very likely: but the public the public? are we not to 
 do our duty by it too ; and, aided by our superior knowledge and 
 genius for the fine arts, point out to it the way it should go ? Yes,
 
 172 THE ARTISTS. 
 
 surely ; and as by the efforts of dull or interested critics many bad 
 painters have been palmed off upon the nation as geniuses of the 
 first degree ; in like manner, the sagacious and disinterested (like 
 some we could name) have endeavoured to provide this British na- 
 tion with pure principles of taste, or, at least, to prevent them from 
 adopting such as are impure. 
 
 Carmine, to be sure, comes in for very little abuse ; and, indeed, 
 he deserves but little. He is a fashionable painter, and preserves the 
 golden mediocrity which is necessary for the fashion. Let us bid 
 him good-bye. He lives in a house all to himself, most likely, has 
 a footman, sometimes a carriage ; is apt to belong to the Athenseum ; 
 and dies universally respected ; that is, not one single soul cares for 
 him dead, as he, living, did not care for one single soul. 
 
 Then, perhaps, we should mention M'Gilp, or Blather, rising 
 3'oung men, who will fill Carmine's place one of these days, and 
 
 occupy his house in , when the fulness of time shall come, 
 
 ana (he borne to a narrow grave in the Harrow Road by the 
 whole mourning Royal Academy) they shall leave their present 
 first-floor in Newman-street, and step into his very house and shoes. 
 
 There is little difference between the juniors and the seniors ; 
 they grin when they are talking of him together, and express a 
 perfect confidence that they can paint a head against Carmine any 
 day as very likely they can. But until his demise, they are occu- 
 pied with painting people about the Regent's Park and Russell 
 Square ; are very glad to have the chance of a popular clergyman, 
 or a college tutor, or a mayor of Stoke Pogeis after the Reform Bill. 
 Such characters are commonly mezzotinted afterwards ; and the por- 
 trait of our esteemed townsman So-and-So, by that talented artist, 
 Mr. M'Gilp, of London, is favourably noticed by the provincial press, 
 and is to be found over the side-boards of many country gentlemen. 
 If they come up to town, to whom do they go ? To M'Gilp, to be 
 sure ; and thus, slowly, his practice and his prices increase. 
 
 The academy student is a personage that should not be omitted 
 here ; he resembles very much, outwardly, the medical student, and 
 has many of the latter's habits, and pleasures. He very often wears 
 a broad-brimmed hat, and a fine dirty crimson velvet waistcoat, his 
 hair commonly grows long, and he has braiding to his pantaloons. 
 He works leisurely at the academy, he loves theatres, billiards, and 
 novels, and has his house-of-call somewhere in the neighbourhood of 
 Saint Martin's Lane, where he and his brethren meet and sneer at 
 Royal Academicians. If you ask him what line of art he pursues, 
 he answers, with a smile exceedingly supercilious, " Sir, I am an his-
 
 THE ARTISTS. 178 
 
 torical painter;" meaning that he will only condescend to take 
 subjects from Hume, or Robertson, or from the classics which he 
 knows nothing about. This state of an historical painter is only 
 preparatory, lasting perhaps from eighteen to five-and-twenty, when 
 the gentleman's madness begins to disappear, and he comes to look 
 at life sternly in the face, and to learn that man shall not live by his- 
 torical painting alone. Then our friend falls to portrait-painting, or 
 annual-painting, or makes some other such sad compromise with 
 necessity. 
 
 He has probably a small patrimony, which defrays the charge of 
 his studies and cheap pleasures during his period of apprenticeship. 
 He makes the oblige tour to France and Italy, and returns from 
 those countries with a multitude of spoiled canvasses, and a large pair 
 of moustachios, with which he establishes himself in one of the dingy 
 streets of Soho before mentioned. There is poor Pipson, a man of 
 indomitable patience, and undying enthusiasm for his profession. 
 He could paper Exeter Hall with his studies from the life, and with 
 portraits in chalk and oil of French sapeurs and Italian brigands, that 
 kindly descend from their mountain-caverns, and quit their mur- 
 derous occupations, in order to sit to young gentlemen at Rome, at 
 the rate of tenpence an hour. Pipson returns from abroad, esta- 
 blishes himself, has his cards printed, and waits and waits for com- 
 missions for great historical pictures. Meanwhile, night after night, 
 he is to be found at his old place in the Academy, copying the old 
 life-guardsmen working, working away and never advancing one 
 jot. At eighteen, Pipson copied statues and life-guardsmen to ad- 
 miration ; at five-and-thirty, he can make admirable drawings of life- 
 guardsmen and statues. Beyond this he never goes ; year after 
 year his historical picture is returned to him by the envious acade- 
 micians, and he grows old, and his little patrimony is long since 
 spent ; and he earns nothing himself. How does he support hope 
 and life ? that is the wonder. No one knows until he tries (which 
 God forbid he should !) upon what a small matter, hope and life can 
 be supported. Our poor fellow lives on from year to year in a mi- 
 raculous way ; tolerably cheerful in the midst of his semi-starvation, 
 and wonderfully confident about next year, in spite of the failures OA 
 the last twenty-five. Let us thank God for imparting to us poor, 
 weak mortals, the inestimable blessing of vanity. How many half- 
 witted votaries of the arts, poets, painters, actors, musicians, live 
 upon this food, and scarcely any other ! If the delusion were to 
 drop from Pipson's eyes, and he should see himself as he is, if 
 some malevolent genius were to mingle with his feeble brains one
 
 174 THE ARTISTS. 
 
 fatal particle of common sense, he would just walk off Waterloo 
 Bridge, and abjure poverty, incapacity, cold lodgings, unpaid bakers' 
 bills, ragged elbows, and deferred hopes, at once and for ever. 
 
 We do not mean to depreciate the profession of historical paint- 
 ing, but simply to warn youth against it as dangerous and unprofit- 
 able. It is as if a young fellow should say, " I will be a Raphael or 
 a Titian, a Milton or a Shakspere ;" and if he will count up how 
 many people have lived since the world began, and how many there 
 have been of the Raphael or Shakspere sort, he can calculate to a 
 nicety what are the chances in his favour. Even successful histo- 
 rical painters, what are they ? in a worldly point of view, they mostly 
 inhabit the second floor, or have great desolate studios in back pre- 
 mises, whither life-guardsmen, old-clothesmen, blackamoors, and other 
 ' properties,' are conducted to figure at full length, as Roman con- 
 querors, Jewish high priests, or Othellos on canvass. Then there 
 are gay, smart, water-colour painters, a flourishing and pleasant 
 trade. Then there are shabby, fierce-looking geniuses, in ringlets, 
 and all but rags, who paint, and whose pictures are never sold, and 
 who vow they are the objects of some general and scoundrelly con- 
 spiracy. There are landscape painters, who travel to the uttermost 
 ends of the earth, and brave heat and cold, to bring to the greedy 
 British public views of Cairo, Calcutta, St. Petersburg, Timbuctoo. 
 You see English artists under the shadow of the Pyramids, making 
 sketches of the Copts, perched on the backs of dromedaries, accom- 
 panying a caravan across the desert, or getting materials for an 
 annual in Iceland or Siberia. What genius and what energy do 
 not they all exhibit these men, whose profession, in this wise 
 country of ours, is scarcely considered as liberal ! 
 
 If we read the works of the Reverend Dr. Lempriere, Monsieur 
 Winckelmann, Professor Plato, and others who have written concern- 
 ing the musty old Grecians, we shall find that the Artists of those 
 barbarous times meddled with all sorts of trades besides their own, 
 and dabbled in fighting, philosophy, metaphysics, both Scotch and 
 German, politics, music, and the deuce knows what. A rambling 
 sculptor, who used to go about giving lectures in those days, 
 Socrates by name, declared that the wisest of men in his time were 
 Artists. This Plato, before mentioned, went through a regular 
 course of drawing, figure and landscape, black lead, chalk, with or 
 without stump, sepia, water-colour, and oils. Was there ever such 
 absurdity known ? Among these benighted heathens, painters were 
 the most accomplished gentlemen, and the most accomplished gen- 
 tlemen were painters ; the former would make you a speech, or read
 
 THE ARTISTS. 175 
 
 you a dissertation on Kant, or lead you a regiment, with the very 
 best statesman, philosopher, or soldier in Athens. And they had the 
 folly to say, that by thus busying and accomplishing themselves in 
 all manly studies, they were advancing eminently in their own 
 peculiar one. What was the consequence ? Why, that fellow So- 
 crates not only made a miserable fifth-rate sculptor, but was actually 
 hanged for treason. 
 
 And serve him right. Do our young artists study anything beyond 
 the proper way of cutting a pencil, or drawing a model ? Do you 
 hear of them, hard at work over books, and bothering their brains 
 with musty learning ? Not they, forsooth : we understand the doc- 
 trine of division of labour, and each man sticks to his trade. Artists 
 do not meddle with the pursuits of the rest of the world ; and, in 
 revenge, the rest of the world does not meddle with Artists. Fancy 
 an Artist being a senior wrangler, or a politician ; and, on the other 
 hand, fancy a real gentleman turned painter ! No, no ; ranks are 
 defined. A real gentleman may get money by the law, or by wear- 
 ing a red coat and fighting, or a black one and preaching ; but 
 that he should sell himself to Art forbid it, heaven ! And do not 
 let your ladyship on reading this cry, " Stuff! stupid envy, rank 
 republicanism, an Artist is a gentleman." Madam, would you 
 like to see your son, the Honourable Fitzroy Plantagenet, a 
 painter ? You would die sooner ; the escutcheon of the Smig- 
 smags would be blotted for ever, if Plantagenet ever ventured to 
 make a mercantile use of a bladder of paint. 
 
 Time was some hundred years back when writers lived in 
 Grub Street, and poor ragged Johnson shrunk behind a screen '.n 
 Cave's parlour, that the author's trade was considered a very mean 
 one ; which a gentleman of family could not take up but as an 
 amateur. This absurdity is pretty nearly worn out now, and I do 
 humbly hope and pray for the day, when the other shall likewise 
 disappear. If there be any nobleman with a talent that way, why 
 why don't we see him among the R.A.'s. ? 
 
 501. The Schoolmaster. Sketch) Brum, Henry, Lord, R.A. F.R.S. S.A. of the 
 
 taken abroad ....) National Institute of France. 
 
 502. Vicwof the Artist's residence) , T , . , , TT 
 
 ^ ,. , > Maconkey, Right Honourable T. B. 
 
 at Windsor ) 
 
 503. Murder of the Babes in the) Rustle, Lord J. 
 
 Tower / Pill, Right Honourable Sir Robert 
 
 504. A little agitation .... O'CarrolI, Daniel, M.R.I.A. 
 
 Fancy. T say, such names as these figuring in the catalogue of 
 the Academy : and why should they not ? The real glorious days of
 
 176 THE ARTISTS. 
 
 the art (which wants equality and not patronage) will revive then. 
 Patronage a plague on the word ! it implies inferiority ; and in 
 the name of all that is sensible, why is a respectable country gen- 
 tleman, or a city attorney's lady, or any person of any rank, however 
 exalted, to " patronise" an Artist ? 
 
 There are some who sigh for the past times, when magnificent, 
 swaggering Peter Paul Rubens (who himself patronised a queen) 
 rode abroad with a score of gentlemen in his train, and a purse- 
 bearer to scatter ducats ; and who love to think how he was made 
 an English knight and a Spanish grandee, and went of embassies as 
 if he had been a born marquis. Sweet it is to remember, too, that 
 Sir Antony Vandyck, K.B., actually married out of the peerage ; 
 and that when Titian dropped his mahlstick, the Emperor Charles 
 V. picked it up (oh, gods ! what heroic self-devotion), picked it 
 up, saying " I can make fifty dukes, but not one Titian." Nay, 
 was not the Pope of Rome going to make RafFaelle a Cardinal, and 
 were not these golden days ? 
 
 Let us say at once, " No." The very fuss made about certain 
 painters in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, shews that the 
 body of Artists had no rank or position in the world. They hung 
 upon single patrons ; and every man who holds his place by such a 
 tenure, must feel himself an inferior, more or less. The times are 
 changing now, and as authors are no longer compelled to send their 
 works abroad under the guardianship of a great man and a slavish 
 dedication ; painters, too, are beginning to deal directly with the 
 public. Who are the great picture buyers now ? the engravers 
 and their employers, the people, " the only source of legitimate 
 power," as they say after dinner. A fig then for Cardinal's hats ! 
 were Mr. O'Connell in power to-morrow, let us hope he would not 
 give one, not even a paltry bishopric in partibus to the best painter 
 in the Academy. What need have they of honours out of the pro- 
 fession ? Why are they to be be-knighted like a parcel of aldermen ? 
 for my part, I solemnly declare, that I will take nothing under a 
 peerage, after the exhibition of my great picture, and don't see, if 
 painters must have titles conferred upon them for eminent services, 
 why the Marquis of Mulready or the Earl of Landseer should rot 
 sit in the house as well as any law or soldier lord. 
 
 The truth to be elicited fro^n this little digressive dissertation, is 
 this painful one, that young Artists are not generally as well in- 
 structed as they should be ; and let the Royal Academy look to it, 
 and give some sound courses of lectures to their pupils on literature 
 and history, as well as on anatomy, or light and shade.
 
 THE SOLICITOR. 
 
 - I grant your worship that he is a knave, sir; but yet God forbid, sir, 
 but, a knave shouH have some countenance. 
 
 SH AKSPKRE.
 
 THE SOLICITOR. 
 
 BY LEMAN REDE. 
 
 ELIA, in one of his delightful essays, has said, " Lawyers were 
 children once, I suppose ;" and, no doubt, in the mere literal sense, 
 they really were ; but your genuine, unadulterated Lawyer, even in 
 his lacteal days, only simulated infancy : he was young, but knew 
 not youth. It were no violent freak of fancy to paint Charles 
 Phillips a rollicking, roaring boy. One might imagine Lyndhurst 
 knuckling down at marbles ; but your Attorney, your issuer of writs, 
 and drawer of cognovits, your mortgage maker ! He never was a 
 boy. Poets, it is said, are born, not made. May it not be that 
 Lawyers are made, not born ? Is there no litigatory spirit that 
 takes a strange delight in concocting these animals, and popping 
 them down in Fig-Tree Court or Harcourt Buildings, fresh from the 
 mint of mischief, " seeking whom they may devour ?" I put it to 
 any lady in the land, from Mrs. Edwards, who lately had four chil- 
 dren at a birth, to Her Gracious Majesty, whether she would suckle 
 a Lawyer ? In the name of the whole sex, I answer, " No." 
 There have probably been women that would ; Mrs. Brownrigg, 
 who had a fine taste for cruelty, might have done it ; Mary Bate- 
 man, perhaps; but England, in 1840, contains no such women. I 
 see, from my window, a chubby cherub nestling in the arms of a 
 beauteous mother. The young spirit, fresh from the presence of 
 his Maker, breathes of heaven purity is hearted in him. Will any 
 one tell me that that is only a sucking Lawyer ? The thought is 
 monstrous. In our early days, it is deemed prudent, by mothers 
 and nurses, to maintain as a mystery the means by which little 
 humanities come upon earth. I had two little sisters whom the 
 doctor brought ; surely Lawyers are creatures whom some one 
 else brings. 
 
 There is something in legal phraseology almost demoniacal. Is 
 
 it not too much for a man to talk of " serving" you with a copy of 
 
 a writ? " Your obedient Servant" is as ridiculous at the end 
 
 of a letter for payment of debt, as at the conclusion of a challenge. 
 
 73 I
 
 178 THE SOLICITOR. 
 
 How impressive is the word " Bond ! " There is such a thing (for 
 I once saw a bill of costs) as a " rule to bring in the body." 
 What a phrase ! Could any one ever understand a copy of a writ ? 
 I doubt it. 
 
 1 hear that great changes have taken place in common-law prac- 
 tice ; but I don't believe it. I see sharks at the Seal, and muster- 
 ings at the Master's office, as usual : the only change I am conscious 
 of, is the removal (thanks to the Chancellor of the Exchequer) oi 
 the stamp (a blood-red one) from the corner of a capias, thereby 
 rendering the aftn-esaid luxury five shillings cheaper. 
 
 Solicitors are of various grades. There be those who scorn to 
 issue a writ : some good angel at their concoction leavened that 
 virtue into them : their names should be printed in gold in that 
 agreeable work, " The Law List." I have known one but one 
 of these legal leviathans ; he lived in a region of Japan not the 
 empire thereof (extending from longitude 131 to 142 E., for which 
 see the " Gazetteer," as I have), but a region of Japan boxes reach- 
 ing from the front parlour abutting upon Lincoln's Inn Old Square 
 to the back closet situated in Serle Street. The uninitiated reader 
 sees no great grandeur in dwelling amid tin boxes ; but read the 
 
 names that adorn them : " The Duke of ," " Marquis of :" 
 
 mercy on me, all the magnates of the land have their title-deeds 
 boxed up in that dingy retreat ! The transformation from the grub 
 to the butterfly is less complete, and far less rapid, than the change 
 that takes place in Mr. Fleece, of Lincoln's Inn Old Square, and the 
 said Mr. Fleece at his private mansion. There the gay saloon, the 
 crushing party, the voice of music, all breathe of riches and enjoy- 
 ment the Lawyer melts into the man ! How blandly he smiles as 
 he converses with Miss Tittup, heiress of an estate mortgaged 
 beyond redemption ; yet, two hours ago he received a letter from 
 Hammary and Coke, announcing their intention to foreclose and 
 beggar her : how winningly he addresses that leading coimsel, who 
 is really a man of ton : how patronisingly that young shoot of the 
 prunella genus. Massive plate a gorgeous banquet, this is the 
 hall of the happy. Turn to the dark and dusty looking chambers 
 the mine from whence this wealth has sprung ; the depository of the 
 secrets of those the world was made for ; there are " conveyances" 
 of that which cannot be " conveyed" the land of our fathers. Con- 
 vey (according to those silly creatures lexicographers) cometh from 
 convoyer, of eon and veho (to carry or send into another place), but 
 Mr. Fleece knows better ; for, saith he, " It cometh of Lease and 
 Release !"
 
 THE SOLICITOR. i?9 
 
 In what year Clements and New Inns were married we never 
 heard, but, like other couples, they are now separated, an iron 
 gate divides them ; a black gentleman has been kneeling a long 
 time in the garden of the former, imploring, we presume, that 
 emancipation which government has provided his more fortunate 
 brethren : the latter is unadorned save by a lodge, a pump, and a 
 watchman. In these inns dwell another class of worthies ; here 
 are agency offices ("infernal agency" offices, as a dramatic write* 
 most improperly remarked). Other Solicitors confine their annoy- 
 ances to London ; but these, to use their own phrase, " throw 
 themselves upon the country." There is something hideous in 
 the idea of a fellow dwelling behind Clare Market calmly filling 
 up a capias ad satisfaciendum directing the Sheriff of Cumberland 
 to take the elegant person of Sir Frederick Fip, who is frisking 
 at the Lakes. What has John Hunston, of Harrowgate, done to 
 that smoky-faced, runty, lawyer's clerk ? Nothing ; yet see how 
 fast the fellow fills up that judgment paper. 
 
 An agency Solicitor differs from any other. It is recorded of 
 old Impey, that on a client desiring him to arrest a man the very 
 day that the poor fellow had paid half the debt, he glorious old 
 practice-writer as he was kicked the rascal into the street : now, 
 an agent has no chance of performing such a feat ; he knows 
 nothing, can know nothing of the merits of the case, he may be 
 aiding in the vilest and most atrocious oppression ; he may be 
 famishing a family by sealing a fi. fa. : the fi. fa. is sealed, and 
 he recks not. It will be answered that it is a necessity of his trade. 
 True ; and a stern necessity it is. 
 
 Another class (distinct as a different genus) is your Insolvent 
 Debtor's Attorney. In the "good old days" of Runnington, So- 
 licitors scorned this court, and unimaginable and incomprehen- 
 sible kind of vagabonds 'yclept agents, obtained for gentlemen 
 " the benefit." They (the agents, not the gentlemen) are swept 
 from the face of Portugal Street, or flourish only as clerks, &c. 
 
 Pleasant days and long, hath the practitioner in the court for 
 gentlemen disinclined to pay ; Caleb Quotem's work was nothing 
 to it. Morning, rise at eight, breakfast (which they call entering 
 on the roll) ; and then away to the sweet localities of the Bench, 
 the Fleet, Whitecross, Horsemonger, or the Marshalsea. First, 
 there is the propitiation of the turnkey ; this is generally effected 
 through the medium of a hot and intoxicating fluid, which, as 
 Brummel said of Port wine, is very much drank by the lower orders. 
 Your gentleman one, &c., of the I. D. C., learns through the
 
 180 THE SOLICITOR. 
 
 keeper of the keys, who has been " brought in," and for how much 
 the latter is an important part : Lord Thick for 2,800 ; John 
 Small, for 11 13s. Does not the soul (if an Attorney has a soul) 
 expand with a generous fervour to aid Lord Thick, there must 
 be some picking from a purse that has netted nearly three thou- 
 sand pounds; but pitiful John Small, a poor, petty-larceny rascal, a 
 low latrocinist, he can never come to the court with credit. 
 
 Your I. D. C. Attorney lives in gaol, professing to get others out 
 of it : roguish debtors are his daily food honest and unfortunate 
 ones his bane. The man that has done many, will do for him ; a 
 fine accommodation bill customer, with innumerable notices to serve ; 
 a many-residenced roue, who has experimented from Stultz to 
 Swaine from Rundells to Ridley ; these are your I. D. C.'s legi- 
 timate prey : for them was he made ; " born for their use, he liveth 
 but to fleece them." It is the only lex talionis these gentlemen are 
 ever practically acquainted with. It is not to be concealed, that 
 your respectable Solicitor scorneth, or affecteth to scorn, * " the 
 Court :" but gold cometh therefrom ; and there is an excellent 
 ancient axiom, anent aurum e stercore. Your I. D. C. Attorney 
 believeth in Cooke and Woodroffe, and thinks the highest legal 
 functionary, Commissioner Harris : he has a great opinion of the 
 literary talent of Mr. Hatt (the eternally attending reporter) ; and 
 thinks the daily papers might do better than report the cases in 
 which his clients get remanded. 
 
 The genus pettifogger, alias sharp-practitioner, has fallen some- 
 what into decay: the days are gone, when twenty might be sued 
 upon a single bill of exchange, and any one of the unfortunates made 
 to pay the costs of all. Cockainge, and Parry Popkin, have left no 
 legitimate descendants. The present race have taken to assault and 
 libel cases ; and conduct these on the precarious " no cure, no pay" 
 system. The " brutal and pernicious" principle of trial by jury, has 
 done much to clip the wings of these vampire bats : a parcel of 
 ignorant tradesmen have lately been dabbling in numismatics, and 
 discovered that there is a coin denominated a farthing. Judges 
 have hit upon a system of " certifying," thereby depriving the far- 
 thing-gaining plaintiff (literally the Solicitor) of his costs : petti- 
 foggation is, therefore, on the decline. Everything hath an end ; 
 and, as it has been sagaciously, though ungrammatically, remarked, 
 that thing called a pudding, hath two. Libel pudding is less eaten 
 
 * H , whose business is chiefly conveyancing, twitted little L on the 
 
 nature of his practice. "Come, come," said L , "I have the best of it; 
 
 you're a leaser, but I 'm a rel easier.".
 
 THE SOLICITOR, 181 
 
 than of yore ; and ex-offioio pie appears to have gone clean out of 
 fashion. Shade of Sir Vicary Gibbs, we have fallen upon gloomy 
 days ! 
 
 Your criminal Lawyer has nothing to do with any of the classes 
 we have described : he hunts not debtors, though his clients occa- 
 sionally appear opposite the debtor's door. He has two metaphysical 
 creeds : first, when engaged for the prosecution, that there is no in- 
 nocence upon earth ; second, when engaged for the prosecuted, that 
 there is no guilt. He keeps the best company family men, if not 
 men of family. With the swell mob he is intimately acquainted ; a 
 burglary delights, and a murder positively enchants him. What a 
 client Thurtell must have made! to say nothing of the ecldt at- 
 tendant upon defending that fascinating gentleman. 
 
 It is understood to be the leading principle of a certain school of 
 philosophy, that we cannot control, and, therefore, should not be 
 responsible for our offences. Your criminal Lawyer follows out this 
 benevolent theory ; he could (after receiving a retainer) sympathise 
 with Burke and Hare, and feel deeply interested for Bishop and 
 Williams. " Why," he emphatically asks, " will Italian boys wander 
 about Smithfield at night, tempting gentlemen who aid anatomy?" 
 
 In the deep cells of Newgate, of York and Lancaster Castles, 
 what fearful revelations have been made : the murderer, in the dim 
 light, pouring his secret into the ear of his Attorney ! " I must 
 know the facts to enable me to mislead the prosecutor," is the 
 recorded speech of a celebrated thief-saver. 
 
 A fine glow of benevolent satisfaction blushed upon the brow of 
 
 the yet more celebrated Mr. H , when Mr. Sheen was acquitted 
 
 he had only cut his child's head oif; the parish attorney de- 
 scribed the boy as John, instead of Thomas at least, some error 
 as important had occurred: the judge directed an acquittal; here 
 was a true legal triumph ; the frightful evidence of butchery was 
 complete, the identity of the pallid corse ascertained, but, said 
 " the perfection of reason," you must not call the boy by a wrong 
 name ; a clerical error is fatal, a murder may be surmounted. 
 
 Your money-lending Solicitor has sat for his likeness to a 
 very eminent artist. Mr. Ralph Nickleby is drawn and coloured 
 after nature ; but there are great varieties amid this genus, from 
 the Howard and Gibbs of twenty years since, down to the Thavies' 
 Inn practitioner, who " does" little bills, or " gets them" done. 
 
 A sporting Lawyer seems an anomaly ; yet such an animal 
 exists. Horse-racing Solicitors and coursing Attorneys are nu- 
 merous ; they are resorted to when grooms will insist on physick-
 
 18 THE SOLICITOR. 
 
 ing horses after their own fajiiion, or gentlemen cannot clearly 
 recollect pedigrees. 
 
 Your theatrical Attorney is himself alone. Most of them are 
 dashing fellows, a cross between loiterer and Lawyer ; they dis- 
 play a vast deal of would-be-if-I-could-ishness : snowy white is 
 the waistcoat, glossy black the satin opera-tie a carbuncle or an 
 emerald reposes upon it ; the gloves are of yellow kid, and the 
 wearers have a vast deal of linen on hand ; the hat is peculiar a la 
 D'Orsay or Petersham ; the boots are either of patent leather or, 
 unlike their owner, highly polished ; a cane dangles from the digits, 
 and a gold eye-glass sticks between the nose and cheek. Some of 
 these gentry delight in private boxes and agreeable flirtations ; 
 what their real duties are, Heaven and the managers only know ; 
 but a lessee without a lawyer never yet was seen. In the palmy 
 days (I have caught that phrase from the newspapers, but don't 
 pretend to know what it means), Sheridan employed a solicitor 
 named Burgess. It is no news to say that he had something to 
 do. In one of his encounters with a gentleman of the same pro- 
 fession, he was thus addressed : " You, Mr. Burgess, are, I pre- 
 sume, concerned for Mr. Sheridan ?" " I am Mr. Sheridan's 
 solicitor, sir," was the reply, " but I am concerned for no man." 
 
 A candid lawyer is a rarity. "Would that the host of theatrical 
 solicitors followed the example of Mr. B ; for we truly believe 
 they are concerned for no man least of all for the luckless lessee 
 that retains them. 
 
 Two years since there were some half-dozen Lawyers employed 
 about old Drury. Mercy on us ! six Attorneys lurking and wander- 
 ing up and down that bailiwick ! A man might as well hope to 
 thrive with as many physicians, as a theatre with that number of 
 professional advisers. 
 
 Your theatrical gentleman one, &c. patronises the actors. 
 Sometimes he gives dinners, and invites the stars ; sometimes he 
 promises to speak to the lessee, in behalf of some less radiant 
 person. He is an animal eminently chat-ivorous. If he has any 
 business, no one knows how it is done ; for he is ever loitering at 
 the side-wing, or haunting the purlieus of the theatre ; occasionally, 
 he does get something to do, for he is wont to walk to Basinghall 
 Street or the Queen's Bench on his own account, and his name 
 duly appears in a celebrated paper published twice a week. 
 
 There is a hankering after all things theatrical in this class. 
 One gentleman will actually lend his money to a lesseea stretch of 
 benevolence perfectly marvellous ; another amuses his leisure by
 
 THE SOLICITOR 183 
 
 taking half the profession through the Insolvent Debtor's Court. 
 Portugal Street has nearly as many actors in it now, as it boasted of 
 when Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre flourished. 
 
 Having thus hastily glanced at some varieties of the tribe, it 
 will be right, after the manner of other naturalists, to sum up the 
 common characteristics. Exceptions to rules are said to prove 
 them ; I deal but in generalities. 
 
 A solicitor is seldom very fat. We once saw one who might have 
 filled Size Lane ; but he has gone the way of all flesh. Mathews 
 immortalised him in a monopologue under the title of Hezekral 
 Hulk. A solicitor is seldom very tall (there, I know, Carus 
 Wilson is half out of your mouth) ; a solicitor has a keen enquiring 
 look uneasy, not to say suspicious ; he is often clever, never great ; 
 generally acute, never profound ; he deals in details, and never cares 
 for or comprehends principles ; he sees a point of law only as it 
 affects the case before him ; he asks many questions, and answers 
 few. He is, in nine cases out of ten, a Tory. He cares little for 
 literature ; but, if rich, affects pictures, which he regards as good 
 investments of capital. He is well read in the classics, but seldom 
 really a scholar. Though he claims to himself the name of Lawyer, 
 there are not many amid the class who deserve that title. When 
 he doubts (and when does he not doubt?) he sends the case to 
 counsel. He buys Term Reports, but doesn't read them, and his 
 shelves are loaded with learned legal volumes, doomed never to be 
 opened. From being continually consulted and appealed to, he 
 attains a certain look of self-satisfaction, a perfect reliance on his 
 own acumen. He laughs little, but has a stock smile, that suits 
 many, if not all occasions. He loves beves and beverages, and is 
 not disinclined to unbend at a public dinner. He laughs outright 
 when Charles Taylor sings " L-A-W, Law," and thinks that gen- 
 tleman the greatest humourist and vocalist of the day. He some- 
 times speaks at public meetings, but never very successfully ; he 
 sometimes subscribes to public charities, but never very largely. 
 When he visits the theatre, it is to see a comedy. He gives 
 bachelor parties, though a married man ; for his wife has her own 
 set. 1 will not say that the duties of his calling harden his heart, 
 but assuredly they have a tendency to deaden it. Much of his 
 time is necessarily spent in making people uncomfortable ; some 
 of it is happily devoted to righting the wronged, and resisting the 
 oppressor. I would not willingly have my son a Lawyer ; though I 
 have known many intelligent, honourable, and generous men in that 
 profession ; and, in fact, extraordinary as it may appear, once found 
 a friend in a SOLICITOR.
 
 THE DOWAGER. 
 
 BY A BACHELOR OF ARTS. 
 
 THE female character is a riddle in its infancy ; becomes more diffi- 
 cult of appreciation at every stage of its career ; and is, of course, 
 utterly incomprehensible towards its close. Take a dozen pld 
 women in the remotest parish of England, who have, to all outward 
 appearance, led the same life, had the same difficulties to contend 
 with, and been, as nearly as possible, subject to the operation of the 
 same influences ; and do you think, friend reader, you could draw 
 the picture of an abstract old woman, which would resemble any one 
 of them ? Yet, if parochial accident can produce such diversity of 
 character among village crones, what, think you, must the far more 
 varied influences of fashionable life among those who arrive at the 
 dignity of Dowager ? Bear in mind that they have gone through 
 the processes of fashionable education, fashionable flirtation, and, 
 above all, fashionable matrimony, and then tell us whether you have 
 a precise idea of essential Dowagerism ! 
 
 What can be more forlorn and wretched than the Dowager ? 
 She has lost the dear old partner who shared with her the sorrows 
 and pleasures of thirty long years. The world of flatterers that once 
 hung upon their footsteps are gone, for they expect no more from 
 the dead, nor from the shadow which he has left behind, and called 
 his Dowager. The splendid mansion, the magnificent retinue, the 
 pomp and circumstance of life, which used to be hers, have passed 
 to other hands. The professed cook and housekeeper, and their 
 respective suites, have been absorbed in an Abigail or a kitchen- 
 maid ; the thirty thousand a year is reduced to one ; and she is 
 alone, all alone. It matters not whether her lord's successor is 
 her own son, or only his brother. The eldest sons of folks of 
 quality, who have been kept in twenty years expectation of their 
 father's death, have a great deal too much to do, when they come 
 into their property, to be able to trouble themselves about their 
 mothers. Nor is that new tie which lawyers have created between 
 them, and called a jointure, particularly calulated to promote affec-
 
 TriE DOWAGER. 
 
 ''Fuitnus." ;
 
 THE DOWAGER. 185 
 
 tionate feelings. The Dowager's attorney is always in corres- 
 pondence with the son's man of business ; and while she is for ever 
 grumbling at the ingratitude of the stingy heir, he is constantly 
 cursing Hygeia, that permits an old woman to live so long ; 
 
 " To linger his desires, 
 
 And winter on a young man's revenue." 
 
 Again, what more glorious independence than that of the Dow- 
 ager ? Her old lord is gone to where he can no longer bore or thwart 
 her. While he was alive, she had to squabble for every farthing she 
 ever got, and then was obliged to spend it as he chose ; whereas, 
 now she has 4000/. a-year for life, unencumbered with any burthens, 
 and liable to no difficulty of collection. She has to provide for no 
 children ; has transferred to her husband's successor all local claims 
 on the family bounty ; and, in short, has nothing to do but to spend her 
 ample income exactly where, and how, and when she pleases. What, 
 then, is essential Dowagerism ? Beyond having once been married ; 
 being, almost invariably, of a certain age ; being addicted to cards ; 
 and, in their own necessary exemption from the weighty concerns of 
 life, being given to interfere in those of their neighbours, it is diffi- 
 cult to enumerate any other peculiarities which all Dowagers possess 
 in common. Yes ! there is one more, which emphatically belongs 
 to them the feeling which is expressed by the word which we have 
 selected for our motto the feeling offuimus the sense that they were 
 once something else. The Dowager is always living two lives at once ; 
 the present being very different from the past, and generally the least 
 agreeable of the two. Let her but survive her husband, and she 
 knows that she must of necessity descend one, or, perhaps, many 
 steps in the scale of worldly comfort. Time brings infirmity and 
 suffering to man as well as woman ; but the lord of creation has to 
 look forward to no necessary lowering of his social position. " My 
 wealth and power will obtain me respect and pleasure to my latest 
 day," is his never-failing consolation. But, alas ! it is a part of 
 my lady's fate to slip down one fine day from wealth to competence, 
 from fashion to obscurity, from power to insignificance. The 
 feeling of fuimus may, by accident, take possession of an old man ; 
 but it is unavoidably ever present to Dowagers. Let us see how 
 they bear up under it ; and, first, let us take a peep at the poli- 
 tical Dowager. This phenomenon is the relict of a statesman who 
 held high office ; and during his life-time she was a political wife. 
 There are many motives to induce a woman so situated to turn poli- 
 tician. The high living to which she is accustomed, cannot fail, if 
 74 Y
 
 18G 
 
 THE DOWAGER. 
 
 she is of an ordinarily warm temperament, to stimulate her to some 
 extravagance. To be sure, that extravagance may take the form of 
 fashionable gallantry, and she may find more amusement in the sur- 
 render' of private, than in the maintenance of public virtue. Or she 
 may plunge into furious sanctity ; spend all her own money, and a 
 great deal more, in subscriptions to fashionable charities, and end 
 by running off with a popular preacher. Or, indeed, she may 
 take to writing novels, or lines, or stories for her o\vn portrait in 
 Lady Blessington's " Book of Beauty." But the odds are, now-a- 
 days, that she will take to politics. A strong interest in the success 
 of her husband is a conceivable motive to begin with. But if this 
 homely feeling is supposed not to flourish well in such exalted 
 regions, there are a variety of other motives to conduce towards 
 the same result. The pleasure of having solicitors for patronage, and 
 the power of rewarding them, after their due period of homage and 
 suspense, are temptations as difficult to be resisted by a woman as 
 by a man ; and you may rely upon it, that the favour of the 
 minister's wife is so well known to be one of the most approved 
 paths to the good graces of the minister, that she will have no lack 
 of adventurers who will try it. Then, again, there are the delights 
 of being perpetually in the society of the most distinguished leaders 
 of her party ; and of being admitted, before the rest of the world, to 
 a knowledge of state secrets. 
 
 The political wife has one amazing advantage in her profession. 
 She may coin any quantity of facts with impunity ; for the greater 
 part of them will always be believed till they are forgotten, and 
 those which are discovered to be spurious can never be resented. 
 Then there is no hate so thoroughly genuine as hers, no tongue so 
 free to express it. We doubt not, reader, that, in common with 
 others, you labour under the curious delusion that the female breast 
 is the depository of all that is kind in human nature. Let politics 
 find their way there, and you will soon perceive your mistake. Just 
 
 hear Lady talk of the leader of the opposition, and of his 
 
 wife. Just look at her proceedings in the matter of Johnson, the 
 grocer, who voted against her nominee in a government borough. 
 Just pry into her thoughts, and watch her movements any day that 
 Parliament may happen to be in session, and then take to a new 
 theory of the female heart ! Such is the political wife. A dinner at 
 the palace kills her husband, and she becomes the political Dowager. 
 As for changing her pursuits, that is impossible. Politics are all 
 in all to her ; and neither time, nor affliction, nor reduced circum- 
 Btances, can soften their rancour. On the contrary, they give a
 
 THE DOWAGER. 187 
 
 fresh impulse to it. But she has no longer any fine house, or fine 
 parties, or flatterers. Her husband's colleagues are polite in their 
 enquiries, as she is obliged to admit, on a large black-edged card ; but 
 they vote her a bore, and never go near her. She no longer learns 
 cabinet secrets, and has no longer any power or patronage. Still 
 she is not aware of the full extent of her fall, and she will try 
 to persuade every one who will be fool enough to listen to her, that 
 she can do anything for them as easily as ever. She takes five 
 
 years to convince poor old Mrs. and herself that she cannot 
 
 recover an alleged debt of Ram-harem-zadeh, to that lady's grand- 
 father ; and the curtain which hides ministerial doings being still 
 before her, she cannot understand that she has got to the wrong 
 side of it. Of course, in her best days, she never really compre- 
 hended the full bearings of any one great question ; but she used 
 to pick up certain phrases which fell from sacred lips, and she knew, 
 at all events, what was going to be done. Now, on the contrary, 
 she can get no one to talk in confidence to her, and she knows 
 things only when they are done, and when all the world is talking 
 about them. Yet she maintains just the same oracular tone as ever, 
 and practises with more than her former unscrupulousness her 
 wholesale forgeries of facts. On the eve of any great division, she 
 calls three or four times a day at the party club, and bores all her 
 old acquaintance to tell her exactly what the numbers will be what 
 fresh defections there have been on either side, and who are still 
 considered doubtful. Then she will undertake to secure this or that 
 of them, or really flatters herself that she can effect conversions, 
 through the medium of tea-parties and conversaziones, with as great 
 ease as she did formerly with the help of balls and splendid ban- 
 quets. By degrees, she discovers that people are slack in attend- 
 ing to her when she talks politics ; so she takes to writing them. 
 Accordingly, not a day passes but she despatches some long rigmarole 
 to some great officer of state ; and, by an answer next morning, she 
 
 is informed that a certain private secretary is directed by Lord 
 
 to acknowledge the receipt of her ladyship's letter of such and such 
 a date ; relating, as the case may be, to the affairs of British North 
 America ; or to the petition of the state prisoners then on their way 
 to Botany Bay ; or to a project for an extensive scheme of national 
 education ; and to assure her ladyship that it shall meet with his 
 lordship's most serious consideration. However, she is not to be 
 put off in this fashion, and she writes again and again to request, 
 Urge, and insist upon an answer. The secretaries soon not having 
 ume even to acknowledge the receipt of her letters, she invades the
 
 183 
 
 THE DOWAGER. 
 
 obscurity of temporary commissions and voluntary associations, and 
 contrives for a while to embroil herself with them. But on every 
 side she is disappointed, and the great officers of state and their 
 secretaries, and temporary commissioners, and voluntary associates, 
 become the objects of her unrelenting hatred. All this time she has 
 been in the habit of giving weekly evening parties at her little house 
 in Old Burlington Street, which " The Morning Post," by her direc- 
 tion, calls " Conversaziones." To these her former distinguished ac- 
 quaintance occasionally pop in, in their way to pleasanter assemblies ; 
 but the people who come early and stay late, are emphatically second- 
 rates. Second-rate professional singers, and second-rate amateurs, 
 sing political songs of the previous century. Second-rate lions, 
 whom people have ceased to patronise elsewhere, are here per- 
 mitted to growl out their old age ; and ladies of a certain time of 
 life, who cannot attract admiration in other places, have here some 
 chance of getting a rise out of the blighted affections of some simi- 
 larly situated victim of the other sex. But you cannot move without 
 jostling divers second-rate authors or authoresses, and you will be 
 sure to interrupt them in a very loud, long, and ill-natured story. 
 
 To make the whole thing complete, Lady is wheeled in an 
 
 arm-chair, over hundreds of second-rate toes, round and round the 
 room, till there is not a soul that she has not bored with some 
 tiresome tirade about politics. 
 
 And has she not bored you too, friend reader ? us she has, in 
 all conscience. But how can we get rid of her ? Dowagers are 
 like cats in all things, but in none so much as in having nine lives. 
 Come, then, to our aid, thou that alone canst take them ; nerve- 
 shattering, spirit-breaking, Influenza ! Arise from thy dry desert- 
 lair. The east wind is whistling for thee at the cold street corners ; 
 the old of the pension list are trembling, the faculty exulting at 
 thy approach. Dainty deity ! that feedest only on aristocratic blood, 
 and lovest that, too, to be dry and long kept. Beneficent epicure ! 
 that sparest the bloom, and revellest on wrinkles ! Thy predecessors, 
 in by-gone days, demanded the sacrifice of lovely youths and spot- 
 less virgins. Thee, mild chastener ! we propitiate with hecatombs 
 of Dowagers. Come, then, to our aid, and in thy busy walks 
 knock at 49 Old Burlington Street, and leave a P. P. C. on 
 
 Lady . Draw sand-paper up and down her throat; poke 
 
 thy fingers behind her eyes, and push them out ; beat thy unceas- 
 ing reveillee on the drums of her ears ; make all her flesh tingle, 
 and all her bones ache ; and, after torturing her with a long and 
 fierce delirium, give her the coup-de-grace of a moment's con- 
 sciousness of what an intolerable bore is the political Dowager.
 
 THE DOWAGER. ib9 
 
 The Bath Dowager is a peculiar species, and is, to the other 
 Dowagers, much what Bath is to other towns, more formal, more 
 dull, and more old-fashioned. One-tenth of her life is spent in a 
 sedan-chair ; four-tenths in mumbling scandal over tea, or shaking 
 her head at concerts ; and five-tenths in playing at whist. She is 
 ordinarily well off, as regards pecuniary circumstances, and her 
 temper is pretty good, except under the affliction of a bad deal. 
 She is a very gregarious animal. You will meet Dowagers at Bath 
 every night, in flocks of twelve, sixteen, twenty, or any multiple of 
 four ; for they all play at whist, and set far too great value on 
 time to patronise the slow process of cutting in by turns. As 
 you enter one of their card-parties, your senses are somewhat sur- 
 prised by the novelties which meet them on every side. Your nose 
 never before took in such a bouquet of old silk, old lace, and old 
 tinsel. Your ears never heard such a chattering of false teeth ; 
 and your eyes never beheld such extraordinary physiognomies en- 
 veloped in such extraordinary covertures. 
 
 The Bath Dowager has generally some sort of complaint, real 
 or imaginary, and is under the treatment of a fashionable quack. 
 Some carry about them a box, or rather boxes, of Morrison's pills, 
 which they take by tens and twenties every quarter of an hour ; 
 while others, once a day, are obliged to use a telescope to see that 
 they do n't take more than one at a time of Dr. Quin's. They 
 are eternally disputing about their respective favourites ; and this 
 subject, with the exception of whist, is the staple of their conversa- 
 tion. Of whist, they talk even when they are not playing it, and 
 take no small pleasure in fighting over again to-day the battles of 
 yesterday. But when they are once fairly launched in a game, adieu 
 to every other consideration ; woe to the unlucky wight who dares 
 to interrupt them. It is worth your while to watch their counte- 
 nances at this exciting moment. In some hardened dissemblers, 
 not a muscle will move, either when they take up a hand which 
 ensures them the game, or when they take up one in which there 
 is not a single court-card. In others, again, their hand is reflected 
 in their face : they give a sort of a chirp when it is bad, and a 
 sort of a grin when it is good ; and the feathers in their hat, cap, 
 or turban, quiver like autumnal forests when their partner plays 
 a wrong card. The Dowager almost invariably deals very slowly, 
 we might almost say fumblingly. She repeatedly insists on a general 
 counting of the cards, and an intense and reasonable anxiety as to 
 the issue prevails among all four ; two hoping it will be a misdeal, 
 and two, of whi^h p:irty is the dealer, that it will be all right.
 
 190 THE DOWAGER. 
 
 They are strict disciplinarians ; and old obsolete laws, which the 
 humanity of modern players has long since repealed, are still in 
 force among them. The lull which prevails while the hands are 
 playing, is followed by an awful burst after the thirteenth round. 
 The four winds, that up to that moment lay chained like babies in 
 their cavernous homes, now simultaneously rush forth ; and each 
 furious Dowager reviews every proceeding of the past deal, with the 
 same merciless criticism that Lord Lyndhurst is wont, in August, to 
 review the ministerial doings in the past session of Parliament. 
 " How could you lead hearts again, Dowager Number Three ?" 
 cries Dowager Number One, " when you knew that I passed 
 Dowager Number Four's nine." " Really, Dowager Number 
 One," replies the asthmatic Dowager Number Three, with her 
 mouth full of Morrison's pills, " if you will finesse so indiscrimi- 
 nately, you must take the consequences of your very absurd system 
 of play." Dowager Number Two has an equally strong case against 
 Dowager Number Four : and Dowager Number Four an equally 
 confounding retort. And thus this general melee goes on till a 
 truce is proclaimed by the turn-up card of the next deal. 
 
 The Watering-place Dowager is a much more active personage 
 than her Bath relation, and her years more frequently belong to 
 that period 
 
 " That is nor youth nor age, 
 
 But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep, 
 
 Dreaming on both." 
 
 She is a never-failing patroness of the balls and concerts of the 
 neighbourhood, and still prefers dinners to tea-parties. She drives 
 out to pic-nics, gives a fete champetre on the day of the regatta, 
 and keeps a stall at the annual charity fair. She knows everybody 
 that ought to be known within reach of the watering-place, and 
 takes such an interest in their affairs, that she feels grievously 
 offended if not consulted on all emergencies. By-the-bye, she is 
 rather prone to take offence, and each of her neighbours in their 
 turn come under her displeasure, for some imaginary neglect. If 
 there is one thing she cannot endure more another, it is two young 
 people talking together so low that she can't overhear them ; and 
 she expects to be the first person to know the posse as well as the 
 esse of every matrimonial engagement. She has a dreadful knack 
 of repeating, at the most inopportune possible moment, and to the 
 very last person who should hear it, the secrets that incontinent 
 gossips have unbosomed to her. Accordingly, she has, at one time 
 or another, set all her neighbours .by the ears. She contrives to
 
 THE DOWAGER. 1G1 
 
 let the parson know that the doctor thinks him a conceited bore 
 and the doctor, that the parson vows he has killed more patients 
 than the Duke of Wellington has killed Frenchmen. An unhappy 
 girl who has committed the offence of falling in love with an officer 
 of one regiment, when our Dowager has recommended an officer of 
 another, is entertained with unceasing recitals of the profligacies of 
 the object of her affections, and of the slights which he is reported 
 to have passed upon her at his mess ; while, on the other hand, 
 she laments, in presence of the wretched captain, over the incor- 
 rigible inconstancy of a certain young lady, whose name she would 
 not mention, did she not well know the said captain's indifference 
 to all such flirts. The wife of an invalid lord, whose easy and 
 agreeable manners have naturally attracted a host of harmless ad- 
 mirers, is said to be " going on in such a manner," and to be 
 apparently " not over happy at home," and " not likely to remain a 
 widow long after her husband's death," &c. ; all of which good- 
 natured inuendoes, by dint of constant repetition, find their way 
 all over the watering-place, and lose nothing by being occasionally 
 taken up by sister Dowagers of a similar stamp. 
 
 The class of Dowagers which we have just been describing are 
 stationary animals : but there is another species, which is per- 
 petually flying from one watering-place to another, or from one 
 great town or another ; or taking a new villa within thirty miles 
 of London every six months. They are very fond, too, of travel- 
 ling abroad, and really very pleasant persons to come across at 
 Baden-Baden, or Geneva. They carry about with them a pet phy- 
 sician, and not unfrequently a pretty protegee of nineteen. On these 
 occasions, they are delighted to meet their countrymen, and are 
 very generous in their entertainments to them. But beware how 
 you stay too long in their company. There never yet was a 
 Dowager who had not a pretty strong development of the bump of 
 meddling with other people's affairs ; and if you give the travelling 
 Dowager a decent opportunity, she will insist as much ao any of 
 them on taking you under her care, and regulating your move- 
 ments by some fancies of her own ; or, if you resist, it is quite 
 possible that she will avenge herself by denouncing you to the 
 police as a member of a secret political society, seeking to com- 
 municate with a foreign branch established in the country in which 
 you, poor soul ! think you are going to trav. 1 for your pleasure. 
 There is a very delightful independence about this Dowager's life. 
 All she cares for on earth her lap-dog, her protegee, and her 
 jewels, are easily contained within the four wheels of her carriage.
 
 192 THE DOWAGER. 
 
 She can shift her home at an hour's warning, wherever ;>nd when- 
 ever she pleases ; and Messrs. Hammersley and Co. have provided 
 her with a plentiful supply of the one thing needful. Of course, 
 this independence is not always turned to the best possible account ; 
 and, to us, it might appear that her ladyship is losing a great deal 
 of real enjoyment by indulging in a variety of foolish crotchets 
 and caprices. But, be it recollected, crotchets and caprices are 
 constitutional with her ; and that, once in her head, it is essential 
 to her comfort that they shall be fully humoured. 
 
 We cannot profess to notice all the other forms of Dowagerism 
 that diversify society. You will meet poor old moping Dowagers, who 
 never take off their weeds, and never stir from the old castle where 
 they were once so happy. They live entirely in the past. They 
 talk of nothing but what used to be in " the old times ;" and it ia 
 their only care and satisfaction that nothing is changed. 
 
 Again, you will meet with nice, frisky, good-humoured old Dow- 
 agers, who can live with their eldest sons without grudging them 
 the possession of the good things which were once theirs ; who can 
 frolic :vith their grandchildren ; bear to see, nay, to assist in, im- 
 provements of the estate ; and whose sympathies are so evergreen 
 as to find enjoyment to the last, in promoting the comfort and 
 improving the morals of all within their reach. 
 
 But, on the whole, we are disposed to take a gloomy view of 
 Dowagerism, and to record our opinion, that it is an institution 
 which is not fitted for these times. Nay, more than this, we will 
 follow up that opinion, like Mr. Fowell Buxton in the matter ot 
 slavery, by proposing a remedy ; and next motion day as ever is, 
 we will go down to the House, and, after reading to it this article, 
 amid unanimous cheers, will move, in our moderate fashion, that 
 henceforth the law shall cease to recognise or provide for Dowagers. 
 Public feeling will be strong with us, and our motion will be car- 
 ried ; unless, indeed, a quicker and more decisive remedy shall be 
 thought desirable. Then, perhaps, we shall withdraw our motion, 
 in favour of Mr. Wakley's, " that all ladies, on arriving at the state 
 of Dowagerism, shall be compelled to enter hospitals established on 
 the principle of communicating, and not curing, influenzas ;" or of 
 an amendment by Mr. Warburton, " that the Poor-Law Commis- 
 sioners be empowered to devise an effective scheme of Sutteeism, 
 bv which the easy invention of the fagot shall be substituted for 
 the complicated expedient of Dower."
 
 THE TORY. 
 
 Be to his faults a little blind, 
 And to his virtues very kind.
 
 THE TORY. 
 
 BY AN M. P. 
 
 I AM afraid that the nature of my own political opinions will be 
 inferred from the very name which I have chosen to designate a 
 political party in this country. It will be said that I have com- 
 menced with a nick-name, which that whole party repudiates 
 that there are no longer Tories in England ; and that I ought to 
 describe the members of the Opposition by their own new and 
 favourite appellation of Conservatives. If I were a party writer, 
 engaged in mere political controversy, I should feel bound in po- 
 licy, as well as politeness, to do this. But my object being merely 
 to describe a class of men, 1 must use the good old homely terms, 
 which everybody understands, and always has understood. It is 
 my very Toryism that makes me eschew new-fangled words; and 
 use the name that carries with it associations of Pitt, and Perceval, 
 and Castlereagh ; of the old days of the war ; and of that old primary 
 world of rotten boroughs, which existed before the Deluge of the 
 Reform Bill. Whatever side of the House I may sit on, and how- 
 ever I may have acted on Sir John Buller's motion, I own I have 
 a kindly feeling towards the Tory: and the older the type of the 
 party to which he belongs, the more I like him. 
 
 The old official Tory, for instance, is a very peculiar personage. 
 The storms of the last ten years have, it is true, left but few of 
 them standing. The greater part of the race of subordinate offi- 
 cials have been swept out of Parliament ; and many of the older 
 and higher class have passed into retirement, or the Upper House. 
 But among the right honourables who fill the front opposition 
 bench, you still see some distinguished relics of those, who, in 
 former times, used to govern the country. Men almost always of 
 moderate fortunes, and often of humble origin, they have passed 
 their youth in the drudgery of subordinate office, and think them- 
 selves very scurvily treated, in being now after no long enjoyment, 
 excluded from the higher prizes of what they regarded as their 
 profession. Hardly one of these men is distinguished for any 
 
 75 - -
 
 194 THE TORY. 
 
 striking ability as a speaker : their lives have been passed in tho 
 routine of official business ; and though they are not in consequence 
 remarkable for any extent or soundness of general views in politics, 
 they are thoroughly well acquainted with the details of .ouhiiT 
 business, and with the political precedents of their own day. They 
 speak little ; and when they do, sensibly and effectively, though not 
 brilliantly. It is the fashion to sneer at these representatives of the 
 Red Tape School ; but they were available men in their own ge- 
 neration; and I cannot but respect them a little now that events 
 have thrown them among another. And in the handling of Red 
 Tape, a man used to pick up some good qualities, which it would 
 be just as well for some of our modern race of public men to have a 
 little more of. 
 
 Then there is your old Tory Squire, the representative of his 
 county in the good times, when county members were very great 
 men indeed. Then, counties were counties, and not half- counties; 
 and there were no Conservative Associations ; and our old friend in 
 
 the top-boots carried shire after a fifteen days poll, at his own 
 
 expense. As it was not easy for a party to find a man who would 
 stand such contests, our friend was tolerably independent, and voted 
 pretty much as he liked. He generally liked to vote with the Tory 
 ministry ; but not always. He voted stoutly against Property 
 Tax, and Salt Tax ; and even sometimes, supported Hume in mo- 
 tions for economy. But now, independence, and all that kind of 
 nonsense, is done away with, and Sir Thomas votes with Sir Robert 
 Peel on all occasions. If he does n't he will not be returned again : 
 and I do n't think he looks the happier for being conscious of this, 
 and of the consequent loss of the importance which he used to 
 have as an independent member. 
 
 Next to him sits a particularly neatly dressed old gentleman, quite 
 as good a Tory, and a representative of quite as remarkable and peace- 
 ful a class. He is the representative of your old, wealthy, mercantile 
 Tories ; that race, whose Toryism and importance both date from Mr. 
 Pitt, and whose palmy days were those of the war. Almack's itself 
 ivas never more exclusive than this body : time was when no banker 
 was thought good enough to come into it. All this is now passed 
 away ; but our old friend has all the traditions of it in his memory, 
 and in his haughty but polite air. He does n't think himself a bit 
 honoured by the notice of the grandees of his party : his name in 
 the city is quite as distinguished as any of them in their own 
 counties. But he, too, like our county member, has fallen on evil 
 terms. He recollects when Mr. Pitt and Lord Liverpool used to
 
 THE TORY. 195 
 
 Consult him before they took any great step in finance ; and he doesn't 
 altogether forget how the information he thus obtained gave him half 
 a day's precious start of his competitors on 'Change. All this is 
 gone by ; no one ever consults anybody now-a-days ; and our once 
 influential friend merely counts as one in a party of more than three 
 hundred. His, too, is a mortified and grumbling Toryism ; but it 
 is not a bit the less vehement for that ; for whenever he thinks of 
 the sad change of times, he always feels more bitter against the 
 wicked Whigs and Radicals, who brought it about. 
 
 Then there are the old Tories of every profession. The old 
 lawyer has almost quitted the parliamentary stage. There are some 
 old military men who think the war is only just over, and just going 
 to begin again. They swear by the Duke ; and think the only 
 chance or safety for the nation is in another " good war." There is 
 your old admiral, too, who thinks it his duty to attend the debates on 
 Navy Estimates, and to say a few words expressive of his belief that 
 we have hardly a ship at sea ; that the few we have have hardly any 
 men in them ; that what sailors there are, are fit for nothing, owing 
 to the laxity of discipline ; that the dock-yards are strewed with 
 nothing but ragged sails, rotten ropes, and bad timber : in fine, that 
 the French and Russians have nothing to do but sail up the Thames, 
 or sweep the Channel, and disgrace the British flag, whenever they 
 choose. Like all their party, they maintain a very gallant fight for 
 their principles ; but all the older portion of them keep up the 
 struggle without much hope, or much satisfaction with their own 
 objects and course. There is something in this very respectable ; 
 there is much in the individuals that is amiable ; and above all, they 
 are very quiet and well-bred, and quite a pattern, in that respect, to 
 to the younger or newer generation of every party. 
 
 Your modern specimens of Toryism I confess I do n't like half so 
 well as the older race. This may be owing entirely, or in great part, 
 to nay not understanding them so well. Among them, there is, of 
 course, every variety of class and character. There are young Tory 
 squires, and young mercantile Tories; young Tories training for 
 office (for few have actually enjoyed it) ; young Tory lawyers ; and 
 young Tory officers, both of the army and navy ; there are Tory 
 lordlings and dandies in great numbers, with powerful voices, not for 
 speaking, but for screeching and cheering ; there are some ultras 
 and some moderates ; some Puseyites, and some of contrary denomi- 
 nations ; some are always in their places; some never attend except 
 at great party divisions ; but all are effective on these occasions, and 
 though the whippers-in complain of the difficulties of their task, it 
 must be said for your Tory of the new school, that he shames all
 
 196 THE TOKY. 
 
 preceding oppositions, by his devotion to the interests of his party 
 at any sacrifice of pleasure or conscience. Party spirit runs so strong 
 in these days that these young lords and squires and lawyers really 
 seem to think that the safety of their country depends on the success 
 of their party. At the call of the whipper-in, they are always ready 
 to come down and vote ; be it at five, on some motion about a new 
 writ; or at midnight, on one of their great party divisions. To be 
 sure, there is a time from seven to ten, when the fine gentlemen, 
 and those who affect to be such, never make their appearance. Then 
 Whig and Tory (paired) are at dinner, and the Radicals constitute the 
 majority of the House. 
 
 The oddest feature in the young Tory is the intense interest 
 which he appears to take in the management of all the details of 
 party warfare. The whole mind of these young men seems to be 
 absorbed in calculating divisions. Every one of them seems to be 
 training for whipper-in. You meet a good-natured dandy of the 
 party a few days before some great division, and he immediately 
 begins asking, sotto voce, how such a one will vote : then you hear 
 him throwing out triumphant but mysterious hints, that such another 
 is going to vote against ministers or stay away ; he can tell you every 
 pair, and every man absent without a pair : and if you gainsay or 
 doubt anything he says, he turns to his division list, which serves him 
 for a pocket library. All this time he rarely knows anything of the 
 real facts, and if he offers you a bet, you would generally be safe 
 in taking it. As the division approaches, the inquiries, the. hints, 
 and the offers of bets, become more and more frequent. You are 
 pestered during the whole debate with these speculations on a reoult 
 which a few hours must decide : nay, even when you are going out 
 into the lobby, in a division, you are sure to see from half-a-dozen to 
 ofttimes a score of these young gentlemen waiting in the door-way, 
 in order to count the members going out, because they cannot wait 
 for the tellers counting them as they come back. It certainly seems 
 rather an idle occupation for educated men. One would think they 
 might serve themselves and their party more, by getting some know- 
 ledge of the question, and taking some part in the debate. But nothing 
 seems to interest them, save the numerical results. It always strikes 
 me that when Sir Robert Peel comes in, he will have to make up 
 his whole ministry of Secretaries of the Treasury : it seems to be the 
 only office any of his followers is fitting himself for. 
 
 I have a perfect horror of political clubs : and " The Carlton" being 
 the most perfectly organised club of the kind, seems to me about 
 the most detestable invention in the world. It is a great establish- 
 ment for the propagation of political bores and boring. There is a
 
 THE roar. 197 
 
 sleepy monotony about " Brookes's," which never offends nor disturbs. 
 But the spirit of " The Carlton Club" is an active spirit, roaming up 
 and down society, corrupting men, and what is worse, women, with 
 the hateful knowledge of the mere details of party politics. I do n't 
 dislike a woman for talking politics. I like to hear a pretty girl 
 shew her Toryism by singing, "Awa' Whigs, awa' ;" but when 
 it is nothing but the eternal clatter about " how many we shall 
 have on this question? " and whether " we shall carry such a place ? " 
 we pray that such words may at least not meet us from female lips, 
 but echo only through the rooms of " The Carlton," where, those 
 alone who delight in such topics, need go to hear them. 
 
 But again, I revert to my old Tory, as the amiable and res- 
 pectable personification of the class. He doesn't frequent your 
 " Carlton Club ; " or if he does, it is from an absolute necessity, not 
 from inclination. His favourite resort is "Boodle's ; " thither goes he 
 in the middle of the day to read the newspapers and talk over 
 matters with his brother squires. But Tories are not gregarious 
 like Whigs : there is no especial hour for congregating together 
 at " Boodle's," as at " Brookes's :" you see no parade of cabs and led 
 horses padre up and down before the door, and the attendance, 
 scattered as it is, is on the whole much more scanty than that at 
 the Whig club. The evening is the time for " Boodle's;" and the 
 rubber the attraction. 
 
 But the country is the real abode of the old Tory. At Quarter 
 Sessions, pottering about the county business ; or, at Petty Ses- 
 sions, fining, committing, and much oftener letting off, the rogues 
 of his vicinity, you see the Tory squire in his glory. There are 
 many of these who are not, after all, so bad as " The Morning 
 Chronicle" would make out. Their whole time is not spent in 
 racking or intimidating tenants, persecuting poachers, or shutting 
 up the poor in union workhouses. They have their prejudices, 
 doubtless ; they have an unreasoning terror of free trade ; they 
 suspect the Dissenters of wishing to blow up the parish church ; 
 they think the country is going to the devil ; and divide the bktme 
 of the catastrophe between Catholic Emancipation and the Repeal of 
 the Game Laws. But their prejudices do not, after all, so much in- 
 duence their conduct as you might imagine ; and many a good Tory 
 member, who never opens his mouth in the house, except to say 
 "Aye" to some measure of coercion, or to intimate the necessity of 
 keeping down the unruly wills of the people, is a good landlord, a 
 good magistrate, and'a good neighbour, the best of men in his own 
 family, and the most agreeable of
 
 t 
 
 THE COLLEGIAN, 
 
 BY A BACHELOR OF ARTS. 
 
 WHIIE other folks are busying themselves with frowsy enquiries 
 into parochial schools; computing the proportion of felons who 
 can read and write ; and drawing their opposite inferences as to 
 the good or bad effects of education on the lower classes, we invite 
 you, happy reader, to the sweeter atmosphere of Academus, 
 where you will see how the statesman learns patriotism and elo- 
 quence the lawyer, impudence and acuteness the parson, so- 
 lemnity and virtue the diplomatist, cunning and every grade of 
 aristocracy, the qualifications which fit them for their respective 
 callings. Still it is not to the b'>nks of Isis, or of Granta, that we 
 call you, but rather to thai glorious abstraction of a University 
 which, if you cannot straightway form to yourself out of thes 
 two, you possess not the only faculty which philosophers tell us 
 distinguish the man from the brute. In a work with so extensive 
 an aim as that to which we are now contributing, it would be 
 derogatory to descend to the petty details which peculiarly charac- 
 terise either Oxford or Cambridge. Let the student of the one 
 delight more in the dirty occupation of grubbing for the roots of 
 words ; the other in the more cruel one of extracting the square 
 roots of letters. Let this sacrifice his nights and days to the 
 unknown quantities of Algebra, and that to the false quantities of 
 Prosody; this be more solemnly dull, and that more disagreeably 
 argumentative; let the hatters in the Strand typify their compara- 
 tive merits by the different humours of those bits of beaver which 
 they label Oxonian and Cantab. We know not these distinctions. 
 We present to our readers the phenomenon which is common to 
 both : in a word the Collegian. Oh ! Alfred, and all ye other 
 founders of our venerable monopolies of learning ! would that ye 
 could descend or arise (as the case may be) from your present 
 abodes, and see the goodly train of youths that even in this dis- 
 tant century crowd regularly each autumn to the scenes of your 
 princely bounty ! These are freshmen, though little the wiser would
 
 \ 
 
 THE COLLEGIAN 
 
 Ibain ad collegium, ad capieudum mgerui cultum. 
 
 LATIN (IRAMMAR.
 
 THE COLLEGIAN. 1 90 
 
 ye be by this explanation. From distant Winchester, and Eton, 
 and Harrow, and Westminster, have they come, " Smit with the 
 love of sacred song;" and burning to bring to a better market 
 their various accomplishments of making longs and shorts, boxing, 
 rowing, and playing at cricket. There they stand, side by side, 
 in the senate-house, some hundreds of them, taking alphabetically 
 solemn oaths that they will always detest the Pope, and the Pre- 
 tender ; that they will not play at marbles during divine service, 
 nor wear top boots in the High Street. Yet is this a glorious 
 moment for all. It is the beginning of manhood of liberty 
 of eagle-eyed independence. Can you not recollect, reader, the 
 delight of feeling for the first time that you were master of your 
 own actions ; that all around you was under your control the 
 room you sat in the bell you rang the servant that answered 
 it ; that you could have breakfast when you chose ; put in as 
 much tea as you liked ; have your own little cellar of wine ; your 
 own friends ; run up what bills you pleased ; and were scores of 
 miles from parents, guardians, aunts, and friends of the family? 
 Every freshman owns this feeling with more or less intensity. 
 Even he, who has to struggle against new necessities on a hardly- 
 earned, and still inadequate pittance, is conscious that he is 
 struggling for himself, and has health and hope to cheer him on. 
 Yet on what strangely different destinies do these boys enter from 
 the moment that they have bolted these useful oaths ! How dif- 
 ferently is the golden gift of independence employed by them ! 
 One of them is Lord Leatherhead, a youth who, as wits say, is 
 his own father, and has the management of a guardian, whom the 
 late lord left a certain number of pounds to manage him. He 
 becomes a rowing man of the first class. He has brought with 
 him to college a large dog, an Italian valet, and last, as well as 
 least, a private tutor. His academical career is a series of tri- 
 umphs, the dons will tell you, for though he does nothing, they 
 swear there was only the will wanting. Although he was pluckec 
 the first time for his little-go, it was because he had read too 
 deep for it ; and he was only advised not to go up for his degree, 
 lest he might, by some accident, fail to be senior wrangler. What 
 fine sympathies he has! Look at his treatment of his dog. He 
 has taught him as many tricks as he knows himself. How con- 
 siderate to his private tutor! He gives him leave of absence as 
 often as he likes ; nay, sometimes is obliged to force it on him. 
 for he knows his modesty in that particular. Then again, how 
 generous to his friends ! Not a day passes, but a score of them
 
 200 
 
 THE COLLEGIAN. 
 
 are made drunk at his expense. And hear how they praise him 1 
 He has the best cigars they ever smoked ; the best wine they ever 
 drank ; sings the best song, and is, in short, the best fellow they 
 ever saw. Oh ! a college was made for a lord ! Its rules and 
 restrictions are all well enough for the poor student ; for the lord 
 they are wisely relaxed. For him the obsequious gates can open 
 either way, and at any hour. Against him the voice of tell-tale 
 porter, gyp, or laundress, is still as death. Toll away thou mourn- 
 ful morning bell for others. My lord's slumbers are not to be 
 disturbed for chapel. In the snug and elevated corner, where 
 noblemen, unjostled, are supposed to offer up their prayers to 
 Heaven, you will rarely find Lord Leatherhead at his matins. His 
 book is in its place, and his cushion but there is he not. Slat 
 nominis umbra. Do n't suppose, however, he is always in bed till 
 twelve o'clock. When the hounds meet thirty miles off, he can 
 be up and away by daybreak. Lectures are no attraction to him ; 
 and if not, says the college tutor, what can be the use of enforcing 
 his attendance. His lordship prefers taking in pupils of his own; 
 and cigars and ale are much more to all of their tastes than Greek 
 or Algebra. Even the noon of a sporting lord's day is not unin- 
 structive. Here you may see idleness in its least exciting and 
 least attractive form. His lordship is in a dressing-gown, and 
 wears an embroidered skull-cap. Half-a-dozen friends are seated 
 around him, all in slippers ; some in dressing-gowns some iu 
 rough great-coats but none are dressed, for it is only one o'clock. 
 A full half- hour will often pass without a single word being ut- 
 tered. The whole party sit motionless their legs stretched out, 
 and their eyes fixed on the ceiling. Not a sound is heard but puff, 
 puff, swig, swig, and occasionally, spit, spit. Doesn't Locke 
 define time to be nothing more than the perpetual succession of 
 ideas ? If that is a correct definition, time, during these noontide 
 revels, must frequently have ceased to exist, for many a round has 
 the clock made, and no idea presented itself to the minds of the 
 noble Leatherhead and his friends. It is worth your while to 
 examine the furniture of that room, if your eyes can pierce the 
 " Tobacco's rolling dun." Prints of dogs, horses, half-dressed 
 women, and Lord Eldon, cover the walls (for mark you, my lord 
 is a Conservative). The shelves of a largo book-case are filled 
 with sporting magazines, hunting-whips, gloves, and cigar boxes. 
 At either corner, are statutes of Demosthenes and Cicero; and in 
 the middle, the plaster caricature of Lord Brougham, with a sto- 
 mach-ache. On the faces of the two former, the humorous lord
 
 T1IK COLLEGIAN. 201 
 
 has. with his own hand, painted splendid cork moustaches, -while 
 on each of their heads, some kindred wit has placed a smoking 
 cap. Leatherhead's associates are either boys of quality and for- 
 tune, and of congenial tastes, or impudent, pushing toadies, who 
 find that it is by far the cheapest plan to live at his expense, 
 and that they derive a sort of consequence from being often seen 
 in his company. When he is not hunting, he likes a lark across 
 country; and no such fun as jumping into a farmer's garden, and 
 then jumping out again. He is fond of a lounge too up the 
 High Street, where he is on ogling terms with several tradesmen's 
 daughters, and tres lien with several tradesmen's wives. Nor is 
 this more than fair. The tradesmen have cheated him enough, 
 and need not grudge nim such a return. He sits an hour in a 
 confectioner's shop every day, over soup in winter, and ices in 
 summer. He rarely dines in hall, though, when he does, the 
 Master and Vice-Master are the whole time convulsed with laughter 
 at his prodigious wit. In short, his whole morning, noon, and 
 evening, are one long loll and saunter. It is at night that he 
 really begins to move, and have his being. Walk with us, reader, 
 towards his rooms some night at ten o'clock ; and do thou, too, 
 come, thou monger of new things thou friend of cheap knowledge, 
 thou scorner of other times look upon yon old quadrangle. This 
 is the habitation which our wise forefathers, in far distant ages, 
 consecrated to the high purposes of piety and science. Here have 
 thought and struggled the best and wisest of the earth. Is thy 
 fancy so dull that thou dost not see their stately shadows through 
 the dim religious light of those deep venerable cloisters ? and 
 does thy cold soul glow with no new warmth at the sight of that 
 old mouldering chapel, on which the moon is looking down so 
 serenely, and gilding with the light of heaven ? Hark ! what is 
 that distant murmur? Is it the chaunting of some holy youth 
 at his restless vigils ? Now other voices chime in 
 
 "With his Too-rul-loo-rul-loo-rul-loo." 
 
 'T is Leatherhead and his wine-warmed friend singing after-supper 
 songs. These are, of a truth, classic revels ; Bacchus presiding 
 over all that is done, Venus over all that is said. The long table is 
 covered with punch-bowls, tobacco-pipes, cigars, and every variety of 
 wines and spirits in bottles. Some of the party are blind drunk some 
 roaring drunk some dead drunk. In short, every stage of drunk- 
 enness is there exhibited in all its glory. Olivini puts his master to 
 bed quite senseless, at three o'clock, and then goes to bed himself; 
 76 A A
 
 202 THE COLLEGIAN. 
 
 and how the rest find their way to their respective homes, or to the 
 places where they are picked up the next morning, is a mystery 
 which they unsuccessfully employ the greater part of the morrow m 
 endeavouring to fathom. 
 
 Directly above the scene of these obscene orgies, and driven to 
 distraction by the noise, is poor John Smith, the reading-man, in his 
 little garret. He is the son of an ill-paid curate ; and, were it not 
 for a scholarship which he obtained almost immediately on his arrival 
 at college, he could not possibly meet the necessary expenses of his 
 humble situation. How much is he to be pitied, and yet how much 
 to be envied, in the contrast with his noble neighbours '. Toil and 
 privation are his lot. No health can ever stand such incessant 
 exertion, and his is visibly impaired. But he has a purpose 
 before him : he is stimulated by a noble ambition, and the feeling 
 that it is noble supports him in all his trials. To be the first 
 prize-man of his day, is his all-absorbing hope a dream worth all 
 the solid realities that constitute the happiness of Lord Leather- 
 head. He has a little clock in his bed-room, with an alarum 
 attached to it, always set to six o'clock, at which hour he jumps 
 up ; and, by the glorious sun in summer, and a dingy lamp in winter, 
 does he work two good hours before he touches his frugal morning 
 meal. He is regular as clock-work in the performance of all his 
 college duties. He never misses chapel or lecture ; takes a con- 
 stitutional for an hour before dinner ; smokes a clay pipe and third- 
 rate tobacco (his sole luxury) for half an hour after it ; and every 
 other moment of the day and night is shut up with " sported oak" 
 in his little garret. A curious sanctum this ! He has not a book- 
 case, but he has two old trunks set up on their ends in a corner of 
 the room, and full of all the standard works on mathematics. The 
 floor is absolutely carpeted with square bits of paper, covered with 
 learned hieroglyphics. On some you will see diagrams round, 
 oblong, square, and angular with letters here and there which com- 
 municate with explanations below, where you are informed, after a 
 great deal of beating about the bush, that one of the lines therein 
 drawn is precisely the same length as another neighbouring line, and 
 that one of the square figures is exactly the same size as one that 
 has twice as many sides. On others, again, you will fancy that John 
 Smith has been composing riddles ; for they begin with an assertion, 
 that there are so many square yards in a certain farm in Australia, 
 and so many thousand sheep on another farm hard by ; and that the 
 farmer is anxious to transfer the stock from the latter to the former. 
 It appears, however, to involve some difficulty, which John Smith
 
 THE COLLEGIAN. 203 
 
 further appears to have a commission to solve. You would thinly 
 reader, that there was some fun, or pun, or play on the words, in all 
 this, and would go on puzzling your poor brains till you would be 
 obliged to give it up. But see how John Smith has set to work ! 
 He appeals to the calculations of no surveyor ; refers to no evidence 
 taken before agricultural committees ; but suddenly, with a stroke of 
 his pen, transform the sheep into the letter x, and the square yard 
 into the letter y. You think then, in your innocence, that he has 
 taken leave of his subject or his senses ; for no mention is made^ 
 all down the page, of Australia, farmer, sheep, or square yards. 
 Nothing follows, but the most wanton persecution of these two inof- 
 fensive letters. Not content with tearing them from their happy 
 homes at the end of the alphabet, and exposing them in their single 
 nakedness to the impertinent curiosity of college dons, he submits 
 them to all the torturing processes of Algebra. They are multi- 
 plied, divided, added to, and subtracted from ; they are shuffled 
 from one side to the other to suit his convenience ; their square 
 roots are extracted ; they are raised to impossible powers ; and 
 when you feel as a friend to letters, disposed, at all hazards, to 
 interfere, lo ! the conjuror, John Smith, again touches x and y 
 wiih his wand, and they instantly resume the shape of the required 
 number of sheep and square yards. Whoever can make the most 
 use of these two mysterious letters, and play the greatest variety of 
 tricks with them, is called senior wrangler ; and it is for this dis- 
 tinction that John Smith works so hard sixteen out of every twenty- 
 four hours. It is curious how little he knows of other things, and 
 how limited is the range of his reasoning faculties when unassisted 
 by mathematical instruments, or x and y. He is the kindest- 
 hearted creature on earth, though he has no friends to benefit by his 
 sympathies. He is on nodding terms with two or three fellow- 
 lecture-attenders, and " wines" once a term with the college tutor. 
 Poor John Smith, he gets his reward! He is senior wrangler at 
 last, and has ruined his health for ever! 
 
 Bob Jones is a rowing man of the second class. He belongs to 
 a small college, and cannot claim descent from 'he Jones-Ap-Joneses 
 of Wales. He wears a blue checked shirt without a collar, a 
 coloured neck-cloth, a cut-away green coat, and inexpressibles that 
 fit as tight as a second skin. He has invariably a cigar or an oath 
 in his mouth. He came to college knowing nothing, and while 
 there only learns a little about horse-flesh. To him are accorded 
 none of the immunities which are purchasable by the high rank and 
 prospects of Lord Leatherhead ; but he is in perpetual hot water
 
 201: THE COLLEGIAK. 
 
 with the authorities. He rarely attends chapel or lectures ; but 
 then, for each omission of the former duty, he is adjudged to * tran- 
 scribe a hundred lines of Homer ;" and for a certain number of 
 omissions of the latter, he is confined for a fortnight within gates. 
 He is so fond of female society, as to be brought into perpetual col- 
 is ion with the proctor, who is very jealous in this particular. He is 
 a constant frequenter of the bar of " The Eagle Inn ;" and very soon 
 found it necessary to his purpose to give a verbal promise of marriage 
 to the barmaid. He is a capital boxer, and the leader of the mob of 
 gentlemen in the town, and gown rows on the 5th of November. He 
 .s the stroke-oar of the college-boat, and one of the crack bowlers in 
 the University Eleven. He lodges in the town, and made early 
 conditions with his landlord that he should not report over-faithfully 
 his hours of returning home at night or the next morning. The 
 principal ornaments of his rooms are tandem-whips, pipes, boxing- 
 gloves, cricket- bats, and foils ; and on a card-table stands the proudest 
 monument to his capabilities, in the shape of a glass a yard long, 
 which he every day, after breakfast, fills with ale and drinks oft 
 without once drawing breath. What tradesmen gain by their impo- 
 sitions on Lord Leatherhead, they lose by giving too much credit to 
 Bob Jones. When in the middle of his second year, he is rusticated, 
 and immediately afterwards taken from college by his friends, to be 
 put into the Church, he is in debt some five or six hundred pounds ; 
 and so he remains all the rest of his life. 
 
 Charles Fluent is a man of very different pursuits. He is neither 
 an idler, nor a candidate for academical honours ; but he is absorbed 
 in politics, metaphysics, and what he calls philosophy. He belongs 
 to an essay society, where, weekly, he, Henry Muddle, and a few 
 other choice spirits, meet to discuss every variety of subject embraced 
 under those prolific heads. Fluent is a radical of the Bentham 
 school. He can tell you all about the right relations of wages and 
 profits ; thinks monarchy an absurd extravagance ; aristocracy an 
 unmitigated evil ; an established church subversive of morality and 
 religion ; and the constitution of the United States of America the 
 model of all that is good and wise. As is usual with the young dis- 
 ciples of this school, he altogether misunderstands, and sadly parodies 
 the " principle of utility," which is always in his mouth. He asserts 
 that poetry is not useful, and, therefore, should not be encouraged ; 
 and calculates to a nicety, as he thinks, how every question of the 
 day bears on the greatest happiness of the greatest number. 
 
 Muddle is a mystic of the first water. He is Fluent's chief rival ; 
 and the society, which is limited to twelve, is ranged in pretty equal 
 divisions under these two leaders. Muddle has this advantage, how-
 
 THE COLLEGIAN. 205 
 
 ever, that his opponents can never completely answer, because they 
 can never completely understand him : accordingly, he always fancies 
 he comes off victorious. He is a worshipper of Coleridge, Words- 
 worth, and Carlyle, and delights to use the be- Germanised phraseology 
 which the latter distinguished writer has brought into such dan- 
 gerous fashion. But the inventor of that instrument is the only man 
 who should be permitted to employ it. Poor Muddle makes sad 
 mutilations with it ; as much of himself, however, as of any one else. 
 What an awful set of words, to be sure, he strings together ! 
 " There is a soul in the universe," he said tauntingly, one evening, 
 to Fluent, as an argument for keeping the bishops in the House of 
 Lords ; and concluded a super-mystical peroration of the same 
 speech by asking his honourable friend, in the word? of the great 
 Coleridge, whether " religion were not an idea of the mind, evolved 
 into act and fact by the superinduction of the extrinsic conditions of 
 reality." Muddle is a poet too : how sweetly his mind masquerades 
 in verse! All those flowers and birds he makes so much of, are not 
 really flowers and birds : one means truth, another hope ; and that 
 " Sonnet to an Owl catching Mice in the dark," is a delicate allusion 
 to Fluent entrapping his little party, under favour of his own and 
 their state of brutal ignorance. He can smell sights, and see smells, 
 and hear both ; but, above all, he has the singular faculty of believ- 
 ing without understanding. They have, however, a larger h'eld for 
 their rivalry, in a debating society which is open to the whole 
 University : Lord Leatherhead, Bob Jones, and even John Smith, 
 are members of it. The latter does not attend regularly, and nevei 
 opens his lips ; the former takes part, as he calls it, in general dis 
 cussions ; and Bob Jones confines his talents to the private business 
 of the society. You will every week see his name on the boards, 
 subscribed to some such motion as, " That another copy of the 
 Sporting Magazine be taken in." You will find in this august body 
 all the forms and ceremonies of the House of Commons. The 
 youthful orators call each other honourable gentlemen, and their 
 speeches are interrupted, at due intervals, with loud cries of " Hear, 
 hear ! " and " Oh, oh ! " Scarcely a question is discussed in the 
 model house, but a division follows it in this ; and not only are the 
 principal arguments of the great parliamentary leaders carefully 
 re-echoed (with due allowances for misunderstanding and misappli- 
 cation), but the very personalities and recriminations which are the 
 delight of St. Stephens, are all the fashion in the long room of " The 
 Hoop." Taunts of abandonment of former principles and former 
 friends, are in high favour; and " nusquam tuta fides" has been 
 applied, in his turn, to almost every speaker of note. Sir John
 
 206 THE COLLEGIA!*. 
 
 Buller's motion on the was carried here the week after it 
 
 was lost in the House of Commons, and many a junior soph made 
 just as patriotic speech against the " Newport job," as did the most 
 immaculate supporters of Mr. Liddell. Indeed, we doubt not that 
 the society has been convulsed with its " Privilege Question," and that 
 some unfortunate waiters, at this moment in durance by their orders, 
 are expiating, in an hotel cellar, crimes of like magnitude and com- 
 plexion to those of the sheriifs of the short neck and turgid liver. 
 All the principal speakers are Radicals. They carry everything 
 before them except the votes. Here they are in an awful minority. 
 The Tories are in the proportion of five to one, and are very 
 Toryish of the Sibthorp school. They have many of the same 
 peculiarities as the young Tories in Parliament. They comprise 
 the greater part of the noblemen and fellow-commoners, and are 
 very noisy and very ignorant. They exaggerate, naturally, the 
 folly and fury of their prototypes ; and sentiments are uttered in 
 these debates, but more especially at their Pitt Clubs and other 
 politico-jovial meetings, which would do honour to Bradshaw or 
 M'Neile. We recollect a most characteristic discussion on a ques- 
 tion proposed by Muddle not long ago : " Would her Majesty's 
 ministers have been justified, in the year 18'20, in omitting the word 
 ' Protestant,' in the announcement of the Royal marriage ? " This 
 reference to the year 1820, is an ingenious device for evading a 
 restriction imposed on the society by the University authorities, 
 that they shall discuss no events that have occurred within a float- 
 ing period of twenty years anterior to the date of the discussion. 
 The word Protestant has just the same potent charm in this so- 
 ciety as it has in public life, and it is equally curious to observe 
 here the very remarkable class of men, which the mere mention of 
 it calls into oratorical prominence. Of the immense majority, 
 which, on this occasion, recorded their condemnation of ministers, 
 perhaps one half was drunk ; and perhaps their speakers were 
 among the most incorrigible profligates of the University, Yet 
 to be sure, such piety never flowed from the lips of men. Lord 
 Leatherhead asked "What would have been the use of the 
 Reformation, if ministers were to go on in this way ? and what 
 Martin Luther would have said if he had been a privy councillor 
 on that day, and taken his seat at the board, between the Duke 
 of Norfolk and Mr. Sheil ? " Muddle took the Tory side in his 
 opening speech, and the other side in his reply ; and though there 
 really was a great deal of eloquence in both, the argumentative 
 parts might have exchanged places without any inconvenience to the 
 speaker, or any chance of detection by the audience. We are far
 
 THE COLLEGIAN. 207 
 
 from wishing to throw an air of ridicule over these societies : we 
 know that many of the most accomplished speakers in the House of 
 Commons and at the Bar have here learnt the rudiments of their art. 
 We have our eye on three Charleses, who are among the most rising 
 men of the day, and who have to thank the opportunities of a 
 University Debating Society for their singular facility of speech. We 
 shall be grievously mistaken and disappointed if this trio dc not, 
 before long, furnish a list of Charleyana, in the way of sayings and 
 doings, which will justify our prophecy of their fame. 
 
 There is one other species of Collegian, to which we feel bound 
 to do honour : it is the man who does nothing at all, who neither 
 reads for University honours, nor for debating societies, nor even for 
 self-improvement ; who commits no debaucheries, and who never, 
 during his academical career, says or does a single thing which 
 attracts the observation of a single soul. It is impossible to give this 
 character any distinctive name ; he is, virtually, a nonentity. His 
 three years and a half are one monotonous routine of nothingisms ; and 
 with the exception of his being those three years and a half older, at 
 the end of his academical career he is precisely the same creature 
 that he was at its commencement. He has neither added to nor 
 taken from his former little stock of public-school knowledge, but has 
 kept himself throughout, and in every way, in a perfectly even state 
 of temperature. He leaves no bUls unpaid, regrets parting from 
 no friends, and his back once turned on alma mater, neither he nor 
 she have one thought for each other again. 
 
 Hurrah! then for the Collegians! What would man be that he 
 cannot learn to be at college ? Are you young, friend reader ? 
 go to college, and learn such wisdom as has inspired these pages ? 
 Are you a parent? send your sons there. They will acquire 
 religion there, morality, and learning. Do you doubt it ? How 
 can they help becoming religious ? They leave their revels to 
 go to chapel of an evening, while the wine is still hot in their 
 brains ; and go again the next morning, when the wine has got 
 from their brains to their stomach. Is not that religion ? How 
 can they help becoming moral ? They have two proctors, and two 
 pro-proctors, and swift-footed bulldogs, who watch over their mo- 
 rality! How can they help becoming learned? They have daily 
 lectures, and quarterly examinations ; and little-goes, and big-goes, 
 and tutors, and professors, and prizes of every description. Reli- 
 gious, moral, learned phenomenon ! Glory of England envy of 
 the world ! In the affecting words of Homer : 
 
 ovo Xi\e 'ars, av Kpi ' a^icw.' "
 
 THE CAPITALIST. 
 
 BY F. G. TOMLINS. 
 
 I HAVE never been able to reconcile myself to that calmly received 
 philosophical axiom that man is the same to-day as he was a five 
 thousand years since. I am not able to attack the proposition as 
 regards the genus " homo," but I cannot think it just as applied 
 to the species " vir socialist That the " poor forked animal " 
 always had " eyes, organs, affections," is not to be denied ; but 
 whether they were developed or applied in the same manner, seems 
 to me more than questionable. I fancy London itself is not more 
 changed in the last hundred years than the race that inhabit it: 
 and there appears a great similarity in the transmutation of the 
 two things ; the house being the outward and visible sign of its 
 proprietor. In the roomy, awkward, overhanging barns that lined 
 the narrow streets of our ancestors, may we fancy the prototype of 
 the wealthy, cautious burgess of the middle ages ; " cold without," 
 but warm within, with good arras hangings, massive plate, and 
 stout stubborn furniture. In our modern squares, we see plain 
 buildings without elegance or symmetry : externally, regular as 
 bricks can be piled together; internally, everything costly, but 
 little that is elegant ; coldly respectable, and stupidly methodical. 
 These remarks have not been made to elongate the paper to the 
 printer's desire, but to introduce the present head, who is essen- 
 tially a new species, engendered by a new state of things, and 
 evolved from the invention of funds, and the involutions of com- 
 merce. There is nothing like unto him in the ancient world, nor 
 in the middle age; he is a modern creation, and a living contradic- 
 tion to Solomon, being one of the few new things under the sun. 
 
 It is not our business to trace the history of the heads we 
 dissect, but to characterise their peculiarities ; and had we resolved 
 to unite the historian with the anatomist, we, in this instance, 
 couid have had but little scope for that easiest of writings, but 
 hardest of readings. Slight very slight traces of something 
 like the creature may be found about the time of George I. ;
 
 THE CAPITALIST. 
 
 *.othmg comes arciss, so money comes with all. 
 
 SlIAKSl'KKK.
 
 THE CAPITALIST. 209 
 
 and had the South Sea Bubble not have burst, but have proved a 
 veritable piece of sun, instead of moonshine, it would probably 
 have been much earlier brought to maturity. The development of 
 this species was, however, very gradual. The American war pro- 
 duced a few specimens, but the breed was not fully matured until 
 the time of the younger Pitt. His genius fostered the embryo 
 tribe ; and on the vast hot-bed of his financial arrangements, nu- 
 merous splendid specimens were produced. Loans, foreign and 
 home, greatly enlarged the race. The continental war aided 
 them ; and the climate of India was found to be particularly adapted 
 to bring them to maturity. 
 
 Like everything else in the nineteenth century, that took to 
 progressing at all, it went on at a quadruple pace. Taxes, profits, 
 population, inventions, gases, steam, legislation, learning, lying, 
 all got into full gallop ; and our head went a-head in a most fero- 
 cious manner : became a class, a species, and certainly a most 
 veritable " head of the people." Swaying cabinet councillors influ- 
 encing elections deciding for peace or war putting up and putting 
 down kings starving or stuffing the million at its will goading 
 or galling the spirit of the age speculating and dallying with the 
 very elements destroying or defending the venerable things of the 
 past. Religion with it became a commodity ; law was its tool ; 
 and literature its slave. But it is time to introduce him personally 
 to the gracious reader. 
 
 Behold, then, a rare specimen of this select class. He is 
 clad in the modern style ; is particularly neat in his appearance ; 
 and has nothing showy about him ; indeed, he is so exceedingly 
 plainly attired, that, at the first glance, he looks almost common ; 
 but a stricter view shews you that he is careful in his toilet, delicate 
 in his habits, and has a judiciousness of taste that approaches to the 
 elegant. His hands are not white " like a lord's," but are re- 
 markably clean ; and the very simple ring he has on his finger is an 
 evidence (perhaps the only one that can be gleaned from his appear- 
 ance) that he too has known the storm of human passion, the anguish 
 of human feeling. He is tall aristocratically tall, and he occa- 
 sionally remarks, that the Normans were a long-legged race. His 
 carriage approaches more to the military than any other ; but it has 
 neither the dash nor the emptiness of that bearing. It is not so 
 striking, but is based on " a firmer understanding." It is more 
 formidable, but less likely to irritate. His eye is, however, his dis- 
 tinguishing outward characteristic. It is not piercing and restless, 
 like the lawyer's ; it is not stolid and staring, like the parson's ; it 
 77 BB
 
 210 THK CAPITALIST. 
 
 is not veiled and blinking, like the shopman's ; nor amorous and 
 defying, like the soldier's ; but it is a good, clear, bright eye nine 
 times out of ten, grey, or greyish blue clear and firm, but mild and 
 quick. I could tell the eye of a Capitalist out of a million ; and I 
 have looked into every eye-shop in London, but could never find 
 that they had " hit off his eye" as they ought. If I had ever heard 
 of such a thing as a one-eyed Capitalist, I would have speculated, 
 and had a few made under my own particular superintendence ; but 
 it would be catching wind in a sieve, or water in a looking-glass, 
 for they are too wide awake, and seem only to use their eyes to 
 think with. 
 
 His habits are singular, but simple. He is often found in a 
 state of widowhood, with one fair child, " sole daughter of his house 
 and heart." He cannot be said to be fully developed as a Capitalist 
 until he is forty years of age, or close upon it. Previous to this, he 
 may be a " man of fortune," or even " a speculator" (a class he is 
 by no means to be confounded with) ; or, perchance, " a merchant" 
 probably an East Indian one. There have been instances, but cer- 
 tainly very rare ones, of his emerging from the law, or even the 
 army and navy ; but then he has been in the latter in some civil 
 capacity. 
 
 There are some circumstances that mark him, at once, as a pure 
 and genuine Capitalist. The chairman of the Bank Directors, or 
 the East India Company, is ex-officio one. The head-partners in 
 seven or eight of the London banking-houses, especially where 
 their names do, and their persons do not, appear. In other cir- 
 cumstances, the unpractised eye may mistake the speculator for 
 him ; a vast and varying species, that tnkes all kinds of shapes 
 and appearances. However, the following hints may prevent mis- 
 takes. The Capitalist is a graver, and perhaps duller class. The 
 speculator is generally showy, and often brilliant. The CapitalL-t is 
 quiet and reserved ; and has rather an antipathy and horror of the 
 class he is thus confounded with. The Capitalist avoids small titles, 
 and eschews initials after his name. He is sometimes a member 
 of Parliament ; but, if so, probably sits for a borough of his own. 
 He is no great orator ; but his speeches, most frequently uttered 
 at some board of directors, are keenly attended to. They are 
 generally sound deductions from a few premises, logically but not 
 eloquently expressed. The speculator is a brilliant talker, and a 
 clear speaker ; and occasionally may be, by an unusual chance, as 
 wealthy (or, rather, have at one time as much money) as the Capi- 
 talist ; but the one only employs, while the other parts with his
 
 THE CAPITALIST. 211 
 
 wealth. To distinguish them, however, requires an intimate ac- 
 quaintance with both species. 
 
 The occupations of the Capitalist are not numerous, though 
 they have increased of late. He may be a Bank or East India 
 director ; a chairman of a fire or assurance office ; a director of 
 a dock company, or of one or two railroads. Banking on new 
 principles has occupied a few ; and some may be found much inte- 
 rested in the politics of Russia or France. Others will, for a while, 
 be discovered in large wholesale businesses, where they undergo 
 more labour in the direction of " the finances," than is usual for 
 this species voluntarily to endure. Until, comparatively, lately, 
 instances have been known of their even being the vital principle 
 of numerous smaller businesses, and the ignorant have mistaken 
 them for " pilanthropists," who have generously started young 
 men in business from the purest motives of Christian charity. A 
 rapid rise of the rate of discount at the bank has, however, proved, 
 by the sudden withdrawal of their patronage, that other motives 
 than these primitive ones might be imputed. 
 
 His haunts are, for two or three days in the week, from one to 
 five, in the city when he is busily employed in his various direc- 
 torships, and when his most, or indeed, only amusing qualities are 
 displayed. See with "what courteous grace" he waves his hand 
 to some fellow- Capitalist, and says, while crossing Lombard Street, 
 " Pardon me, but I am behind time now." See with what a 
 sharp pace he ascends the broad staircase of his last new director- 
 ship, while the polished doors are flung open by an old servant 
 whom he has placed there, and who, venturing on his former long 
 service, says, " Just one minute, sir." Five more of the same 
 species, with perhaps a speculator or two amongst them, are already 
 assembled around the elegant table, eyeing an Indian bowl, in which 
 are twenty sovereigns. The soft chimes of the chimney-piece 
 clock peal the hour " Shut the doors, Johnson! " is uttered simul- 
 taneously ; and the o.der is obeyed as the last stroke is echoed by 
 St. Michael's. Two or three footsteps are heard on the stairs the 
 door is shaken violently : <; Open it! " " This is shameful ! " " It 
 wants five minutes ! " " Disgraceful ! " " Next general meeting ! " 
 (A violent thumping.) " Open the door ! " " A perfect robbery ! " 
 " Shameful ! " To this nothing is heard but peals of laughter 
 on the inside ; and the chinking of the gold being awarded to the 
 punctual. This over, the polished doors fly open, and the five 
 are seen demurely sitting with their four sovereigns each, in 
 a row, before them. " Shameful !"" Too bad ! " " The clock
 
 212 THE CAPITALIST. 
 
 shall be repaired," &c. &c. To which no answer but a silent and 
 deliberate dropping of the sovereigns into the purse. But the chair 
 is taken, and the secretary is already in the middle of a million of 
 figures. 
 
 Let us now follow him into his seat of power, and behold 
 him with a few short sentences shiver a throne ; change a dynasty ; 
 give plenty to a nation ; or wither its energies. On one side, 
 see him loose rebellion and rapine ; on the other, give firmness 
 to tyranny : here he takes the fetters from a nation ; and there he 
 hands them captive to their task-masters. The mightiest watch 
 his movements ; the warrior and his horde is dependent on him : 
 senates shape their laws upon his motions : commerce waits upon 
 his will ; even pleasure is for a moment demure, and knows her 
 airy existence in his power. 
 
 He is in " the parlour" of the Bank of England; and in a few 
 minutes the rate of interest is raised. The whole commercial world 
 feels the motion to its lowest depths ; the trader is stopped for 
 want of a medium to exchange his goods for his neighbours' ; the 
 manufacturer dismisses one hundred men out of his six hundred, 
 each successive Saturday night ; the bankrupt list increases alarm- 
 ingly ; gold utterly vanishes ; the poor debtor is more strictly pur- 
 sued ; the rich mortgager is sorely pressed ; the great leviathan 
 (people) begins to roar, and lash its mighty tail ; the legislature is 
 paralysed ; the government voted utterly useless ; its ministers must 
 be changed ; the constitution rocks ; society totters ; national ruin 
 and national bankruptcy are inevitable ; when, lo ! the Capitalist is 
 again in council ; the locks are taken off the coiFers ; the golden tide 
 is circulated first gradually, and then freely through the body 
 civic; and health once more returns. We are again " the envy of 
 surrounding nations :" government must be upheld, and the wisdom 
 of our ancestors counsels us to keep on the old paths, " and recon- 
 ciles each to his lot." 
 
 Behold him in close divan with his brother kings in Leadenhall 
 Street: the fate and welfare of millions rest on his decision; " the 
 integrity of our Indian Empire " requires that the barbarous states 
 of the eastern frontier should be crushed ; and war with all its fero- 
 cities is determined on. How many a goodly youth did that vote 
 give to the jungle fever, and the poisoned creese. By those few words, 
 how many yawning graves were opened ! what tides of blood were set 
 flowing ! then rapine had her licence, and avarice her warrant. 
 
 See him in the well-proportioned room of that fine newly-erected 
 house, more peaceably, more benevolently employed. Fertile
 
 THE CAPITALIST. 213 
 
 wastes yet untrod by man are about to be subdued, and made to 
 yield their share to the comforts and luxuries of life. A territory 
 thrice the size of our Island, awaits his decision to be made a future 
 England. The hardy, honest peasant, the toil-worn artisan, hails 
 his decision as the dawn of a new life ; for the first time to be 
 crowned with a just reward for integrity and industry. The 
 Capitalist votes, and the ocean is white with scudding sails, and 
 hope guides the flotilla to the distant beach, and the bounteous 
 savannah. 
 
 Again we follow him to scenes less pleasing. Here, he as a 
 loan contractor for awhile supplies the sinews of war to two barba- 
 rous factions ; there he enables the overbearing tyrant to seize his 
 smaller neighbour's territory ; and at this moment he takes off the 
 chains of those who differ from us but in colour, and enables 
 philanthrophy to perfect her wishes without wrong. Now he gives 
 an impetus to social existence, and carries the age forward a 
 hundred years at once. Science obeys him ; the waters are covered 
 with vessels ; the earth with railroads ; the soil even becomes more 
 fertile ; and labour, assisted by machinery, gives to all a share in 
 the produce of the arts. 
 
 Has he not cause to be proud ? Should not his step be free, 
 and his port lordly ? Should he not dilate with exultation, when 
 he feels he is the demi-god of the modern world ? What were 
 Theseus or Jason to him ? what Hercules or Cadmus ? Not so. 
 He is not a legislator a hero a philosopher a philanthrophist 
 he is a Capitalist A means in the hands of the Mightiest to perfect 
 His good will. To add stores to stores is all his aim ; and he seeks 
 not other ends or other gratification. Are we therefore to mourn 
 over the dwarfish nature of man ? No ! Let us rejoice at the 
 constitution of events that evolve out of the small the great ; out 
 of the particular the universal. 
 
 From his public, let us accompany him to his privite life. He 
 is naturally courteous and urbane ; and, though seldom cordial, he 
 still will invite us to his quiet mansion in Park Lane, or May Fair. 
 It has all the elegance of the house of an aristocrat of twelve gene~ 
 rations ; but has more marks of abundant wealth : nothing is new, 
 but then nothing is old in it, but the upper servants. 
 
 Where the Capitalist bestows his affection (perchance to a favourite 
 daughter or son), all the energies of his cautious and calculating dis- 
 position are liquified, and flow with a deep and silent constancy, 
 that, "like the Propontic and the Hellespont, knows no retiring 
 ebb, but keeps due on." He has ambitious hopes for his favourite
 
 214 THE CAPITALIST. 
 
 object ; but great consideration. He attempts not visibly to con- 
 troul actions : in this, as in all important matters, he is naturally 
 too sound of understanding to endeavour to shape all events to 
 his desires : he knows circumstances are but the passing waves of 
 the ceaseless tide of existence, and can but be caught by human 
 ingenuity to turn the wheels of the mill that grinds his fortune. 
 
 The grand warp of his intellect consists in an exaggerated notion 
 of the power and capacity of wealth. He deems it a self-evident 
 proposition, that there is an impassable gulf between the wealthy 
 and the poor. With him, the human race is divided into two 
 classes ; those who have wealth and those who have not. This, to 
 him, is a tangible indisputable distinction, that the commonest sense 
 must acknowledge. This is no fanciful division of the metaphysician 
 or the herald : this is no subtlety of the politician or the lawyer : 
 but a plain, visible matter of fact : and, like the daylight, can only 
 be denied by the stone-blind. 
 
 His manners are gracious to his inferiors ; easy to his equals ; 
 somewhat arrogant to his superiors. Their most prominent trait 
 is an inclination to satire, which is sadly curtailed by a meagreness 
 of imagination. This taste is chiefly manifested in his polite gibes 
 at a brother- Capitalist, who in endeavouring to secure to himself the 
 whole cake of a loan, has burnt his fingers. What years of joke is 
 this ? What endless stores of bon-mots after the fourth glass ? How 
 well is a date pointed by " Was it not about the time of the Hague 
 Loan, Saunders : " or, " When you made that million by the Spanish 
 affair?" 
 
 His politics are the wonder and sphynx's riddle to the vulgar and 
 the uninitiated. A Capitalist, and the opponent of government? 
 Bound to the aristocracy by wealth and connection, and yet a decrier 
 of the corn-laws ? An advocate for the Reform Bill ; and, ay, even 
 for the Ballot ? rich and expensive : refined in taste, and fastidious 
 as to connections ; yet the defender of mobs, and the promoter of 
 tumultuous petitions ? He bewilders the country gentlemen ; he 
 beguiles the multitude ; he is an enigma. The newspaper sages are 
 even puzzled ; they know not what to predicate of him ; to day he 
 votes for equality and cheap bread ; and to-morrow for high prices 
 and despotism. Sometimes he deeply sympathises with republican 
 France ; sometimes exults with autocratic Russia ; now speaks for 
 the Poles ; now denounces the Christines. His changes are as 
 subtle as the weather, and as extreme. 
 
 But he is still consistent to one principle, and that is his own 
 principal. In the abolition of the corn-laws, he descries the greater
 
 THE CAPITALIST. 21.5 
 
 demmd for capital, and sometimes he sees the Ballot would help the 
 question. For the other matters, the same causes may apply ; and 
 the only barometer that can index his principle, is that which affects 
 his interest. 
 
 The Capitalist, like other individuals of the genus " homo," will 
 get old : not that it is visible in the obsoleteness of his dress, or 
 manner ; for it is his great characteristic to keep in strictest mea- 
 sure with the times, never out-stepping or short-falling of its foremost 
 line. But crows'-feet will start; even light hair will get lighter ; legs 
 will wither, and the trunk sink. Still he is cheerful and debonair 
 thanks to his temperate living and serene disposition. But his 
 directorships are given up ; even the Bank. He takes but little 
 interest in foreign policy, and at last a paragraph goes quickly round 
 the papers, that he has bought the whole of Westmoreland, or the 
 half of Yorkshire. In fact, that the Capitalist is gone, merged in 
 the landed proprietor. 
 
 Here we might leave him : but we have inspired ourselves, and 
 we therefore hope our readers, with a desire to follow him to 
 that last change of all, a bourse wherein many opposite spirits are 
 assembled. 
 
 He thinks of a barony for himself, but varies his resolution 
 into procuring one for his son-in-law, and so in time for his favourite 
 grandson, a youth of great promise, and whom he still hopes he 
 may just live to see Chancellor of the Exchequer ; or, at all events, 
 President of the Board of Trade. He only sees his first election for 
 the East Riding of Yorkshire. He had ridden three successive days 
 canvassing for him and it was remarked at the time, as was acutely 
 said afterwards, " that it was very hot." He complained of fatigue, 
 and was carried to the sofa, and thence to his chamber, from which 
 he was only borne, in all the blazonry of that last remnant of pomp 
 (a rich man's funeral) to the vaults of the church he had founded in 
 the vicinity of his new mansion. His children mourn him deeply 
 his son-in-law politely his grandchildren boisterously his servants 
 sincerely the neighbours not at all his fellow Capitalists respect- 
 fully and the world garrulously.
 
 BY PAUL PRESDERGAST. 
 
 Two jolly gownsmen, drinking at " The Dragon," or, perhaps we had 
 better say, at a certain hotel, in a certain street, not far from a cer- 
 tain square, had just emptied their third decanter. 
 
 " Waiter ! bring another bottle of claret," cried one of the twain 
 in accents not remarkable for clearness. 
 
 " Dimsdale," said his companion, " you must have no more 
 wine ; you have had too much already ; you 're drunk." 
 
 " Nonsense, Compton ; you know I never get drunk so soon as 
 you. Waiter, I say! Waiter!" 
 
 " He can't hear you, the rascal. Here, waiter, you thief." 
 
 " Yessir yessir!" 
 
 " Bring another bottle, will you ?'' 
 
 " Instanter, do you hear ? and take that with you ! " 
 
 " Do n't be unpleasant, sir ; thanky, sir, yessir ! " 
 
 Didn't miss your tip there, Jemes," said a brother official, as 
 the Waiter, rubbing the part on which the pointed toe of a fashionable 
 boot had told rather too strongly to be quite agreeable, bustled down 
 the coffee-room. 
 
 " If them gents gives you two shillin' presently, I should rather 
 83y you '11 have had two and a kick," said another. 
 
 " I should be a little tenacious, though, of goin' too near them 
 next time," remarked a third. 
 
 " Gentlemen as is tipsy is often playful," said the recipient of 
 Mr. Dimsdale's bounty. " They laughs as wins." 
 
 And accordingly the Waiter laughs. When his bodily feelings are 
 materially outraged, he is hurt, of course, like other men : but he 
 will bear any given amount of insult and abuse without minding it 
 in the least, so long as he is sufficiently paid. We said that the 
 Waiter laughs ; it is more correct to say that he smiles. However 
 harassed, hurried, or hunted he may be ; by what name soever he 
 may be called ; whatever may be thrown at his head, provided that 
 it does not hit him his countenance still beams with a placid, resigned
 
 Away, you rogue ; dost thou tot hear them call ?
 
 THE WAITER. 217 
 
 and gentle smile : a smile of satisfaction, content, and hope ; of satis- 
 faction with himself, of content with his lot, and of hope of his fee. 
 
 The individual at whom we have just taken a glance belongs, in 
 a double sense, to the " higher circles ;" for, in the first place, he 
 attends upon the description of people so called, and, in the second, 
 is himself a person of some rank in his own profession. Indeed, his 
 dress avouches as much ; for, were it not that his clothes do not fit 
 him quite so well as they might do, and that he wears white cotton 
 stockings, his decent suit of black and his white neckcloth might 
 cause him to be taken (the expression of his face not being observed) 
 for a young clergyman. Perhaps, as a facetious friend has sug- 
 gested to us, he may conceive himself entitled to assume a clerical 
 appearance, from the circumstance of his taking orders. 
 
 The complexion of the Waiter is usually such as to render him 
 what young ladies call " interesting;" that is to say, it is very 
 sallow. At least, it would make him " interesting," were his face 
 uniformly devoid of colour ; but it unfortunately happens, in a great 
 many cases, that a transference merely not an obliteration of tint, 
 is what takes place, and that the nose is enriched at the expense of 
 the cheeks. He is generally knock-kneed ; but the peculiarity by 
 which he is especially distinguished is that, from frequently running 
 up and down stairs, the ligaments of the sole having given way, 
 and its arch having been consequently destroyed, his foot bears a 
 strong resemblance to a barge, or a flat-bottomed boat. The Waiter's 
 voice is remarkable. It has all the persuasive or, so to speak, the 
 saponaceous qualities by which the accents of the linen-draper, 
 fancy-stationer, trinket-seller, and, in short, of all those whose busi- 
 ness it is to coax people into parting with their money, are charac- 
 terised ; combined with all that rapidity of utterance with which a 
 parish doctor questions his paupers. The Waiter must keep a tongue 
 as expeditious as it is civil in his head ; and this is no very easy feat 
 to accomplish : but, like making a bow on the tight rope, though 
 difficult, it may be achieved by practice. It asks, however, divers 
 grimaces and contortions of the mouth in the due performance of 
 it ; and, even if the speaker combined in his own person the know- 
 ledge of a Walker and of a Murray, would be totally incompatible 
 with either correct pronunciation or diction. 
 
 The Waiter has great opportunities of observing human nature, 
 and enjoys the singular advantage of very frequently surveying it 
 at a time when men are proverbially unreserved. He needs only 
 to be a good listener, to become a wise man. What discussions 
 must he not have heard on manners, morals, literature, politics, 
 78 c t
 
 218 THE WAITKR. 
 
 metaphysics, and theology particularly on the three last subjects ? 
 How well, on these at least, he might learn to talk ! But he has 
 something else to think about, and something better to do ; he in- 
 tends to be, one day, himself landlord of an hotel ; and, in the mean 
 time, his perquisites are to be earned. 
 
 The conversation of the young gentlemen whom we left over their 
 wine, was such, perhaps, that our waiter lost much by not attending 
 to it ; but it will be more to the present purpose to relate his own, 
 carried on, at the farther extremity of the coffee-room, with a co- 
 adjutor. 
 
 " Well, them young gents in No. 5 certainly enjoy their wine ; 
 that 's one thing I know." 
 
 " Uncommon, Jemes But what sort of gents, now, should you 
 say they wor ?" 
 
 " Why, 'Vausity, I take it, William. Arry, you 're wanted 
 pay, No. 8. 
 
 " 'Vausity! what, Stinkymalee, as they say ? Can't be, surely." 
 
 " Law love you, no ! Oxford or Cambridge gents ; parsons, you 
 know, as is to be." 
 
 " C'legians you mean ; ah ! 1 should n't wonder. I 'm partial to 
 C'legians, they 're always sure to tip." 
 
 " Tip, or tipple, did you say, William ? " 
 
 " He ! he ! he ! a little bit of both, I should rather say." 
 
 " Some of 'em is peculiar pleasant when they 've got a mind. 
 What do you think the long one hast me just now ? " 
 
 " What ? I can't guess." 
 
 " What I 'd take for my choker." 
 
 " Well, that was a question ! What did you say ? '' 
 
 " Whatever they 'd please to give me. It 's always best to 
 humour 'era, you know. Well, and didn't you 'ear what the short 
 one, 'im in the cut-away, said of you?" 
 
 " No did he though ? What was it ? " 
 
 " He said you was just like a Sim as he knew at ' John's.' " 
 
 " Sim! What's a Sim? I never 'card a Waiter called a Sim 
 before." 
 
 "Waiter! Bless you, 't ant a Waiter; ' John's' isn't a otel; it's one 
 of their college places ; and I fancy a Sim is some top sawyer there." 
 
 " My eye, is it ? That 's a nicish young gent that short one : 
 he did 'nt 'urt you much just now, did he ? " 
 
 1 Not remarkable. A precious nice life they must lead ! To hear 
 them two talk, now, you'd say they'd been tipsy every night for the 
 last week. Ah ! should n't I jist like to have their time of it ! "
 
 JHE WAITER 219 
 
 *' Do n't you wish you may get it, Jemes ? What ! do you want 
 to be a hangel at once, as the old man said to his wife ?" 
 
 " Well, to be sure, we must take what comes. But what chaps 
 they are to laugh ! One of 'em hast what cold meat there was. 
 Says I, ' There's some very nice cold 'am in the 'ouse, sir.' I don't 
 know what there was in my sayin' that ; but it seemed to amuse 
 'em uncommon." 
 
 " Ah ! and as I was goin' by up at that end of the rocm when 
 they fust come in, ' Dimsdale,' says the longest of 'em to t'other, 
 ' why do n't you wear your 'air like that 'ere ? ' and then the little 
 one looks at me, and out he bustes like fun." 
 
 " Well, them sort of jokes breaks no bones. Allo! That's they 
 callin'. Comin', sir ; yessir!" 
 
 And away tripped the Waiter. 
 
 " Waiter, let us know what we have to pay." 
 
 " Paysir, yessir, directlysir, thankysir." 
 
 " Now that fellow will be an age, I suppose. What is that 
 placard there, look, on the back of that gentleman in difficulties. 
 
 "There are two Oh no! I see What is it? Noble Art 
 Self Defence Grand set-to ! Let us go. 
 
 " Very well. Waiter, you vagabond ! be quick.' 
 
 " Yessir. Sorry to keep you waitin' sir. Bill, sir ? two 
 fifteen." 
 
 " There, take that we've no time to stop for change ; and 
 now be off, and call a cab immediately." 
 
 " Thankysir ; much obliged t' ye, sir ; yessir, directly, sir.'" 
 
 We have noticed the somewhat canonical style which charac- 
 terises the Waiter at an hotel. In this respect, he is resembled 
 by Waiters at inferior inns and coffee-houses, in the same pro- 
 portion, perhaps, as that in which a rich rector may be by a poor 
 curate. The Waiter, however, at an eating-house, is not always, 
 nor indeed generally, thus attired. His neckcloth may be a black 
 one ; he may wear a blue coat with brass buttons ; or he may be 
 equipped in a striped linen jacket, either of an ordinary make, or 
 of that species sometimes denominated a " duck-hunter " His 
 style and manners, too, are peculiar ; and his abbreviations, mo- 
 difications of grammar, and technical terms, are more numerous 
 than those of any other Waiter. He has also that which, were 
 there any music in it, might be called a tune for all that he has 
 occasion to say in the way of business, either when he is calling 
 to the cook below, reciting the bill of fare, or enumerating the 
 liabilities of a customer. The manner in which he cries, Roce-
 
 2'20 THE WAITER. 
 
 beefantatoes," " Bilemutnancapesauce," " Aplpudn," or " Rubub- 
 pie," is as definite, if not quite so melodious (though there may 
 be more opinions than one on this point), as the song of a bird. 
 All this is owing to his desire to supply as many people as pos- 
 sible with their dinners in as short as possible a time, and to 
 carry out the principle, not always so successfully acted on, of 
 "the greatest happiness yf the greatest number." 
 
 May we be permitted to observe, by the way, that " the 
 greatest happiness of the greatest number " is precisely that 
 which the Eating House Waiter, aided by the cook, butcher, 
 and baker, is so instrumental in enabling us to enjoy ? 
 
 " Waiter, I ordered some roast pig an hour ago ." " Coming 
 up, sir, d'rectly sir. John, hurry that pig! Porter for you, 
 sir ? In one minute, sir. " 'Erald," did you say, sir ? here 's 
 " The Times." What d 'you please to take, sir ?" 
 
 " What have you got ?" 
 
 " Jugdare, sir, jist up aunchamut'n breastavealanoystus, very 
 nice curry fowl, sir rocegoose leg a lamb an' sparags." Hav- 
 ing thus said, the Waiter begins rubbing the table-cloth with 
 his napkin. 
 
 " Hum ! I '11 take some jugged hare." 
 
 " Jugdare, sir. Yessir. Any vegetable, sir ?" 
 
 " Potatoes." 
 
 " 'Tatoes, sir ?" Yessir." Hereupon, he bellows down a pipe 
 " Jugdare antatoes !" at the top of his voice. 
 
 "Waiter, bring me a pint of ale." 
 
 " Hale, sir ? Yessir. Burton or Kennet, sir ? Burton sir. 
 Yessir, in one moment, sir." 
 
 "Waiter! Hallo! Here! What's to pay V 
 
 " Yessir. Vealanam-eight, 'tates-one, one bread, goozpie-four, 
 cheese and afpinetale. One-and-five, sir. Thankysir." 
 
 The remuneration of the Eating House Waiter, though based 
 on the voluntary system, is yet a fixed one, like a physician's 
 fee. His honorarium is the moderate sum of one penny. He 
 has frequently a help (we use the word in its American sense) in 
 the shape of a damsel, who has sometimes no mean pretensions 
 to personal charms ; on which account she is appointed to preside 
 over a separate room, whither it generally happens that a number of 
 young men connected with the hospitals repair; and where also one 
 or two old gentlemen turned of seventy, are very often to be seen. 
 
 At a chop-house, properly so called, the Waiter, again, is a 
 distinct personage. His dress is not so strictly professional as
 
 THE WAITER. 221 
 
 that of the rest of his brethren, and he differs, moreover, from 
 the generality of them, in not being so intolerably civil as they 
 are, and also, in many instances, in being a very honest fellow, 
 chop-houses, old established ones at least, have certain daily 
 frequenters, with all of whose faces, and with some of whose 
 names, the Waiter is perfectly acquainted, and to whom he is 
 himself equally well known: so familiarly, in fact, that they al- 
 ways call him by his Christian name, Tom, George, or Ben, as 
 the case may be. The business of these places being conducted 
 on a systematic plan, from which no deviation is ever made, the 
 Waiter has nothing more to do than to go through his customary 
 routine of duties, assured, by the continued patronage of the same 
 persons, that he gives universal satisfaction, and under no fear 
 whatever of not obtaining his gratuity, or, in vernacular language, 
 of "missing his tip." On such easy terms is he with his visitors, 
 that it is not at all an uncommon thing to hear one of them enter- 
 ing the room, exchange sentiments with him concerning the weather, 
 or on the agricultural, or even political state of the country ; or 
 answer his inquiries respecting some former guest. And then the 
 order is given, and "Cook two mutton down together," "One rump- 
 steak thoroughly done," or "Two pork to follow one another," 
 shouted by the Waiter, either to the upper or nether regions, secures 
 its speedy execution. 
 
 There are certain taverns in London, chiefly in the neighbour- 
 hood of the large theatres, well known to most young men as places 
 where, after the play, a tolerably cheap supper may be expeditiously 
 obtained. At these, also, the Waiter is commonly invoked by the 
 name which his godfathers and godmothers (if he ever had any) 
 bestowed on him. To be sure, he is pretty well known to not a 
 few of his patrons ; but the familiarity with which he is addressed by 
 some of them, arises from a different cause ; many of the younger 
 sort esteeming it fine and manly to do or say anything wherebj 7 it 
 may appear that they are frequently out at night, and, by the same 
 token, no longer subject to controul. Perhaps, too, they feel, if not 
 some degree of regar ibr the Waiter, some admiration, at least, for 
 his bustling, off-hand, and independent manner, of which their own, 
 in society, is sometimes not a bad imitation. From him and his 
 fellows, moreover, they acquire divers additions to their vocabulary, 
 their knowledge of which they take good care to evince on all conve- 
 nient occasions. But as they learn something from the Waiter, so the 
 Waiter learns something from them. A slight alteration (if we may 
 take so great a liberty with the words of Shakspere) will render
 
 222 
 
 what Falstaff says of Justice Shallow and his servants exactly in 
 point : " They, by observing him, do bear themselves like waiter- 
 like clerks ; he, by conversing with them, is turned into a clerk-like 
 waiter." Sometimes, he is even a more decent-looking fellow than 
 they ; and we have seen one individual of this class, who, by the 
 orderly arrangement of his exterior, composed and leisurely voice, 
 and serious and tranquil physiognomy, might really, not being 
 engaged in the performance of his official duties, be supposed to be 
 a member of one of the learned professions. This Waiter, however, 
 is a distinct being, the qualities by which he is marked are peculiarly 
 his own : it is very evident that he is a Waiter who thinks for him- 
 self, and highly probable that he is an educated Waiter. He must 
 surely have been brought up at an academy and one, too, con- 
 ducted on the principle of the school advertised some time ago, in a 
 provincial paper, where instruction in the art of behaviour was made 
 an extra charge, the terms of the gymnasium being thus stated : 
 " A new school tuppuns a weke, and them as larns manners pays 
 tuppuns more." We do not mean to insinuate that he paid so small 
 a sum as " tuppuns ;" on the contrary, it is quite clear that he has 
 been indoctrinated in a first-rate, and, therefore, an expensive style. 
 The way in which he responds to the demand of " Waiter, what's 
 to pay ? ;> is a thing worth observing. He speaks, unlike all other 
 Waiters, in a low, and measured tone, and in an extremely confi- 
 dential manner ; his body, supported by means of the knuckles of 
 one of his hands on the table, slightly inclining towards the person 
 he is addressing ; and his other hand, the arm being bent at right 
 angles, resting on his hip. 
 
 " Pay, did you say, sir? Ye-a-s, sir. What have you "ad?" 
 We feel confident that no Waiter could say had. 
 
 " Let me see why" (gentlemen who have taken sundry pints 
 of stout, and glasses of grog, often find their recollection a little 
 foggy) " why, I've had a pint of stout." 
 
 " Ye-a-a-a-s, sir." 
 
 " Pint o'stout Welch rare-bit," 
 
 " Welch rare-bit; ye-a-a-a-s, sir." 
 
 " Welch rare-bit ; two poached eggs." 
 
 " Ye-a-a-a-s, sir. Whiskey, sir ? " 
 
 " Whiskey ? eh ? yes no gin ; two goes o'gin."- 
 
 " Any cigars, sir ?" 
 
 " Cigars? oh, ah! yes two cigars." 
 
 " Ye-a-a-s, sir. Pint of stout, five ; Welch rare-bit, seven 
 twelve ; two poached eggs, eight cne and eight ; two goes of
 
 THE WAITER. 223 
 
 gin, and two cigars, fourteen two and ten. Two and ten, sir. 
 Thank you, sir ; much obliged to you, sir. Wish you a good 
 evening, sir." 
 
 Waiters at these taverns usually go through the process of calcu- 
 lation, continually turning their heads about, and looking alternately 
 over each shoulder, apparently with the object of preventing any 
 unscrupulous gentleman from making a clandestine retreat without 
 paying his shot. 
 
 The Waiter at a " Free-and-Easy," or a place where " Har- 
 monic Meetings" are held, looks, in general, like a great scamp ; 
 and is, most probably, what he appears to be. He is always dirty 
 and uncombed, and, not unfrequently, impudent. His business, in 
 addition to receiving and executing the commands of those present, 
 is to run about, in the intervals between the songs, with a large 
 tray, on which certain small measures, containing alcohol in various 
 forms are disposed, ci'ying, " Gentlemen, give your orders ; give 
 your orders, gentlemen ; whiskey, brandy, gin, and rum rum, gin, 
 brandy, whiskey. Brandy, sir whiskey, sir gin, sir rum, sir ; 
 rum, whiskey, brandy, gin ; give your orders, gentlemen ; gentle- 
 men, give your orders." 
 
 " Now, then, waiters, look alive there !" cries the mditre d'hotel, 
 and Coryphaeus of the songsters. 
 
 " Fried-'am-an'-eggs for you, sir?" " Sassages, did that gen- 
 tleman say? Sassages is all gone, sir." " Go-' whiskey, for you? 
 This here is whiskey." "Tripe, sir? Yessir." "Dozen 'iceters? 
 in one minute. Not done, sir sorry for it, sir." " Go-'rum, 
 did you say? go-'rum, sir." 
 
 " Order, order ! Silence, waiters. Gentlemen, if you please, 
 I '11 sing a song. 
 
 * * * * # 
 
 ' Where Will Watch, the bold smuggler, that famed lawless fellow, 
 Once feared, now forgot, sleeps in peace wi-i-i-ith the dead !" 
 
 " Now, then, Waiter, bring that gentleman's kidneys. Chop and 
 shalots for the gentleman oppo-site. Look alive there be brisk ! " 
 
 " Kidneys for you, sir ? Copy of the song just sung, gentle- 
 men copy of the song ; celebrated song, sir thanky, sir. Song, 
 gentlemen, song ; orders, gentlemen, orders gentlemen, give your 
 orders ! " 
 
 There may, perhaps, be some other Waiters, who may be 
 arranged in separate classes ; but it appears to us, that the above 
 are all those whom it is worth while to particularise.
 
 224 THE WAITER. 
 
 We understand that the gains of a Waiter at a good coffee-house 
 or hotel, are very considerable ; insomuch, that some of them are 
 enabled to keep their gig, or buggy, and indulge occasionally, on a 
 holiday, with their wives and families, in the delights of a Cockney 
 excursion. That a very considerable number are in a thriving state, 
 is apparent from the fact, that the generality of the younger ones are 
 in a fair way to be married ; that is to say, if we may judge from 
 the flattened curl which adorns the forehead of so many of them ; 
 and which, we believe, is denominated a love-lock. Of the domestic 
 habits and manners of the Waiter, there is not much to be said, as 
 he does not get home till late at night, and is obliged to be stirring 
 with the lark in the morning. Whether, therefore, he beats his 
 wife, for instance, or loves and cherishes her, it is not easy to 
 decide : the probability is, that being very tired, he neither does the 
 one nor the other 
 
 Of the principles and opinions of the Waiter, it may, perhaps, 
 be expected that we should speak ; but it is our conviction that he 
 has none ; for although, as we before remarked, he must neces- 
 sarily hear a great many good things in the course of his life, what- 
 ever enters at one of his ears escapes very speedily at the other. 
 
 We believe, however, that the Waiter has some literary taste, 
 though not of a very refined description ; because we have often 
 observed him, even when the daily papers belonging to the coffee- 
 room have been disengaged, attentively perusing certain publications 
 illustrated with clumsy wood-cuts, to be seen in divers small cigar 
 and snuff-shops in the environs of town. We imagine that he is a 
 considerable patron, in his way, of the unstamped press. It is, 
 moreover, remarkable that, wanting an hour's amusement, and not 
 being inclined to stir out (supposing yourself to be staying at qn 
 inn), if you ask the Waiter to bring you some book, he is sure to 
 produce the " Terrific Register," the " Newgate Calendar," " God's 
 Revenge against Murder," or some such interesting compilation. 
 
 Having thus concluded our sketch of the Waiter, we shall only 
 observe, that should any alteration for the better, in the tie of the 
 neckcloth, the cut of the coat, the style of the hair, the gait, 
 manners, morals, or pronunciation of his fraternity, take place in 
 consequence of our labours, we shall feel, in no ordinary degree, the 
 emotions of pride and satisfaction ; of pride at the attainment of our 
 end, and of satisfaction in the indulgence of our philanthropy.
 
 THE COACHMAN. 
 
 He will bear you easily, and reins well.
 
 THE COACHMAN AND THE GUARD. 
 
 BY NIMROD. 
 
 WHOEVER doubts the importance of a Coachman's calling, admits 
 that he has not looked much into books. There is none more 
 classical ; few have been considered more honourable ; in fact, we 
 should write our inkstand dry were we to enumerate a tithe of 
 the honours paid to those who have distinguished themselves in 
 the management of the reins and the whip. One of the finest 
 passages in Virgil, and one in which he is thought to have ex- 
 celled Homer when alluding to this subject, is his description of 
 a skilful charioteer, in which he is said by one of his critics to 
 mount the soul of the reader, as it were, on the box with him, 
 and whirl him along in the race. Then when JEneas takes up 
 Pindarus into his chariot, to go against Diomed, he compliments 
 him with the choice either to fight or manage the reins. Nor is 
 the answer of the hero less worthy of remark : he tells ./Eneas that 
 it would be better that he should drive his own horses, lest by 
 not feeling their proper master's hand, they might become unruly, 
 and bring them into danger. That men of high quality were thus 
 employed is evident from the mention by Homer of the skill of 
 his heroes in the driving art. Both Hector and Nestor are re- 
 presented as great in the art ; and after the manner of the former, 
 the father of Hercules, although he is said to have left other ex- 
 ercises to masters, was himself his instructor in the management 
 of horses in harness. Again ; Theocritus assigns the celebrated 
 charioteer Amphitrion, as the tutor to his own son, on the box, as 
 a matter of the greatest consequence : 
 
 To drive the chariot, and with steady skill, 
 To turn, and yet not break, the bending wheel, 
 Amphitrion kindly did instruct his son : 
 Great in the art, for he himself had won 
 Vast precious prizes on the Argive plains ; 
 And still the chariot which he drove remains, 
 Unhurt in th' course, though time has broke the falling reins. 
 79 D D
 
 22fi THE COACHMAN. 
 
 But independently of poetical associations, the Coacnman is illus- 
 trious from his connexion with classical lore. The car of Cuchullin 
 is magnificently described by Ossian, even the horses' names being 
 given. Pelops is immortalised by the first of Grecian bards, for his 
 ability to drive at the rate of fourteen miles in the hour ; and the 
 story of the ivory arm is but a metaphorical illustration of the merits 
 of his punishing whip hand, when contending for a wager with a 
 royal brother whip. In addition to all this, the Coachman is cele- 
 brated for the morality with which his name is associated : " All 
 the world 's a stage ! " says Shakspere. 
 
 So much for the honour of the ancient charioteer. Neither is 
 there anything like " small potatoes " in the character and de- 
 meanour of the modern Coachman. He is not only, next to his 
 master, the greatest man in the inn yard, but there are times when 
 his word of command is quite as absolute as was that of Wellington 
 at Waterloo. For example : who dares to disobey the summons 
 of " Now, gentlemen, if you please," given as he walks out of a 
 small road-side house, on a winter's night, into which himself and 
 passengers have just stepped to wet their whistles, whilst the horses 
 are being changed ? Then see him enter a country town " the 
 swell dragsman ;" or what Prior calls : 
 
 " the youthful, handsome charioteer, 
 
 Firm in his seat, and running his career;" 
 
 why, every young woman's eyes are directed towards him ; and 
 not a few of the old ones as well. But can we wonder at it? 
 How neatly, how appropriately to his calling, is he generally at- 
 tired ! How healthy he looks ! What an expressive smile he 
 bestows upon some prettier lass than common; partly on his own 
 account, and partly that his passengers may perceive he is thus 
 favoured by the fair sex. But in truth, road Coachmen are gene- 
 ral favourites with womankind. It may be, perhaps, that in the 
 tenderness of their nature, they consider their occupation to be 
 a dangerous one, and on the long-established principle, that " none 
 but the brave deserve the fair," they come next to the soldier 
 in female estimation, amongst a certain class. 
 
 But how manifold are the associations connected with a road 
 Coachman's calling ? The great source and principle of human 
 happiness, in a worldly sense, is novelty ; and who can indulge in 
 this equally with the traveller. To spend our lives with one set 
 of unchanging objects, would afford no variety of sensations, 
 images, or ideas ; all around us, indeed, would soon have the
 
 COACHMAN. 2'27 
 
 sameness of a cell ; whereas, to the traveller every fresh scene is 
 a picture, and every object affords food for a contemplative mind. 
 In fact, the benefits of travelling are innumerable: it liberalises 
 the mind, and enlarges the sphere of observation by comparison ; 
 dispels local prejudices, short-sightedness, and caprice ; and has 
 always been considered essential to the character of an accom- 
 plished gentleman. How delightful is it, then, to live in a country 
 in which, as in England, travelling is so perfect, and can be occa- 
 sionally indulged in with comfort, by all classes of the community. 
 We are denied a passage through the air ; but who can wish for 
 anything of this nature beyond being conveyed at the rate of ten 
 miles in the hour, on a road nearly as hard and as smooth as a 
 barn floor, and by horses that appear to be but playing with their 
 work ? Then the extraordinary, the unique comfort of an English 
 road-side inn ! There is nothing like it in all the world besides ; 
 and since first we read of our Harry the Fifth's revellings with 
 FalstafF, and the merry men of Eastcheap, at the sign of " The 
 Boar's Head," we have always had a penchant for those temples 
 of jollities and comfort English inns. Next, a modern stage 
 coach ! what a pretty specimen of mechanism reduced to practical 
 usefulness and comfort does it exhibit ; and how lamentable is it 
 I hat it should be about to be put aside, to make room for that 
 " nasty, wheezin', crackin', gaspin', puffin', bustin' monster " as 
 Master Humphrey calls it the steam-engine and its appurtenances, 
 with which England is now cursed ; and this, perhaps, for the 
 rest of her existence as a country, to the utter extinction of her 
 pastoral character, heretofore her most beautiful and distinguishing 
 feature ! Then, again, the really classically dressed healthy-looking 
 Coachmen and Guards, metamorphosed into smoke-dried stokers, and 
 greasy engineers ; their passengers conveyed through the country like 
 thieves, amidst hosts of police-officers and constables, and locked up 
 in vans, as if on their road to Newgate ; and all this with the chance 
 of being blown up into the clouds, or decapitated on the spot ! 
 
 Quitting this disgusting scene, let us revert to the once boasted 
 heroes of the road ; and looking at the " HEADS " that are pre- 
 sented to us, endeavour to illustrate the originals. According to 
 the rule of seniores priores, we will commence with the " old ones " 
 the old fashioned Coachman of former days ; and we know not 
 how we can better develope his character and calling, than by 
 letting him at once speak for himself. We will, then, introduce 
 him in conversation with his box-passenger, on his first start from a 
 country town, a hundred and fifty miles west of the metropolis,
 
 228 THE COACHM VN, 
 
 But, reader, observe this: no Coachmen of the Old school, nor 
 many of the new, say a word to their passengers for the first 
 two miles of the journey. They have sundry important matters to 
 occupy, if not monoplise, their ideas for the time. There is the 
 way-bill ; the parcels to be dropped on the road ; the state of the 
 horses since their last journey ; a calculation of their own lawful 
 receipts, together with how much may be added to them by the 
 help of the short pocket ; and sundry other affairs which concern 
 only themselves. Let us, however, suppose the ice to be broken, 
 and after a slight survey of his person, imagine our Jehu of the 
 old school, thus addressing his fellow-traveller : 
 
 Coacttman. Booked through, sir ? 
 
 Passenger. Yes . 
 
 C. Nice day for your journey, and you'll find this a good coach. 
 
 P. Not very fast. 
 
 C. If she aint fast, she aint slow ; and though she loads neavy, 
 she keeps her time. You '11 be in Lunnun to-morrow morning, sir, 
 as the clock hits nine. 
 
 P. A good coach for Coachman and Guard, I '11 be bound. 
 
 C. No great things, sir. We does contrive to make tongue 
 and buckle meet, as the saying is, and that 's all ; although I have 
 been a Coachman thirty years come next May, I am worth next 
 to nothing. Then, to be sure I 've had a heavy family, and if it 
 was n't for the help of the short pocket now and then, I know not 
 what would have 'come on us 
 
 P. Short pocket ! 
 
 C. Some calls it shouldering, sir. 
 
 P. Oh, I understand you; you mean occasionally putting some 
 money into your own pockets, instead of into your employer's ? 
 
 C. Why, to be sure, sir ; I can't say but it is a bit wrong, but 
 a Coachman's place is no 'heritance, and there aint half-a-dozen 
 in England as doesn't do it, and very few proprietors as doesn't 
 know it. 
 
 P. And will they stand it? 
 
 C. Not all on 'em, sir ; nor some passengers wont if they 
 knows it. For instance : the last journey but one, I axed a pas- 
 senger who sat behind me on the roof, if he would walk on a 
 little way on the road, while I changed horses, and he said he 
 would. At last, he asked me why? "Why, sir," said I, "I 
 means to swallow you this morning." " Swallow me ! " said he, 
 " what do you mean ? " On my telling him I meant to put his 
 fare (it was but a trifle, as he warnt going very far, nor warnt
 
 THE COACHMAN. 229 
 
 on the bill) into my own pocket, he said, he should do no sich 
 thing. Now, says I to myself, what sort of a chap can this be ? 
 And who do you think he was ? Why a Methodist parson ! Blow 
 me, says I to the Guard, but I didn't think there was as much 
 honesty in all the Methodist parsons in the world. 
 
 P. Then all proprietors will not stand shouldering ? 
 
 C. No, sir. I lost a sarvice by only shouldering a soldier two 
 stages, and made it a rule never to shoulder another of that sort 
 of live lumber. A proprietor can see 'em a mile off by the colour 
 of their coat, and the feathers in their cap. 
 
 P. Well, it was no feather in your cap ? 
 
 C. No, nor out of it, for the coach was no great things, and I 've 
 been on this ever since. 
 
 P. Driving must be a healthy occupation, and as you say you have 
 been a Coachman nearly thirty years, you prove it to be such, for 
 you look hale and hearty. 
 
 C. No doubt but it 's healthy, sir ; that is to say, provided a 
 man takes his natural rest, and keeps the right hand down. For 
 my own part, I never lay rest a score journeys in my life, except 
 when I broke this here leg, and had my hand frost-bitten. 
 
 P. What do you mean by keeping the right hand down ? 
 
 C. Why, you know, sir (smiling}, we takes the glass in the right 
 hand ; what I means is, not to take too much liquor. 
 
 F. TT ' T 5iit do you call too much liquor ? 
 
 C. Why, sir, d' ye see, we stands in need, and especially o'er 
 this high and cold ground, of something comfortable to keep out 
 the weather. For my own part, I never called myself much of a 
 drinker ; but what curious notions some persons have about what 
 a man like me should drink. 
 
 P. You rather might say, what a man like you does drink, or 
 ought to drink. 
 
 C. Well, sir, have it that way if you like : a few journeys back, 
 I had a doctor on the box along with me, and he would have it 
 that hot rum-and-water and that's the liquor I always takes on 
 the road is poison. 
 
 P. Poison! 
 
 C. Yes, sir, downright poison ; so much so, he said, he was quite 
 sure that two glasses every day would kill a man in three years. 
 
 P. And what did you say to that remark ? 
 
 C. Why, you know, sir, it warnt for me to contradict a 
 doctor ; but I made bold to ask him, what sort of stuff he thought 
 I must be made of, for, said I, I have drunk no less than six
 
 230 THE COACHMAN. 
 
 every day, on the road, for the last nineteen years, besides what 
 I takes with my dinner and supper, and something comfortable 
 with my pipe at night ; and I do n't know now, whether the 
 'Surance Office people would n't have my life before the doctor's, 
 for he looks as white in the face as my near leader does. 
 
 P. You must meet with all sorts of people in your daily vocation. 
 
 C. Yes, and of all sizes too; I consider myself no small weight, 
 but I had a gentleman alongside me on the box a few journeys back, 
 that made me look like a shrimp. I axed him what he weighed, 
 and he said, six-and-twenty stone on the weigh-bridge. for no scales 
 would hold him. 
 
 P. Now what description of passengers pay you best ? 
 
 C. Why, sir, next to a drunken sailor, just paid off, there is 
 nothing like Eton schoolboys, and Oxford gentlemen. You see, 
 sir, when they leaves school, or the "Varsity, they are very happy 
 at the thoughts of getting away from the big wigs, and their books ; 
 and when they returns, they are full of money, and do n't think 
 much of a few shillings ? 
 
 P, But the drunken sailor. 
 
 C. Pardon me, sir ; I do n't mean to say, all sailors are 
 drunkards, but I mean to say this, there 's nothing, in our line, 
 comes near a sailor, a little sprung, with money in his pocket. 
 When I drove the old " Liverpool Marcury," commonly called on the 
 road (saving your presence), the " Lousy Liverpool," I have sacked 
 two pounds on a journey for weeks together, in the time of war ; 
 and the landlord of the inn at which the coach stopped to breakfast 
 has been heard to say, it was worth five hundred a-year to him. 
 
 P. How could that be ? 
 
 C. How, sir ? Why, Jack, you see, could never eat nothing 
 at that time in the morning ; but calling for something to drink 
 for himself and messmates, would chuck down half-a-guinea, saying 
 he never took no change. 
 
 P. And how came you to lose such a coach as that ? 
 
 C. Aye, that 's the job, sir. I told you before our place is no 
 'heritance ; we had a bad mishap ; we had four horses and three 
 passengers all drowned at one go. 
 
 P. And was you the cause of it ? 
 
 C. Worse luck, I was. 
 
 P. Drunk, I fear ? 
 
 C. No, sir, I warnt drunk, nor warnt sober. I wos what 
 we calls stale drunk ; the liquor wos a dying in me, like ; but 
 that warnt the cause. It wos a terrible foggy night; we had a
 
 THE COACJIJJAN 231 
 
 terrible aw k \vaid bridge to go over; and as bad luck would have 
 it we were shocking badly horsed in that coach every one of 
 the team that night was blind. Now what could be expected in 
 such a case as this, with only one eje among us, and that one 
 wos mine ? I missed the bridge ; into the river we went, drown- 
 ing all the horses, and three drunken sailors asleep, in the inside. 
 Of course, I got the sack. 
 
 P. And what are your worst payers ? 
 
 C. Why, God bless them, sir for I loves them to my very heart 
 for all that, and have had two heavy families by two wives women 
 are the worst, and parsons next. Many a woman thinks she 
 behaves handsome, if she gives a Coachman sixpence for driving 
 her fifty miles, and helping her to swear that her child aint seven 
 years old, when she knows it is eight, and ought to pay full fare ; 
 and as to parsons, you might as well expect to squeeze blood out 
 of turnips, as more than a shilling out of them, especially those who 
 have their hats turned up behind, and a bit of a rose in front, like 
 that at the side of our coach-horse's bridle-fronts. But I sarved 
 one of them out some years back. I happened to swear twice on 
 the journey, when he made, that an excuse for not giving me 
 anything. Well, sir, when I sets him down at his house, he wanted 
 his carpet bag ; and also a heavy trunk that was in the roof: "You 
 shall have your carpet-bag, sir," said I ; "but as you have done your 
 duty, I must do mine. I shall take your trunk to the office, and you 
 will have seven-and-sixpence to pay for it." If he had given me some- 
 thing, you see, he would have had nothing to pay for his trunk. 
 
 P. I am at a loss to know how you distinguish your horses, when 
 you have occasion to speak of them to the various horse-keepers on 
 the road. 
 
 C. You see, sir, some on 'em are named by us, and others by 
 the horse-keepers. For example : this here near-wheeler wos 
 christened Alderman in the stable, because he is such a devil to 
 eat ; and his partner, I calls Lawyer, because he wont do nothing 
 without being well paid for it, and as little as he can help, then. 
 In short, he is a shifty-rascal, and no more minds the whip than a 
 lobster does a flea-bite. 
 
 P. And what do you call your present leaders ? 
 
 C. Why, sir, I christened them both myself. The little bay horse 
 on the near side, I calls Barleycorn, because he was bought of a pub- 
 lican, who brews the best ale -on this road ; and his partner, the grey 
 mare, Virago. 
 
 P. Why Virago ?
 
 -<S1 THE COACHMAN. 
 
 C. Well ; to tell you the plain truth, sir, she is much like my 
 first wife ; God rest her soul, she warnt a bad kind of woman 
 neither ; but terrible violent if put out. And that 's the case with 
 that there mare. If I was to hit her two or three times, smartly, 
 under the bars not that I am a-going to insinuvate that my poor 
 missis and I ever came to blows she would n't be herself again 
 for all the rest of the stage. Then again you see, she wears some- 
 thing like a shade before her eyes, what we calls a mope, and this 
 because she 's apt to be what we calls megrimy. 
 
 P. What do you mean ? 
 
 C. Why, if she runs with the sun in her face, she is apt to be 
 taken with the megrims, and then she 's down on her back in a 
 crack, if not pulled up. 
 
 P. Has that anything to do with temper ? 
 
 C. I should n't wonder if it has, for the neighbours used to 
 say, my wife was very full of megrims, and I see no reason why it 
 should n't be the same case with horses. 
 
 P. From what does it proceed ? 
 
 C. I can't say exactly ; but our farrier says it has something 
 to do with the head. Now if I was to give my opinion, it comes 
 from the head in horses, and from the heart in women ; but both 
 are apt to be queer in their temper, and difficult to handle, so as 
 always to keep them in the straight road. Both, you know, sir, 
 are given to bolt at times, and now and then to kick over a trace, 
 or jump over the pole ; not that I am a-going to insinuvate that my 
 first missis ever went so far as this, at least, not to my knowledge. 
 
 P. But, Coachman, I fear your trade will soon be over ; they tell 
 me we are to have steam-carriages on the road as well as elsewhere. 
 
 C. Oh, sir, that wont be in my time nor yours ; the Guard tells 
 me, though, that our Lunnun man has heen talking about them. 
 
 P. Who do you mean by your London man? 
 
 C. Him who drives over the upper ground into Lunnun. These 
 Lunnun men, you see, sir, knows a many things that we down in 
 the country knows nothing about. 
 
 P. Was you never in London. 
 
 C. Never could reach it, sir ; never could get beyond the 
 middle ground. It aint on account of Coachmanship, for I would n't 
 turn my back to any man in England, in our line, and that our 
 proprietors knows, or I should n't have been on this coach for the 
 last nineteen years ; the stopk speaks for that ; but the truth is, 
 we country Coachmen arnt thought quite 'cute enough to bring 
 a coach especially a night coach in and out of Lunnun : so many
 
 THE COACHMAN. 233 
 
 thieves, you know. A brother of mine, who druv the Holyhead 
 mail through Wales, where a man aint hanged above once in fifty 
 years, was done brown the first week he druv a coach into Lunnun : 
 a man comes up to him in Piccadilly, with fine lace on his hat, 
 and says, " Now, Coachman, be alive ; my master's luggage ; there 
 it is, that ere carpet bag;" so, taking the first that was handed 
 down to him, off he goes with it ; and of course, before night, my 
 brother was off the coach. Then they tells me, some of them 
 Lunnun Coachmen are quite like gentlemen, and able to talk with 
 gentlemen on any matter, and in any language. Our Lunnun 
 man, indeed, the passengers tells me, speaks Greek and Latin, 
 and that which the Jews talks, as well. But for my part, I thinks 
 some of those fine Lunnun Coachmen are a little above their 
 situvation ; not but what I would have every man, in our line, 
 keep himself respectable. Indeed, I could not help saying to our 
 Guard, t' other day, when he told me he met one of what they 
 calls the " swell-dragsmen" out of Lunnun, at work in kid gloves, 
 and with a bunch of curls sticking out on the off-side of his hat, 
 that I should like to put a twitch on his nose, and trim him about 
 the head, as we do a horse. I 'd put the dog-skins on him, too ; 
 what real Coachman ever druv in anything but dog-skin gloves ? 
 It 's coming it too strong, sir. Then our Guard told me another 
 queer go. He said, an old fellow-servant of mine had given notice 
 to quit his place at the end of the month, and what do you think 
 this place is ? Why no less than thirty miles in and out of Lunnun, 
 two coaches in twenty-four hours, and all night-work ! Why, I 
 reckon the blockhead wants a place in the House of Commons. 
 
 P. I think your friend is somewhat unreasonable ; but I do n't 
 understand one expression of yours. You speak of " night-work," 
 as a recommendation. 
 
 C. Nothing like " night-work," sir, for a Coachman. Proprietors 
 snug in bed arter a certain hour ; always something to be picked up 
 on such a road as his. 
 
 P. But you must suffer in cold weather ? 
 
 C. Can't say we does n't, sir. I 've had my box-coat so froze 
 that it could not be unbuttoned ; actually obliged to have the 
 buttons cut off before I could get out of it, and then it would stand 
 up for all the world as stiff as if I had been in it. Then meeting 
 a storm of hail sore work for the eyes, because, you see, sir, we 
 are obliged to raise the eyelid, or we can't 
 
 P. I do n't comprehend you. 
 
 C. Why, sir, if you '11 try, you will find that, though you can 
 80 " t tc
 
 23-1 THE COACHMAK. 
 
 see the wheel horses, and half way along the leaders' backs, with 
 your eyelids down, and your head in its natural place, you can't 
 see their heads, still less the road before them, unless you raise 
 your eyelids, and then you expose your eyes to the storm. I have 
 had a pellet of hail strike my one good eye, ready to knock it out of 
 the socket, and what a pretty go would that have been. 
 
 P. Well, driving and guarding a coach through a winter's night, 
 or even a winter's day, must be punishing work, and doubtless 
 attended with no small degree of danger. It is on this considera- 
 tion that I always feel disposed to reward Coachmen and Guards 
 well ; here are three shillings for yourself, and I shall pay the Guard 
 where we leave him. 
 
 C. Much obliged to you, sir ; I shall drink your health after my 
 dinner, with my usual toast. 
 
 P. Pray what may be your usual toast ? 
 
 C. " As we travel through life, may we live on the road." 
 
 P. (to himself). Dum vivimus, vlvamus ; and very well translated. 
 
 At the next change, a different sort of person gets on the box, 
 commonly called, when, as in this case, there are three Coachmen 
 on the whole length of ground, "the middle-ground man." He is 
 generally a cut above "the lower-ground man;" not so provincial 
 in manner or language ; in other words, a smarter and more wide- 
 awake looking person altogether. By way of correctly illustrating 
 him, we must continue the dialogical style. 
 
 Coachman. Charming day, sir ; anything new down the road ? 
 
 Passenger. Not that I am aware of. That fellow-servant of 
 yours, we have just left behind, is a droll hand ; but I wish he were 
 not so fond of gallopping his horses, and flogging them. 
 
 C. A capital coachman, sir ; but of the old school ; been used to 
 weak horses and heavy loads, in former times, so can ; t keep his right 
 hand still (" Nor down neither," said the passenger to himself). A 
 terrible hard hitter : can almost lift a leader otf the ground, as we 
 say, with the point of the thong, and the draw. 
 
 P. But, surely, he was not used to gallopping in former days ? 
 
 C. No, sir ; neither need he to gallop now if he could persuade 
 himself to pass by a public-house without calling; but he can't 
 do that for the life of him. He 's then obliged to gallop to fetch 
 up the time he loses in taking "his allowance," as he calls it, and 
 chattering to the mistress of the house, or the landlord ; hut there 
 is no necessity for gallopping on this coach, although she is rated 
 at ten miles an hour. You '11 see no horse of mine gallop, except 
 just at the bottom of a hill, with another in the face of it, which
 
 THE COACHMAN. 235 
 
 gives the horses a bit of a lift, by keeping the coach alive (" the 
 vis vivida" muttered the passenger) ; and as to whipping, a knot 
 of Nottingham cord lasts me a twelvemonth. I do n't use my 
 horses to whipping ; and though I do n't pretend to be as good a 
 Coachman as old Joe Randies, or One-eyed Joe, as we call him, 
 I can coax my horses over their ground, and keep time, without all 
 that whipping. You may whip horses till they wont go any pace 
 without it ; and after all, why punish poor dumb animals, who 
 hav n't the power to complain, if you can do what you want, without 
 it? That off-leader, for example : she has been in this coach eleven 
 years : well, for the first six miles, she is as good as she ever was ; 
 in fact, she will have the bar ; but she drops off the last four. In 
 fact there aint much left in her besides her good heart, and a man 
 must be a brute to whip that out of her. 
 
 P. I suppose you oftentimes find similar cases to her's in coach- 
 horses. 
 
 C. Yes ; and if all Coachmen would give it consideration, we 
 should hear of fewer accidents than we do. For instance : many 
 wheel-horses will take a coach down a hill without skidding, at the 
 beginning of a stage, and then Coachmen expect they can do the 
 same at the end of it. But the case is altered. They are then 
 often much distressed for wind and power, consequently, weak ; and 
 thus accidents happen by the coach getting the better of them. 
 
 P. One-eyed Joe, as you call him, has been a hard drinker in his 
 time, I have reason to believe. 
 
 C. Almost all Coachmen of the old school drink more than they 
 should, but it is all over now with drinking on the road. A glass of 
 shsrry, and a biscuit, is all I take over my ground ; and I believe 
 our London Coachman only eats an apple. 
 
 P. A great improvement ; but our friend, One-eyed Joe, wont 
 hear of improvements, or, I rather had said, innovations. He wont 
 believe that we shall ever see steam-coaches on the road. 
 
 C. Neither will I, sir : I have seen one of those unsightly ob- 
 jects at work, and am of opinion that not only will the machinery 
 be constantly liable to be out of order, but I doubt much whether 
 the wheels have sufficient bite of the ground to prevent their turn- 
 ing round without moving the carriage forward, particularly on 
 hills, and when the road is glazed by ice. Joe says, he wishes the 
 man who invented steam had been smothered in the birth, and I 
 am also of his opinion, for they tell me, travelling by steam on rail- 
 roads, will soon become general, and then it is all over with coaching, 
 unless here and there, on some cross-roads, with those dangerous 
 things called light pair-horse coaches.
 
 236 THE COACHMAN. 
 
 P Most the pity; now it is brought to such perfection ; and the 
 Coachmen, what will they do ? 
 
 C. God only knows, sir. What is such a man as One-eyed Joe 
 good for, off his box? He can just read well enough to make out what 
 is on his way-bill, but as for writing, you never beheld such a scratch ; 
 and how can it be otherwise, for his fingers are nearly as thick as a 
 horse's leg. Indeed, he says himself, that he hopes, when he is taken 
 off the box, that he may at once be booked by the down mail. 
 
 P. That is talking rather lightly, Coachman. I would advice 
 One-eyed Joe to ask for a little time to make up his account in ano- 
 ther way ; in other words, to make reparation, or supplicate forgive- 
 ness, for all he has put into the " short pocket." But I feel for 
 proprietors of inns and publicans on the roads, who have embarked 
 their capital, as well as for Coachmen and Guards, should steam 
 conveyance for travellers become general. Thousands of hearts will 
 be broken, and should it not eventually turn out to the country's 
 benefit, the experiment will have been made at a great price. Rely 
 upon this, it may be resorted to from necessity, other modes being 
 done away with ; but it will never be a favourite conveyance with 
 Englishmen ; a bad substitute for the well-appointed English stage 
 coach, in, and about which, as Mr. Cobbet so forcibly expressed him- 
 self, you might see nearly the whole population of a village, carried 
 away at the rate of nine miles in the hour, and as safe as when they 
 were in their beds. For my own part, although I am no Coachman 
 beyond driving a gig, I am fond of everything that belongs to what 
 you call the road, and I wish to ask you a few questions. 
 
 C. Beg pardon, sir, but your mention of a gig puts me in 
 mind of a good story a young Oxford gentleman told me the other 
 day. He persuaded his uncle to take a drive with him in his gig 
 assuring him his was the quietest horse alive. Well, the old boy 
 gets in, and he had n't been in long, before he told his nephew that 
 he paid him a great compliment by trusting his person in his gig, 
 as it was only the third time he had ever been in one in all his 
 life. " Oh," said the young one, " my horse beats you by chalks ; 
 he was never in one till to-day." I need hardly tell you, the old 
 one was soon out of the gig. But, sir, those gigs are terrible 
 dangerous things ; and strange to say, a road Coachman scarce ever 
 gets into one that something do n't happen. I know of four that 
 were killed by being thrown out of them, the famous Dick Vaughan, 
 or H 11-fired Dick, as the Cambridge scholars christened him, of 
 the number. Give me four wheels, and then you have a chance 
 for your life, if a horse falls, or sets a-kicking. But I will now 
 hear your questions, and answer them to the best of my power.
 
 THE COACHMAN. 237 
 
 P. What do you consider the best kind of a horse for what you 
 call road- work ? 
 
 C. Your question is answered in a few words, sir. Plenty of sub- 
 stance, on short legs, with free action, and a close worker. A horse 
 without substance is of little use in our coach, because horses draw 
 by their weight, and not by the force of their muscles, although it is 
 the force of the muscles that puts that weight into motion. He 
 should, therefore, have good wind, for wind in a horse is strength. 
 
 P. How do you know when a horse is a close worker ? 
 
 C. By looking at him closely. 
 
 P. Exactly so, I understand you ; there is an increased tension 
 of the frame when a horse exerts his powers in draught. But how do 
 you manage to drive blind leaders, and to make those that see, face 
 all weathers ? 
 
 C. AVe should not keep time as we do keep it, if it was not that 
 a coach-horse is always running home, that is to say, his home is at 
 each end of his stage. As for blind horses, they soon know every 
 yard of the ground they run over, and will stop to within three paces 
 of where they are accustomed to stop. How they measure the ground, 
 is more than I, or any other man, can say ; and I am quite sure no 
 human being could do the same thing ; and as for blind horses in 
 harness, some of them are delightful to drive, when running up to their 
 bits, as they generally do, to avail themselves of their driver's hand. 
 
 P. I observe your horses are not poled up so tightly as those of 
 your fellow-servant. 
 
 C. It punishes horses to pole them up short; but it must be 
 done if they are made to gallop, because long pole chains cause the 
 coach to roll. A man must have a very fine finger to gallop his 
 coach with long pole-chains, and few Coachmen of the old school are 
 blessed with a light finger. 
 
 P. As you appear to be an observer of circumstances, let me ask 
 you what you consider the best material for roads, with reference 
 to the draught of horses ? 
 
 C. Why, you will hardly believe me when I tell you, that on 
 good pavement, the draught is not more than a third of what it is 
 on loose gravel, nor more than half what it is on a broken stone sur- 
 face, after M' Adam's plan. 
 
 P. You spoke just now of " the draw," in allusion to the whip, 
 when applied to a leader. 
 
 C. I did, sir, but it may be difficult to explain what is meant 
 by that word. It signifies the mere act of a Coachman throwing 
 out the point of his thong, so that on its return it invariably comes
 
 238 THE COACHMAN*. 
 
 back across his breast to his hand, and never hangs in the bars ot 
 the pole-chains. They tell me that nowhere but in Great Britain is 
 there any neatness, still less science, displayed in the use of a four- 
 horse whip by Coachmen. On the continent, I am told the whips 
 used are similar to those with which Irishmen drive their pigs, when 
 they come over to this country in droves. The manufacture of four- 
 horse whips, in England, is now arrived at great perfection, and 
 affords employment to many hundreds of persons. On the continent, 
 a stick cut from a hedge or copse, and a slip of what is called whit- 
 leather, are all that are considered necessary for a four-horse whip. 
 
 Our traveller again changes the scene we rather had said, his 
 companion. We have now not merely the " Lunnun man," as One- 
 eyed Joe calls him, but the modern Coachman of the very first class, 
 who is at once recognised as such by the respect paid to him by his 
 horse-keepers, the high polish of his harness, the superior condition 
 of his horses, and the dress and address of the man. We will at 
 once start him on his journey, and haying taken a slight survey of 
 his passenger, suppose him thus to open the ball. 
 
 Coachman. I hope you have had a pleasant journey, sir ; found 
 the coach what it ought to be, and likewise the Coachmen. 
 
 Passenger. Quite so. I do not profess to be much of a judge of 
 Coachmen, but I think you are fortunate in having an amusing man 
 on one part of your ground, and a very decent, civil person on the 
 other. 
 
 C. You mean One-eyed Joe, I suppose, sir, as the first ? I have 
 only seen him once, and then not on his box, but he appeared quite 
 a character ; and they tell me that, after the fashion of the old school, 
 he is a right good Coachman. His lingo, to be sure, is a queer one, 
 also of the old school ; and I wish you could hear him give a descrip- 
 tion of himself at a wedding dinner, given by a sporting baronet at 
 his mansion, in his part of the country, to a favourite road Coachman. 
 It is far from being amiss, I can assure you, from the technicality 
 of the style, shewing how intimately his ideas sympathise with his 
 calling. I will endeavour to repeat that part of it which relates to 
 his conduct in the servants' hall : " I walks in," says he, " as free 
 as hair ; hangs my hat on a peg behind the door ; sits myself dowa 
 alongside a young woman they calls a lady's-maid, and gets as well 
 acquainted with her in five minutes as if I had known her for seven 
 years. At last, we goes to dinner; starts with some soup, very dif- 
 ferent tackle from what I gets at " The Black Swan," on my journey 
 down in the winter time ; and next comes some fish. They was 
 what are called trouts, spotted for all the world like any coach-dog.
 
 HIE COACHMAN 239 
 
 Then, a loin of veal, as white as hallyblaster ; the kidney fat a.s big 
 
 as a lady's bandbox, I aint lying, so help me . A couple of 
 
 ducks, stuffed with sage and innions, fit for ajiy lord ; and a pudding 
 you might have druv a coach around. Red port and sherry white 
 like puddles on the road ; no end to 'em, one after t' other, like hop- 
 position coaches ; and I almost feared the butler would have broke 
 his harm, a-drawing cocks. Then we finishes with tea and toast in 
 the house-keeper's room, where all was right for a long time ; but, 
 at last, I turns my eye o' the near side, and sees Bill Sims of the 
 Bristol mail, a making too free with a young woman on the next 
 chair. Says [ to myself, I '11 put the drag chain upon you ; Bill, says 
 I, keep your hands in their places ; that wont do ; there must be 
 nothing but whot's genteel here ; recollect you aint at Bristol now." 
 
 /*. Capital ; the ruling passion. 
 
 C. Yes, sir, strong in drink, as Pope says it is in death ; and I 
 heard, the other day, a remarkable instance of the latter, in a horse- 
 dealer. A person had been trying to make a purchase, but there was 
 the sum of five pounds between them, as the saying is. The chap- 
 man, however, called the next morning to make a second attempt 
 to buy , and asked to see the dealer, who happened to be ill at the 
 time. " Master died in the night, sir," said one of his men in the 
 yard ; " but he left word you should have the horse." 
 
 P. Capital again ; but what a splendid road is this ! 
 
 C. Indeed it is sir ; in fact the prophecy which says, " Every 
 valley shall be exalted, every mountain and hill shall be made low ; 
 and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain," 
 appears to be about to be fulfilled on our roads. See what has 
 been done here ! We are now absolutely going down hill, where 
 our fathers went up, on this very spot. Only fancy the road having 
 once gone over the top of that hill. But the fact is, road makers, 
 a century back, were very dull fellows. They fancied a straight line 
 to be the shortest direction between two points, and therefore the 
 most eligible for a road. But this opinion is not well founded. In 
 some cases, indeed, both premises and conclusions are false ; and in 
 meny cases, the premises may be granted, and the conclusion denied. 
 A straight line is, indeed, the shortest distance between two points 
 on a plane ; but over a conical hill, it is longer than a circuitious 
 line ; and over a hill which forms a hemisphere, it is exactly of the 
 same length, with a line round half the base. 
 
 P. (looking surprised]. You appear to have studied this matter. 
 
 C. Not particularly, sir ; a man at rny time of life ought to know 
 bomuthing of everything, and a good deal of what belongs to his call-
 
 THE COACHMAN. 
 
 ing If Eschylus had not bled on the plains of Marathon, he could 
 not have celebrated on the stage, the triumphs of his country ; and 
 if road Coachmen were now and then consulted about these matters, 
 fewer mistakes would be made, and less expenses incurred. 
 
 P. Pray what is your opinion of steam ? 
 
 C. Why, sir. every age and every country of which I have either 
 heard, or read, has beheld some science the object of preference. 
 Physics and mathematics are now on the throne; and we may be 
 said to have entered upon a locomotive era. 
 
 P. Are you of opinion that steam will be applied to carriages on 
 the roads ? 
 
 C. I am not of that opinion, sir ; but, as I have just observed, 
 science has produced a new era, and although it will put us Coach- 
 men on the shelf, such is the triumph of intellect over matter, that 
 there is no saying what cannot, or what will not, be done. The 
 substitution for inanimate, or as the scientific men call it, elementary, 
 for animal power, is one of the most important improvements in the 
 means of internal communication ever introduced, chiefly as to eco- 
 nomy of time ; that it will never be given up on railroads, is my 
 belief, but my opinion is decidedly adverse to its ever becoming 
 general on the road. 
 
 P. The last Coachman was adverse to them, and stated a few 
 reasons for his opinion. 
 
 C. It strikes me, as it strikes him, that the wheels would not 
 have sufficient bite of the road ; in other words, that the periphery 
 of the wheel would not have sufficient hold of the ground to make 
 an available fulcrum. Then, in ascending hills, if a locomotive 
 engine on a rail-road can scarcely propel itself up an inclined plane 
 of moderate elevation, how is this to be effected on a road, where 
 the friction is still more severe ? But the greatest evil would be 
 were steam-carriages to become general the entire destruction OL 
 oar roads, from greater weight being carried over them, than their 
 strength would bear. There is certainly a strong prejudice against 
 steam-carriages on the road, but that would give way to experience 
 with all but those who resist all attempts to quit the beaten track. 
 Horace, you know, sir, considered navigation a violation of the laws 
 of Nature ; an impious defiance of the will and power of the gods ; a 
 
 mark of the impiety of mankind ; and 1 beg pardon, sir ; did 
 
 you notice the Coachman who has just passed us on " The Magnet?" 
 Perhaps you never saw so diminutive an one ; still there are few 
 better on the box ; and as you appear to be amused with our road 
 imgo, I can give you an anecdote of him.
 
 THE COACHMAN. 241 
 
 P. Why, I have observed that most Coachmen, those on fast 
 coaches especially, have a peculiar readiness of answer a sort of 
 epigrammatic style, which I admire. No humming and hawing; no 
 waste of words, but out it comes at once, short, but to the point. 
 In fact, Mr. Locke says, " Perspicuity of language merely consists 
 in proper words or terms (the fewer the better) for our ideas or 
 thoughts, when we would have them pass from our mind to that of 
 another." But your anecdote. 
 
 C. A certain lord, very fond of the whip, was complimenting the 
 person I alluded to, on being so powerful a man on his box, and so 
 small withal. " My lord," said he, " what others does by strength, 
 I does by hartifice." Now were it not for his murdering the 
 English, one might have supposed this fellow to have understood 
 Greek, and had been reading Homer, who makes Nestor tell his 
 son, that although his prads were got old and slow, they would beat 
 their rivals in the chariot race, by his superior coachmanship ; and 
 Atrides, you know, had no chance with him. " It is not strength, 
 but art, obtains the prize," is a literal translation of his words. 
 
 P. But how is it, Coachman, that you quote Horace and Homer ? 
 
 C. The fact, is, sir, I was designed for the church, and took a 
 degree at Oxford ; but not being at all sure that I should make a 
 good clergyman, but on the other hand, pretty ^sure that 1 should 
 make a good Coachman, I am what you now see me. Moreover, 
 I had no interest in the church that would lead to the loaves and 
 fishes ; and in my opinion, a poor parson works to a great disadvan- 
 tage. He should be able to administer bodily as well as spiritual 
 comfort to no small portion of his flock. That I dropped in the 
 social scale, I admit, but 
 
 " Honour and shame from no condition rise, 
 Act well your part, there all the honour lies." 
 
 P. Perhaps it may be all for the best, in your case ; and if there 
 were more well educated men in your line of life than there are, 
 the road would be the better for them. We should hear of fewer 
 accidents ; less cruelty to horses would be practised ; and the whole 
 system would be still more refined and improved than it is. Now 
 let me ask you a few questions, some of which it might have been 
 useless to have put to either of the other Coachmen, because they 
 would not be inclined to speak out. First : what are the principal 
 causes of accidents to coaches ? 
 
 C. They may be classed thus : carelessness the first ; fast driv- 
 ing round corners, and down hills, next; and both combined in the 
 81 p ,
 
 242 THE COACHMAN 
 
 first. Thirdly: broken axletrees, not altogether unavoidable, but, 
 to a certain extent, to be traced to carelessness in not taking care 
 that the weight to be carried by a coach is not too great for the 
 sustaining powers of the axletrees, which may be proved by the iron 
 they are made of being tried before use with an hydraulic press, the 
 test being double the pressure it may have to sustain. Also that it 
 is free from flaws. But so long as Coachmen are ignorant of the 
 impetus of motion, and the gravitating preponderance of a loaded 
 coach, accidents in descending hills, and swinging corners, will con- 
 tinue to prevail. Were you to talk to One-eyed Joe of the properties 
 of falling bodies ; that the velocity of falling bodies is proportionate 
 to the times from the beginning of their fall, that is, the falling body 
 receives a new impulse equal to what it had before in the same space 
 of time received from the same power ; that its velocity, in fact, at 
 the end of two seconds of time, is double what it was at the end of 
 the first, and so on in proportion to the time of its fall, he would 
 only smile in your face, and ask you what nonsense you were talking ? 
 and yet he never drives a coach down a hill that he does not prove 
 the truth of these axioms ; and if he goes fast off the top of it, adding 
 impetus to impetus, he experiences the difficulty his wheel-horses 
 have in holding back the coach. Then suppose you were to talk to 
 him of the centre* of gravity, or a centrifugal force. He knows 
 nothing about either, but how many times has his coach been within 
 an inch of losing the one, which would of course have thrown her on 
 her side, and nearly swung off her legs by the preponderating influ- 
 ence of the other, without his being aware of it, and this, in great 
 measure, by the improper position of the load, winch disturbs the 
 equilibrium of his coach. But there is now about to be a new source 
 of accidents ; the driving horses not properly harnessed, which chiefly 
 had its rise in affectation. Light-mouthed leaders may be driven 
 with safety without bearing reins, but the omission of them on 
 wheel-horses has already caused some fatal accidents by the cross bar 
 of the bit becoming fast in the pole-hook. On the Exeter road, two 
 lives were lost on one night from this cause ; and more than a dozen 
 of the other passengers were very seriously injured. In fact, Seneca's 
 distinction between the epithets tutus and securvs, often occurs to me, 
 on my box. The one, he says, signifies out of danger ; the other, 
 free from the dread of it. Passengers by coaches should have no 
 causes for alarm, beyond those which, unavoidably, attend all the 
 actions of our lives. 
 
 P. I should like to have your opinion on the effects of speed, RS 
 generally affecting the profit and loss of coaching? for that, I believe,
 
 THE COACHMAN. 21d 
 
 is the term applied to the conducting of public conveyances on the 
 road. 
 
 C. I consider the expenses nearly keep pace with the rate at 
 which a coach is timed ; in other words, the expense increases up to 
 the practical limit of speed, nearly as the velocity. The efficiency 
 of horses IP draught diminishes as their speed increases, so that, for 
 fast coaches, a superior horse, with superior keep, is required, and 
 his services are necessarily shortened. 
 
 P. What is the maximum of speed of horses in harness ? 
 
 C. I know of nothing on the road that exceeds Mr. Sheward's 
 exploit. He drove four horses fifteen miles in fifty-four minutes.. 
 
 P. There is not, I think, so much cruelty towards coach-horses, in 
 these days, as was formerly practised. 
 
 C. Certainly not. Road Coachmen used to pride themselves, as 
 One-eyed Joe does, on being what they called hard hitters, that is 
 to say, able to punish horses unmercifully with their whips. All 
 this is bad, and too often unnecessary. As Shakspere says, " It is 
 excellent to have a giant's strength, but tyrannous to use it like a 
 giant ;" and a noble sentiment it is. For my own part, I abhor cruelty 
 towards animals horses above all ; and have never forgotten that 
 beautiful passage in Lord Erskine's speech, which I believe I can 
 repeat : " We are too apt to consider animals under the domination 
 of man," said his lordship, " in no view but that of property. The 
 dominion granted to us over the inferior part of the animal world, 
 is not confided to us absolutely. It is a dominion in trust. The 
 animal over which we exercise our power, has all the organs which 
 render it susceptible of pleasure and of pain. It sees, it hears, it 
 smells, it tastes, it feels with acuteness all the sensations of pleasure 
 and pain ; how mercifully then ought we to exercise the dominion 
 entrusted to us!" For my part, I wish a pathometer could be in- 
 vented, to enable us to judge of the suffering of the animal creation. 
 It would make us all more merciful towards them than we are. 
 
 P. I asked the last Coachman how he knows when a horse is 
 doing his share of work ? He told me he judged partly by looking 
 at his body. 
 
 C. He is right, sir. A horse may appear to work up to his 
 collar, and to keep something like a tight trace, and still be doing 
 but little. It is by observing a tension of the whole frame that we 
 can best judge of the power he is exerting in draught. The vital 
 principle of giving out that power at will, will ever remain inexpli- 
 cable to us ; and it is the necessary increase of it, when going at a 
 quick rate, and in ascending hills that occasions distress to horses. It
 
 244 THE COACHMAN". 
 
 is said that the increment of power necessary to take a horse without 
 anything upon or behind him up a hill rising three inches in a yard, 
 is equal to one- twelfth of his weight. 
 
 P. What do you think of gentlemen Coachmen, and the length to 
 which, some years back, they carried their passion for the coach-bos ? 
 
 C. Why, sir, I think they did a great service to their country, 
 although some of them remind us of the young gentleman, so well 
 described by Ovid, in his Metamorphosis, who would drive the horses 
 of the sun ; they sometimes meet with more than their match, and 
 get floored. But depend upon this, sir, neither the roads, nor the 
 coaches, nor Coachmen, nor horse-keepers, would be so efficient as 
 they now are, but for the gentlemen Coachmen. And why should 
 not a gentleman drive his own coach? Kings have done so in the 
 best of times ; and I think I have read of a Roman figuring on the 
 box in the streets of Rome, during the period of his consulate. 
 
 P. Yes, but only by night, when consul. Lateranus was the person 
 you allude to. 
 
 C. One-eyed Joe would have said, " I wonders what sort of lamps 
 the gentleman used." But English gentlemen need no apologist for 
 their driving propensities ; and we shall meet one of them presently 
 who, like Camillus of old, has not driven a horse of any other colour 
 but grey, for the last forty years; and another, who sticks to the 
 roans. They are both capital Coachmen, and very worthy men. 
 
 P. I should like to have your opinion of a perfect road Coachman. 
 
 C. The modern road Coachman, sir, is generally to be appreciated 
 by the time his coach is rated at. As coaches are now horsed, any 
 muff who knows how to put the reins into his hand, can drive a 
 slow coach ; but a fast one, hotly opposed, is quite another thing. It 
 requires what we call an artist in our line ; and he must be as ready 
 with his tongue as with his hands, and able to spring from, and on 
 to his box, with the agility of a harlequin. Neither should he shut 
 his eyes, but like the sailor in the main-top, he must look our for 
 squalls. Then, as a soft answer turns away wrath, so does a short 
 one best become a Coachman's mouth that is to say, provided it be 
 a civil one. Men in our line, however, will sometimes forget them- 
 selves. For instance : a passenger the other day, put his head out 
 of the window of one of the fastest coaches on our road, at the first 
 change out of London, and wanted to know whether he could have 
 some breakfast ? " Yes, sir," replied the Coachman, who was in the 
 act of drawing the reins through the terrets at the moment, and about 
 to spring on his box, " if you can eat it whilst I can count twenty." 
 But you have no idea of the absurd questions often put to us by
 
 THE COACHMAX. 245 
 
 passengers. Fancy an old woman wishing to know, the last journey 
 but one, whether I had ever been at Brighton ? and on my telling 
 her I had, she asked me, did I know a Mr. Jones ? But to return 
 to the previous question, as they say in the House. One of the first 
 requisites in a Coachman, is to know when horses are put properly 
 to a coach, on the well-known axiom that " who has made a good 
 beginning has half finished his work." Avoid gallopping as much as 
 possible, because when leaders gallop, their bars are not at rest, and 
 much of their draught is consequently lost in the angles described by 
 them. Always take a hill in time, that is to say, never go fast off 
 the top or crown of it. Use your whip as sparingly as you can ; keep 
 your eyes open, and your mouth shut, as much as you can ; and never 
 throw away a chance. In passing or meeting other carriages, clear your 
 bars, and all will be right, and always keep your own side. Still 
 
 " The rule of the road is a paradox quite, 
 I confess I have thought it so long ; 
 If you go to the left, you are sure to go right, 
 If you go to the right you are wrong." 
 
 P. Speaking to coach-horses on the box is quite out of fashion. 
 
 C. Coachmen, forty years back, like Antilochus of old, absolutely 
 cracked their voice by a peculiar roll of it, which no doubt had its 
 effect; but we of this day are not allowed more than two clicks of 
 the tongue not even a whistle. 
 
 P. By the way, alluding to the doings of " this day," what think 
 you of Asphalte ? 
 
 C. A regular humbug ; like many other of the doings of " this 
 day." 
 
 P. And the wood-pavement? 
 
 C. Invented by an Irishman of course wood-pavement! What 
 shall we hear of next ? They say it is to last for ever, like that which, 
 as Addison says, 
 
 " To proud Rome th' admiring nations leads.' 
 
 P. I know not what we shall next hear of ; but I fear many of 
 those who are denied the faculty of hearing at all, will be run over, if 
 that covering for streets becomes general. But why call it pavement, 
 which is derived from the Latin word pavio, to ram ? 
 
 C. Why, sir, it is not miscalled. It is the fashion of the day to 
 ram down people's throats anything they will swallow ; and as Asphalte 
 has rather stuck by the way, they are about to try a somewhat softer 
 material ; but, excuse the pun, I should not wonder at the projectors
 
 246 THE GUARD. 
 
 of it being floored. However, here we are at Hyde Park Corner ; 
 and three minutes and seventeen seconds within our time, instead of 
 being three hours and a-half behind it, as was formerly the case when 
 there were One-eyed Joes on all the ground. I hope, sir, you have 
 had a pleasant journey, and will not fail to recommend our coach. 
 
 P. I have had a very pleasant journey, especially the latter part 
 of it, thanks to the information I have received from you. It has 
 greatly helped to shorten its distance by beguiling the time, and 
 although I was amused by One-eyed Joe, I admit that I have received 
 instruction from you. 
 
 C. Not much of that, sir (pulling up at " Hatchett's Hotel," at the 
 moment) ; the subject is a barren one. " Ornari res ipsa negat, con- 
 tenta docri." I am much obliged to you, sir, and hope to see you on 
 your return to the country. 
 
 THE GUARD. 
 
 OF all impositions, in a small way, ever laid upon the British public, 
 has been that of throwing upon travellers, the payment beyond a 
 pittance of half-a-guinea a week from Government of the services of 
 Guards to mail-coaches, forasmuch as the services of the said Guards 
 have been to them of no avail at all. In fact, their very duty has 
 required that they should not trouble themselves about passengers 
 that travel by their coaches, beyond opening the coach-door for them, 
 should they chance to be close at hand at the moment ; their sole atten- 
 tion being confined to the care and delivery of the mail-bags. Not 
 a carpet-bag, much less a portmanteau, would they touch, notwith- 
 standing which, the cuckoo cry of " Please to remember the Guard, 
 sir," is as familiar to their passengers as the rattle of the wheels, 
 as they revolve. But does he not carry a blunderbuss and pistols to 
 protect the persons of his passengers ? Not a bit of it : he has nothing 
 to do with his passengers. His own life and the mail-bags are all 
 he is bound to defend ; and a devil of a life must his be on some roads, 
 and at certain seasons of the year, with the thermometer at zero for 
 example, and a hundred miles in his teeth ; with the mad woman * 
 inside, and only three out. 
 
 But let us not be too hard upon the Mail Guard. He earns his 
 bread dearly ; is perfectly trustworthy, and performs the duties of his 
 office with much punctuality and credit. But he must have, for the 
 
 * The mad woman is a term on the road for an empty coach.
 
 THE GUARD. 
 
 The greatest is behind.

 
 THE GUARD. 247 
 
 most part, a sorry time of it when on duty : no companion to converse 
 with ; no pretty girl on the roof to say soft things to, as his Coachman 
 often has ; no horses to occupy his attention ; nothing, in short, to 
 engage his thoughts beyond the next office at which a bag is to be 
 left, and another to be taken up ; unless it be either the retrospect of 
 his past life, or a view of his present not very enviable situation ; and 
 every now-and-then indulging a foreboding, that one of these nights, 
 either Gallopping Jem or Lushing Ben will be the death of him over a 
 certain part of his ground his wife a widow, and his children help- 
 less ! But death or no death, Time says the Post-office (always per- 
 sonified on the roads) must be kept; gallop they both must, and Ben 
 must drink, forasmuch as his nerves being shattered by drink, he 
 cannot gallop when quite sober. 
 
 But the phenomenon Time : who knows the value of it equal to a 
 Mail Guard ? He may truly be said to exist on time, as the Deity 
 exists in eternity. At all events, not a moment of it passes away 
 unheeded by him when on duty ; and so fully occupied with it are his 
 thoughts, that were he to be asked, as the philosopher of old was 
 asked, " What time is '( " he would not reply as he did, "Si non roges, 
 intelligo;" but would at once tell you, his time to be at the Post-office 
 is thirteen minutes before six, and that he has at that moment three 
 minutes in hand. In fact, eternity to him is a bauble compared with 
 time ; I '11 answer for his not thinking of it one journey in a score ; it 
 is nothing but time, time, time ; and as he began his life with it, so 
 does he end his journey, with a minute or two in hand, if he can. 
 
 But the Mail Guard runs other risks than being gallopped to death 
 by Gallopping Jem or Lushing Ben. He often puts his life to hazard 
 in his zeal to forward the bags, when the roads have been rendered 
 impassable to his coach by floods or snow Some years since, in- 
 deed, one lost his life on the Chester road, by being carried away 
 by flood, and another perished in a snow storm. A signal instance 
 of this zeal occurred on the Holyhead road, some twenty years ago. 
 Fourteen Irish mails were due, to the no small inconvenience of the 
 commercial world, and all who had bills to take up from anticipated 
 remittances from England. The stoppage on the road commenced 
 at Corwen, when the bags accumulated were found just a load for a 
 coach. The Guard was determined to make an effort to forward 
 them, and by help of pioneers, got his coach through the snow. At 
 one place of change, however, he was rather put to a nonplus. The 
 horses were refused him, and the stable door was locked. But he 
 soon found a remedy for all this : taking his tool-box in one hand, 
 and his blunderbuss in the other threatening to shoot the first
 
 243 THE GUARD. 
 
 man who obstructed him he got the horses out of the stable, and 
 proceeded. He was rewarded for his trouble by the Post-office, and 
 very deservedly so. 
 
 The Mail Guard always carries a civil, respectful tongue, and is 
 generally clean in his person when he starts ; never being seen without 
 well-polished boots, and above all, a well-brushed hat. He has a 
 peculiar blast of his horn, quite different from that of the Guards to 
 stage-coaches ; and, strange to say, there is a certain soothing, if not 
 soporiferous tone in it, not ill adapted to the dead hours of night. 
 If he be not so, generally, he ought to be active in person to enable 
 him to mount and dismount quickly when necessary, and he should 
 be an expert skidder of a wheel. One of his fraternity was able to 
 do this, not only whilst the coach was going, but, from great personal 
 strength, he could also release the wheel from the skid, by turning 
 the wheel backwards, without the coach being stopped ; but, alas ! 
 he did this once too often. The skid struck him on the head, and 
 killed him on the spot. But, with a few exceptions, there will be 
 no more need for expert skidders of a mail-coach wheel. Their 
 Guards have nothing for it now but to sit on or about their coaches, 
 on what some of them call the h 11-fire railroads, with mopes 
 before their eyes, after the fashion of One-eyed Joe's Virago ; and, 
 instead of being afraid of being killed on the spot by Gallopping Joe, 
 or Lushing Ben, have only to fear being blown up into the air, or 
 roasted alive, by their coaches taking fire, as has already been the 
 case, in two instances. 
 
 Guards on stage-coaches are somewhat of the inferior order to 
 Mail Guards, but are generally well conducted. They are also re- 
 quired to he powerful men, to lift luggage and all heavy packages ; 
 and they had need be in the vigour of life to enable them to stand 
 fatigue. Fancy a man, in this situation, starting on cold and wet 
 nights to go from London to Exeter, one-hundred-and-eighty miles, 
 with scarcely time to take any refreshment on the- road, and, as he 
 returns with the next coach but one, only being in his bed one niqltt 
 in three. 
 
 Guards have often a propensity to speculate on sporting matters. 
 Among those on the north road, many of them have been rather 
 heavy betters on the turf; and we could now name one who often 
 picks out a winner. Several of them have been famous for game- 
 cocks, but here their occupation is gone. Immoral pastimes are only 
 tolerated in the rich and the great, at the present day.
 
 THE POLICEMAN. 
 
 In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man ns modest stillness and 
 humility. 
 
 HkSBY V.
 
 THE POLICEMAN. 
 
 BY PAUL PRENDEROAST. 
 
 As these pages are intended for the perusal of all classes of society, 
 from the highest to the lowest, it will be desirable that all the views 
 in which the Policeman is capable of being regarded, should be taken ; 
 for different sorts of people have very different notions respecting 
 him : and should our own be peculiar, there is no reason why we 
 should wish to impose them on the world. 
 
 That the Policeman wears an oil-skin hat, and, in wet weather a 
 cape of the same material, which, when it is fine, is rolled up and 
 strapped to his side ; that this cape, when there is occasion for wear- 
 ing it, is superadded to a stout great coat, or what, if the maxim 
 11 Set a thief to catch a thief" be true, might be termed a wrap- 
 rascal ; that his ordinary official costume is a sort of half-military 
 uniform of blue ditto ; that a leather belt encircles his waist ; and 
 while he is on duty, a piece of striped list the cuff of his coat ; that 
 his collar is so made as to defy retaliation on the part of those 
 with the corresponding portion of whose dress it is sometimes his 
 business to make free ; and that his somewhat soldier-like appear- 
 ance, taken in connexion with the colour of his clothing, and perhaps 
 with the prehensile qualities for which he is distinguished, has made 
 him the subject of an invidious comparison with a certain marine 
 shell-fish in its uncooked state, are facts, which, coloured howsoever 
 they may be, nobody will dispute in the main. Nor indeed would 
 they be mentioned here, were not this work, in a manner, a book of 
 Natural History ; and were they not of a nature quite as interesting 
 as the spots which besprinkle a sparrow's egg, or the shades that 
 diversify a cat's tail. And now, having got rid of what we had to 
 say of our subject generally, let us descend to particulars. 
 
 In the first place, the Policeman may be considered a perfect 
 model of symmetry ; his person exhibiting those beautiful and ideal 
 proportions, which the talented artist in male costume displays at the 
 door of his establishment ; while on his uniform, the artist referred 
 to appears to have exhausted all his skill. The brim of his hat 
 82 GO
 
 250 THE POLICEMAN, 
 
 shades, on each side, a jaunty, spruce-looking bush of short, curly, 
 black hair. Whiskers of as deep a dye, remarkable for their extent, 
 set off the manly red that glows in his cheeks. His shirt collar is 
 white, and well starched ; he wears his trowsers " very smooth, like 
 unto the sign of the leg;" his carriage is erect and noble ; and his 
 favourite attitude is the second position. So much for his bodily at- 
 tributes. As to his disposition, it is one marked in an eminent de- 
 gree by humanity and courage : the start of horror with which he 
 first encounters some scene of crime and blood, is a proof that he 
 possesses the first of these virtues ; and the alacrity with which, 
 brandishing his staff of office, he seizes, in spite of his carving-knife, 
 the sanguinary assassin, assures us that he is distinguished by the 
 second. 
 
 Such is the poetical view of the Policeman ; the beau-ideal of a 
 young officer, drawn by the imagination of Mary the housemaid, who 
 looks upon the A division, with just as much interest and admiration, 
 as her youthful mistress feels for the life-guards. The above de- 
 scription may perhaps fall short of the conceptions of some of our 
 readers ; in which case, they are respectfully referred to the beauti- 
 fully-illustrated, full, true, and particular account, of the last horrid, 
 barbarous, and atrocious murder, all to be had for the small charge 
 of one penny. 
 
 The Policeman, secondly, may be stigmatised as a morai and 
 physical monstrosity. He is a great mis-shapen giant, with large 
 glaring eyes, a ferocious hooked nose, and shaggy and enormous 
 whiskers. He carries a bludgeon with him wherever he goes, and 
 with that weapon beats, bruises, and knocks down unoffending apple- 
 women, unresisting infants, and crippled beggars, as if he thought it 
 necessary to put all persons hors de combat, previously to taking them 
 into custody ; or as if being in a state of insensibility were an essen- 
 tial condition for admission into the station-house. Thus, constituting 
 himself a public nuisance, and doing in particular much injury to the 
 ' HEADS OF THE PEOPLE," it is but fit that we should endeavour, 
 with all our forces, to expose him to the indignation of society. 
 
 This is the picture of the Policeman, exhibited in certain combi- 
 nations of Literature and Art, which are weekly circulated, at a cheap 
 rate, among a large class of Her Majesty's subjects : a hard working 
 nay, occasionally a hard labouring body of men, of whom the 
 Policeman is the natural enemy, and whom his every act aggrieves ; 
 inasmuch as he is continually interfering with their avocations. 
 
 The Policeman is essentially necessary to the well being of the 
 State; he it is who keeps in order the truculent and blood-thirsty
 
 THE POLICEMAN. 251 
 
 mob, who, but for him, would at once rise upon their betters, deprive 
 them of their lives and property, overthrow the Church, subvert the 
 government, and dethrone the Queen. Thus is he esteemed by one 
 class of politicians. 
 
 By another party, he is accounted the tool of a tyrannical aristo- 
 cracy ; an instrument for clogging the liberty, and abridging the 
 amusements of the subject : his office implies an insult to the spot- 
 less morality of the masses ; and his very existence is incompatible 
 with the rights of Englishmen. 
 
 For our own part, never having been taken up fcr the free ex- 
 pression of opinion is not, in this happy country, thus summarily 
 punishable, except when those from whom it proceeds are drunk and 
 disorderly we bear the Policeman no ill will. In what we have to 
 say concerning him, therefore, while we shall " nothing extenuate," 
 so neither shall we " set down aught in malice." There may be a 
 few things about him which may excite our laughter, but there are 
 not many that can provoke our bile. 
 
 Among the former of these may certainly be mentioned his hands 
 and feet, especially when we regard them, not in state of repose, but 
 in one of action. These parts of a man's person, if particularly large 
 and clumsy-looking, present, even while he keeps them still, a some- 
 what comical appearance, but as soon as he begins to use them, their 
 peculiarities become more prominent, and their ludicrous character 
 is increased. And this happens when he makes the most of nature 
 in the management of his legs and arms ; but when he stumps along 
 upon his heels, with his elbow joints straightened as if by a process 
 of disease, and his fingers stiffly extended, and separated from each 
 other, like those which the youthful caricaturist sketches in white 
 chalk on a barn-door ; we cannot restrain ourselves from laughing at 
 him outright. Now, such is precisely the Policeman's mode of 
 progression ; and the members which are therein displayed to the 
 greatest possible disadvantage, are still further set off; the hands, by 
 Berlin gloves, sometimes white, whereby their apparent thickness is 
 augmented; and the lower limbs by trousers made at random, and 
 usually some inches too short ; and by boots, whose eccentric con- 
 formation resembles those works of Nature, which she is said to 
 perform in sport. The heels, in particular, of these curiosities, are 
 remarkable for a developement, by no means corresponding to that of 
 the internal parts of the same name, than which they are considerably 
 larger, advancing in front of them to a singular unsightly, and, one 
 would think, uncomfortable extent. Hence, perhaps, arises, in some 
 measure, the characteristic gait of the Policeman. It would seem
 
 252 THE POLICEMAN. 
 
 that the process of drilling, which had been brought to bear on the 
 back bone, so as to straighten it to a tolerable degree, had been pre- 
 vented, by the inflexibility of their cases, from affecting the feet. 
 Another piece of oddity about the Policeman consists in an apparent 
 length of body, produced by a real elongation of coat, which generally 
 is made to descend to a point level with the hips, and marked in front 
 by the last of a row of pewter buttons, that, beginning at the throat, 
 indicates, in its downward course, the outline of the wearer's chest 
 and stomach. He thus has, certainly, on the whole, a risible kind of 
 figure ; and one which, drawn without the least exaggeration, nay, by 
 the Daguerreotype itself, might with propriety be called a caricature. 
 But though the Policeman may fairly enough be made the sub- 
 ject of sport ; there is neither reason nor justice in constituting him 
 an object of abuse. There are those to be met with who vituperate 
 him on all occasions ; as if there were something in his office essen- 
 tially detestable and odious : on what account, their own honesty 
 being presumed, it is not easy to perceive. Their invectives, indeed, 
 render their pretence to that virtue exceedingly questionable; and 
 their hearers will display no lack of judgment, if, inferring that they 
 have been, are, or expect to be, in some sort of peril from the person 
 whom they malign, they remove any property that may be in their way, 
 as speedily as possible out of it. We are told, by people of this kind, 
 that society does not require to be kept together by constables ; that 
 man can be moral without coercion ; that to think otherwise is to 
 take a degrading view of human nature, and other twaddle to 
 the like effect ; but it will be found by those who are at the pains 
 to observe, that they who are most indignant at precautions against 
 roguery, based on a distrust of the world in general, are the per- 
 sons most likely to justify them. An honest man has HO objection 
 to be set down, on the score of his species, for a rogue, by those who 
 do not knew him ; well aware that his character will improve in their 
 estimation on acquaintance ; whereas the knave, despairing of being 
 able to prove his integrity, is the more anxious tc have it taken for 
 granted. None are such sticklers for the maxim of law, that every 
 rogue is an honest man until he is found out, as those who chiefly 
 profit by it. The Policeman walks the streets in the supposition 
 that any one whom he meets may be a thief; and if Aristkles himself 
 could come out of his grave, he might be looked upon (considered 
 simply as A) as being, perhaps, a men.ber of the swell mob. But 
 what would he care about that, seeing that by the same general 
 suspicion, his pockets were secured from the spoliation of the frater- 
 nity in question? It should be remembered that the Policeman
 
 THE POLICEMAN. 258 
 
 here spoken of, is the English Policeman, whose vocation practically 
 consists in keeping an eye upon swindlers, pickpockets, and all man- 
 ner of vagabonds; in maintaining public order and decency; and in 
 preventing riot, robbery, and violence. He is not, as in some other 
 countries, a political spy, occupied i'rom morning till night in watch- 
 ing the movements of some patriotic jackass, who, choosing to stick a 
 ribbon, which he has no business with, in his button hole, is suspected 
 of being engaged in a plot to blow up the Sovereign. Among us 
 there is no danger, because, employed in this way, he has flo time to 
 attend to such trifling matters as the protection of life and property, of 
 being shot or stabbed in the streets, if we remain out after dark. But 
 let any one take a walk down Regent Street, or through Leicester 
 Square, and count the number of dirty, moustachioed, ferocious- 
 looking fellows that he is sure to meet; or let him visit the Rookery 
 in St. Giles's, or the vicinity of Saffron Hill; and then let him con- 
 sider with himself how much of the personal security which we enjoy, 
 is owing to our being possessed of an efficient police. The Police- 
 man is eminently useful ; it is to be wished that his office were 
 unnecessary, but that, till England becomes Utopia, or till we are all 
 Socialists and rogues together, will assuredly never be the case. 
 
 Let it not, however, be supposed that it is intended to represent 
 the Policeman as immaculate : there are not many grounds of quarrel 
 with him ; but still there are a few. Every true Briton will have an 
 affection, a regard, an esteem, nay, a certain veneration, for the 
 time-hallowed amusements of his country. He would not, perhaps, 
 desire to see bull-baiting, bear-baiting, and cock-fighting revived ; 
 yet, in making this concession, he will feel that he sacrifices some- 
 what of a high sentiment, though, it may be, at the bidding of one 
 higher still. But when he stops, with others of her Majesty's sub- 
 jects, to contemplate, in the capacity of by-stander, a harmless 
 boxing-match, between a couple of urchins, who adopt that mode 
 of settling the difference at once, which they would otherwise brood 
 and sulk over, the interference of the police except in the case of 
 an obstruction to passengers being produced will be not a little 
 offensive to his mind. He who restrains the pugilist, may one day 
 have to apprehend the murderer. We are now, however, touching on a 
 point on which there may be a diversity of opinion ; and we, therefore, 
 shall not insist on it ; but proceed to one, with respect to which there 
 can be nothing but the most perfect unanimity, among all who have 
 eyes, ears, heads, hearts, patriotic feelings, and muscles of laughter. 
 
 We trust that our gentle readers, of both sexes, are fond of 
 Punch. We say, of both sexes, to prevent misconstruction ; for the
 
 254 THE IOLICEMAX. 
 
 fondness referred to, can have, or at least, be supposed to have, but 
 one object only in the female breast. The word gentle is used in 
 contradistinction to simple, because those to whom the latter epithet 
 denoting, not the simplicity of a child, but that of a simpleton 
 belongs, are, we are convinced, hopelessly insensible to the merits of 
 our favourite drama. We were walking, but the other day, accom- 
 panied by a friend, through one of the large thoroughfares of this 
 city, when certain familiar sounds, consisting of those of the drum, 
 Pandean pipes, and a peculiar and well-known, but anonymous 
 mouth-piece, induced us to turn down a by-street, in order to wit- 
 ness the play to which they served as an overture. The theatre 
 had been erected, with requisite caution, close to the pavement ; 
 the spectators had arranged themselves in such a manner as neither 
 to impede nor stand in danger of the few carriages (for the fashion- 
 able part of the day was over) tlrat were then passing. Having 
 each of us contributed his share to the encouragement of the ex- 
 hibitors, who, although they do not make the announcement, " No 
 money returned," always act on that principle on which account 
 our case was the harder we stationed ourselves at some little dis- 
 tance, to witness the representation. The hero appeared, made his 
 bow, inquired after the health of his audience, sang, danced, and 
 commenced his amusing career. He had just knocked the con- 
 stable, who comes to apprehend him for the murder of his wife and 
 child, on the head, and, flushed with victory, was performing on his 
 favourite instrument, and in his own presto style, the air of " Alice 
 Gray," when he was unseasonably interrupted by the appearance of 
 a blue-coated, pewter-buttoned, big-fisted, heavy-footed, marble- 
 hearted, leather-headed Jack-in-office, who, without mercy or re- 
 morse, commanded both him and his patrons to " move on." And 
 in spite of what did he utter this hard behest ? Will it be believed 
 that Punch, the fierce, the fearless, the victorious, the scorner of 
 law, and the killer of its officers, actually condescended to deprecate 
 the fellow's rigour by a bow ? In imitation of a personage immor- 
 talised by the greatest of poets, but whom, both in deeds and in 
 person, he strongly resembles, he might well have said 
 
 " I never sued to court nor constable ; 
 My knee could never learn low servile bend ; 
 But now thy favour is proposed my fee, 
 My proud heart sues, and prompts my knee to bow." 
 
 But whatever success may have attended the self-abasement of 
 Richard III., that of Punch was destined to be fruitless; although 
 the act of humiliation was repeated at least three several times,
 
 THE POLICEMAN. 255 
 
 " Come, this here wont do, you know, it 's quite agin the rules," 
 said the Policeman. 
 
 " Oh dear ! oh dear ! oh dear ! Here 's a pretty situation ! " 
 exclaimed Punch, in his characteristic key." 
 
 " Come, I say, none of this ! ' cried the imperturbable officer," 
 whose gravity, or rather dulness, would have been proof against 
 Momus or Grimaldi himself, " it 's o' no use. Move on." 
 
 Mr. Punch suddenly disappeared ; and a head, the face apper- 
 taining to which bore a very rueful expression, was protruded from 
 behind the green baize extended between the supporters of the 
 theatre. 
 
 " We aint a doin' no harm," remonstrated the head ; "wot 'casion 
 is there for turnin' of us away?" 
 
 " Can't help it. Move on, will yer ? 'less you 'd like to be made." 
 
 41 Well, this is rather hard, this is. A exhibitor o' Punch do n't 
 meet with encouragement every day ; and yer might find somethin' 
 better to -io, I should think, than stand in the way of a man gettin' 
 a honest livin', and disappint the public besides." 
 
 "No gammon, mister! 'taint o' no use, I tell yer. Come, move 
 on, or d' ye want me to help yer ? " 
 
 The unfortunate Thespians were obliged to obey. A murmur 
 of indignation arose, mingled with cries of " Shame !" in which we will 
 not undertake to say that we did not join. Most certainly, if we 
 ever felt a temptation to resist the authority of the " powers that be," 
 it was at that moment; and if all the motives for sedition and insur- 
 rection could be unveiled, few, perhaps, would be found more reason- 
 able in their nature than zeal for the outraged dignity of Punch. 
 
 To all exhibitors of street shows, to itinerant musicians, wizards, 
 and astronomical demonstrators, the Policeman is as important a 
 person as the Lord Chamberlain is to theatrical managers ; and as a 
 motion made in the House of Commons, lately proved the means of 
 imparting a little common sense and justice to the exercise of a cer- 
 tain office, it is to be hoped that recourse will be had by some patri- 
 otic member to a similar proceeding, for the purpose of doing away 
 with all such vexatious exertions of power, as that of which we have 
 above had occasion to complain. The Policeman is also an object of 
 much terror to all small boys ; not only to those who are of a preda- 
 tory turn, but likewise to the players at marbles or hop-scotch, 
 vaulters over posts, and loiterers under lamps. It is quite amusing 
 to observe the rapidity with which his " Now then, young leller," 
 makes one of these young gentlemen scamper. You may often be 
 advertised of the approach of a Policeman, by seeing half-a-dozen of
 
 256 THE POLICEMAN. 
 
 them dash by you at the turning of a corner ; just as in the country, 
 a flock of small birds whirling in rapid flight round a hedge, pre- 
 pares you for the appearance of a sparrow-hawk. The same birds 
 would follow, twitter at, and buffet, an owl or a buzzard ; and the 
 same boys would hoot and bawl after a great fat beadle ; but the 
 Policeman is not to be played or trifled with ; and whatever senti- 
 ments they may express respecting him during his absence, his 
 presence inspires them with veneration and awe. The urchin who 
 would have no hesitation in asking you what might be the state of 
 your mother's health, would never think of addressing him otherwise 
 than by the title of " Sir." 
 
 We do not know what particular notions of justice, our various 
 readers may entertain ; and therefore, while we mention as a fact, 
 that the Policeman makes, generally, a wide distinction between the 
 wearer of a good coat and of a bad one, in case of disorderly or irre- 
 gular conduct ; we shall not accompany it by a comment. We are 
 acquainted with an instance in which one, who had not been a long 
 time in the corps, was guilty of the mistake of taking a few young 
 gentlemen, disguised, by their own admission, in point of dress, and 
 presumably, in liquor also, to the station-house, because they per- 
 sisted, in spite of his warnings to the contrary, in singing glees about 
 the streets at night. For this piece of officiousness, he received the 
 rebuke of his inspector, to whom the prisoners were known ; and if 
 we mistake not for here we will not implicitly trust our memory 
 was excluded from his share of the beer, by the compotation of which, 
 on the part both of his fellows, and the captive vocalists, the little 
 adventure concluded. 
 
 It was originally our intention to terminate this article with a 
 dissertation on the utility of the metropolitan police, in connexion 
 with the abstraction of knockers ; in which the nature and results of 
 that amusement would have been briefly illustrated and considered. 
 We had also an interesting story to tell, exemplifying the efficiency 
 of the rural police, and setting forth in what manner a gentleman 
 was, not long since, at a cathedral town not a hundred miles from 
 Winchester, summoned before the civic authorities, in the morning, 
 and fined five shillings, for having dared, over night, in a state of 
 vinous excitement, to pronounce a malediction on the head, or visual 
 organs (we will not undertake to say which) of an eaves-dropping 
 officer, who was standing in his way. But for these, and other 
 matters, we have not room, we will not say, unfortunately, for 
 were we not rendered brief by necessity, we might, possibly, become 
 tedious from licence.
 
 THE PARISH CLK1IK. 
 
 And the truth is riot in us. 
 
 COMMON PHAVHI.
 
 THE PARISH CLERK. 
 
 BY PAUL PRENDERGAST. 
 
 IN those good old times, commonly called the "dark ages," the 
 word " Clerk" denoted a person in holy orders. As learning was 
 then confined to the priesthood, it became, likewise, a convertible 
 term with " scholar ; " and such it continued to be even after the 
 laity had learned to read and write. Thus it acquired, in process of 
 time, two distinct significations. It is as implying an occupation 
 more or less literary, that it is now appropriated by persons who 
 transact business, keep accounts, and the like, for others; but the 
 sense in which it belongs to our parochial friend, is not quite so 
 plainly apparent. His claim to it may, however, be defended on the 
 ground of his reading, by those who call it reading, in Church . 
 or on that whereupon the names of Solon, Solomon, and other 
 philosophers and wise men, are sometimes applied to certain people. 
 
 The Parish Clerk is a sort of non-commissioned officer of the 
 Church militant ; and the ecclesiastical drilling of the charity children 
 is generally one part of his business. Beside the responses and the 
 catechism, he sometimes teaches them the art of singing; at Teast, 
 that beautiful and affecting style of it which musicians call parochial. 
 With the nature of the remainder of his duties, our native readers 
 are, of course, familiar ; but, for the information of the French and 
 others, we may say, that in addition to the secular offices of taking 
 care of the vestry, and keeping sundry books relating to the church 
 and parish business, he acts as assistant to the clergyman during 
 certain parts of the service, some of which he reads aloud alternately 
 vvitn him ; and also as deputy to the congregation, on whose part he 
 is delegated to say " Amen." Had we not mentioned thus much, it 
 would certainly puzzle a foreigner to account for allusions to any 
 thing like the ceiemonies of the Establishment, in connexion with 
 the personage here described. 
 
 Though everywhere essentially the same animal, the Parish Clerk 
 is found in two varieties ; one in the country, the other in town. 
 Each of these requires a separate notice. 
 83 H H
 
 258 
 
 THE PARISH CLERK. 
 
 The office and work of a Clerk is sweetened by a fair allowance 
 considered with respect to the occupant's station in life of the 
 loaves and fishes ; and affords frequent opportunities for divers *, ery 
 pleasant nibblings at them as well. He is usually, at the time of his 
 appointment, somewhat advanced in years ; this at least is the case 
 in the country; where, as there are almost always several persons in 
 a village whose merits and acquirements give them nearly an equal 
 claim, in the event of a vacancy, to the employment, seniority is 
 often the circumstance that determines the choice between them. 
 Otherwise, the station is, by allowance, in a manner hereditary ; and 
 the son, himself far from young, succeeds to it on the death or 
 resignation of the father. 
 
 Whatever may be the roice which the 'squire of the parish has in 
 the vestry, the Clerk has a stronger one in the church. Parochial 
 affairs are mostly conducted on the strictest utilitarian principles. 
 Those who are versed in rural matters well know that if church- 
 wardens can have their way, they are sure, if there be a spot in the 
 village where, from its conspicuousness, something of an ornamental 
 nature might be erected, to make it the site off the stocks, the cage, 
 or, as the latter is sometimes called, the " blind-house." The same 
 regard to utility is observed in the selection of a Clerk. He is 
 chosen principally for his strength of lungs. Among those who 
 attend church on a Sunday, there are a great many men and women 
 who are old and deaf; and to enable them to join, to their own great 
 comfort, and the edification of their neighbours, in the singing, it is 
 necessary that they should hear what it is that is given out for the 
 psalm. Hence the advantage of having this announcement made in 
 as Stentorean a voice as possible, and hence, too, the expediency, 
 on the part of those who aspire to the dignity of delivering it, of 
 training themselves for Boanerges. Hence, moreover, in some country 
 places (and we have an eye now to one in particular), there are some 
 half-a-dozen rustics who, each hoping to be the next successor to 
 the existing Clerk, make a point of vying with each other in reading 
 after the clergyman in as loud a tone as possible ; a practice which, 
 especially as they express themselves in a very provincial dialect, is 
 greatly conducive to the beauty and decency of the service. These 
 objects are still more effectually consulted by a peculiarity which the 
 Clerk acquires as he gets older, in consequence of the natural dimi- 
 nution of power wh'ch his voice undergoes ; namely, an alteration in 
 point of quality of the sounds which proceed from his windpipe. 
 His vocal energies having become impaired, he has no other way left 
 of making himself intelligible, as it has always been his boast to be
 
 THE PARISH CLERK. 259 
 
 to Ae dullest ear, than a remarkable style of intonation, which acts 
 by stimulating blunted nerves, and exciting sensation anew. De- 
 spading of strength of sound, he endeavours to make up for it by 
 the next b?st thing for acoustic purposes, shrillness ; and in place 
 of svrelling 
 
 "The murmur of the deep Amen,' 
 
 Tie delivers that word in a staccato manner, particularly consistent 
 with its meaning, and singularly expressive of solemnity and awe. 
 Add to this, that from an accumulation of snuff, or some other 
 obstruction in his nose, his notes, being debarred from a free egres* 
 through that organ, are made to reverberate about its various 
 caverns, to the no small augmentation of their sonorous properties^ 
 and it will be seen, plainly enough, that so far as an extraordinary 
 mode of utterance can go in bespeaking attention, he may be con- 
 sidered, though no longer able, to bawl, as tolerably certain of always 
 obtaining it. The expression, notes, is used above advisedly ; for, 
 though he has little enough of music in his soul to be fit (according 
 to Shakspere) for a Chartist; yet all that proceeds, in the exercise 
 of his vocation, from his mouth, assumes the form of a kind of chant ; 
 :ind so great, in this respect, is the general similarity that exists 
 between all Clerks, that one might almost ascribe it to traditional 
 instruction. Now and then, however, the Clerk is, or believes him- 
 self to be, a parish Handel, a wag would refer such an one to the 
 parish pump, and, in that belief, ventures an attempt at composi- 
 tion. Of course, the principle of such "composition" would be, in 
 the most literal sense, that of the construction ef a rook's nest ; but 
 still there is one instance at least, in which, as we are assured on 
 unquestionable authority, the thing was actually done. 
 
 There is a village in Hampshire, which rejoices in the epithet of 
 " dirty ;" what other name it may have we have no occasion to say. 
 Here there flourished, some years ago, an obscure Timotheus, in the 
 shape ef the Clerk. His productions have unfortunately been lost^ 
 indeed, their very names, with the exception of that about to be 
 mentioned, are now unknown. However, it is an established fact, 
 that he once composed a sort of funeral anthem, on the occasion 01 
 the decease of a member of his choir; and it was arranged that this 
 should be sung in church, during the interval between the pravers 
 and the sermon, on the Sunday subsequent to the burial. 
 
 It must be premised, for the informntien of those who are not 
 av^aic of the foct, that in village churches, the place 'of an organ is 
 often supplied by a sort of orchestra, including a flute, fiddle, violon-
 
 260 THE PARISH CLERK. 
 
 cello, horn, and clarionet, which instruments are worked by self- 
 taught performers, the greater number of whom play from ear. We 
 are not certain that it was not a member of such a band, who, when 
 observed to be playing the violin without making any use of his left 
 hand, assigned as a reason for the omission, " Whoy, I doant know ; 
 zum do, and zum doant: it's all a matter of fancy !" 
 
 The service was over ; the parson had ascended the pulpit, and 
 the congregation, having finished coughing, were sitting in unwonted 
 expectation, when the Clerk rose from his seat, and with a look of 
 greater importance, and with even more bustle than usual, gave out 
 the following novel exhortation : 
 
 " Let us zing, to the praise and glory, &c. (Clerks always reverse 
 the ordinary rules of emphasis), a little 'im of my own composun !" 
 
 Scroop, scroop, grumbled the double-bass ; prut-trut, trut, 
 tweedle deedle, squeaked the fiddle ; too-tle, too-tle-too, moaned the 
 flute, in the agonies of being tuned ; but the clarionet was refractory. 
 Ubp ! ubp ! puffed the owner of it, vainly endeavouring, with staring 
 eyes and distended cheeks, to induce it to speak. " Ubp ! ubp ! ubp !" 
 
 " A little 'im of my own composun," cried the Clerk again, con- 
 ceiving that the silence of the performers was owing to their awaiting 
 the final signal for commencing the prelude. 
 
 " Ubp ! ubp ! ubp !" was the only reply. The clarionet (to 
 venture a Paddyism) was their first fiddle, they could not get on 
 without him. 
 
 Not observing the cause of the delay, the Clerk began to wax 
 rather impatient. In a quicker tone than usual, and one which 
 plainly shewed that he was astonished and annoyed, he repeated, for 
 the third time, with strong emphasis, 
 
 " A little 'im of my own composun !" 
 
 "Ubp! ubp! ubp!" 
 
 Another pause ensued. 
 
 " A little 'im of my own composun !" shouted the Clerk once 
 more ; now losing all temper. 
 
 " Ah ! there ! it 's o' naw use ; 'a got a hoss-bean in 'un, and 'a 
 wunt blow!" 
 
 Whether the repose of the soul of the departed chorister was 
 further interfered with, or not ; or whether the requiem, adapted to 
 other words, was reserved for the next occasion, festive or otherwise, 
 that presented itself, we cannot undertake to say. From what has 
 been related, a moral may be deduced by some persons, inculcating 
 on country performers the propriety of keeping their wind instru- 
 ments somewhere else than in the bin where th^y put their corn.
 
 THE PARISH CLERK. 261 
 
 Others, judging by the results of so disposing of them, will con- 
 tend that there is no other place to which they might be so fitly 
 consigned, except, perhaps, the bottom of the well. 
 
 We hereby, on behalf of our client, the public, apply to the 
 parish authorities generally, throughout England, for a rule to shew 
 cause why an injunction should not be forthwith issued, to restrain 
 all and sundry Parish Clerks from the abuse, alteration, and dis- 
 figurement of divers terms, words, and phrases, to be met with in the 
 Book of Common Prayer, and likewise in the Psalter, or Psalms of 
 David. 
 
 There are certain persons who are pleased to say, that in the 
 discharge of such offices as those which belong to the Parish Clerk, 
 deportment and manner of speaking are of little or no consequence : 
 and the admirers of Cant (not the German philosopher) are welcome to 
 believe them. We cannot but think that, the place where the Clerk 
 stands and the substance of what he utters being considered, he 
 might as well pronounce his words correctly. We doubt, with all 
 deference to that part of the world called serious, and admitting 
 the share which the weakness of an acute perception of absurdity (to 
 them apparently unknown) has on the formation of our opinion ; 
 we doubt whether the bulk of mankind have as yet arrived at that 
 pitch of perfection, at which ludicrous behaviour on solemn occasions 
 is no longer observed or regarded. Ordinary mortals, when they 
 hear " mercy," pronounced " massy ;" " we beseech thee," " we 
 'sache thee ;" the " raging of the sea," the " raggin of the zay," and 
 so forth, are obliged, if they succeed even so far in controlling them- 
 selves, to keep their countenances by main force. Who, hearing a 
 nobleman or a judge addressed by the title of " My Lard," would 
 not instinctively connect the expression, as the countryman in the 
 well-known story did the word " felicity " with " something inside a 
 hog ?" Or let the justice or the peer be called " Goulard," for 
 " Good Lord," will not the phantasm of a pint bottle, labelled, 
 " The lotion to be used as directed," dance, uncalled for and pro- 
 vokingly, before the mind's eye ? But the laws of association of 
 ideas are the same all over the world, and operate even in a pew. 
 
 Country Clerks may be fairly divided into fat and lean ; for the 
 easy nature of their duties and mode of life inclines them, necessarily, 
 to corpulence ; and those on whom it fails to produce such an effect, 
 are of that peculiar class of individuals who are constitutionally 
 meagre, and on whom meat, as it were, is cast away. It is true 
 that the Clerk labours otherwise than in his ministerial capacity, and 
 that with his own hands, too : but, then, his legs have in general
 
 2G2 THE PARISH CLERK. 
 
 very little to do. He is at one village a cobbler ; at another a tailor ; 
 and in many places, in conjunction with some such occupation as 
 one of these, he is a schoolmaster. His instruction is of course of a 
 very elementary nature, comprising only those branches of knowledge 
 which a country gentleman, in prefacing the toast, " Popular Edu- 
 cation," is said to have called the three R's, "reading, 'riting, and 
 'rithmetic." So quiet a way of getting through the world, falling to 
 the lot of a man who feeds plenteously, and is besides strongly 
 addicted to pipes and ale, is exceedingly favourable to bodily aggran- 
 disement. Hence a very curious incongruity between the two most 
 conspicuous persons in a parish church is often observable ; the 
 curate being as poor as a church mouse, because, like that animal, 
 he is in a place where he cannot get a living ; while the Clerk 
 rather resembles a stalled-ox ; and one that more the pity is 
 never muzzled. A jolly rubicund face, set off by a snub nose, and 
 wearing an expression of obtuse veneration, of which self, officially 
 considered, is perhaps more an object than anything else ; a bullet 
 head, and a round portly figure propped up by short and somewhat 
 small legs, may perhaps be regarded, on the whole, as furnishing, 
 collectively, the best idea of this pseudo-clerical character. His 
 habiliments, for the most part, are much in keeping with his func- 
 tions ; he is, in external appearance, a kind of ecclesiastical merman : 
 for while he is arrayed from the neck to the middle in canonical 
 black, his nether parts are usually invested with the drab of a 
 layman. 
 
 We have often thought that there is less extravagance than that 
 which at first sight may appear in Mr. Shandy's hypothesis respect- 
 ing Christian names. Those of Clerks have undoubtedly a generic 
 character. They are mostly Scriptural ; and their bearers, Ebenezer 
 Brown, Ezekiel Jones, or Zachariah Yokes, would almost seem to 
 have been specially christened with a view to their destined office. 
 There must be something in the Shandean theory. 
 
 Tn speaking of anything that is done in the church, the Clerk is 
 very prone to make use of the personal pronoun in the plural 
 number, we; by which he means, " We of the spirituality ;" that is 
 to say, " The parson and I," or rather, it may be, " I and the 
 parson." It should be remembered, that Wolsey, who used to 
 express himself in a manner somewhat similar, was a Clerk. but, 
 then, he was not a Parish one. 
 
 The foregoing description relates to a personage, who, whether 
 at his desk or elsewhere, but particularly in the former case, must be 
 admitted to be, both in manners and appearance, a grotesque one.
 
 THE PARISH CLERK. 203 
 
 Yet, on the whole, he is rather to be termed queer, whimsical, anu 
 eccentric, than utterly and contemptibly ridiculous. There is often 
 a certain quaintness about him, which, though not exactly a fit 
 qualification for the office which he has to perform, is by no means 
 a disparagement to him out of church. It causes him to be looked 
 at with good nature ; it is productive of amusement, certainly, but so 
 far as it goes, it by no means incurs derision. Nay, when his length 
 of days have given him something of a patriarchal appearance, espe- 
 cially if he chance to be a lean Clerk instead of a fat one, it does not 
 hinder us from regarding him with a sort of comical reverence, not 
 altogether unlike that with which, in surveying some grey old ruin, 
 we contemplate a strange-looking corbel. But nothing of this kind 
 can we say for the Clerk of a London parish. He has everything 
 that is objectionable in his country counterpart, and faults of his own 
 besides, with nothing at all to redeem either. 
 
 His secular employment is very often the sickening one sicken- 
 ing as conducted in this Metropolis of Undertaker: and in virtue 
 thereof, he dresses entirely in black. Thus far assimilated to the 
 appearance of his superior, the clergyman, he endeavours to complete 
 the resemblance in the matter of neckcloth ; and perhaps in that 
 of hair : for he is frequently a much younger man than the country 
 Clerk. His face is not one of the ruddy jovial sort to be met with 
 in the healthy village ; his habits, aided by a London atmosphere, 
 have rendered it puffy, pasty, and shining. His aspect, too we are 
 still supposing him to be also an undertaker has that mock-solemn 
 kind of appearance, with which features habitually moulded to the 
 exhibition of artificial concern, at last become permanently stamped ; 
 everything about it is ludicrously woeful, with the exception of the 
 dull, be-muddled, money-loving eye. As to his deportment in his 
 place on a Sunday, in this likewise, he tries to imitate the clergy- 
 man ; or, to speak more correctly, even to surpass him. Should the 
 latter be possessed with an unfortunate habit of discomposing his 
 countenance, or disguising the natural tones of his voice, he is pretty 
 sure to be out-heroded by his subordinate in the desk below him, to 
 a degree, which, on the part of any one else, would be accounted 
 the height of burlesque. The London Clerk, too, has vices of speech 
 which are peculiarly his own. These principally consist in vulgar 
 attempts at refinement, than which the coarsest provincialisms are 
 less offensive to a judicious ear. What can be more intolerable than 
 " Laud," " Ohmen," or Fawther," except the odious substitution, of 
 which he is also too often guilty, of the letter o for a, in such 
 a word, for instance, as " harden," which he almost invariably pro-
 
 2G4: THE PARISH CLERK. 
 
 nounces " horden ? " And were there anything wanting to enhance 
 the richness of these lingual elegances, it would surely be found in 
 the endeavour, which accompanies them in the majority of cases, to 
 be impressive, affecting, and pathetic. 
 
 How it happens that so strange a person is usually selected to 
 fill the office of Clerk, it is somewhat difficult to explain. There 
 are some satirical people who say that all ecclesiastical functions are 
 not equally gentleman-like, and that we are obliged to put up with 
 a vulgar fellow for a Clerk, because we can get no one else to be 
 one : but their opinion, imputing to the religious public a decree of 
 pride to which of course they are strangers, is uncharitable. Others 
 may contend that it is not the genius of the English nation to en- 
 dure unmixed solemnity, insomuch that in the most grave dramatic 
 compositions in our language, we are pleased by the introduction 
 of a clown. To us, however, it appears that what may be fit and 
 proper enough on the stage, may possibly be not so appropriate in 
 church ; and that the duties of a Clergyman, how serious soever 
 their nature may be, can be so performed as to command and sus- 
 tain all requisite attention, without the enlivening of a buffoon. 
 Nor do we think that the devotion of the greater part of us is so 
 deep, and pure, as to be profitably exercised by any such trial of 
 its sincerity as the contemplation of a ridiculous object. 
 
 It is the peculiar misfortune of this country, that no defect is 
 ever remedied no grievance redressed no public eye-sore even 
 removed out of the way, until everybody is clamouring against it. 
 And though all may feel the inconvenience, a long time often elapses 
 before any one thinks of complaining. Hence, perhaps, the tolera- 
 tion which the Parish Clerk, such as he has been and still is, has so 
 long experienced. There is, now. however, or, at all events, there 
 very soon will be, a demand arising for his amendment ; and we beg 
 to suggest to the collective wisdom of this country, that should they 
 resolve, for the good of the nation, to legalise a measure for Church- 
 Extension, it would not be amiss to accompany it by another for 
 Clerk- Improvement. With this suggestion, and in the hope that in 
 making it we have not been guilty of a breach of privilege, we con- 
 clude our observations on the PARISH CLERK.
 
 THE SPITALFIELDS WEAVER. 
 
 Ttis weaves itself perforce into my business 
 
 KING
 
 THE SPITALFIELDS WEAVER. 
 
 BY ARTHUR ARMITAGE. 
 
 " CALL that an Englishman ? " we fancy some compassionate reader 
 exclaiming within himself, as he ponders upon the " picture of misery " 
 opposite. It must be acknowledged that the Spitalfields Weaver is 
 but a sorry representative of our national characteristics. The 
 honest yeoman as he " stalks a-field " with his broad substantial 
 shoulders his finely-developed thews and sinews ; hi? open cheerful 
 eye, and his manly bronzed countenance, might well regard with 
 complacent distrust the claims of such a dwindled specimen of 
 humanity to the honours, rights, and privileges of a free-born 
 Briton. The Juggernaut of commercial cupidity has crushed the 
 energies of the poor Weaver ; confinement and unwholesome labour 
 have stunted his form. His muscles from lack of exercise are 
 wasted till they are almost as powerless as a child's; the healthful 
 breeze has never since he left his cradle visited his sharp colourless 
 features: he has read somewhere admiring comments upon the 
 " purling brooks " and the " tuneful birds " (it was an extract in a 
 newspaper), and he wonders that no mention is made of the music of 
 the shuttle. He has some vague conception of a " harvest-home," 
 and murmurs at the want of liberality in master weavers, who never 
 give men in their employment a glass of spirits when they carry their 
 work home. The idea of liberty he dismisses from his mind, as the 
 wild speculation of enthusiasm, or the day-dream of indolence, an 
 idea totally unworthy the attention of a sensible working man. 
 
 The Spitalfields Weaver occupies a small tenement which, though 
 newly-built, has, like himself, all the appearances of premature 
 decay. His workshop is a long room, lighted back and front with a 
 frame of small leaded windows, several of which are wanting, and 
 their places supplied by old rags or paper, as may be most con- 
 venient. There are two looms in the apartment, at one of which is 
 seated the father, a jaded man in a worsted nightcap, and a pair of 
 grey stocking-sleeves. At the other loom is employed a sickly boy 
 of ten years of age, clad in a calico night-shirt and a pair of corduroy 
 84 I I
 
 266 THE SPITALFIELDS WEAVER. 
 
 trousers, suspended by a piece of list running transversely over his 
 shoulder. In one corner is a party-coloured counterpane and a 
 blanket, whereon the boy sleeps after his frugal supper, consisting of 
 a thick slice of bread and a raw onion. The dingy plastered walls 
 are ornamented with a Dutch clock and a broad sheet almanack, the 
 hieroglyphic painted by some inexperienced artist. On the floor, in 
 picturesque confusion, lie scattered an old band-box, a wooden doll 
 (sorely maimed), a battered tin oil-lamp, a small pair of shears, and 
 from two to three bushels of fine oriental (or east-end) dust. 
 
 Full sixteen hours the Weaver keeps the treddles in motion with 
 his feet, and the shuttle with his hands. He sees no such amazing 
 hardship in this ; a certain quantity of silk must be wove per diem 
 to procure a certain amount of food, which the children fetch from 
 the baker's, two peck loaves at a time. On extraordinary occa- 
 sions, however, when the doctor is attending his wife for instance, 
 he labours for an additional hour or two. If death be in his house, 
 the Sunday is no day of rest for him. When his little girl returns 
 from Sunday-school, her father is still at his loom, and she sits down 
 on a stool in the chimney-corner and reads aloud the pious tract 
 which the teacher gave her to bring home for her parent's edification 
 and improvement. 
 
 " Throw that in the fire ! " exclaims the father with an angry 
 voice, that makes the little creature's heart to beat as she trem- 
 blingly hesitates to obey a command that, coming from her father, 
 she scarcely knows whether its " intent be wicked or charitable." 
 
 The old alliteration of "poverty and progeny" is exemplified in 
 the Spitalfields Weaver. Nature and Fortune, we have often thought, 
 resemble two benevolent sisters, one of whom undertakes to dispense 
 her bounty to the patrician, while the other distributes her gifts 
 amongst the working portion of society, including such of the clergy 
 as have livings not exceeding fifty pounds per annum. The Weaver 
 of Spitalfields generally has a family equivalent in number to the 
 muses and graces united. In every street in that populous district 
 may be seen shoals of half-dressed little wretches crowding the door- 
 ways, gambolling in the gutters, or devouring with frightful rapidity 
 tremendous hunches of bread and treacle. 
 
 At the recurrence of every fifteenth moon, the Spitalfields Weaver 
 entertains a large party of his relatives and acquaintances, to celebrate 
 the christening of his last family portrait. Then comes his brother 
 and his brother's wife and family ; also his sister (a widow) and 
 family ; also his wife's brother and family ; also his father-in-law and 
 mother-in-law, and his grandfather, a decrepid old man, in a buff
 
 THE SriTALFIELDS WEAVER. 267 
 
 coat with a scarlet collar and cuffs, and plated buttons, who has 
 obtained leave of absence, on parole, from the parochial asylum for 
 superannuated invalids. Then there are the Smiths and family, the 
 Browns and family, the Jones's and family, half-a-dozen or so 
 casual visitors, and nephews and nieces promiscuous, who, with the 
 other juvenile branches, compose a select party of their own, and 
 make merry over brown cakes and soft apples in the wash-house. 
 
 Easter and Whit-Monday are red-letter days with the Spitalfields 
 Weaver; we mean of course the "fine young weaving gentleman," 
 that is courting Rebecca Tidy, who is much addicted to tambour- 
 work. When holiday making, he attires himself in his best suit, 
 which being characteristic, we shall attempt to describe it. His 
 upper garment is a blue frock-coat, with a very short waist and 
 prodigiously long skirts. Two parallel cords run down either side 
 of his trousers, at the termination of which he displays a pair of 
 highly-polished high-lows, secured across the instep with a strap and 
 buckle. His throat is confined by a loose bandanna handkerchief, 
 tied with studied negligence. His hair is a pale canary, tortured 
 into two pensile ringlets of the Corinthian order, and surmounted by 
 a glossy silk hat, with a lofty expanding crown, sufficiently capacious 
 to answer all the purposes of a portmanteau or a carpet-bag, and in 
 which, when travelling on a pleasure excursion, he invariably carries 
 Rebecca's clogs. 
 
 The Spitalfields Weaver possesses notions of gallantry at once 
 peculiar and original. For example, he will walk for miles with his 
 " betrothed " on his arm, and his hands quietly deposited in his 
 breeches pockets. Occasionally you will see him with a short pipe, 
 beguiling the tediousness of a long journey, and Rebecca's still more 
 extensive reminiscences. His favourite suburban resort is " Clay 
 Hall," a sort of tea-gardens, celebrated for its ingenious machine by 
 which old persons may be ground young again. The process of 
 going up into the mill, and descending amidst the banter of the 
 company, affords a wonderful deal of diversion to the young women 
 of the shuttle and bobbin persuasion. As might be supposed, from 
 his sedentary occupation, the Weaver is more of a meditative than a 
 mercurial temperament. Rural felicity with him is sitting in a close 
 box, exhaling the fumes of tobacco, imbibing copious draughts of 
 mild ale, and picking shrimps. 
 
 The Spitalfields Weaver is, by hereditary predilection, a pigeon- 
 fancier. Let his family be ever so numerous, his privations ever so 
 great, he must have a pigeon-trap on the roof of his domicile, where 
 twice a-day, at dinner and tea-time, for ten minutes, he exhibits the
 
 268 THE SPITALFIELDS WEAVER. 
 
 capabilities of his highly- trained covey of pouters, tumblers, dragons, 
 Jacobins, and carriers. He flaps a long cane on the boards, and the 
 covey pouters, tumblers, dragons, Jacobins, and carriers fly off 
 and describe concentric circles in the air. Anon, he puts two fingers 
 between his teeth, and gives a shrill whistle, when the sagacious 
 Jacobins, &c. immediately return to their lawful habitation. Per- 
 chance, an individual who has but lately entered the regiment is 
 prone to desert, and quitting his corps, lodges with provoking impu- 
 dence on a neighbouring parapet, looking like a citizen who has 
 taken up his freedom. The Weaver whistles till his lungs are 
 exhausted in vain. Once more he flaps the boarding with his magic 
 wand, and sends up the flock to entice if practicable the recreant 
 back to his allegiance. The manoeuvre wont do, the little vagabond 
 has resolved upon a voyage of discovery; and, turning his tail upon 
 his indignant sovereign, he coolly struts into a remote attic window. 
 Quick as thought, the Weaver, with a volume of half-suppressed 
 anathemas, drops down from his trap, and posting off to the house 
 where his " pouting horseman " has taken apartments, urgently de- 
 mands the restoration of his property. The tenant, who is also a 
 pigeon-fancier, denies stoutly having in his possession any biped of 
 any quality or description whatsoever, save what he has honestly 
 bought and paid for. The claimant insists upon his right of entry 
 the right is disputed hard names are reciprocated a fight ensues, 
 and both plaintiff and defendant are ultimately conducted to the 
 station-house, with nose and eyes respectively of a sanguinary and 
 sable hue. 
 
 The Spitalfields Weaver is a passionate lover of harmony. Every 
 Monday night he attends a concert upon the otium cum dignitate, or 
 "free and easy" principle, at the "Cheshire Cheese." His taste in 
 singing, as in everything else, is eccentric ; neither Bailey nor 
 Barnett has any merit in his opinion. His favourite melodies, those 
 which he calls " sentimental," generally relate to shipwrecks and 
 disasters at sea. They never consist of less than fourteen verses of 
 eight lines each, and usually occupy from ten minutes to a quarter of 
 an hour in the delivery, exclusive of interruptions, hole in the ballad, 
 trying back, &c., &c. He laughs immoderately at comic songs, 
 especially those which touch upon donkeys and itinerant vendors of 
 greengrocery, and he joins in the chorus cordially and lustily : unlike 
 the tailor, who handles with equal dexterity the fiddle and the sleeve- 
 board, the bodkin and the fiddle-stick, the Weaver rarely performs 
 upon any musical instrument. The violin he thinks approaches too 
 nearly to the character of a machine, and playing on it is too much
 
 THE SPITALFIELDS WEAVER. 269 
 
 like an apology for manual labour. When he does feel musically 
 inclined, he patronises the Pandean pipes, better known by their 
 vulgar appellation of the mouth-organ. 
 
 If we may credit the assertion of the Weaver; some twenty years 
 ago there was no more flourishing branch of industry in existence 
 than that of silk-weaving in Spitalfields. The introduction of 
 machinery, the multiplication of journeymen, and other causes, have 
 conspired to reduce it to a state compared with which the occupation 
 of a scavenger must be truly enviable. The Weaver complains 
 bitterly of French silks and free-trade, the caprices of fashion and 
 the inhumanity of its votaries. He will descant for hours upon the 
 departed glory of the " book-prices." His club meet once a month, 
 when deputations are appointed to wait upon the masters to petition 
 for an advance or remonstrate against a threatened reduction of 
 prices. About ten years ago, there was a " strike " amongst the 
 journeymen weavers. Members of the " union " distinguished them- 
 selves by exhibiting outside their houses an assortment of fancy 
 ribands affixed to a pole. Those who neglected or refused to hoist 
 this veritable " signal of distress " were punished for their negligence 
 or contumacy by having every pane of their windows broken shortly 
 after dark. Processions were constantly formed, and the allied forces 
 went about the streets with a band of music and blue silk banners, 
 with heroic and patriotic mottoes in gold letters inscribed thereon. 
 Apprehensions of a tumult being entertained by the peaceful inha- 
 bitants of the Tower Hamlets, some half-dozen determined-looking 
 Bow Street officers were sent down by government to intimidate the 
 " union." Had it been a detachment of cavalry, the intimidation 
 could not have been more speedy or more complete. At sight of 
 the sturdy emissaries of justice, the band, who understood nothing of 
 the differences between masters and journeymen, and probably cared 
 less, suddenly emerged from the congregated body of the " union," 
 and drum, fife, and bugle, to the astonishment and indignation of 
 their employers, walked off quietly about their own particular 
 business. Soon after this occurrence, the " union " disbanded its 
 forces, but they still persist in ascribing the failure of the combi- 
 nation to the pusillanimity of their fellow- workmen who declined 
 " striking " with them, instead of laying the blame upon those mer- 
 cenary musicians, who sneaked off when called upon, at the critical 
 moment of an expected conflict, with animation and vigour, to 
 " strike up." 
 
 Surprising as it may appear, the Weaver, while deploring the 
 depressed condition of his trade, as soon as his children are capable
 
 THE SPITALFIELDS WEAVER. 
 
 of exercising their upper and lower extremities, puts them as a 
 matter of course in the loom, and by so doing perpetuates a famished 
 and discontented race. It is true that his conduct admits of some 
 extenuation, inasmuch as if some portion of the family be devoted to 
 future destitution, it is to save from present starvation the remainder. 
 With strangers, however, no such plea can be adduced. Nevertheless, 
 experience justifies us in stating, that parents in no way connected 
 with the silk trade are constantly binding their sons apprentices to 
 Spitalfields Weavers. We have heard of a youth who, despite the 
 entreaties of his friends, persisted in enrolling himself a member 01 
 the diabolical Society of Chimney-Sweeps, and could only attribute 
 his partiality for that profession to a natural love of solitude and a 
 desire of being alone. Living in town, he considered that a chimney 
 was the only situation in which a man of a reflecting turn of mind 
 could indulge in meditation free from interruption from his fellow 
 men. The Spitalfields Weaver, whose portrait heads this article, 
 affords a similar instance of blind fanaticism. His attachment to 
 weaving was grounded on the advantage of being enabled to sit all 
 day long; whereas, had he been brought up as a doctor's boy (as 
 his maternal aunt most earnestly desired), he would, as he justly 
 remarked, have been condemned to be constantly running about, or 
 standing behind the apothecary's counter. His election, therefore, 
 required not a moment's consideration. 
 
 The officers of a city parish, sometime last summer, came before 
 the magistrates at Worship Street, with a lad fresh from the work- 
 house, who felt ambitious (so the beadle affirmed) to be apprenticed 
 to a silk-weaver in Spitalfields. The Weaver was in attendance, a 
 hungry-looking man, whose mouth watered for the five pound note 
 which he was to receive, by way of premium, as soon as the inden- 
 tures were sealed and delivered. Fortunately, the usual preliminaries 
 had not been completed, when the beadle of Spitalfields appeared 
 before the bench, and presented to the sitting magistrates such a 
 graphic picture of the miseries of a Spitalfields Weaver, that the 
 bench at once resolved upon quashing the proceedings in toto. On 
 hearing this decision, the "City" became wroth exceedingly, and 
 boldly declared that " Spitalfields " was animated in its opposition 
 by the meanest and most discreditable motives ; and in order to 
 defeat the selfish object that Spitalfields had in view, the City 
 announced its determination to bind every boy in the poorhouse (as 
 soon as he should arrive at years of discretion) to artisans resident in 
 Spitalfields, thereby exasperating the rate-payers, and provoking them 
 to regard with inveterate enmity the law of settlement for genera- 
 tions to come.
 
 THE SPITALFIELDS WEAVER. 271 
 
 In the palmy days of weaving, we mean prior to the establish- 
 ment of the new police system, the most favourite recreation of the 
 Spitalfields Weaver was bull-baiting. A bull, smoking-hot from 
 Smithfield on a Monday afternoon, was looked for by the sporting 
 gentry of Mile End Old Town, as regularly as the London mail by 
 the ostlers of a country inn. The streets were lined at an early hour 
 by gay young gentlemen in their shirt sleeves, each equipped with a 
 knobby club, and all on the tiptoe of expectation. As soon as the 
 animal appeared in sight, a wild shout of triumph suddenly rent the 
 air ; and apprentices, deaf to the call of duty and of " master's wife," 
 sprang out of their looms and scampered off to join in the melee. 
 There was a little hump-backed fellow on crutches, with one leg 
 shorter than the other, who was celebrated for his activity and enthu- 
 siasm in the sport. Several times had he been suddenly and un- 
 expectedly elevated to a level with the house-tops, first having 
 invited, with inconsiderate gallantry, an embrace with the animal's 
 horns. By some means, known only to himself, he invariably con- 
 trived to fall on a soft place, so that his pericranium (the softest 
 place perhaps he could fall on) seldom sustained any material injury. 
 He is now a married man, and deals in portable confectionary and, 
 sweetmeats, but he never observes a drove of oxen pass along with- 
 out betraying an agitation of feeling that requires him to be narrowly 
 watched by the policeman on duty. 
 
 Fairlop Fair has, from the period of its institution, been annually 
 honoured by the presence of the elite of Spitalfields and its vicinity. 
 Early on the first Friday in July, light commodious spring-vans 
 covered with red bordered canvass, and tastefully decorated with 
 green boughs, start for Epping Forest, each capable of conveying a 
 double row of ladies and gentlemen, varying in age from one score 
 to three score, and in number from twenty-five to thirty-five. Large 
 stone bottles are carefully deposited between the legs of the sterner 
 sex, in order that those of either a masculine or feminine^ constitution 
 who may experience on the road a sudden depression of spirits, or 
 any other equally distressing malady, may be furnished with prompt 
 and effectual means of alleviation. A hamper or two secured on the 
 outworks of the conveyance, and heavily laden with cold legs of 
 pork, affords scope to the imaginations of the silent, and gives rise to 
 prophetic observations of a jocular character in such as can relish 
 " good things," whether animal or intellectual a pun as well as a pie. 
 
 The Spitalfields Weaver, when his trade has been particularly 
 stagnant, has endeavoured to give it a temporary stimulus by angling 
 for the patronage of royalty. One of the most expensive baits that
 
 272 THE SPITALFIELDS WEAVER. 
 
 ever was thrown out to hook a crowned head, was a magnificent robe, 
 presented by the Weavers of Spitalfields to the fourth George, and 
 first gentleman of Great Britain. His majesty of course felt highly 
 flattered by this proof of affection in his industrious subjects 
 graciously condescended to try on the admired garment reviewed 
 his elegant person in a cheval glass, and pronounced it to be an 
 exquisite piece of workmanship ; promised to recommend the gentle- 
 men of his court to abjure India and use pocket-handkerchiefs only 
 of home manufacture ; and having bowed out the blushing delegates, 
 retired into his dressing-room, threw the robe to his valet, and 
 requested to be furnished with a bottle of eau de Cologne. 
 
 Having had time to repent of their disobedience of David's 
 injunction about reposing trust and confidence in polite princes, the 
 Spitalfields Weaver next resolved to make a desperate experiment 
 upon the gratitude of female majesty, ascribing his disappointment in 
 the first instance not to a want of sentiment in sovereigns universally, 
 but to a simple mistake of gender. Accordingly, a bevy of ingenious 
 vestals, with spotless hands, was selected from the virgin operatives 
 of Spitalfields, and deputed to fabricate a specimen of their ability in 
 reconciling warp and woof for the adornment of their beloved sove- 
 reign. The work was finished, and taken with all due ceremony to 
 the palace. Her majesty (for the time being) on looking at it at 
 once candidly confessed that she never before beheld anything one 
 half so beautiful. The ladies of her court (like the gentlemen of the 
 former) were one and all instructed on the spot to provide themselves 
 with similar articles of apparel from a similar source with all con- 
 venient expedition. 
 
 To facilitate the execution of this benevolent design, a procla- 
 mation was issued commanding all the housemaids in the royal 
 establishment to cast aside any dress of a silken fabric they might 
 have in their use or possession, and assume forthwith the more 
 becoming garb of merinos, stuffs, or printed cottons. The Weaver's 
 bosom was filled with joy, the housekeeper's room with indignation. 
 The poor Weaver saw in his sleep a vision of St. James's glittering 
 in the effulgence of Spitalfields silks : the persecuted housemaids 
 saw nothing but degradation ; loss of admiration ; a life of celibacy, 
 and irremediable woe. At length, the household began to talk 
 seriously of the imperative necessity for republican institutions ; the 
 operatives, meanwhile, discoursed calmly upon the serene beauty of a 
 limited monarchy. Time flew on : the housemaids were still in agony, 
 and knew not what course to pursue ; the poor Weaver pointed to 
 himself, and bade them learn a beneficial lesson of resignation.
 
 w 
 
 THK SPORTING GENTLEMAN. 
 
 The oreed of noble bloods. 
 
 C.-LaAU.
 
 THE SPORTING GENTLEMAN. 
 
 BY NIMROD. 
 
 HUNTING has been called "a remnant of ancient barbarism;" and so 
 called by one who, no doubt, called himself a clever fellow. The 
 blockhead ! The antiquity of the Goths is nothing to it ; we 
 scarcely travel over half a dozen pages of the Bible ere the sport 
 begins. " And Esau went to the field to hunt for venison," says the 
 author of the twenty-seventh chapter of Genesis. Perhaps he did 
 so from necessity ; but that this pastime which doubtless it soon 
 became seized on the affections of men beyond any other, is 
 evident from its having stood the test of so many ages, improving, 
 as it were, in each, without any one venturing to attack what has 
 such high authority to support it. As has been elegantly said of it, 
 " it has (with us) long since become the great and exhilarating 
 characteristic of the English country gentleman, transmitted by his 
 ancestors to the present generation, equally pure and unimpaired 
 with the glorious constitution under which he lives." We wish 
 Solomon had tried it. He is said to have found the pleasures in 
 women, wine, fine houses, fine gardens, gold, silver, and music, 
 to be vanity and vexation of spirit : would that he had tried fox- 
 hunting! 
 
 But to be serious. Field sports are congenial with the habits 
 and taste of Englishmen, as well as peculiarly suited to their native 
 pith and pluck ; they have, in fact, a natural tendency to inspire and 
 promote manly spirits, and a free and generous conduct ; whilst in 
 the present state of society amongst the upper classes, they may be 
 said to afford the only effectual counterbalance to the allurements of 
 great towns, and their consequences. Then, on the score of health, 
 which is said to raise us above man and fate. Cowley says : 
 
 "Here health itself doth live, 
 That salt of life which doth to all a relish give." 
 
 Look into the face of the Sporting Gentleman, and compare him 
 with the town voluptuary a sort of walking quagmire, with joints 
 85 K K
 
 274 THE SNORTING GENTLEMAN. 
 
 like rusty hinges. As the brightness of the flame consumes the fuel, 
 so is he worn out long ere he attains the age of man ; and how 
 should it be otherwise ? Independently of his dividing his time 
 between an anxious conscience and a nauseated stomach, the very 
 make and composure of the human system demand motion and 
 exercise for its relief and preservation, and it will not go oil regularly 
 and well without them ; and as action is natural and necessary, it is 
 as pleasant as it is useful. Indolence is, in fact, the bane of repose, 
 whereas exercise and fresh air produce easiness of mind, joined with 
 clearness and strength of thought that fit us for anything of which 
 we are capable, to say nothing of the truism, that the devil 
 always employs an idle man. 
 
 It is true, there have been objections made to hunting ; the most 
 powerful of any, perhaps, by Addison, as resisting our compassion 
 for the brute creation. A Frenchman, M. Pascal, says, no man 
 goes a-hunting unless it be to fly away from his thoughts ; whilst 
 Virgil, in his tenth Eclogue, makes Gallus fly to it, to relieve his 
 love for his lost mistress, all other expedients having failed ; no small 
 recommendation, by the way, to its all- engrossing- powers. But 
 what value has the opinion of a Frenchman of Monsieur Pascal's day, 
 on the merits or demerits of the chase ? We might as well apply to 
 a Parisian for his notions of a pastoral, which seldom extend beyond 
 a court ; or to Sir Fopling Flutter, who considered all beyond Hyde 
 Park Corner to have been a desert. Virgil was a Sporting Gentle- 
 man, and so was Pliny the Consul, both of whom extol the chase ; 
 and Horace speaks in disgust of an effeminate young Roman, who 
 had given up the pursuit of manly and invigorating exercises ; and, 
 to crown all, Xenophon calls hunting a princely sport, the gift of 
 the gods ! 
 
 Divines, it is true, in their dark metaphysics, have been severe 
 on hunting, and most others of our manly pursuits. By a perverse 
 application of passages in the Old Testament, as well as from a 
 corrupt interpretation of Evangelic precepts, the retirement and 
 abstraction of a monastic life was represented as the state most 
 favourable to virtue ; but, happily for mankind, the more liberal use 
 of reason has dispelled such mistaken notions. Providence never 
 could have designed that this world should be filled with murmurs 
 and repinings, or that the heart of man should be voluntarily involved 
 in gloom and melancholy. 
 
 " "What more grateful to the ear, 
 Than the voice that speaks to cheer ? "
 
 THE SPORTING GENTLEMAN. 275 
 
 They forget that recreation is an essential part of life, inasmuch as it 
 gives us strength to fulfil the duties of it; nay, further, it has been 
 insisted upon by some, that to occupy one part of life in serious and 
 important occupations, it is necessary to spend the other in amuse- 
 ments. Then, again, hunting is said to be the most threadbare of all 
 threadbare subjects for the pen. This assertion is untrue. It can- 
 not be unpoetical, for it holds out an opportunity to expatiate on 
 the beauties of Nature, with which, Milton says, the devil himself was 
 pleased. 
 
 The great Lord Falkland pitied an unlearned gentleman on rainy 
 days, a censure generally applied to Sportsmen. It is true, that 
 the Squire Western of his day was little better than an illiterate 
 brute in the morning, and a drunken sot in the evening; such, 
 however, is not the case now. But, let us proceed to a description 
 of the Sporting Gentleman. 
 
 The Sporting Gentleman is For the most part of comely appear- 
 ance, his countenance and frame denoting health and cheerfulness, 
 and cheerful he generally is. Ami a rare virtue is cheerfulness ; it 
 makes more friends than learning and wit into the bargain ; in fact, 
 it was a proverb among the ancients, that a roan who can laugh 
 heartily, will never cut your throat. It is malice and cunning that 
 render him serious. It may be said of him, indeed, what Cicero 
 said of Catiline, that he lives with the young, pleasantly; with the 
 old, gravely; that is to say, he is well bred enough to put all his 
 friends and acquaintance at their ease. He abhors over-refinement, 
 which he considers but a mark for profligacy, heartlessness, and 
 insincerity ; and often thinks what old Fabricius would say, were he 
 to rise from the grave, and witness the over-strained and unnatural 
 state of a great portion of the fashionable society of the present age, 
 His house, however, abounds with everything tending to convenience 
 and comfort ; partly with reference to his station and family, and 
 also with a view to the repose necessary to himself and friends, after 
 a good day's sport. 
 
 In his general conduct, in his transactions with the world, the 
 Sporting Gentleman has a scrupulous regard to truth, with the most 
 religious attention to fulfil every engagement he may enter into, 
 which is the distinguishing characteristic of a gentleman. He has, 
 in fact, been educated in the schools of honour, those of Eton and 
 Christchurch, or others of equal note, which have inculcated the 
 most delicate sensibility with respect to these points. But let us 
 look a little closer into his character. 
 
 It is a singular fact, that there are thousands of country gentle-
 
 2 7 6 THE SPORTING GENTLEMAN. 
 
 men possessing their thousands per annum, but who are scarcely 
 known beyond the precincts of their own county. It is not so with 
 the Sporting Gentleman. He is almost universally known by name 
 and reputation, and not only in his native country, but on the con- 
 tinent. When Mr. Thomas Assheton Smith was presented to Napo- 
 leon at his court, he exclaimed, "Ah I le grand chasseur d 'Angleterre" 
 And it does not require a man to be a master of fox-hounds, by 
 which his name so frequently appears in the newspapers, to be thus 
 known. The mere fact of his being an accomplished Sportsman and 
 horseman is sufficient to blazon him to the world. Where is the 
 English gentleman who never heard of the late Lord Forrester and 
 Lord Delamere, when they rejoiced in the less distinguished ap- 
 pellations of " Cecil Forrester," and " Tom Cholmondley ? " And 
 what raised them to the peerage ? Why, in great part, their 
 celebrity in the hunting field, which introduced them to the friend- 
 ship of George IV., added to that of half the nobility of Eng- 
 land. 
 
 The Sporting Gentleman seldom entangles himself in the thorny 
 mazes of politics, at all events, he is never found amongst the 
 daring apostles of Utopian liberty, and would as soon see the devil at 
 his table, as Joseph Hume or Daniel O'Connell. He is, however, 
 a thoroughly loyal subject, and in former days his usual daily toast 
 was, " Church and King, and down with the Rump." Refinement 
 has robbed him of his toast, but the sentiment is still cherished by 
 the Sporting Gentleman. 
 
 The Sporting Gentleman is a great admirer of the female sex, 
 and, if married, his wife is generally what is called a fine woman. 
 His eye, being accustomed to regard the points of the brute creation, 
 does not overlook them in woman, knowing that, on the principle of 
 " like producing like," it is hopeless to look for fine and healthy 
 progeny from an ugly, ill-formed mother. The Sporting Gentleman 
 is also proud of his wife ; takes her to London for a few weeks in the 
 spring, as well as to all the races and race-balls in his neighbourhood ; 
 but, as he prefers the air of the country, and well-ventilated apart- 
 ments to the heated saloons of London, his stay in the metropolis is 
 short. 
 
 The Sporting Gentleman is very fond of his children, and puts 
 them on horseback as soon as they can stride a saddle. He sends 
 his sons to Eton for two seasons. He is partial to the Eton grammar, 
 in the first place ; and in the next, he was himself at Eton. He 
 afterwards sends them to Oxford, where he also was, and to 
 Cliristchurch College, although warned by a friend of the expense.
 
 THE SPORTING GENTLEMAN. 277 
 
 " I will make the sacrifice," is his answer, " for I wish my sons to be 
 gentlemen." Should he have three, the second succeeds to the family 
 advowson, and the third generally enters the army. The law is 
 suggested as a fine field for the third, but the father has at once an 
 answer, having recourse to poetry for a clincher : - 
 
 " Tom struts a soldier, open, bold, and brave 5 
 Wilt sneaks a scrivener, an exceeding knave." 
 
 The daughters of the Sporting Gentleman are educated at home 
 by a governess and other necessary instructors. He is too good a 
 iudge to send them to a boarding-school, having been let into some 
 of the proceedings of those seminaries as they are called, and not 
 inaptly, inasmuch as they are the seed-plots of vice, by his wife. 
 He also puts them on horseback at an early age, esteeming riding an 
 accomplishment, but confines their excursions to the road. He has 
 objections to their hunting; first, because he considers it not un- 
 attended with danger * secondly, his experience of the cover's side 
 has taught him that it is not always the court of Diana. 
 
 The daughters of the Sporting Gentleman are generally much 
 admired by the opposite sex, in great measure the consequence of 
 their very healthy appearance, for there is nothing of voluptuousness 
 about a woman without the display of good health. But the fact 
 is, not only have the errors in the physical education of the body, in 
 what Dr. Beddoes calls " the manufacturing them into ladies," been 
 avoided, such as pinching them off in the middle by tight lacing and 
 so forth ; but the preternatural forcing of their intellectual faculties, to 
 the destruction of the vital energy of their frames, and the banish- 
 ment of the bloom on the cheek, has not been resorted to by these 
 country-bred ladies, and ladies they really are, notwithstanding the 
 apparent laxity of their discipline, when compared with other systems. 
 The daughters of the Sporting Gentleman are seldom cut off by 
 consumption in the very budding of their womanhood, if not in still 
 earlier life, but live to become mothers themselves, imparting a healthy 
 offspring to posterity, untainted by hereditary disease. 
 
 The Sporting Gentleman is always an agriculturist to a certain 
 extent, and often to a very considerable one, assisted in his operations 
 by a Scotch bailiff, being aware that none other will keep his land 
 clean, and consequently productive, forasmuch as it cannot produce 
 corn and weeds at the same time. He prides himself on his cattle 
 and sheep, and now and then exhibits at the Smithfield show. In 
 nine cases out of ten he is a liberal landlord, and from the following
 
 273 THE SPORTING GKS'TLEMAV. 
 
 considerations. First, being himself a practical man, he knows what 
 can be done on a farm ; and, also, if the occupier is too highly taxed 
 for rent, he is aware he cannot do justice to it. Secondly, his pur- 
 suits in life bringing him oftentimes in contact with his tenants, he 
 has a feeling for their welfare beyond that of the mere landlord. 
 They are brother sportsmen, in fact, and a bond of social union 
 exists between them and their families, of great moral strength. 
 
 The Sporting Gentleman is a kind master to his servants, 
 several of them being considered as heir-looms on the estate, 
 descending from father to son, and dying in the service of the latter, 
 or retiring on the fruits of their service. But he keeps a tight 
 hand upon them, those in his stables especially, the high condition 
 of his hunters, as well as the neat " turn out " of his equipages, being 
 a grand consideration with him. Experience has taught him two 
 lessons touching this matter, the one, that servants, like soldiers, 
 under a relaxed system of mastership, are never really good ; the 
 other, that a good master makes good servants, kindness having 
 more influence than fear. 
 
 The Sporting Gentleman prides himself on keeping what is 
 called a good house, and in the real John Bull acceptation of this 
 term, not a grand display in the family dining-room, with scantiness 
 in the servants' hall, but plenty everywhere, and to " comers and 
 gosrs" as well. Still, without condescending to enter into the 
 minutiae of the butlery and the pantry, his injunctions are, that 
 there be no wilful waste. The butler looks to it in his department, 
 and over the kitchen chimney-piece is this seasonable hint in letters 
 six inches in length, " Want not ; waste not." Neither are the 
 poor of his neighbourhood forgotten by the Sporting Gentleman. 
 Broken victuals and soxip are served out to them twice a week 
 through the winter, from his kitchen ; and he gladdens their hearts 
 at Christmas by a distribution of meat and coals, in addition to 
 articles of female apparel, suitable to the season, by his lady. 
 
 The Sporting Gentleman gives a dinner to his tenants twice a 
 year, at his rent days, and often presides at it himself. This latter 
 point, however, is immaterial ; he does what is much more bene- 
 ficial to them and to his neighbours ; he drops great part of the 
 money he receives on the spot on which it is produced, in lieu of 
 taking it to enrich strangers who neither know, nor care a rush for 
 nimself or any one belonging to him. 
 
 The Sporting Gentleman is oftentimes in parliament, and then 
 generally for the county in which he lives. He is called upon by 
 his station to go there, although it be not much to his taste ; but
 
 THE SPORTING GENTLEMAN. 279 
 
 when he does go, he goes as his hunter goes over the country, with 
 Ids head at liberty ; he will not stand a martingal. In other words, 
 he will suffer no one, not even the " unwashed," to tell him how 
 he is to act, or for or against what he is to vote. Neither is party 
 his object. He wants no favours, the good of the country being his 
 chief aim. In fact, he courts not popularity at its expense ; he is 
 too proud to do it : 
 
 " This, my prize, I never shall forego; 
 
 This, who but touches, warriors, is, iny foe." 
 
 The Sporting Gentleman is on the Turf. That is, he has two 
 or three thorough-bred brood mares, and runs their produce at the 
 neighbouring races, say, within a radius of fifty miles. Racing, 
 with him, however, is only a secondary pursuit. Still, as far as he 
 goes, he enters into it with spirit. He gives large sums for mares 
 of the most fashionable blood, knowing that to breed from any other 
 is to incur certain loss ; and he selects the best stud-horses to breed 
 from, regardless of the heavy expense. He is proud of his paddocks, 
 which he has planned himself after the newest system, being about a 
 fourth of the size of those in his father's time ; and his young racing 
 stock are fed chiefly on dry food, by which they are forced into size 
 and form, and as such have generally the best of their neighbours. 
 He does not back them at the post beyond a few pounds, still less 
 attempt to make what is called " a Book," and this for two reasons. 
 First, he is aware that there are very long odds against him, or 
 against any other private gentleman on a race-course. Secondly, he 
 is well assured that not one man in a thousand possesses the powers 
 of calculation sufficient to enable him to make a winning-book ; and 
 lastly, it is not congenial with his feelings.* He considers it 
 infra dig. to be in constant communication with a most disreputable 
 order in society, the public betting-men of the day. 
 
 The Sporting Gentleman, however, occasionally performs the 
 office of gentleman-jockey, at some of our first private race-meetings, 
 and occasionally at public ones, for stakes whose articles express 
 that the riders of the horses should be gentlemen. And he will 
 take great pains to prepare himself for this office, either on his own 
 account, or to serve a friend, whose horse he may be asked to ride. 
 
 * It is a curious fact, that men who come under the true denomination ct 
 Sportsmen, are seldom ardent admirers of the Turf. On the day of the last 
 Epsom Derby, three masters of foxhounds, namely, Mr. Thomas Asshetou 
 Smith, the Earl of Kintore, and the Honourable Colonel Lowther, remained in 
 London.
 
 280 THE SPORTING GENTLEMAN. 
 
 He will go through the regular process of training, by severe 
 exercise, for wind, and of reducing his weight by fasting, each of 
 which is no small sacrifice to those who have not been accustomed 
 to any compulsory exertions and self-denials. Ambition, however, 
 has something to do with all this; he is proud of, and anxious to 
 display his fine horsemanship, and the winning a race, by a head, 
 foi a friend, is esteemed one of the most gratifying events of his life. 
 
 The Sporting Gentleman is proud of exhibiting his stables and 
 their contents ; and on the arrival of his sporting acquaintance and 
 friends at his hall, the first walk is to his stables. The superior 
 condition of his horses is his principal boast on these occasions ; and 
 it has been his aim to make as many converts as he can to the 
 means by which it has been obtained, out of his regard to that noble 
 animal, the horse, and from a wish to diminish his sufferings. Add 
 to this, he urges this means, the in-door treatment of hunters 
 in the summer, on the score of economy, assuring his friends, that 
 five hunters so treated will do the work of six of those which have 
 been summered in the fields, as was formerly the practice pursued 
 by ninety-nine sportsmen in a hundred, to the destruction of a 
 third of their studs by either accidents or diseases, of both of which 
 it was the most prolific source. 
 
 Amongst other pastimes, the Sporting Gentleman is fond of what 
 is termed " The Road ; " and if he have not (as several of his genus 
 have) a regular team of coach-horses at work all the year round, he 
 generally contrives to make up what is called a "scratch team" 
 in the summer, some of his hunters, who have rather lost their pace, 
 contributing towards it. And he patronises " The Road" and all 
 that belongs to it. A mail and a stage-coach pass daily through 
 his nearest village, at a certain public-house in which a refreshing 
 glass is always ready, at his expense, for the coachmen and guards. 
 He also directs his attention to the state of the roads in his neigh- 
 bourhood ; and to his countenance and presence are to be attributed 
 sundry improvements and ameliorations in the important operations 
 of travelling. 
 
 The Sporting Gentleman has once in his life been abroad, a 
 foreign tour having been considered by his father an essential part 
 of an English gentleman's education. But the continent is little to 
 his taste ; he misses the comforts of his hall, and the habits and 
 pursuits of the people are at variance with his own. 
 
 The Sporting Gentleman is a preserver of game in his covers 
 and woods, for the amusement of himself and his friends; but a 
 Btill stricter preserver of foxes, finding from experience, that game
 
 THE 8POETTNG GENTLEMAN. 281 
 
 and foxes can be preserved together, on the same spot. But he 
 is not content with the tame diversion afforded by partridges and 
 pheasants ; he visits Scotland in the August month, which, from the 
 wildness of the quarry, is quite in unison with his idea of wherein 
 the perfection of shooting consists. Neither is he content with 
 grouse ; but, with rifle in hand, pursues the stag of the forest, and 
 has been known to kill from his own shoulder upwards of sixty of 
 those animals in one year, a feat that has been performed by the 
 celebrated Captain Ross, of Rossie Castle, N. B. He looks upon 
 deer-stalking as the fox-hunting of shooting ; and, on his return 
 home, amuses his family and friends with a recital of what he has 
 done. And he has a fine field for the descriptive. The majestic 
 scenery of the Highlands ; the motions of the deer under every 
 variety of pursuit and danger ; their sagacity and self-possession { 
 their courage and noble bearing ; the bay; the method in which 
 they are prepared for being taken home ; and many other particulars 
 relating to their natural history and habits, are themes worthy of 
 any man's tongue or pen.* 
 
 The Sporting Gentleman visits Melton Mowbray generally once 
 in a year, for a longer or shorter period, as circumstances may 
 direct ; and occasionally spends the entire hunting-season in that 
 emporium of fox-hunting. In the latter case, he is called upon to 
 open his purse-strings, and increase the strength of his stud to the 
 number of fourteen, less not being sufficient for six days' hunting 
 in each week, which the circumstance of there being three packs of 
 foxhounds within daily reach of that town, enables him to avail 
 himself of. And he is likewise called upon to make another addi- 
 tion to his establishment, namely, a first-rate man cook. Mrs. 
 Jennings is all very well, a top-sawyer, indeed, hi the provincials, 
 but she will not do for Melton Mowbray. " Nil ibi plebeum ;" and 
 next to a slow horse, nothing is less in character with the place than 
 the animal so often sought after by housekeepers in other parts of 
 the world, where the palate is not so refined, namely, " the good 
 .plain cook." 
 
 It often happens that the Sporting Gentleman is himself the 
 master of foxhounds ; let us, then, look at him in that character. 
 His heart and soul are in the whole thing, and he devotes half hig 
 tame to ic, at least; forasmuch as, without the master's eye, and that 
 
 * Should any of the readers of the "HEADS OF THE PEOPLE" be inclined to be 
 initiated into the rudiments and mysteries of this noble sport, we recommend 
 them" the perusal of Mr. Scrope's elegant work, published by Mr. Murray 
 86 r< i<
 
 282 THE SPOKTING GENTLEMAN. 
 
 the eye of a spomman, a failure in some department of the nnder 
 taking is the natural and inevitable consequence. His object is to 
 show sport to his field ; to give satisfaction to the country ; and in 
 his endeavours to do so, he spares neither his purse nor his pains. 
 Still, he does not launch out into unnecessary and ruinous expences, 
 It being his intention to continue to keep his hounds as long as he 
 is able to follow them ; and not, like Actaeon of old, to be devoured by 
 them in the prime of his days. Four thousand pounds a-year, then, 
 is the sum he appropriates for the purpose, should he not accept a 
 subscription ; and he finds that, with good management, it will cover 
 all expenses for four days' hunting, in each week, and occasionally a 
 bye-day. And such it should do ; it is a large sum to pay chiefly 
 for tlie amusement of others, and what no human being upon earth, 
 except a native of Great Britain, would ever dream of paying. 
 Sancho Panza considered sporting pleasant when at other people's 
 expense ; and we are so far of his opinion, that except in cases of 
 vast landed possessions, all masters of foxhounds, should be assisted 
 by a subscription ; and we say this from a knowledge of the great 
 sacrifice of property that has already been made to the keeping of 
 foxhounds ; in some instances, indeed, to the irretrievable ruin of the 
 too liberal individuals. But referring to those who could afford the 
 outlay which we have now stated as the annual charge of an efficient 
 fox-hunting establishment, some curious facts may be related. It is 
 well known that one celebrated sportsman, lately deceased, was the 
 owner of foxhounds for fifty-seven years ; here has been the immense 
 sum of two hundred and twenty-eight thousand pounds expended by 
 one man, in one pursuit, supposing the above annual sum to have 
 been disbursed in the charges attending it. We could name a 
 dozen masters of foxhounds for thirty consecutive years, at their 
 own cost, each of which must have expended one hundred and 
 twenty thousand pounds in the course of that period, and on the 
 above-named account ! Should fox-hunting be put an end to in this 
 country, which, despite of evil forebodings, we hope it may not, 
 and another century be completed ere the pen of the historian should . 
 record the doings of the present, the foregoing statement might go 
 far towards shaking the faith of the reader in the veracity of the 
 writer. 
 
 The hounds of the Sportbg Gentleman are bred by himself with 
 the greatest care, his idea on that subject being that nothing should 
 de esteemed as cnaracteristic of a species but what is found amongst 
 the best and most perfect individuals of that species. He breeds
 
 THE SPORTING GEM'LEMAN. 283 
 
 largely, therefore, to enable him to draft nis pack closely, and thus 
 avoid the almost certain disappointment of entering hounds at all 
 faulty in their make, at least, in points that are found to be essential 
 to hard work. Whether or not he performs the office of huntsman 
 to his own hounds, so much the custom of late years, depends on 
 circumstances. Carthage produced but one Hannibal, and Great 
 Britain is somewhat tardy in giving birth to men eminently qualified 
 for this difficult task ; and he may be of opinion that it might oe more 
 satisfactory to his field to trust it to the hands of a well-instructed 
 servant. Should he, however, undertake it, he resembles not the 
 Baronet in Humphrey Clinker, who commenced hunting without 
 having served an apprenticeship to the mysteries of it, but brings to 
 his aid the experience of at least a dozen years in the difficult science 
 of the chase ; and difficult it is, as all those who have given their 
 time and attention to it will testify. On this subject there is a 
 remarkable passage in one of the letters of Pliny the Consul. " I 
 employ myself," says he, " at my Tuscan villa, in hunting and study- 
 ing, sometimes alternately, and sometimes both together ; but I am 
 not yet able to determine in which of these pursuits it is most diffi- 
 cult to succeed." On another occasion he tells a friend, how much the 
 chase contributes to enliven the imagination, and elegantly assures 
 him, he " will find Minerva as fond of traversing the hills as Diana." 
 It may be objected, that I have drawn too flattering a picture of 
 the Sporting Gemlemau. Let me hasten, then, to disabuse the 
 minds of such of my readers as may be of this opinion. The Sport- 
 ing Gentleman is very far from immaculate, perfection is not the 
 lot of humanity : 
 
 " Virtue and vice in the same man are found, 
 And now they gain, and now they lose their ground." 
 
 Still, as regards his morality, he is generally on a par with his neigh- 
 bours. At all events, there is nothing demoralising in his pursuits ; 
 on the contrary, the pastimes of the Sportsman have been found to 
 be public benefits in more ways than one ; and his example in the 
 field is not without its effect. We have no slight authority for say- 
 ing that the hearts of those men which are capable of being strung 
 up to a high pitch of enthusiasm and determination in the chase, 
 which is called the image of war, would fit them to lead columns 
 in their country's battles ; at the same time that they are found to 
 possess in the softer moments of relaxation and enjoyment, certain 
 chords which vibrate the sweetest notes of pleasure ; and the former 
 of these positions is substantiated by the testimony of military
 
 284 THE SPORTING GENTLEMAN. 
 
 officers, who have often so asserted, that in the battle-field the most 
 daring and gallant soldiers have been those who have been accus- 
 tomed to field-sports.* Neither does the Sporting Gentleman spend 
 his time in countei acting happiness; and, as Johnson has it, " filling 
 the world with wrong and danger, confusion and remorse." The 
 converse is the case ; the pursuits he indulges in promote happiness 
 by finding employment for vast numbers of the community, both in 
 trade and in servitude, and they are known to be the lion supporters 
 of the agriculturists by the great demand for horses, and consequently 
 for the produce of their land for their support. Let us hope, then, 
 lhat although changes are gradually introduced by time in the habits 
 and modes of thinking of mankind ; and notwithstanding the refine- 
 ment of modern manners may contract, as it has done, the circle of, 
 and abate the general ardour for, the sports of the field, room may 
 still be found for the enjoyments of the manly pursuits of the chase ; 
 and also that the flagging spirit which has lately shown itself, may be 
 revived by the generation that is to succeed us. As I have already 
 observed, they have stood their ground from the earliest times ; have 
 been encouraged in all ages, and by the greatest of men ; and cannot, 
 therefore, now be supposed to dread censure or need support. They 
 had their origin in Nature. And we have a pleasing foreboding 
 that our hopes on this subject will be realised. The illustrious con- 
 sort of our gracious Queen is a sportsman ; and although, as the 
 poet says, 
 
 " Who, from the morning's brightest ray, 
 Can promise what will be the day;" 
 
 we have a fair promise here, that by his example and influence, the 
 sports of the field, in the country which has adopted him, will be 
 upheld in their pristine vigour. And Prince Albert will find his 
 account in this. It was one of the qualifications bestowed by Xeno- 
 phon on his Cyrus, that he was a sportsman ; and if the Scripture 
 Nimrod had not been a sportsman, he would not have been a king. 
 Add to this, all sportsmen are popular ; and the historian, Sallust, 
 has assured us that neither armies nor gold can preserve princes on 
 their thrones ; they must reign in the affections of their people. 
 
 * General Sir Hussey Vivian expressed himself very much to this purpose, a 
 few years back, in his place in the House of Commons.
 
 THE BAHtUSTER. 
 
 .And peers through all things with his halt-shut eyes.
 
 THE BARRISTER. 
 
 BY LAMAN BLANCHARD. 
 
 How majestic; but that is a cold word! How inexpressibly sub- 
 lime and beautiful is the spectacle presented to the delighted imagi- 
 nation, when, taking a range for which Westminster Hall would be 
 too low and narrow, were half Europe canopied there, it embraces 
 all the glorious ideas that congregate around the Barrister on his 
 Legs ! Humanity has no higher, no nobler image. The pages of 
 philosophy unfold no lovelier or purer reality. The dreams of the 
 poet, 
 
 " Lone sitting by the shores of old Romance," 
 
 peopled though they be with countless things, of mould magnificent 
 and unfading lustre, compass not the bare conception of a form more 
 radiant in character, more towering in action, more godlike in 
 purpose ! Talk of power in the Hercules, and gracefulness in the 
 Apollo ! Look at the Barrister on his legs ! The stamp and 
 expression of all moral beauties there unite. We think of the fine 
 old Vicar's great man struggling with adversity, and then of his good 
 man who comes to relieve it ; but both are eclipsed by the greatness 
 and goodness concentrated in that image. 
 
 Glance round the Court of Law, the Exchequer or Queen's 
 Bench ; we view the jurymen with indifference, wonderfully con- 
 trasted with our reverence for the principle that places them in the 
 box ; we see the plaintiff and defendant, perhaps, and share a little 
 in the anxieties of both ; we survey the crowd of witnesses with the 
 curiosity, the compassion, due to people about to be legally stretched 
 on the rack, and turned constitutionally inside out ; we behold the 
 judge with just respect ; but it is the Barrister whom we gaze on 
 with admiration and wonder. 
 
 Who would care to see a knight-errant of old ! Look but at the 
 Barrister of to-day. There is the spirit of chivalry, cased in black 
 mail, and riding on a roll of foolscap, as witch did never yet on 
 broomstick. Look searchingly at him. Your first impression is
 
 286 THE BARRISTER. 
 
 that you see nothing but a rather ordinary little man with a pert 
 nose, a cunning eye, a coarse hard mouth, a sallow complexion, and 
 wiry hair of a sandy hue, straggling all round (except just across 
 the parchment of the forehead) from under a wig that must have 
 been ugly before it was dirty ; the unsightliness of it being now so 
 considerably heightened, as to induce a conviction that the powder- 
 puff which last came in contact with it, was ft-esh from the soot-bag. 
 You suspect, too, that his attire consists of a suit of black ostenta- 
 tiously shabby ; the sleeves so worn as to harmonize with the dingy 
 gloves, and the collar so darkly powdered and pomatomed, as to 
 match exactly with the wig ; all else, save a neckcloth and band, 
 remarkable for illustrating the satirist's maxim, that " white's not so 
 very white," being developed in a stuff gown, that having lost all its 
 original blackness relies for its distinguishing marks on the effect 
 of a profusion of crumples and splashes in the hinder parts. 
 
 Such are, probably, your first impressions ; but these, as you look, 
 give place to convictions more flattering. You discern in the coarse 
 mouth, cock nose, and cunning eye, the moral beauty of a man, 
 fired in every atom of that mass of sensation which he presents to 
 you, with a heroism more than human in its excess of daring on 
 behalf of humanity, with a sympathy that elevates its possessor 
 above all mortals, by the very truth of its devotion to all as repre- 
 sented in one, his client ! The crisp curls of his wig shoot out 
 into rays of glory circling his head ; his gown of shabbiest stuff 
 becomes a robe of grace of finest texture, 
 
 " Soft as dove's down, and as white as it." 
 
 You hail in him the inspired advocate of human right, the indefati- 
 gable and uncompromising asserter of justice. His acuteness is 
 equal to his intrepidity, his impartiality, if possible, surpassess both. 
 He is the champion of the man in tribulation, be he high or low. 
 He is the redresser of wrongs, be the wronged man dwarf or giant. 
 His shield is thrown over the first comer, the creature who seeks 
 his protection, whatsoever he may be, and it is thrown over him 
 unhesitatingly, unshrinkingly, untiringly. In the same spirit is he 
 moved, by the very first appeal to his chivalrous devotion to the 
 cause of fair-dealing and equal justice, to draw his sword and 
 commence the combat. His principle of action is to assault the 
 oppressor, as well as to shelter the oppressed ; and whether the poor 
 man who deems himself injured shall purpose to beard the great lord 
 in his strong castle, or to besiege him, if it may so be, therein ; or
 
 THE BARKISTEB. 2S? 
 
 whether the great lord shall purpose to sally forth from his stone 
 walls, and give battle to a daring and lawless multitude of tres- 
 passers, his heart is found in the right place ; his arm with its 
 muscle hard ; his hand with a weapon in it, his weapon with a keen 
 edge to aid the quick stroke. Herein is his magnanimity displayed. 
 While ready ready ! ridiculous ! while anxious, most anxious, to 
 plead the cause of " Poverty v. Riches ;" while prepared to war against 
 windmills in defence of the vested rights of blind old Dobbin, he is 
 equally anxious anxious ! absurd ! He is solicitous, in the most 
 eager sense of those syllables, to champion the plaintiff in the cause of 
 " Riches v. Poverty." Conscious that he is ever at the call of Weakness, 
 he is magnanimous enough to take part with Power when the call 
 comes in that direction. At the beck of the Indigent, he has sufficient 
 moral courage and philosophic daring to devote his best energies : 
 when invited to the purposes of Wealth, he feels that he can afford it. 
 
 See him at one time asserting the rights and privileges of the 
 subject against the crown ; at another period, of no less momentous 
 interest, maintaining the prerogatives of the crown against the 
 encroachments of a faction. To-day he is found wielding the 
 strongest weapons and exercising the subtlest craft in endeavours 
 to snatch some wretch, whose guilt is doubtful, from the meshes 
 of the law, that have been dra\vn around him to his condemnation ; 
 to-morrow, it is his task, a nobler still, to extricate, if he may, an 
 innocent being from the law's almost limitless entanglements ; and 
 finding the pleas of justice powerless, to deliver the half-dead victim, 
 through the lucky medium of a flaw ; and then, the next hour, it must be* 
 come his duty to vindicate that law triumphantly against all assailants ; 
 to establish the perfectness of its wisdom, the purity of its justice, and 
 to instil a sense of its eacredness into the bosom of every hearer ! 
 
 Thus the same undaunted energies which he is eager to interpose 
 between the law and its victim, he is as strenuous in exerting in 
 defence of the -law, when its sanctity is perilled by the sacrifice of 
 the least of its forms to expediency or caprice. And while you 
 observe with what impartiality he resolves, note with what zeal and 
 fearlessness he executes. No consideration of the offence that he 
 may give to the high and powerful, by the line of argument he 
 pursues in support of the feeble, ever glances across his mind ; the 
 blandishments of worldly sport and pastime beset him in vain, if a 
 brief require to be persued, or a cause have a chance of being called 
 on ; he has no pleasure, no business, no duty, but the interest of the 
 one being whose welfare he had engaged to promote. Wife, children.
 
 288 THE BARRISTER. 
 
 club, debate, even dinner, seduce him not from his purpose. He 
 is to plead the cause of the stranger on the morrow, and the soul of 
 honour within him is proof against all temptation. Unensnared by 
 the charmer, though turlle and cold punch are among the persuasives 
 employed, behold him, freed from every fascination but that of 
 justice; punctual to his hour, in court ere the contest begins, 
 watchful of every turn of it to seize the chance advantages ; and 
 imbued with such a sense of its importance, that to him the glorious 
 interest of the great Past, the awful mysteries of the mighty Future, 
 are merged and mingled in the actual Present. He has no particle 
 of life belonging to him that is not living in the contention then and 
 there going on. What can shake his fixed resolve to win the victory 
 for the struggler he has adopted ? Any fear of exposing others ; any 
 dread of injuring himself ? No! The ties of consanguinity here 
 hold him not back ; the springs of sacred friendship are for the 
 occasion dried up. In defence of a client whom, though he has 
 never seen, he has undertaken to protect, he will convict his near and 
 dear relation of rascality ; to win his cause, he will quarrel with his 
 excellent friend on the other side, charging him with the most 
 palpable unfairness; covering with scorn his arguments is shallow; 
 his motives as unworthy ; and branding his highly-respected asso- 
 ciate as the apologist for perjury, and the advocate of fraud. 
 
 Beautiful and sublime is the spectacle ! Talk no more, then, of 
 the knight-errant in the olden time ; for in his topmast bravery, he 
 is a poor creature beside some modern knight , a Sir James Wheedle, 
 or a Sir Jacob Bluster, pricking o'er the plain of Bedford Square, cr 
 of Bloomsbury, at nine in the morning, in a patent-safety to rescue 
 that distressed damsel, Justice, from piteous perils, at Westminster ; 
 or to relieve her sightless and forlorn condition in the neighbourhood 
 of the giants at Guildhall ! 
 
 But is the eminence on which the Barrister sits to be contem- 
 plated admiringly only from a single point ? or rather, has that 
 eminence but one towering pinnacle ? instead of a multiplicity of 
 peaks above peaks, each rising up as though in a struggle for 
 superior loftiness. We have but to take him in his several avocations 
 to find him " another, yet the same" in all. Is anybody unpleasantly 
 situated in reference to some trust-deed, or title-deed, which, having 
 no irons in the fire, he heartily wishes there ? Whither points his 
 hope but to Number-something, Such-an-Inn, where, though he 
 fancied himself without a friend in the world, he finds a total 
 Btrangur willing to incur headache and heartburn in a toilsome
 
 TH8 BARRISTER. 239 
 
 search for flaws; and able to prove the bond, that kept him pate, 
 nothing but waste parchment. Or has a gentleman found himself, 
 like Farquhar's recruit, troubled with too much wife, to whom does 
 he rush, in the hope of divesting himself of the superfluity in his 
 house, but to the fellow-genius of the philanthropist who gained the 
 other gentleman an estate? How must both gentlemen admire 
 the one, to see a man discovering him to be the real owner of an 
 estate not his own ; and the other, to find a man knowing consider- 
 ably more about his family secrets and his wife's failings than he 
 ever did himself'! 
 
 But, whether with regard to the conveying of property (" convey 
 the wite it call"), or to other chamber-counsellings for the more 
 peaceable settlement of disputes, or to the last and grandest effort 
 the gallant stand-up fight in open court, making a fellow-creature's 
 c;iuse his own the Barrister labours under one great disadvantage 
 when compared with the saints, heroes, philanthropists, and good 
 Samaritans of old. He sells his philanthropy. He lets out his 
 spacious soul in furnished apartments for single litigants. He plies 
 for money ready money only ! 
 
 Such is the captious and profoundly stupid objection which the 
 ungrateful insensibility of the world allows itself to urge against a 
 chivalrous defender. His chivalry is not the " cheap defence of 
 nations," forsooth ; his heroism is not the "unbought grace of life.' 
 " The charm of the contest is the fee it brings," they cry. The only 
 written bit of a case that affects his hard heart, or moves him to 
 mortal sympathy, is on the outside of the folded-up document, just 
 above the attorney's name " Case for opinion, &c., Mr. Swivelton. 
 Six guineas." The questions of life and death in his brief, the 
 tremendous interests that are at issue in the cause he has to open, 
 touch him no more than the deaths of the folks who were slain 
 at Hastings. What are his countrymen to him ? He cares for 
 nothing but his fee, and fights hard for a verdict only that he 
 may get a heavier retainer next time. 
 
 Now, of all the ten thousand modes and systems of detraction, 
 this we should hate most, if we did not perceive a still more abomi- 
 nable species of calumny gaining ground to the detriment of the 
 Barrister at the bar of public opinion. 
 
 Imagine the advocate of a great cause the enforcer of a noble 
 principle the defender of an oppressed fellow being, working him- 
 self up to frenzy ; scattering the fiery bolts of his indignation around 
 him; trampling on personal distinctions, and snapping ancient friend- 
 ships asunder, as flame severs flax ; and all upon the principle 
 87 MM
 
 290 THE BARRISTBR. 
 
 nothing higher that carries the player-king triumphantly through 
 his task of tears ; tears shed for Hecuba ! Conceive this glorious 
 advocate of right and justice insensible to both, and mindful only of 
 lue statement in his brief; which, injure whom he may, he will 
 seek to substantiate, though he knows the impossibility of doing it, 
 perhaps the cruelty of attempting. 
 
 But, having supposed this which is one charge entered against 
 him in the book of popular errors -how are we possibly to imagine 
 what is yet beyond ? That this Sir Knight, who is the pledged 
 servitor of honour and virtue, and whose glory maketh dull the else 
 brilliant fame of the mailed champions of old, not only fights on the 
 false side as it hath happened for many warriors to do but fighta 
 thereon after he has found it to be false ; that while gloriously 
 vindicating the principle of truth, as embodied in the case of hia 
 unfortunate and respected client, he suddenly discovers what was 
 known to many before, that his unfortunate and respected client is a 
 scamp of the first class A 1 in villany ; and yet, discovering this 
 by tokens that are truth itself, goes on to plead as though no new 
 ray of light had broken in upon the question, no circumstance had 
 occurred to shake his faith in the case he had submitted, no fact 
 had arisen to snatch the mask from imposture and turn the scale of 
 justice? This is asserted (it is so much easier to assert than to 
 believe) of many Barristers, by people, who because they read 
 reports of legal proceedings, and go into courts of law, and hear 
 men in dusty wigs and rusty gowns straining (as the swallowers 
 of camels do at gnats) to convince judge and jury that his scoundrel 
 of a client is a martyr, or that his lying witness ought to be believed 
 pn his oath fancy that they prove their case. These are the dolts 
 who adhere all through life to the doctrine that hearing is believing, 
 There is no use in reasoning with these literalists, 
 
 But do they stop even here ? No ; the scandal only reaches ita 
 full enormity when it alleges that the advocate has been known, ere 
 now, not merely to screen from suspicion the knave who was pal- 
 pably spotted from head to foot ; not simply to defend, as innocent, 
 the culprit who had privately confessed to him his guilt ; but to do 
 this with public asseverations of belief in his innocence frightfully 
 contrasted with a secret knowledge of his criminality. Yet one step 
 more ; he has even (it is thought), under such circumstances, stood 
 yp, in the presence of justice robed for judgment, and sought to 
 twist the evidence into a rope for the witnesses who had spokfeu 
 truly ; to strain suspicion against the innocent accusers ; to fasten 
 upon others, by every species of ingenious practice in the art of;
 
 THE BARRlStER, 2$I 
 
 disjointing facts and appealing eloquently to prejudices, something 
 of the odium of that guilt which he knew to be then resting solely 
 on the head he would have spared. It was the head of his client, and 
 hence his sympathy with it, to the exclusion of the remotest concern 
 for the triumph of justice. Not that he desired to let loose an acknow- 
 ledged murderer upon society ; but that he had received the fee, he 
 had undertaken the defence, it was his prescribed duty to get the 
 accused off if he could ; the knowledge of guilt was an awkward 
 accident, which he could not help ; the insufficiency of evidence was 
 an assumed fact, which he was bound to demonstrate if possible ; and 
 as for the witnesses' characters, how should a spot remain upon them, 
 when his client's confession of guilt came to be published, appended 
 (by way of moral) to the exulting announcement of a verdict of 
 acquittal ? 
 
 As reasonably expect the door-posts of the Temple and the 
 Inns of Court, to be inscribed, " Ground-floor : Mr. Wm. Gammon, 
 Advice gratis," as to expect Barristers to throw up their briefs 
 merely because they discover their clients to be unconscionable 
 rogues. As to a stray endeavour now and then to fix a client's 
 admitted guilt upon his accusers or their witnesses, who can wonder 
 at it, when it is observed that half the people who go to hear trials 
 come away with a cruel prejudice against the Barristers on both 
 sides ; deciding, on a cool review of the whole evidence, that the 
 counsel for the plaintiff, in the one case, was plainly a party to 
 a nefarious attempt on the defendant's pocket ; and that the advocate 
 for the prisoner at the bar, in another case, was, beyond question, 
 particeps criminis in the affair of burglary he had so feelingly- 
 defended ? 
 
 Human nature is not perfection (the remark is rather more true, 
 perhaps, than new) ; and we should all make allowances for one 
 another. The prisoners should make allowance for the witnesses, 
 who seldom know whether they are speaking Arabic or Dutch ; the 
 witnesses should excuse the jury, who will keep fancying they under- 
 stand all that is going on; the jury should feel for the counsel, who 
 have a dozen hard heads to impress, making four- and-twenty ears to 
 stun, and as many eyes to keep wide open ; and the counsel should 
 make great allowances for the judge, who has to bear the full brunt 
 of the knavery, the equivocation, the stupidity and arrogance of 
 them all. 
 
 Let us not claim, then, even for the Barrister, exemption from 
 human weakness albeit he rarely speaks as though he deemed 
 himself liable to it. In a large, although learned profession, elevated
 
 292 THE BARRISTER. 
 
 by much moral excellence, and sanctified by great public usefulness, 
 there must be many abusers of an invaluable privilege. Take these 
 in classes. Say, to begin with, that we light on 
 
 THE DRY BARRISTER. Many of these are called to the bar, just 
 as prisoners are brought to it, because they are destitute. This 
 Barrister can do nothing but pore over precedents, and rake for 
 authorities, that would be very applicable to the case before him ii 
 they were strictly analogous. He is terribly apt to overlook a most 
 important feature in the case you have submitted to him, in the 
 ardour of his interest relative to the long-forgotten case of " Rex 
 v. Mouldy." And when, after going through seventeen striking pre- 
 cedents, he proceeds to irritate the judge, and disgust the over- 
 wearied jury, by citing the last and most curious authority apposite 
 to the matter in hand, you discover that he coolly suppresses in your 
 own case the one essential fact that would have saved you, because it 
 would have spoiled the exquisite parallel which he had luckily dug up 
 out of the dark ages of the law. Of law he has not an atom of idea, 
 except as a thing settled by judges and juries long since mouldered 
 away, in some case not totally dissimilar to the present. Justice and 
 equity are not to be meted out by the living, save in the measures 
 of the dead. The question with him is, not what should be, but 
 what was. 
 
 THE WHEEDLING BARRISTER. He is pretty sure to overdo his 
 work. The veriest simpleton of the twelve not that juries are inva- 
 riably of one class shakes his sage head, and settles that the right must 
 be on the other side of the question, because Mr. Blarney is trying 
 to cajole him. A defendant, who has scarce a scrap of answer to the 
 action, instantly feck that there will be a verdict for him, from the 
 cozening tone of the appeal in favour of the truth. Yet wheedling 
 is a safe game, so long as the professor doesn't fancy that he can 
 " wheedle with the devil," or a judge. And the wheedler is popu- 
 lar as men are, who, though they never win, seem to have the 
 chances of success always running in their favour. 
 
 THE BROWBEATING BARRISTER. This is a large class, and a sin- 
 gularly lucky one ; for witnesses are many, and the metropolis is wide ; 
 yet we never hear of a counsel being kicked through it. The glory 
 of this tribe is to succeed in making a sensible man look like a goose 
 in the witness-box, and to see Truth shrinking out of it as though 
 she had committed perjury. The browbeater is then triumphant ; 
 he has displayed vast genius, and upheld the dignity of the bar. 
 When a timid gentleman, strange to the scene, has delivered in 
 distinct terms bis weak-voiced testimony, up starts the cross-
 
 THE BARRISTER. 293 
 
 examining brow-beater, and, with folded arms, and body rocking 
 to and fro with a vulgar fierceness in his aspect and insolent suspi- 
 cion in his tone with an eye glancing knowingly from the jury to 
 the witness, bellows out, " Now, sir, before you go, I must just 
 trouble you to open your mouth a little wider, and answer this 
 question, without the slightest equivocation : Have you ever been 
 in Birmingham?" The "No" of the nervous witness is perhaps 
 unheard, but the blush of indignation on his cheek is too visible to 
 2scape notice. " I 'm sorry to embarrass you, sir. Calm your 
 nerves you were tolerably composed just now. Come, sir, I must 
 repeat my disagreeable question ; tell me (with a leer round the 
 admiring court), and remember you are on your oath, tell me, Have 
 you ever been in Birmingham ? " Forced to hear the negative 
 now, he returns to the charge. " Never in Birmingham. Now, sir, 
 look at the gentlemen of the jury, and, on your oath, reply to the 
 question I now put to you : Have you ever in your life been in 
 Manchester ? " No sooner has the witness answered " Yes," than the 
 browbeater turns round to the jury with an exulting swagger, and 
 exclaims, " There 's a pretty prevaricating fellow ! " Unless he 
 can turn the nervous man's astonishment and confusion to further 
 account, he probably sits down, observing, that he does n't think it 
 necessary to put any more questions to such a witness as that. 
 
 THE BRIEFLESS BARRISTER, instead of ending, we should have 
 begun with. But we had not the heart. Every puny whipster of 
 a wag has a fling at the Briefless Barrister. Jokers of all degrees 
 take a pride to gird at him. Why? Because he is distinguished 
 above all his fellows ; he has done no mischief ; undone no client ; 
 ruined no man. The parchment *bf his soul is unscribbled. He 
 is as innocent as the prisoner at the bar before the trial begins. 
 And then, he is so melancholy. His blue bag is filled with little 
 devils of the same colour. Every day is a week long to him. The 
 year is one long vacation. What are Hilary and Trinity to that 
 martyr unto brieflessness ? Yet with what punctuality he attends 
 to do nothing ; how undeviatingly regular are his appearances in 
 court ; and he has a clerk, and a boy, and all shamming business. 
 How he squints at other men's briefs, from habit only; for it is 
 seven years since the last hope of having one died within him. 
 As it takes a life-time to get hold of a brief, he wonders how many 
 centuries it will require to make him Attorney-General ; and then, 
 what portion of eternity must elapse before he becomes a judge. 
 He is as a " serpent's egg " that is never hatched 1
 
 THE JUDGE. 
 
 BY LAMAN B1ANCHARD. 
 
 was once an acorn; and the great whale now floundef" 
 ing in the ocean- stream was, a few centuries ago, a little blubberef 
 not too big to reconcile us to its being ranked with the mammalia, 
 But what ages must have elapsed since that grave and reverend 
 seignior on whom we are now gazing was a lubberly boy ; that calm, 
 passionless, imperturbable embodiment of the principle of justice - 
 that living type of the highest morality apparently purified from all 
 human weakness ; speckless as the cambric that envelops his throat ; 
 bright as the gorgeous robe that enfolds his limbs ; soft and sleek as 
 the fur that sweeps so gracefully from his drooping shoulders, yet 
 rigid as the marble out of which his features seem chiselled ; tougher 
 and more wiry than the hair of that abundant wig, to eke out whose 
 expanse the heads of many ursine convicts must have been shaved ! 
 Was he ever boy at all was that cedar of Lebanon ever as a goose- 
 berry-bush ? Was he but a puling infant in the old nurse's arms, 
 more helpless than a blind puppy, and ignorant as so much wax- 
 work? Spun he tops, and was his forte the trap and ball ; his pas- 
 sion, cricket not half a century ago? Was he (this iteration is 
 inevitable, for one is of necessity incredulous) was he indeed a 
 riotous, racketing, pugnacious urchin, ripe for any exploit provided it 
 was irregular pummelling particular friends smashing cucumber 
 frames plundering orchards and overturning stalls tormenting 
 tradesmen torturing tutors and keeping the maternal heart for 
 ever on the rack of terror ? Are these pleasant pranks, natural re- 
 creations, discoverable among the records of his life, who sits there 
 as he were the elder brother of one of those old Roman senators 
 that stirred not from their seats when the ruffian Gaul, in the flush 
 of victory, dared to approach and pluck their long white beards ? 
 All this he must have been ; yet surely it is impossible but to see 
 in him a phenomenon opposed in every sense to the free and youth- 
 ful image of the shepherd " piping as though he should never grow 
 old;" for how looks he, but as one who had never been young, 
 nay other than he is now !"
 
 THE JUDGE. 
 
 There sits a Judge, that no king can corrupt. 
 
 Honor
 
 THE JUDGE. 2.05 
 
 The day has befen, however, when his lordship, or his honour, 
 who now fills the judgment-seat with so much of the flesh, and so 
 little of its frailty clinging to it, was content with a back seat upon 
 the benches appropriated for counsel, and almost dreaded, perhaps, 
 the coming of the hour when, a brief being put into his hands, it 
 would be necessary for him to get upon his legs and address the 
 Court for the first time. He had gone through the preliminary 
 studies and ceremonies with credit ; he had become popular with his 
 young contemporaries, thanks to a dashing air, a lively wit, a turn 
 for thinking, and a capacity for drinking and as this latter quality 
 more especially commended him, in its gradual development, to the 
 notice of his elders in the law, his chances of getting on in his pro- 
 fession were excellent. - These, perhaps, were wonderfully promoted 
 by important commercial connexions or by influence in a snug 
 borough returning two members or by a lucky opportunity of dis- 
 playing his powers as junior counsel in a capital cause, when the 
 senior chanced to be absent or by hazarding, just in the right 
 place, a tiashy remark, or a ticklish repartee, " which excited con- 
 siderable laughter, in which his lordship heartily joined" or by a 
 patient and pains-taking exhibition of such legal knowledge as he 
 happened to possess ; so as, while producing all he knew, to seem to 
 he speaking from the overflowing affluence of his stores instead of 
 ihe scarcity of them or by a new edition of some old reports or 
 uncut treatises or by a pamphlet worthy of being classed with tha 
 tmcut or by a slashing article on some topic of personal interest 
 in a leading review or by being erroneously supposed to write for 
 <( The Times" or (at the cost of half his balance at his banker's) 
 by a grand and desperate dash at dinner-giving, asking twenty nob* 
 to " The Clarendon," and getting them, from sheer curiosity and 
 astonishment at the young man's assurance, to come. 
 
 Those were days of glorious excitement; and perhaps the hour 
 of final triumph, when the hopes of the aspiring lawyer are crowned 
 by his elevation to the bench, has no such delight ; assuredly his 
 career as a Judge can have no such consecutive delights as then 
 were his the pleasures of getting on. Client after client came, and 
 cause after cause was won ; his income advanced from one to four 
 thousand per annum, and then doubled ; he took the coif he went 
 into Parliament and the solicitor-generalship was but a step off, if 
 he chose to seek it. Such was his life of business in court ; his life 
 of pleasure out of it kept pace with this success. He took all that 
 came legitimately in his way among other things, a wife; and, in 
 ft house fcuitable in state and crammed with comfort, managed all
 
 296 THE JUDGE. 
 
 Ills Clarendonisms at home. Nobody was anxious to get first out of 
 his dining-room ; nobody was ever known to find fault with anything 
 that came out of his cellar. 
 
 "Hear him but reason on his burgundy. 
 And, all admiring, with au inward wish 
 You would desire your host were made a grower. 
 Hear him debate on claret and champagne, 
 You 'd say they have been all in all his study. 
 List his discourse of port, and you shall have 
 A glorious bottle rendered you in music." 
 
 But sentence of death must be passed even upon Judges ! and 
 when a Sir William This, one of the Barons of Her Majesty's Court 
 of Exchequer, happens to quit the bench for the bier, there must be 
 a Sir John That to fill the vacant place. In the midst, then, of his 
 prosperity, and in the thick of his pleasures, our barrister is su:r- 
 moned to the bench. Strange to say, the shock of his promotion 
 operates upon him like a cold bath. His star is in its zenith. His 
 reputation and his income are increasing yearly his taste for social 
 enjoyments equals his forensic powers his means answer to his ends. 
 The Judge's wig seems positively, in his case, an anti-climax. If 
 he accepts it, more than half his income goes at one fell swoop, and 
 with it seven-eighths of his freedom of action. Yet the ermine to 
 which he had aspired must not be unworn now that the chance of 
 events has hung it upon him. His political friends are in office ; 
 they must not, by a rejection of their offer, be repulsed and offended. 
 Lastly, when no other persuasive remains, his country occurs to him ; 
 justice and his country require him to consent ; and the honourable 
 and learned counsel is forthwith numbered with the more Learned 
 and more Honourable Twelve 
 
 Now, indeed, comes a serious change over the spirit of that 
 dream his life. He is Mr. Justice Blank^ or Mr. Baron Dash ; 
 and every movement must be decorous, guarded, judge-like, unim- 
 peachable in its propriety, a model and a lesson to every looker-on. 
 There must be no more cakes and ale in public ; no more festivity, 
 in the sweet face of heaven. The club must be sparingly visited, 
 the rubber at whist abjured, Crockford's cut altogether. The race- 
 course is now a place to be as shy of as a ground set with spring- 
 guns ; the theatre, as a convenience to drop into, is little better than 
 a man^trap, and to go behind the scenes would be to take a lover's 
 leap into the bottomless pit. There must be no going hither and 
 thither, no free and easy strollings, no agreeable gaddings about
 
 THB JUDGE. 297 
 
 from concert to ball, and rout to opera. All must be point device, 
 and governed by a rule of correctness as though the eyes of Europe 
 (with those of Asia, &c.) were watching every turn and expression of 
 the countenance. The very servants must not be allowed to over- 
 hear their master humming a comic song in his own dressing- 
 room. " Jolly Nose," though all the world beside were joining in 
 joyful chorus, the learned Judge must not dream of chaunting ; 
 how merry and musical soever in disposition, he dare not mur- 
 mur a single note of " Jim Crow " in his sleep. As for a waltz 
 a country dance a simple, natural, necessary jig he might just 
 as well have had his two legs shot off at Waterloo. With the same 
 degree of propriety, with the same chance of conciliating public 
 opinion, with the same regard to the dignity of his judicial function, 
 might he sally forth one fine winter morning to enjoy an hour's 
 skaiting on the Serpentine. Imagine a Judge cutting a figure of 
 eight, and gravely coming down upon his centre of gravity ! What 
 would Great Britain and Mrs. Grundy say ? 
 
 Nor are these privations all that our Judge suffered, when he 
 gave up half his professional income and doubled his professional dig- 
 nity. He restricted himself, even in grave and sober conversation, 
 to a circle so narrow, that liberty of opinion could hardly be said to 
 be his, save on topics as old as the " Iliad," and quite as unattrac- 
 tive in ordinary society. Topics of to-day were almost forbidden. 
 He found it necessary to glance round the table at the guests, check 
 his observation midway when he saw a stranger present, or mutter 
 his idea inaudibly to his next neighbour. His bare opinion would 
 have, in spite of himself, the weight of a judgment. How could he 
 say but that the very subject in dispute might become a matter of 
 legal procedure of which he himself would be the arbiter? Even 
 the pleasantry of a jest upon it would be denied him. Upon the last 
 elopement, the last duel, the last murder, he must be silent. Yes, 
 his dearest friend's wife might run away, and he be forbidden to 
 bring up the subject, as a charming theme for discussion, in what- 
 ever company he went into. What can recompense a kindly heart, 
 touched with sympathy and fond of interesting converse, for such 
 denials as these ? Nay, he must not go into a towering passion when 
 he wants "no, not an oath." 
 
 Let it not be inferred, however, that such a barrister as we 
 have supposed, can ever be completely tamed down and subdued 
 into such a Judge as appearances have just presented. " Robes 
 and furred gowns hide all," says he who knew everything; and in 
 that mighty all is included every passion that warms arid chills, 
 
 88 N N
 
 THE JUDUE. 
 
 every emotion that elevates or depresses, the heart ol a human 
 being. 
 
 " The charge is prepared, the lawyers are met, 
 The Judges are ranged, a terrible show ! " 
 
 And look well at those Judges. What spectator could ever con- 
 found them, though in station and attire the same, with the 
 counsel congregated in the court ? They are of the bench benchy. 
 They are quite another set of men animated by other interests, 
 governed by other principles, moved by other motives, obeying 
 another law. They seem utterly dead to everything but that to 
 which it is their duty to be keenly alive. They appear to have 
 no thought about persons, but only about the facts adduced and 
 made clear to their understandings. They betray no consciousness 
 of themselves, but simply of the things that are to be done. Ah ! 
 but what mere mortals are they all this time ! Gods of clay, with 
 cracked heads frail vessels, and not so closely sealed but that the 
 divine essence of justice escapes by many crevices ! The breast that 
 heaves under that motionless ermine, which seems to cover a stone 
 image, is agitated, perhaps, with sorrow for a child in peril with 
 shame, possibly, for a brother whose disgrace cannot be hidden 
 with mortification for unrequited friendship. Some concern may 
 penetrate it now for giddy daughters or for stupid sons ; perhaps 
 for a wife who is no angel. Or, in spite of strong self-control, 
 perhaps that breast is tickled with some wilful and perverse remi- 
 niscence of a jocular kind, more resolute to enter because it ought 
 not to intrude in fact, with a bon-mot, which it would discharge 
 at the crowded court if it dared, and which, stifled 
 
 "Fires that are closest shut burn most of all " 
 
 threatens every moment to go off at the eyes and mouth in one 
 convulsive muscular explosion. 
 
 If Judges, before they become Judges, were not exactly like 
 other people, and therefore exceedingly disposed to enjoy a hearty 
 laugh when they can, they would still be very likely to feel, in 
 secret, a peculiar relish for a good thing, thought or uttered, for 
 the very reason that their functions act as a check, and forbid 
 them the freedom which is enjoyed by counsel. No men living, 
 in fact, have a keener relish, but it is not noisily evinced. A 
 Judge's laugh is rather seen than heard ; it oozes out at his eyes, 
 gambols round his mouth, flushes his distended cheeks, and sub- 
 aides in a minute as though it had never been. We read of maniacs 
 Who believed themselves to be wolves, ana that the "bair arew
 
 THE JUDGE. 299 
 
 inward ;" and we hear of Judges who might be described as Ycricks 
 turned inside out wearing the cap and bells inwardly. 
 
 The jokes of Judges on the bench are generally, as they ought 
 to be, involuntary. Excepting the one great case of an Irish 
 Judge in our own time, the world has witnessed very little of 
 premeditated jesting waggery with malice aforethought on the 
 bench. When it has happened, the feeling has been provoked 
 by the humorous sallies of counsel, much in the way that Samuel 
 Johnson was moved by a jovial crew in the night-time, to come 
 down and " have a frisk with them." Of this, an instance may 
 be cited from recent records in Westminster. A sheriff's officer, 
 dashingly arrayed, was undergoing a cross-examination, to which 
 the counsel had given a comic turn, ending with a desire to know 
 ( the witness being described as " an officer " ) if he belonged to 
 the army, and to what regiment. " Neither to the army nor to 
 the navy," was the reply, uttered in a highly offended tone ; " I 
 am an officer of the sheriff of Wilts." " Of what county did the 
 witness say?" enquired the Judge. "Of Wilts," returned the hand- 
 somely-attired witness, with an air of conscious pride. " I should 
 have thought," said the Judge, in a low tone, to the bar, glancing 
 at the witness's smart waistcoat and gold chain, " I should have 
 thought, rather, of Bucks." 
 
 More private, and more decorous, as became superior station, 
 was the pleasantry of a most distinguished living ornament of the 
 bench, when, seated with three of his learned brethren, on a sultry 
 day, the heat became insupportable. " Brother G.," turning to a 
 late learned justice, whose extraordinary figure was more charac- 
 terised by breadth than length, and who sat next to the Chief Judge, 
 " Brother G., it 's growing dreadfully hot ; I wish you could lie 
 down on the bench, and give us a little room" As a bit of "broad" 
 humour, this is perfect. 
 
 But the pleasantest of the pleasant sayings of the Judges are 
 all involuntary. Of this class, was the lapsus of an eminent Judge 
 who presides east of Temple Bar, and who has (perhaps we should 
 say had) a habit of employing the homeliest phrases to juries, 
 as those of which they would best comprehend the meaning. One 
 of his peculiarities consisted in describing a jury as " laying their 
 heads together" instead of "consulting." On a certain occasion, 
 long ago, it fell to our lot to hear an address to a grand jury, 
 in the course of which the Judge had to refer to an instance of 
 doubtful description of property, in a case of felony submitted to 
 them the question being whether knives or forks had been stolen ;
 
 300 THE JUDGE. 
 
 and he cited a parallel case for the guidance of the jury. " Mr. 
 Justice H.," said he, "on the occasion in question, told the jury 
 that it was for them to find, according to the evidence before 
 them, whether the stones alleged to have been stolen were really 
 stones or not; and the jury, having laid their heads together, found 
 them to be blocks of wood." 
 
 Of this species of judicial humour, arising out of a straight- 
 forward and familiar simplicity, many examples might be cited; 
 but we prefer putting in contrast with the above a lapsus that 
 arose out of the opposite habit of employing an elaborate and over- 
 charged kind of phraseology. 
 
 Judge B., in his latter days, fell into an indulgence of this sort. 
 A case of aggravated assault came before him ; a brutal fellow had 
 beaten a neighbour's child with dreadful severity for plucking a flower 
 on his grounds ; he was found guilty, and the Judge, when passing 
 sentence upon him, meant to say that, as the prisoner was himself 
 a father, his conduct was the more revolting. But the phrase he 
 used gave an entirely different turn to the whole expression. " Pri- 
 soner at the bar," said the kind-hearted Judge, whose feelings were 
 strongly excited, " you have been convicted, on the clearest testi- 
 mony, of an offence which is abhorrent to every feeling of humanity ; 
 all the affections of the heart, and all the sympathies of our common 
 nature, rise up in reprehension of your crime. Upon no provoca- 
 tion, or the slightest imaginable, you hare consigned a young and 
 tender and innocent thing to the anguish of a broken limb, perhaps 
 to a life-long injury. Savage as such conduct would have been in 
 any case, in yours the act was more especially revolting and bar- 
 barous ; for how could you commit such an aggravated outrage on 
 your neighbour's child when you had one of your own at home ? " 
 The learned Judge thus inadvertently reduced the question to a 
 mere affair of property ; and how could it be wondered at, if, when 
 he saw the whole batch of barristers below cramming their gloves 
 and blue bags into their mouths to stifle a laugh, he felt the ab- 
 surdity too, and finished his affecting address with emotions rather 
 different to those with which he commenced it ? 
 
 A Judge is bound to weigh and examine every syllable he 
 utters, before it escapes him, lest it be capable of conveying two 
 meanings. The utmost nicety should characterise every expression 
 from judicial lips. A misapplied word a term whose meaning 
 is in the slightest degree obliquitous is sure to have some fatal 
 effect; the seriousness with which he is listened to is exceedingly 
 liable, from its severity, to give way to snap into sudden and
 
 1HE JUDGE. 801 
 
 involuntary laughter. Such a phrase as that which was once em- 
 ployed by Mr. Justice P., when touching on the gravest possible 
 subject, would have provoked no titter, no levity under ordinary 
 circumstances. Addressing the jury, in censure of a man who was 
 called as a witness, the Judge, ever the most zealously religious 
 of his class, said, " the man whom the prisoner called to speak 
 for him is, although his evidence could not be received, in reality 
 a witness against him. That man openly avowed his disbelief in 
 the book upon which he was to have been sworn. He told you, in 
 fact, that he rejected revelation altogether ; that he denied the ab- 
 solute certainty that there is a hell ; that he did not credit the 
 existence of a place of perpetual torment ; and, in short, he would 
 deprive us of all the consolations of religion." Dignity of station, 
 and solemnity of subject, are sometimes horrible provocatives of 
 untimely tittering. 
 
 Among the powers which the isolated position of the Judge in 
 court, and perhaps to some extent in society, undoubtedly tends to 
 ripen, and which are still further sharpened by the continual and 
 rigid exercise of all the best powers of his understanding, is that of 
 attending to two subjects at a time one ear for one topic, the 
 other ear for another topic. A great lawyer of the present day, we 
 believe, disputes this faculty for which some Judges have been cele- 
 brated, if we may decide by the circumstance of his suddenly stop- 
 ping short one day in his argument, upon seeing the Judge (Lord 
 Chancellor B.) employing himself in writing letters. " Go on, Sir 
 E.," said his lordship, looking up. The counsel proceeded so did 
 the Judge and the counsel stopped again, " Go on, Sir E." 
 The counsel wished to wait until his lordship was at leisure to hear 
 the argument ; but the Judge asserted his power of carrying on the 
 two functions of listening and letter-writing at the same time. So 
 also might it have been with a Judge of less repute, who, when on 
 the circuit, was pestered, in some small and inconvenient court-house, 
 with sundry canine visitors, that insisted upon yelping as witnesses, 
 after the fashion of the " quaaking " ducks of Charles Mathews the 
 elde^r. " Officer, turn out those dogs," said the Judge. Out went 
 a dog or two, but in they came again as soon as the door re-opened, 
 and yelped as before. The Judge commanded silence once more, 
 and sharply rebuked the officers of the court for not ejecting the 
 noisy intruders, who were then about to be expelled in right 
 earnest ; but here the Judge broke in again " No, no, officer, not 
 that little dog the others the others ; that little dog has not 
 -.-Jo tV slightest disturbance, I've been watching him for three*
 
 302 THE JUDGR. 
 
 quarters of an hour ; let him alone, he may remain ! " Who will 
 presume to say that a Judge's mind is not capacious enough for the 
 double action the close and vigilant attention accorded at the same 
 time to the witnesses and the whelp ? 
 
 There is, no doubt, a pleasant relief from the severe and weari- 
 some application of the faculties, attainable through the medium 
 of such a trifling incident as the intrusion of this little dog. The 
 eye of the Judge fell upon him as an amusing, a tranquillising 
 object; and perhaps the puppy served to carry off thoughts and 
 associations that might otherwise have thrust themselves into his 
 observation of the cause he was trying, and distracted his attention 
 a thousand times more. How frequently necessary must some 
 such relief be, come in what shape it may ! The weight of years, 
 the heat of the season, the crowd in court, the incumbrance or 
 curls and fur superfluous, the disposition to slumber, the long sitting 
 in one position, the dreadful bodily maladies of which such habits 
 are the precursors, and to which Judges are often known to be 
 martyrs all these privations and sufferings combined, frequently 
 render the representative of justice on the bench an object more 
 entitled to pity, as he is also to reverence, than any other in the 
 assembly over which he presides not excepting even the feminine 
 witness whom a bullying counsel has deemed it his duty to insult. 
 
 And yet, how Judges cling to the bench ! While they have one 
 faculty left unimpaired, they will totter to it as though they had 
 nothing to retire upon. Scotland has afforded remarkable instances 
 of this. Hearing gone and memory gone, the forfeiters will not go 
 likewise. With the mischiefs arising from such defects whole 
 volumes might be filled ; but, instead of these, a curious instance 
 may be adduced of the consequences of another infirmity in a 
 Judge a habit of uttering his reflections aloud. It occurred in 
 London, on the trial of a man for stealing a faggot from a large 
 heap. The witness, who was produced to identify the stolen article, 
 having sworn to it, Mr. Justice P. remarked, " You swear it is the 
 same faggot you saw the prisoner take ?" " Yes, the same." " Very 
 well ;" and then, as he was writing his note of this evidence, he 
 said (to himself, as he innocently thought), " why, how can he swear 
 it is the same faggot? One faggot is as much like another as one 
 egg is like another. " The cunning counsel for the prisoner, close 
 below, caught the Judge's remark, and instantly had the witness 
 called back for re-examination. " Now, sir, you have sworn this 
 is the same faggot ; why, how do you know it 's the same faggot I 
 One faggot is as much like another as one egg is like another.'
 
 THE JUDGE. 80S 
 
 The Judge dropped his pen, and looked over his spectac'es into the 
 serious face of the counsel. " Mr. P.," he observed, " I see the 
 finger of God in this case ; the same reflection was passi ig through 
 my mind at that moment, in the same form of words. I certainly 
 shall not let this case go to the jury on such testimony." 
 
 Let us, in all gratitude and respect, pray that every pure and 
 upright Judge may escape the visitation of such infirmities, or at 
 least be conscious of them when they have crept upon him, so 
 that he may " die with dignity." From errors, weaknesses, and 
 prejudices on the bench, justice must ever suffer ; but these may 
 yet be rendered more limited in their influence. It is something 
 meanwhile to rejoice over, that in modern times the horrible spec- 
 tacle of a dishonest, a corrupt Judge, has been unwitnessed in this 
 land. Defective as he may be in disposition, or perverted by pro- 
 fessional habit and party associations, no one can name the Judge 
 by whom the law was wilfully mal-administered. Cambyses, the 
 Persian, is said to have caused a Judge to be flayed alive, and his 
 skin to be spread on the justice-seat, " to put his son, to whom 
 the vacant office was given, in mind of exercising his charge better." 
 Judges in our day would be sure to die in their skins, though 
 King Cambyses were on the throne. Whatever they may lack, 
 they have INTEGRITY ; if they reverence not justice, they rever- 
 ence a good name, and treasure it. May they all be merrier than 
 they seem more like men and less like machines ; and when a 
 note is brought by a messenger, and handed up to the bench, 
 eliciting a grave, formal, dignified nod of assent, may it be as the 
 great Lawyer Brandon's was, nothing more distressing than the 
 acceptance of an invitation to dinner. May "sobriety cease to be 
 sober." when the time comes. 
 
 Above all, let us express a wish that grows out of a painful 
 reflection. How many barristers, become judges, must have lived 
 to hang the clients they formerly defended ! If the man who goes 
 to law is on the road to ruin, and ruin be a path to crime, the 
 list must be long. May the Judge be spared such pains in future ! 
 As he is faithful to the throne and the altar, may the principles 
 that sanctify both give him at length none but merciful laws to 
 administer ! As he is a sworn friend to order, and a devout hater 
 of the policy that mounts a red cap, may this blessing be his hence- 
 forward may lie never put on the black cap!
 
 THE BISHOP. 
 
 BY LAMAN BLANCHARD. 
 
 THE BISHOP is not merely a national blessing he is, in the strictest 
 sense, in absolute verity, a national necessity. What may be his 
 functions, what his worth, in other countries what these may have 
 been amongst us in former ages we need not pause to enquire ; 
 enough, that he is now, and in this land, an article of first necessity, 
 a popular essential ! 
 
 Take away the Bishop, and the people's safety-valve is gone. 
 What explosions must follow ! The swelling hearts of a million of 
 men, scattered over many districts of the empire, must burst in a 
 single morning, from the sheer want of something to carry off their 
 superfluous emotions, and vent their overwrought and ungovernable 
 humours upon. While the Bishop lives, these sons of excitement 
 will never die by explosion. He is always ready for use, and at 
 everybody's especial convenience. No calamity, public or private, 
 political, social, or domestic, can occur but somebody abuses the 
 Bishop. No man can labour long under a bilious attack, but the 
 Bishop, more potential than the physician, comes to his relief, and 
 then the low grumbling, risen into a fierce growl, terminates. Part 
 of an Englishman's sense of felicity in this world consists in a sweet 
 and stubborn consciousness of having been grievously wronged ; and 
 while there are Bishops above ground, he cannot be persuaded but 
 that he is an ill-used being. He keeps up a tolerable stock of hap- 
 piness, therefore, by perpetually railing. 
 
 Now the English climate is an invaluable resource, and furnishes 
 fcim with frequent causes of discontent and apprehension ; the east 
 wind or the north wind, the dead calm or the sudden blast, the 
 odious drizzle or the soaking shower these are eminently service- 
 able in turns ; the sheet of mid-day fog, link proof the nasty slippy 
 sloppy snow the "muggy" day that stifles, or the sharp dry heat 
 that is pronounced to be pos-i-tively killing all are very fine thing* 
 in their way ; and what myriads would do, if deprived oi such tertib 
 and legitimate helps to the grumbler, it is difficult to imagine, unless 
 they found in the deprivation itself a degree of ill-usage exceeding 
 even that which the climate as it is enables them constitutionally to
 
 THE BISHOP. 
 
 Tne temporal lands, which men. devout have given to the church , 
 would they strip from us. 
 
 llLNUY \.
 
 THK BISHOP. 305 
 
 enjoy. Women especially would more than ever regard themselves 
 as injured angels. 
 
 But what is the weather, as an excuse for grumbling, compared 
 with the Bishop ! Natural liberty, or the privilege of railing at the 
 clouds, the winds, and the sun, has been too common in all ages to 
 be pre-eminently exquisite in any. Civil liberty, or the privilege 
 of calling one another knave and fool, of ripping up old grievances, 
 and exposing family affairs for the amusement of the bystanders, is 
 precious enough ; though, if sweet in the first enjoyment, it is rather 
 unpleasant afterwards. But religious liberty, or the privilege of 
 abusing a Bishop, has no drawback ; for its pleasures, like the 
 music of an island more enchanted than ours, give delight and hurt 
 not. In a country where it is an understood thing that a man in 
 a passion shall pummel the Bishop of the diocese, or, if it so please 
 him, the whole bench, rather than the individual with whom he has 
 his quarrel, what wonder if the peccant humours and irritable affec- 
 tions of the blood are safely carried off, and civil war is a stranger ? 
 What can so practically promote peace, as this species of resentment 
 of affronts and injuries ? Would not duelling, for example, be in 
 effect abolished, if it were a maxim of civil polity that an offence 
 would be properly resented, and wounded honour effectually healed, 
 if the injured man went out into the fields and discharged his pistol 
 at an effigy, set there expressly to be shot at. arrayed in a shovel- 
 hat and wig, silk apron and lawn sleo.ves ? Well, and how many 
 quarrels, that else must ripen into duels, are amicably adjusted by 
 virtue of that principle of religious liberty which points at the vili- 
 fication of the Bishop ? 
 
 Look on all sides. Here, we see a man whose quarrel is with his 
 lawyer whose ire is roused by a ruinous bill of costs ; but, cautious 
 how he exasperates the potent man of the law, he falls, tooth and 
 nail, on the peaceful man of the church ten chances to one, his 
 rage is only finally appeased by tearing a Bishop joint from joint. 
 There, we find an invalid expending the last remains of his vigour. 
 not in a fierce assault upon the apothecary and two physicians 
 who have conspired to treat him for a complaint he never had but 
 in a splenetic attacks upon the Bishops, arch and simple. And, in 
 another place, we discover a railer, who, while his riotous rib was 
 scarifying him from crown to sole, sat suffering, fear-stricken, an 
 swerless to all complaints, not dreaming of the retort-warlike, no; 
 even daring to expostulate who now, with smothered anger con- 
 suming him inwardly, looks about for some grand and fitting and 
 89 o o
 
 306 THE BISHOP. 
 
 legitimate object against which to direct the pent-up storm he must 
 not, for his ears, hurl at the right head, and 
 
 " My dukedom to a beggarly denier" 
 
 it hurst upon the Bishop ! So the honest laird, when Jeannie Deans 
 refuses his offer to make her the lady o'Dumbiedikes, comforts him- 
 self with an anticipation of the hangings that he has in store for 
 Uory Bean, his pony. 
 
 " Bishops," says the duchess in " Don Quixote,"" Bishops are 
 made of blocks, and not of men." Who would think it, seeing the 
 inflictions they undergo ? When we speak of " the bench," it would 
 he comforting to the pity which is in our nature, if we could speak 
 rather of the hard wood whereof it is made, than the soft flesh that 
 is seated on it. But if we should thus be relieved from all concern 
 about the sufferings of that spiritual band, from them what a crown 
 of honour would be snatched from what glorious martyrdom would 
 they be cut off for ever ! If a Bishop in the flesh were no more than 
 a Bishop on a chess-board if he were, to use the duchess's phrase, 
 a block and not a manhe could assuredly suffer nothing though he 
 were burnt ; but neither could he rank with the saints and martyrs. 
 
 " 'Tis better as it is ;" and so the Bishop himself seems to think 
 Many and fiery as are the bolts hurled at the bench, has there been 
 in the worst of times any lack of candidates for a vacant seat upon 
 it ? Has the post been unsought, because it is a post of danger ? 
 Has the world witnessed one single instance of flinching on the part 
 of a reverend divine, when summoned to take possession of a see, 
 and set the mitre on his brows as the warrior draws on his helmet ? 
 No ! amongst so many, not one has been found wanting. It has 
 been known, as well to pious doctors as to the profane and unlearned, 
 that, to become a Bishop, might be nothing less than to be the ap- 
 pointed mark for obloquy and abuse ; to supply a new victim for 
 vulgar scandal ; to present a new name to the flingers of dirt ; to 
 invite the hiss of public scorn to follow in the highways : and yet, 
 has the most timid, the most selfish, shrunk ? Or, rather, has there 
 not been amongst that devoted class in which the heads that best 
 fit mitres are invariably found, as much zeal, activity, and daring in 
 the continual rush towards the bench episcopal, as there ever was 
 as much disordering of surplices and cassocks, rumpling of orthodox 
 wigs, and trampling on toes full of the frailty of the flesh ; in short, 
 as much squeezing, jostling, worrying, wrangling, bullying, vilifying 
 (all in a reverend and learned way), in the parsonic race for the 
 mitre ? Can manifestations of the spirit of self-sacrifice be more in-
 
 THE BISHOP. 307 
 
 dubitable ? Can the Bishop be more exalted than by the simple 
 elevation he attains over the heads of so many spiritual heroes 
 seeking installation and its accompanying martyrdom ? 
 
 Yes ; for there is more behind. The spirit of self-sacrifice is 
 not yet seen at its height. It is for something more even than a 
 readiness to incur obloquy and rancour, that the Bishop should be 
 canonised by his contemporaries, without leaving the grace of that 
 act of justice to posterity. He is willing to bear more serious penal- 
 lies. Yea, he is willing to bear throughout this life the burden of 
 great riches riches, which he knoweth to be the root of all evil ! 
 
 Here we behold the abused Bishop in his brightest lightin his 
 whitest of lawn, in his glossiest of raven black. Self-denial cannot 
 surely be carried farther than this point the voluntary obligation 
 to revel always in worldly wealth and carnal luxury. Apostolic 
 poverty, simple fare, lowly living, laborious occupation, he abjures : 
 these, forming the peculiar blessedness of the earlier Christians, he 
 surrenders without a sigh or a murmur ; he sacrifices himself for 
 the good of his flock ; he spares others the perils of temptation, by 
 imminent danger to himself; he monopolises as much of the root 
 of evil as he decently can, knowing that the more he hath, the less 
 must his fellow-creatures necessarily have to bear the guilt of ; he 
 permits vast quantities of filthy lucre tc be brought to his door, that 
 the habitations of others may be cleansed of it, and all the risk, all 
 the pollution may be his. And, as Sancho informs the duchess 
 Itlready introduced, saying unto her grace, " I shall set out for my 
 government, whither I go with a most outrageous desire of getting 
 money, ' so (but more inwardly) says the Bishop when he sets out 
 for the government of his diocese ; taking for his animating prin- 
 ciple a most outrageous desire of getting money, in order that of 
 the insane root which takes the reason prisoner (the root of all evil), 
 mankind may have the less to devour. Moreover, as the aforesaid 
 Sancho for himself says, that he never once " drank out of malice," 
 though " from thirst he might," so may the meek Bishop declare on 
 his own behalf, that of venison, and turtle, and rare wines, he par- 
 takes not out of malice, though from a strong relish of them he 
 may. From the temptations of wealth, from the evils of luxurious 
 living, he mercifully relieves as many as he can ; he charitably 
 fuses the craving, but not as Blunt does : 
 
 " ' God cannot love,' cries Blunt, with teailess eyes, 
 ' The wretch he starves,' and piously denies ; 
 But the good Bishop, with a meeker air, 
 Admits and leaves them Providence's care. 1 '
 
 308 THE BISHOP. 
 
 If. in moments of weakness, he gives away corruptive coin, it 13 
 in infinite small quantities that can do little harm ; nor is it then scat- 
 tered among a promiscuous multitude ; for, lest the minutest particle 
 of the root of evil should work ill, the Bishop confines the distribu- 
 tion of the craving among his own flock, and takes care that no 
 doitless dissenter shall be injured by an alms. In like manner, he 
 dispenses not rich soups or other lust- provoking viands to penniless 
 and thin-blooded Christians, but cooling drinks and chastening 
 messes, that may keep them lowly and humble : with such good 
 things as gruel has he been known to fill the hungry. Are the rich, 
 then, sent empty away ? No ; lest they should thence repair to 
 their own loaded table, and revel in unseemly excesses, these is he 
 known to entertain at sumptuous banquets, prepared, no doubt, by 
 the most pious cooks that France can produce, and supplied to the 
 sensual guests by numerous saints in fine livery. Thus, he reduces 
 corruption where he cannot exterminate it, and ensures its continued 
 absence where it is not. 
 
 And for this, even for this, is an outcry to be raised and pro. 
 longed and perpetuated against the Bishop because he hath the 
 moral courage, the religious enthusiasm, to be rich ! Because he is 
 the recipient of large revenues, and dares encounter all the risks 
 and responsibilities of ten thousand a-year ! Out of their mouths 
 are they condemned, who say that he condemns himself out of his 
 own, in preaching that it is easier for camels to pass through 
 needles' eyes, than for rich men to enter the place where Bishops 
 ought to be when finally spiritualised ! Let the railers hearken (if 
 Calumny had an ear as sharp as her tongue it would be well) to 
 the truth, that the Bishop is not to be numbered among rich men, 
 and cannot be but by monstrous perversion. No ; the Bishop per 
 se, though not'the per see, is a poor man ; grasps at riches by the 
 root, only that curates may enjoy a healthy and Christian poverty. 
 Can it be supposed that one so versed in divinity puts faith in the 
 unrecorded miracle, that a huge quadruped can pass through a space 
 not ample enough for the passage of an atom ? Are we to be told 
 that a doctor of such approved knowledge is so ignorant of the laws 
 of mechanics and of natural history, as to imagine that a camel, 
 hump included, can squeeze through the eye of a needle ? He be- 
 lieves of course in no such conjuration ; and, identifying the rich 
 man's impassableness with that of the camel, he keeps himself ever 
 in safe poverty, in his own estimation, and can be accounted affluent 
 Dut by proxy. Give the Bishop yet another five thousand per
 
 THE BISHOP. 309 
 
 annum, and he will still deem himself needy, devoting himself to 
 gathering together gold, lest men, seeking it, should be lost. 
 
 Let us consider how many of the meek and faithful among the 
 clergy would be little better than so many of the wicked, were the 
 provident Bishop less thoughtful of their welfare were he rashly to 
 distribute his immense revenues amongst them. The character of a 
 " Good Parson," as painted by old Chaucer, and set in a noble frame- 
 work by Dryden, is yet extant. Comtemplate the glorious picture :- 
 
 " Rich was his soul, though his attire was poor 
 (As God had clothed his own Ambassador), 
 For such on earth his blessed Redeemer wore." 
 And then this : 
 
 " The tithes his parish freely paid, he took ; 
 But never sued, or cursed with bell or book: 
 The country churls, according to their kind 
 (Who grudge their dues and lore to be behind), 
 The less he sought his offerings pinched the more, 
 And praised a priest contented to be poor. 
 Yet of his little he had some to spare 
 To free the famished and to clothe the bare s 
 For, mortified he was to that degree, 
 A poorer than himself he would not see." 
 
 Now, what pains and penalties would be too heavy for that base 
 Bishop, who, by a shameful surrender of income and a wanton 
 equalisation of revenue, should destroy such a character as this ? 
 That it is to be met with in life, not merely in every diocese, but at 
 no great distance from every parish church, is not with decency to 
 be denied : and think of the sin of spoiling such a parson by settling 
 upon him five hundred a-year, abstracted from the superflux of 
 his diocesan. The charm of poverty gone, the spell of virtue would 
 be gone too. You would call at the dwelling of the man of sanctity 
 to gaze with reverence on the human elevated to the divine, and 
 you would find him gone to Ascot, or to a fox-chase, or playing 
 guinea-games at cribbage with the rakish squire. The " Good Par- 
 son" would be no more. You would as readily guess him, by his 
 look, demeanour, dress, or employment, to be " God's ambassador," 
 as you would one of the Bishop's file of servants, clad in purple 
 and fine linen, and faring sumptuously every day. Instead of seeing 
 his parishioners " pinch themselves the more," because he scorned 
 to press them for his tithes, you would see him pinching them (the 
 nippers as hot as law could make them) for the arrears a hand- 
 some remittance to " my lady," gone up to London for the winter, 
 being instantly called for ; or a hunter, not to be had on trust,
 
 310 THE BISHOP. 
 
 having caught the critical eye of his hard-riding reverence. The 
 " Good Parson" would be utterly, hopelessly extinct. 
 
 Thanks to the wisdom and beneficence of the bishop, no such 
 good parson now alive is in the slightest danger of being visited 
 with such a settlement. No such five hundred perils a year are at 
 all likely to drop out of the strong box of the diocesan into the 
 pocket of the poor curate's threadbare garment, there to explode, to 
 delude, to confound and to destroy. The Bishop, knowing the curse 
 of riches, keeps them far out of the way of the working curate. 
 Witnessing the blessings of poverty, he yet practices wonderful 
 self-denial, in officially divesting himself of them as fast as he may, 
 and abjuring them most religiously to the end of his days. 
 
 When a Most Reverend Prelate descanted, upon a recent occa- 
 sion, on the desirableness of giving an Archbishop at least fifteen 
 thousand a-year, and on the necessity of keeping up the enormous 
 incomes allotted to other dignitaries, for otherwise men of com- 
 petent ability and excellence of character would not be induced to 
 make the church their profession, there was a scandalous combi- 
 nation amongst men to misunderstand it. People would and 
 will have it, that the prelate thought so ill of scholars and of high 
 families, had so little faith in the piety of the learned and respect- 
 able ; so little hope of seeing any man influenced by the spirit of 
 religion alone when he enrolled himself among the clergy, as to 
 deem these great church-prizes necessary, in the shape of baits to 
 the ungodly, to turn hypocrites and profess sanctity in the pulpit. 
 But it is quite clear that the observation meant no more than that 
 these prizes must naturally ensure many blanks ; and that by these 
 blanks not by the prizes men of meek and humble natures, of 
 unworldly views, of disinterested and truly pious dispositions, de- 
 spising pomp and vanity, abhorring Mammon and all unrighteous- 
 ness, would be attracted to the church and tempted to enter into a 
 ministry that held out such scanty rewards in the v/orld. On this 
 principle, can the church be too rich ? Can a Bishop have too 
 spacious a coach-house, or too extensive a wine-cellar ? 
 
 The Bishop rarely preaches. Now and then, when some eld 
 institution has fallen into evil days, and the heads of its founders, 
 a charity sermon is extracted from him the promoters of the ex- 
 periment upon public sympathy well knowing that people will flock 
 to see a Bishop, even though a plate be held at the door, when the 
 cause of benevolence pleaded by a plain rector would have had the 
 effect of sending them two miles the other way. See the practica.
 
 THE BISHOP. 311 
 
 uses of the Bishop ! On these occasions, he enlarges, in mild per- 
 suasive accents, on charity (the greatest of the three) ; on the 
 superfluities of the rich, on the privations of the poor ; on the 
 vanity of riches but as a means of virtue : and on man's duty to his 
 neighbour, whom he is to love as himself. To enforce his lesson of 
 jnoderation the more effectually ; to impress upon 'nis hearers' minds 
 how little they need for themselves in this world ; and to exhibit 
 before their eyes an example of the ostentation and vanity they are 
 exhorted to avoid, his splendid carriage, richly purpled within and 
 without, with a magnificent pair of horses, and harness to match, a 
 sleek and serious coachman, and two footmen, who, though accus- 
 tomed perhaps to praying, are manifestly unused to fasting, wait 
 for him at the church gates. 
 
 Thus we see that, if the Bishop puts on the pomps and vanities 
 of this wicked world, and yields sometimes to the sinful lusts of the 
 flesh, his intentions are ever pure, unimpeachable, and saintly. His 
 motives towards us, his flock, are even as those of the Spartan 
 fathers of old, who made their slaves gloriously drunk from morn- 
 ing to night, in order to disgust their children by the spectacle, and 
 to instil into them the principles of sobriety. The famished curate, 
 when, as he walks home through the rain after a hard day's work 
 of marrying, christening, burying, and praying with the sick, he per- 
 ceives the Bishop drive by to dine with a jolly nobleman in that 
 neighbourhood, cannot fail to see the matter quite in this light. 
 
 Cowper makes his Sir Smug a Bishop at last 
 
 " And adds Right Reverend. to Smug's honoured name." 
 
 There is something in that name which should naturally conduct its 
 owner to a mitre. Bishops are always smug. From the wig to the 
 silver shoe-buckle, the attire of the right reverend prelate is smug. 
 His visage is smug his air and manner are quite smug. There 
 is also a peculiar smugness in his language. Clergymen have, to be 
 sure, occasionally complained of exceptions to this rule, perhaps 
 when they have bothered a bishop unavailingly for preferment, or 
 persisted in preaching contrary to prelatical prescription. Nay, one 
 reverend writer (never very reverend when he writes about Bishops) 
 lately lectured one of our lords spiritual for employing language 
 " that savoured rather strongly," to quote the characteristic expres- 
 sion verbatim, " of the phraseology current among those who are 
 engaged in the apostolical occupation of trafficking in fish." But 
 such excesses on the bench of prelacy are exceedingly rare. Smug-
 
 812 THE BISHOP. 
 
 ness in speech, IOOK, and action, is the Bishop's rule. He is twic* 
 as smug as a dean, and more than three times as smug as a rector. 
 He is the "saint in lawn," and doubles the saintliness of him in 
 crape. Yet, the " holier than thou" principle is not betrayed in 
 his expression ; it can only be delicately implied as existing in him 
 from the exquisite odour of sanctity that exhales from his sayings 
 and his doings. All around him is corporeal ripeness, moral re- 
 pose. He looks like a man who, if he had to take *he steep and 
 thorny way to heaven, would hardly get there at all ; who finds the 
 journey of life to be easily travelling ; and who, end where it may, 
 lives well on the road. He sleeps as soundly at night as though he 
 were preaching to himself. He puts no money-bags under his head 
 for a pillow to disturb his slumbers, for his house is a palace, and 
 he fears as little the midnight robber as the noonday roaster at 
 Smithfield. He dreams of neither, loud as may be the war-cry 
 without ; for the episcopicide (the assassin of a Bishop like the 
 assassin of a king, has the honour of a word all to himself) is a very 
 old-fashioned personage, and has no place in modern history. 
 
 There is nothing awful in the idea of a Bishop, so long as h'i 
 confines himself to the discharge of his spiritual functions. When 
 a confirmation takes place, the young people (girls especially) flock 
 towards the Bishop, and scarcely shrink when his hand, like a dove's 
 wing, touches their head. It is only when he meddles with their 
 temporal affairs, that people find him terrible. If he would keep 
 his foot out of the House of Legislature he would stand no chance 
 of being stoned as a martyr. But, if he keeps his seat there, it is 
 perhaps because he is expecting a bill to be brought in for burning 
 him, and he wants to be present to vote against it. He is certainly 
 placed in an awkward position there. For ten years together, -he 
 is assailed as a mere creature of the ministry of the day ; and for 
 another ten years he is assaulted no less fiercely as the creature of 
 the opposition. Do what he will, the good Bishop cannot please 
 people out of church. Assuredly, if connected with party, he can 
 but be the fag-end of it. The " bishop" which we all delight to 
 imbibe from the bowl, may, in one sense at least, emblemise its 
 namesake it cometh in only as the forerunner of a break-up. 
 Bring in the "bishop;" and somehow or other, the signal is soon 
 given to separate : the party splits one man going one way, and 
 another starting off in an opposite direction.
 
 THE JOCKEY. 
 
 I have within my mini a thousaul raw tricka of theas bragging Jacks.
 
 THE JOCKEY. 
 
 BY NIMEOD. 
 
 The great English lexicographer was, perhaps, never more at sea 
 than when called upon to define the word Jockey. The unde de- 
 rivaiur ? as the schoolmaster expresses himself, is ridiculously res- 
 ponded to by him after this fashion : " Jockey, n. s. From J ack, the 
 diminutive of John, comes Jackey, or, as the Scotch say , Jockey ; used 
 for any boy, and particularly fora boy who rides race-horses." Again, 
 " A fellow that rides horses in the race." Again, " A man that deals 
 in horses." Again "A cheat, a trickish fellow :" and here the Doctor, 
 no doubt, thought he had hit the mark ; for it is well known that, 
 when asked why he did not go to see a race, he replied, " It was no 
 pleasure to him to see a rogue in red ride after a rogue in green." 
 However, without further disputing or despising this great authority, 
 let us proceed to develop the character of the British Jockey. 
 
 The Jockey is generally the son of a Jockey, or of a trainer of 
 race-horses, who puts him into the saddle as soon as he can stride 
 across one. Should he be a fine child for his age, the hopes of his 
 parents are at once blasted, inasmuch as he can never expect to get 
 beyond riding exercises, and then only till about the fith year of his 
 teens. But he must not be " a fine child for his age." His growth 
 must be stopped, if he is to ride the winner of the Derby the pin- 
 nacle of ambition in a Jockey's eye by potations of gin mixed witri 
 his mother's milk, and the muzzle must be put on him as regards 
 that i. e. the milk. His sucking propensities, in fact, must ba 
 reserved for after-life, to draw forth secrets from those connected 
 with his profession, which, in vulgar language, is called "pumping." 
 
 The intellectual education of a Jockey is a matter little thought 
 of, even in these enlightened days. Indeed, it was considered so 
 perfectly unnecessary half a century back, that the celebrated dra- 
 matic writer, Holcroft, tells us in his Memoir, that, when training 
 for the profession of a Jockey, at Newmarket, he was considered 
 on the point of going raving mad, from the simple fact of his 
 being found by his brother stable-boys" in the act of reading a 
 book at one time, and casting up some figures on the door of 
 the stable with a rusty nail at another ! No ; it is discipline, not 
 education, that leads the young Jockey to eminence ; and to rigid 
 discipline, exterior, if not moral, must he he contented to submit 
 90
 
 Jit TI1F, JOCKEY. 
 
 ere he can be expected to attain it. In fact, the words of a modern 
 poet may be applied to too many of his caste : 
 
 " Among thy fellow-men a weary lot is thine: 
 To glory, and to suffer to toil, and yet to pine." 
 
 The practical education of the Jockey is this : At about his 
 twelfth year, well breeched and gaitered. he is put on the quietest 
 race-horse in the string (the Newmarket term for lot) ; and, some, 
 where about the middle of it, he follows those before him. His 
 employer soon finds out whether he is likely to improve in the 
 saddle, by the use he makes of his hands ; that of his head being 
 for after consideration, and of no importance at present. A few 
 months, however, develop him. If promising, he is put to ride 
 a short trial. He makes a mistake, as may be expected ; he does 
 not wait long enough, and according to orders ; but it is his first 
 attempt. He handled his horse well, and the task is repeated on 
 the morrow. " Wait till the last hundred yards," says his em- 
 ployer a difficult task for a young one, always eager to get home. 
 He does wait, and wins his trial. " There now, Jack," says his 
 master " you see, you won this trial by strictly following your 
 orders ! If you mean to be a Jockey, you must minutely attend 
 to this point. Had you been riding a race yesterday, you would 
 have lost your employer's money, by not doing as you were bidden." 
 He is next put to a still severer test : another trial is to be run 
 at very light weights, and he is again put up, with orders to make 
 running ; in non-racing language, to take the lead. But there are 
 not a dozen old Jockeys, nor have there ever been a dozen, who 
 have been found eminently to succeed in this difficult task. The 
 non-racing world would naturally ask, "Why? What more easy, 
 to one who knows how to ride a race-horse in his gallop," they 
 would exclaim, " than to let him go nearly as fast as his legs 
 can carry him, at the same time giving him the necessary sup. 
 port from the hand, so as not to allow him to exhaust himself 
 more than is to be expected from his exertion ?" We answer, 
 Nothing more easy ; the difficulty lies in the rider being able to 
 assure himself as to at what rate or degree of speed his horse 
 is going. Neither is that. all. He must be so far cool and col- 
 lected in those exciting moments, as to be able to appreciate the 
 effect the pace at which his horse is running has on the others 
 with which he may be contending in the race ; as likewise on 
 the horse he himself is riding. Here is work for the head, all to 
 be done in the space of two or three minutes at most; and whilst
 
 THE JOCKEY 315 
 
 every nerve and muscle in the frame (of one only half developed, 
 perhaps) is quivering from the severe exertion of riding a hard- 
 pulling horse, at a rate approaching tint of one mile in a minute! 
 Carthage produced but one Hannibal; nor is it to be wondered at 
 that an age does not produce more than half a dozen quite perfect 
 Jockeys. 
 
 But to revert, for a moment, to the education of a first-rate 
 Jockey, just for the purpose of showing to what a good account it 
 may occassionly turn, and what little reason there was for Mr. Hoi- 
 croft being considered mad because he was able to read " Arnold's 
 Psalmody ; M or, as was thought still more miraculous, to spell a word 
 of si* syllables A pamphlet of only one hundred and seventy pages 
 now lies before me, entitled, " Genius Genuine, by Samuel Chifney, 
 of Newmarket." Price Five pounds !.' John Gibson Lockhart, of 
 " The Quarterly ;" Professor Napier, of "The Edinburgh ;" Edward 
 Lytton Bulwer: Theodore Hook, hide your diminished heads. 
 None of you ever wrote one hundred and seventy pages, twenty lines 
 to a page, with a river of margin, that sold for five pounds ; neither 
 will you ever do so. And let me give you a little specimen of the 
 style of this truly classic production. First, as to the point just 
 discussed, touching the difficulty of what is called " making run- 
 ning," by a Jockey. " Skylark, a famous racer of his day," saya 
 Chifney, " was fast, a slug, and a jade, which \vas much against him, 
 his making strong play (i. e. tunning) over the four-mile course.'' 
 Now, the printer might have put his pen across the "him," before the 
 sheet went to the "devil," where, by some, it is feared the writer is 
 also gone ; but, how stands the case on a strict analysis of the pas- 
 sage ? Skylark is fast but he is also a slug. Well ; in the last- 
 named quality, here are bad materials to work upon for four miles in 
 succession, and over very severe ground. But, then comes the 
 climax ; he is a jade as well. Now, in racing lingo, a jade means a 
 race horse with a soft heart ; one that will not strive to do his best, 
 nor struggle to the utmost to win his race^ as a srout-hearted one 
 vvill do ; but he shuts up, as the term is, when collared. I leave 
 my readers, then, to imagine, in their own minds, the difficult task a 
 Jockey must have to induce such a horse as this to lead half a dozen 
 others, at a great pace, over such an extent of ground, without 
 finding out the soft part in his heart ; or, in more racing-like larU 
 guage, upsetting him by the pace. And the issue of this race was 
 that, despite of having had on his back one of the most celebrated 
 Jockeys of the day (not Chifney who rode Escape in {he race)j Sky*
 
 316 1HE JOCKLET. 
 
 lark, although " first till within a hundred yards of the winning- 
 post, there stopped short, and gave over running from distress." 
 
 The following passage (p. 110) is a true picture of the roguery 
 practised on race-courses, by what are termed the betting men. In 
 allusion to the case of a race-horse having been poisoned, at New- 
 market, the author of " Genius Genuine" thus speaks : " This 
 brings to my recollection what Mr. Hodges, the great better, told 
 me, viz. that, if I continued to bet as I did, it would be impossible 
 for me to have a guinea left ; saying, that I always backed my 
 judgment in horses', but that I ought to back men, not horses; for 1 
 should have no chance, if I continued backing horses." Again, 
 where are we to look for a brighter example of the dialogical style 
 than the following few lines afford ? 
 
 " What was your motive for waiting with Escape, on the first 
 day ?'' said the late Sir Charles Bunbury to our author, when " hard 
 up,'' as he expresses himself, before the stewards of the Jockey Club, 
 who were the above-named baronet, and Messrs. Dutton and Panton, 
 all celebrated racing men of those days. 
 
 " You are a very wrong Judge of your man, Sir Charles," replied 
 Chifney, "fo ask such a question." 
 
 " Sir Charles now stopped, looking about apparently dissatisfied," 
 continues the accused Jockey. 
 
 " Mr Dutton said, ' I think Chifney spoke very fair. 
 
 "Mr. Panton immediately said, ' Yes, very fair/ " 
 
 This reminds me of the old adage of "catching a weasel asleep." 
 I wonder whether Sir Charles would have told what was the best 
 and the worst of his celebrated Eleanor; or, in other words, was 
 speed, or lasting, her forte ? No ; unless the baronet had been 
 speaking in his sleep. 
 
 No human being commences trading on his own bottom and 
 there is no figure of speech intended here -so soon as the Jockey 
 does, inasmuch as, provided he have proved himself competent, 
 he is employed to ride in public at a very early age. And he is well 
 paid for his services. He is sure of three guineas, should he lose ; 
 he demands five if he wins, to which a handsome present is often 
 added. Indeed, there is an instance on record of a thousand pounds 
 being given by one gentleman, not the owner of the mare, to the 
 Jockey who rode the winner of the Great Doncaster St. Leger stakes 
 Then, the light Jockey makes a great deal of money by riding triali 
 The late Arthur Pavis, for example, whose receipts were great GL 
 that score ; and, by reason of his being able to ride so light, he wa
 
 1MB JOCKEY. 317 
 
 Certain to be put up in every great race, giving him an income, it is 
 said, of nearly 1,500 per annum! Few Jockeys, however, have 
 died rich, and we fear Pavis himself cannot be quoted as an excep- 
 tion. It may be said, their expenses are considerable ; and such 
 they are, by travelling from home, the keep of a horse, and wear 
 and tear of clothes ; but, independent of those necessary outgoings, 
 their pursuits are expensive ones, in the winter season, and they too 
 often live expensively. It savours of the absurd at all events, of 
 the incredible when we are told of the doings of some of this 
 fraternity a few years back, at Newmarket. Houses fit for noblemen 
 were built for their residence ; and no price stopped them in their 
 purchase of furniture, pictures, and wares. This game, however, is 
 now at an end ; and it is earnestly hoped it will not be renewed, as 
 ruin succeeds, and well it may. 
 
 As naturally may be imagined, Jockeys are generally the produce 
 of rather diminutive parents; still, there are some very striking 
 exceptions. The Days, for example John and Samuel are the 
 sons of a man who rejoiced in the soubriquet of Broad Day, inasmuch 
 as he weighed nearly twenty stone ! John Day's sons, however, 
 have taken after the father, who may be called Day-light; but one 
 of them unfortunately lost his life by a fall, whilst following hounds, 
 a year or two back. And such has been the case with all the 
 Edwardses, Newmarket Jockeys of great renown, whose father 
 was so small, as to be known at Newmarket as tiny Edwards, par 
 excellence. George IV. patronised this family, and was once heard 
 to exclaim, on seeing so many of them preparing to ride in one 
 race " Bless me, what lots of Jockeys Mrs. Edwards breeds !" 
 
 There is, for the most part, a great share of symmetry, if not 
 elegance, in the frame of the majority of Jockeys. Indeed, an ill- 
 shapen person would never make a good one. He should have a 
 small head ; his shoulders should be low, and well formed, and 
 wide in proportion to the size of his frame ; his thighs should be 
 hollowed out, as it were, to give him a firm clip to his saddle ; his 
 arms should be rather long than otherwise ; and he must have no 
 calves to his legs, or he will not wear the neat Jockey boot, which 
 ought to fit tight to the limb all the way up. His seat, if thus 
 formed, will be perfect, and he will appear, as Shakspere has it, 
 
 " As he had been incorpsed and demi-natured 
 With the brave beast." 
 
 In other words, there will be an appearance of adaptation of parts 
 in himself and his horse, which, whilst it is pleasing to the eye, at
 
 318 THE JOCKEY. 
 
 once shows both horse and rider in the characters they are called 
 upon to perform. 
 
 The necessary qualifications of a Jockey are of no easy attain- 
 ment ; in fact, they are by no means evcry-day ones. Besides those 
 termed bodily such as great strength in a small compass, with 
 expansive chest, to allow for the action of the lungs, severely called 
 upon as they are, in his rapid progress through the air others of a 
 higher nature are essential. He must have much personal intre 
 pidity ; a kind of habitual insensibility to provocation, bordering 
 upon apathy, which no efforts of an opponent in a race can get 
 the better of ; and an habitual check upon his tongue. Then, he is 
 called upon to endure sensual mortifications, in addition to personal 
 exertions, to a degree to which no other class of persons are called 
 upon, to enable them to do. their duty towards their employers. In 
 the first place, he ia obliged not only to work hard, on an empty 
 stomach, but is forbidden to satisfy the cravings of hunger when 
 he has finished his work, as all others that labour for their bread do. 
 With the keenest appetite which strong walking exercise, with tem- 
 perance, never fails to promote he is required to be a mere spectator 
 at meals ; neither can he slake his thirst, should thirst oppress him 
 from the effect of a long walk under a mid-day sun. Nor is this 
 all ; he must tax his constitution in another way : he must, if called 
 upon suddenly, have recourse to medicine to reduce his frame, 
 adding the nausea of the drug to other personal inconveniences. 
 We are now alluding to his preparation for riding races, and will 
 proceed to show how it is successfully performed ; and perhaps we 
 cannot do this better than by quoting the answers of an eminent 
 Newmarket surgeon a constant attendant on the heath, when his 
 occupations permitted to some questions put to him on this subject: 
 
 " With those Jockeys high in repute," says he, " their general 
 training continues from about three weeks before Easter to the end 
 of October, when the racing season ends. A week or ten days are 
 sufficient for a rider to reduce himself from his natural weight to a 
 stone and a-half below it. For breakfast, a small piece of bread and 
 butter, with tea, in moderation. Pinner is taken very sparingly : 
 a very small piece of pudding, and less meat ; and, when fish is to 
 be obtained, neither the one nor the other is allowed. Wine and 
 water is the usual beverage, in the proportion of one pint to two of 
 water. Tea in the afternoon, with little or no bread and butter, and 
 no supper. After breakfast, having sufficiently loaded themselves 
 with clothes, that is. with five or six waistcoats, two coats, and as
 
 THE JOCKEY. 319 
 
 many pa'r oi' breeches, a severe walk is taken, from ten to fifteen 
 miles. After their return home, dry clothes are substituted for 
 those that are wet with perspiration, and, if much fatigued, they 
 will lie down for an hour or so before their dinner ; after which no 
 severe exercise is taken; but the remaining part of the day is spent 
 in a way most agreeable to themselves. They generally go to bed 
 by nine o'clock, and continue there till six or seven next morning. 
 Some of them who do not like excessive walking, have recourse to 
 purgative medicines Glauber salts only." 
 
 Oa the question put (the object, indeed, of the inquiry), whether 
 the surgeon alluded to would recommend a similar process to re- 
 duce corpulency ? he thus proceeds : 
 
 " I would recommend a similar process to reduce corpulency, as 
 the constitution does not appear to be injured by it ; but I am ap- 
 prehensive that hardly any person could be prevailed upon to submit 
 to such severe discipline, who has not been inured to it from his 
 youth. John Arnull, when rider to the Prince of Wales (afterwards 
 George IV.), was desired to reduce himself as much as he possibly 
 could, to ride a particular race ; in consequence of which, he ab- 
 stained from animal, and even farinaceous food, for eight successive 
 days ; and the only substitute was now and then an apple ! He was 
 not injured by it! Another Jockey declares that he is less fatigued, 
 md has more strength to contend with a determined horse in a 
 severe race, when moderately reduced; and although he never weighs 
 more than nine stone, has frequently reduced himself to seven." 
 
 The writer of this article knows what it is to waste to ride, 
 having reduced himself thirteen pounds, on one occasion, gradually ; 
 and on another, upwards of four, in one walk in extra clothes. So far 
 from feeling any ill effects from the wasting system and the discipline 
 attending it, the reverse is the case. The sensation of lightness of 
 frame, together with buoyancy of spirits, are the sure consequences 
 of profuse perspiration and a light diet ; and the tranquil sleep en- 
 joyed at night verifies the long established axiom of " Non misere 
 rivit qui parce vivit." 
 
 But the present system of wasting is attended with less labour 
 than that described by the Newmarket surgeon. The walks, for 
 example, are much abridged in length, four miles out and four miles 
 in being the maximum distance ; the perspiration being aided at both 
 ends by a hot fire and dilated liquids. Perspiration, by these means, 
 becomes so excessive as to require the body to be scraped (as the 
 race-horae is scrap3d after a sweat) when stripped of the clothes;
 
 320 TTIE JOCKEY. 
 
 and the loss of flesh is thus more speedily obtained, and generally 
 without the help of medicine, unless it be just at the commencement 
 of training, to prepare the body for such severe work. Constant 
 walking exercise, however must be taken by a Jockey, under all cir- 
 cumstances, to enable him to retain his wind in a race. 
 
 There is no kind of labour which tries the powers of the human 
 frame nearly equal to that of riding a race on a freegoing horse ; and 
 for this obvious reason, there is no intermission during the time it 
 lasts, which is not the case in any other manual exertion. The 
 thrasher of corn is relieved by the throwing up of his flail; the delver 
 by withdrawing his spade ; the rower when feathering his oar, and 
 casting it back: but the rider of the race-horse knows no relief, 
 from post to post, and often comes in, as has energetically been 
 described, with every muscle in his frame quivering from distress. 
 In proof of this, every man not very well prepared, avoids being 
 weighed too fine, as the term is ; and the writer himself once lost a 
 pound in the course of one two-mile race, the effect of absorption 
 from being conveyed so rapidly through the air. 
 
 We will now bring the Jockey to the starting post. He is seen 
 cantering up the course on his hack, with his saddle girthed about 
 his waist ; for, having been told the weight he is to ride, he has been 
 weighed previous to coming to the course, although, agreeable to 
 racing regulations, as well as to satisfy his employer, he goes to the 
 scales once more. Being in good condition, he just draws the 
 balance, forasmuch as he has his bridle and running reins to call for, 
 should he not quite draw it after the race ; and he can claim two 
 pounds for his bridle, if it be a double-bitted one. Should he, how- 
 ever, go to the scales, aware that he is more than two pounds above 
 the weight the articles require him to carry, he is obliged to declare 
 the same, or he would be deemed distanced in the race, should he 
 come in first. The caution here is obvious. Were race-horses to 
 run, and lose by carrying extra weight, of which the public are not 
 aware, they might afterwards be backed to lose from their previous 
 running, under the influence of undue weight. 
 
 The seat of the Jockey may be described in a few words. He 
 should sit well down in his saddle, when walking his horse towards 
 the starting-post, with his stirrups of moderate length, so as to enable 
 him just to clear the pummel of his saddle when he raises himself up 
 on them, and thus to have a good resisting power over his horse. No 
 man can make the most of a race-horse with long stirrup-leathers, 
 because, when going at the top of his speed, he sinks down on his
 
 THE JOCKEY. 321 
 
 fore -quarters, in his stride, to the extent of several inches. The 
 necessity of his having what is called a good bridle-hand is obvious, 
 and on it, indeed, depends the main excellence of a jockey. Some 
 racers have their necks set so low on their shoulders, that they bend 
 first down, then upwards, like a stag's ; and, were it not for the power 
 of their rider, such horses would absolutely look him in the face. 
 A head, attached to such a neck as this, is very difficult to bring 
 into a good place, because the inflexibility of it will not admit of its 
 forming an arch. On the other hand, the necks of some horses are 
 as loose as if they had joints in them. Others get their heads down 
 in their gallop, in the desire to get more liberty of rein, snatching at 
 their rider's hand with great force ; whilst some pull very hard, and 
 others will not pull enough. Were it not, then, for the various bridles 
 and other tackle in which such horses as we have been describing 
 are ridden in their races, not the firmest seat and finest hand of the 
 Jockey would be a match for them ; they would, in fact, be nearly 
 their own masters. Add to all this, no horse can exert his utmost 
 speed for any length of time, unless he will allow himself to be 
 handled by his rider, and pulled well together, to prevent his over- 
 striding, as well as over-pacing himself in his course. 
 
 Let us suppose our Jockey at the starting-post. Having inspected 
 the saddling of his horse and found everything secure, he is chucked 
 up into his seat by the help of one leg by his trainer, who wishes him 
 good luck. After he has seated himself firmly down in it, and tried 
 the length of his stirrup-leathers, he takes his "up gallop," as it is 
 called, of perhaps half a mile, his trainer generally accompanying him 
 on his hack ; and he then walks quietly back to the starting post. But 
 his method of startinghis horse for the race depends on circumstances. 
 If for only half a mile (*. e. the two-year-old-course), in which a good 
 start is a great advantage, he catches fast hold of his horse's head; 
 and, if he will not start without, sticks both spurs into his sides as 
 soon as the word " Go !" is given, taking the chance of getting his 
 head down into its place when and how he may. If for longer dis- 
 tances, he need not be in such a hurry at starting, providing always 
 that he do not lose too much ground, and lie out of his distance, as 
 it is called. But as all this must, in great measure, depend on his 
 trainer's orders, whether to make running or to wait, we will put 
 him in the various situations alluded to. 
 
 A short race : orders, " to make running." Having turned round 
 
 behind the post, on the word being given, he gets his horse on his 
 
 legs that is, on his speed as soon as he possibly can, dropping his 
 
 hand to him, to enable him to fe<=l his mouth. He lets him go, 
 
 91 o Q
 
 322 THE JOCKEY. 
 
 perhaps, half the distance he has to run, with only his head hard 
 held, before he gives him his first pull. He then runs up to his 
 horses again, lines with them to the end, and wins if he can without 
 a second pull ; but, if he finds other horses in the race too near to 
 be pleasant in other words, appearing to be as good as his own 
 he takes a second pull within the last one or two hundred yards, 
 when he again lets lose and wins. The same directions hold good 
 in a mile race, with the exception that the Jockey need not be so 
 much on the qui five at starting, and his pulls may be langer, and the 
 last further from home. 
 
 A short race : orders, " to wait." Here the Jockey starts last of all, 
 if he pleases, but he must not lose much ground the less the better 
 for, however good a judge he may be of pace, it is a fault in a 
 Jockey to lie far out of his ground. He now lies well with his horses 
 all the way, creeping up to them by degrees, and not quittingthem, to 
 win, till he feels almost certain he has the race in his hand ; that is, 
 till he sees that the other horses have over- worked themselves by the 
 pace. He has been ordered to wait, from the knowledge obtained by 
 his trainer, that speed, not stoutness, is the best of his horse ; conse- 
 quently, that, if he had made the play, he would not have run home. 
 
 In a longer race, say two miles, with orders, "to wait," the 
 Jockey goes off at a steady pace, with a fast hold of his horse's head, 
 as near to the others as he likes, but not attempting to go in front. 
 Thus he continues in his place, to within a distance from home, when 
 he brings out his horse, as the phrase is, challenges all the rest, and 
 wins if his nag be good enough. This is one of the easiest tasks a 
 Jockey has to perform ; and, if pleasantly mounted, he gets an agree- 
 able ride. Four-mile races are now abolished. In them, the chief 
 qualifications for a Jockey were strength of constitution, a firm and 
 steady seat, added to a very correct idea of pace inasmuch, as these 
 races seldom come to a very nice point at the last. 
 
 A good Jockey does not more than win his race. A neck, or, at 
 all events, half a length, is sufficient, if he have the race in hand ; 
 but he should win by a clear length when in doubt as to the state of 
 the horses he is running against, for fear of a rush at the last, for 
 which Chifney and Robinson are so celebrated ; and which, indeed, is 
 the very acme of fine riding. Owners of race-horses are naturally 
 anxious that the powers of their horses should not be unnecessarily 
 exposed. 
 
 A good Jockey avoids the application of the whip as much as pos. 
 sible. When a race-horse is in the fullest exercise of his powers, it ia 
 unnecessary, for it cannot make him dc more, whilst a stroke of th
 
 THE JOCKEY. 323 
 
 whip often doesharm, especially if it fall just undet tne flank. Instead 
 of its having the effect of making a horse extend himself over alarger 
 surface of ground, it may have a directly opposite effect, from his 
 shutting himself up, as it were, or shrinking, to avoid the blows. 
 The spur, properly used, is a better instrument for increasing the 
 speed of a race-horse, although theit, are times when the appli- 
 cation of the whip may prevent his swerving in his course; neither 
 is it contended that it may not occasionally be of service, when 
 applied to increase speed. In all these matters, however, the temper 
 and disposition of the horses must be consulted, as most variable 
 are they found to be. 
 
 The person of the Jockey, as has been already observed, is gene- 
 rally symmetrically formed ; and his good appearance is increased by 
 the neat fit of his clothes his appropriate costume to his calling; 
 the extreme cleanliness of his person produced, in great measure, 
 by his necessary attention to it during his preparatory course of exer- 
 cise ; and though last, not least, his almost affinity with the noble 
 animal ye see him mounted upon. But for this he is indebted to 
 Nature to the relation that the bodies of animals hold to natures not 
 their own; and it is most happily exemplified in that of a man to his 
 horse, which appear to have been especially formed for each other. 
 
 In height, the Jockey should not exceed five feet six inches ; 
 and perhaps five feet five may be more desirable. There have been 
 several excellent ones under the lowest of these standards ; but they 
 do not look so well on their horses, neither can they be so firm in 
 their seats, from the want of a better clip, which the grasp of a longer 
 thigh gives. He should be rather long in the fork for his height, 
 with low shoulders, rather long arms, moderate length of neck, small 
 head and a very quick eye. His habit of body should be spare, to 
 ea,ve him the expense to his constitution of very severe wasting when 
 he has occasion to reduce his weight; but he should have as much 
 muscle in his arms and thighs as his diminutive form will admit of. 
 In short, to ride some horses at such very light weights, he should 
 be a little Hercules. Now, whether the Hercules properties being 
 admitted there may be something in the form here delineated, 
 diminutive though it be, that finds favour in the eyes of the fair sex,, 
 iij more than the writer can determine ; but certain is it, many 
 Jockeys have been united in wedlock to very fine women, and the 
 homes of several within the writer's knowledge and experience, 
 have been the scenes of as much comfort and happiness ag falls to
 
 THE BRITISH SOLDIER. 
 
 BT K. H. HOKNE. 
 
 EVERYBODY must have remarked the cowardice of an English mob. 
 An English mob seldom knows its own meaning, or has any defi- 
 nite purpose. Whenever, by a rare coincidence of events, it really 
 knows what it wants, it seldom attempts to accomplish the purpose 
 with an earnest ardour ; and, if ever this happens, the least opposi- 
 tion from the recognised " authorities" disperses its dense and heavy 
 mass, as though it were the merest cloud, and its long list of injuries 
 a volume of smoke. In common street disturbances, or rows ; in 
 the assemblage of masses for the discussion of some exciting political 
 question ; for the demand of some popular rights ; or for the overt 
 act of some riot and physical violence, (here can be no doubt that 
 such assemblages of our countrymen display as little union, firmness, 
 and courage, as can be conceived and credited of a people so re- 
 nowned, as they deservedly are, for great qualities all over the civi- 
 lised world. However loud, eloquent, and valiant, the sight of the 
 "royal arms" staggers the heart and soul of the whole mass; the 
 onward rush of the " lion and unicorn" on a small flag the sud- 
 den appearance among their heads of the little brass " crown" 
 screwed on the tip of a minikin truncheon or the glimpse of a 
 policeman's glazed hat scatters them far and wide, with all their 
 wrongs and all their rights. Say that twenty able-bodied men shall 
 be among a crowd of rioters, three policemen will put them all to 
 flight in a minute. Yet these three are also Englishmen ! Take 
 any three men out of those twenty scampering poltroons, and make 
 them policemen : in a few months they will rush amidst any en- 
 raged crowd, and produce just the same effect. From these mobs 
 and masses in town and country, the soldiers of England are also 
 selected, -whose high repute is founded on their possession of those 
 very qualities of courage, union, and impenetrable firmness, the 
 total absence of which renders our mobs so ridiculous when they 
 " turn out" for action. 
 
 The above qualities of the British Soldier are fully recognised by 
 all nations, and particularly by our old enemies (long, we now hope, 
 to continue our friends), the French, who must be very good 
 judges of the matter. General Foy makes the following remarks 
 on the Battle of Waterloo, an event which must naturally be very 
 repugnant to the feelings of a Frenchman : " On the day of our 
 disaster," he says, " we saw the sons of Albion formed in square
 
 THE BRITISH SOLDIER. 
 
 Guns, bayonets, swords, pikes, lashes, wounds, devotion ; 
 A constant chance of death but no promotion.
 
 THE BRITISH SOLDIER. 325 
 
 battalions, in the plain between the wood of Hougomont and the 
 village of Mont St. Jean. To effect this compact formation, they 
 had doubled and redoubled their ranks several times. The cavalry 
 which supported them was cut to pieces ; the fire of their artillery 
 completely silenced. The general and staff" officers were galloping 
 from one square to another, not knowing where to find shelter. 
 Carriages, wounded men, parks of reserve, and auxiliary troops 
 were all flying in disorder towards Brussels. Death was before 
 them, and in their ranks ; disgrace in their rear. In this terrible 
 situation, neither the bullets of the imperial guard, discharged 
 almost point-blank, nor the victorious cavalry of France, could make 
 the least impression on the immoveable British infantry. One might 
 have been almost tempted to fancy that it had rooted itself in the 
 ground, but for the majestic movements which its battalions com- 
 menced some minutes after sunset, at the moment when the ap- 
 proach of the Prussian army apprised Wellington, that thanks to 
 numbers, thanks to the force of inert resistance, and as a reward 
 for having contrived to draw up brave fellows in the field he had 
 just achieved the most decisive victory of the age." It is very 
 foolish of Foy to make this sneer at " numbers*' the concentration 
 of which on a given point was the chief thing in Napoleon's art of 
 war ; and at the " force of inert resistance," when this was the very 
 force then reqtiired, and the only one that could prove advantageous. 
 He thus continues his remarks on the British Soldier : " The in- 
 stinctive determination, even when it errs, is better than skilful 
 hesitation ; the strength of mind which no danger can appal, the 
 tenacity which carries off the prey by sticking to it to the last, these 
 are rare and stupendous qualities ; and, where they are sufficient to 
 secure the triumph of national interests, it is but justice to load with 
 honours the privileged possessor of them." Taking all this from 
 our gallant friend " on the opposite side," it is pleasant to find 
 such admissions, notwithstanding his subsequent hints of " the 
 interval which separates the man of the profession from the 
 man of genius." It will be only fair, however, to our present 
 subject, to give a passage from the writings of one of our own 
 commanders . 
 
 After the hard-fought battle of Albuera, in Spain (May, 1811), 
 when the French had captured the British, artillery, thoroughly 
 routed the Spaniards, and gained the heights, they were preparing 
 to pour down from this 'vantage ground, and complete their victory 
 by overwhelming the British infantry. But, before they could
 
 826 THK BRITISH SOLD1EB. 
 
 properly commence this destructive movement, the 7th and 23rd 
 regiments of the British, or fusileer brigade, as they were called, 
 commanded by Sir William Myers, flanked by a battalion of the 
 Lusitanian legion, under Colonel Hawkshawe, issued from the midst 
 of the smoke and confusion below, and rushed up the heights. They 
 met the heavy masses of the French as they were just pressing 
 onwards to an assured victory. The French were checked, but 
 instantly vomited a storm of fire. Sir William Myers was killed, 
 and General Cole, together with three colonels Ellis, Blakeney 
 and Hawkshawe fell wounded. But the British Soldier, once 
 moved to a determined course, pauses not for encouragement from 
 his leaders. He follows whoever may be next in command, from 
 the chief officer down to the corporal. " The fusileer battalions," 
 says Napier, " struck by the iron tempest, reeled and staggered 
 like sinking ships !" Quickly recovering, however, they pressed 
 onwards and closed with their terrible enemies. In vain did Sbult, 
 who was in command on these heights, exert himself to the utmost ; 
 in, vain did many of the heroic veterans of the French sacrifice 
 themselves in desperate attempts to assist their comrades to open 
 out their dense masses on so fair a field ; in vain did the mass itself 
 struggle and pour forth its fire, even upon friends and foes, in their 
 inextricable pressure. " Nothing," proceeds Napier, " could stop 
 that astonishing infantry. No sudden burst of undisciplined valour, 
 no nervous enthusiasm, weakened the stability of their order; their 
 flashing eyes were bent on the dark columns in their front, their 
 measuredtread shook the ground, their dreadful volleys swept away 
 the head of every formation, their deafening shouts overpowered the 
 dissonant cries that broke from all parts of the tumultuous crowd, 
 as slowly, and with a horrid carnage, it was pushed by the incessant 
 vigour of the attack to the farthest edge of the height. There 
 the French reserve, mixing with the struggling multitude, endea- 
 voured to sustain the fight ; but the effort only increased the irreme- 
 diable confusion ; the mighty mass gave way, and, like a loosened 
 cliff, went headlong down the steep. The rain flowed after in 
 streams discoloured with blood, and fifteen hundred un wounded men 
 the remnant of six thousand unconquerable British soldiers-* 
 stood triumphant on the fatal hill." 
 
 Comparing tkese tremendous instances of steady courage and 
 fortitude with what has been previously remarked of the behaviour 
 of our crowds and large, multitudes. when in a turbulent state, itwil 
 appear, that the.charapter.of the British Soldier, though simple in the
 
 THE BKIXISH SOLDIER. 327 
 
 aggregate and in all its manifestations, is still made up of rather com- 
 plex qualities, which may be worthy a little further examination. 
 
 A few weeks ago, a rude burly fellow in a blouse obtained ad- 
 mission to the boxes of Drury Lane Theatre, on one of the concert 
 nights, and took up a position in the front row of the dress circle. 
 Here he displayed himself to all the advantage that could be ex- 
 pected ; but, not being satisfied with this, he thought fit to render 
 himself still more conspicuous, by opening a battery with a sort of 
 rival music of his own, of a very coarse and inharmonious character, 
 even if his gratuitous performance had not interrupted the music 
 which people had paid to hear. He took pains ro render himself 
 the annoyance of the whole house, and he thoroughly succeeded. 
 The laughter the remonstrances the " Shame ! shame !" and the 
 " Turn him out!" of the audience, passed through its usual grada- 
 tions ; but there sat the offender, continuing his offence, unmoved. 
 A policeman presently made his appearance. This was a case of 
 man to man not 01 an " authority " coming against a disunited 
 crowd ; and after a severe struggle in which, as the fellow in the 
 blouse clung to one of the pillars, the policeman could only attack 
 him in the rear the obnoxious vocalist finally remained in possession 
 of his redoubt. At this, many of the prevkmsly-offended audience 
 cheered the victor. And now a scene occurred, which is highly 
 characteristic of our countrymen, and a peculiarly apt illustration of 
 our present subject. 
 
 The cowardice of a lawless and tumultuous assembly in the open 
 air of England, is only to be equalled by the despotism of the same 
 lawless and tumultuous assembly in the inside of a play-house. 
 There can be no doubt of the right of an audience to give a full 
 and honest expression of their feelings their likes, their dislikes, 
 their nationalities, their reasons, their morality, their intellectual 
 sympathies, and even their prejudices and ignorances when these 
 things are expressed as becomes a civilized people. The right 
 extends no further. It is questionable whether they are justified in 
 venting screams and yells and execrations on a "matter of taste," a 
 trivial error, or luckless mistake, especially as their judgment may 
 be erroneous ; and still less can it be right in a civilised people 
 to tear up benches and become ferocious in a case where they are 
 by no means compelled to remain and suffer the alleged grievance. 
 They can leave the house. Yes : but this is the very thing they 
 will not do. The performance may be utterly dull, and provokingly 
 objectionable, or too long by hours ; but the more they are annoyed
 
 328 THE BRITISH SOLDIER. 
 
 and exhausted, and the more they hate it, the less they are disposed 
 to move. It was much the same at Waterloo. But to return to the 
 man in the blouse. 
 
 He continued his atrocious annoyance with a triumphant auda- 
 city, and two policemen quickly entered the box, and took him in 
 flank and rear. Finding he was likely to be dislodged from his 
 little fortress, he instinctively bethought him of our nationalities, 
 and appealed to the people of England in the pit. He exclaimed 
 against the interference of the police with the free amusements of a 
 British public ! demanded if the honest expression of our feelings 
 was to be subject to the laws of the bayonet ! talked of the yen 
 d'armes in France and finally exhorted a British public not to suffer 
 their rights and liberties to be invaded in this way, unless we 
 wished to turn foreigners and slaves ! At this address, the 
 leading expressions or watch- words only of which could be generally 
 heard, a deafening cheer was given from the gallery, and the people 
 of England rose in the pit ! Contriving to disengage himself from 
 the grasp of the policeman, our much injured and patriotic vocalist 
 threw himself over the parapet of his redoubt, and was helped down 
 by those below, and received in the arms of the people of England 
 with glee and exultation. 
 
 Presently, two glazed hats appeared in the pit, moving rapidly 
 along through the outposts on the right of the enemy's centre. 
 Now came the settlement of the grand question at issue, whereof 
 the man in the blouse was the mere incident the spark that was to 
 kindle the blaze the ignorant originator of a scene equally interest- 
 ing to the athlete, the humourist, and the philosopher. Here, where 
 an assembled mass had so long been accustomed to be all-despotic ; 
 here, where an individual had taken refuge and been received into 
 its protecting bosom ; here was to be tried the question of whether 
 all this despotism was to succumb before the " royal arms," the 
 " law," and the " authorities." Into the thick of the pit did these 
 two glazed hats precipitate themselves, and, amidst roars and 
 screams from men, women, and children, with wrenching and tearing 
 and stumbling and floundering, out of the strong bosom of his pro- 
 tectors, yea, out of the centre of the enraged people of England in 
 the pit, did these two men drag the vocal volunteer in the remnant 
 of his rent blouse, and bore him off to the station-house " like any 
 common man." But the audience (to do them justice) called for 
 Mr. Jullien, and insisted that he should bail the man ! He agreed 
 to do this ! But as the man was not brought back into the theat-o,
 
 THE BRITISH SOLDIER. 329 
 
 the audience would not hear another note of music. Of course they 
 would not leave the house. They remained to the very last, in- 
 sisting upon the music continuing while they overwhelmed it with 
 victorious noise. 
 
 An Englishman is seldom sure of a principle. He has little or 
 no faith in abstract truth. He is only sure of a fact. The British 
 Soldier is an extreme instance of this national idiosyncrasy. Our 
 friends in France go too far the other way. Tiie rational medium 
 is, perhaps, oftenest found in Germany. Our absorbing faith in 
 facts only, has long since passed into a proverb. Our facts are like 
 our soldiers " stubborn things," not to be disputed, denied, or put 
 down. In vain might a philosopher shew that a principle may in- 
 clude many facts ; he must also prove that it does contain these 
 facts, or he obtains no hearing. A principle may be, to a series of 
 facts, the combining and controlling power, by which alone they 
 can be of any actual use, and without which they may do nothing 
 but mischief. A principle may be far more true than what we, for 
 the time, believe to be " the facts of the ease." Very well : prove 
 that ail these instances which may be, really are, and then we will 
 listen further. Until you do this, we follow facts, The king, the 
 queen, our institutions, the laws of our country, and their represen- 
 tatives, all these are thoroughly-known and long-established facts, 
 the intense belief in which has grown with us from the cradle ; our 
 existence is identified with them ; and our faith in them and as- 
 surance of their power is proportionately stronger than in anything 
 else. This very closely approaches to what Burke called " roast 
 beef reasoning;" and of this, a British Soldier is the most striking 
 and knock-me-down illustration and embodiment. His king and 
 country the royal crown his superior officer his provisions, 
 clothing, and pay these are his grand series of facts ; and, fortified 
 with these, he seeks to know no more, but endures everything even 
 a sound flogging; and marches forward according to his orders, 
 either to victory or to death. If he is told beforehand it will b 
 death, he marches forward just the same, to prove the fact. 
 
 The British Soldier is not of a merry or joyous nature. He 
 is generally a grave man. He possesses great energies, but they are 
 only called forth by strong stimulants, and extraordinary occasions. 
 He has little of what is called animal spirits. There are few people 
 who have ever seen him dance. He thinks he has quite enough to 
 do with parades and drills, and sentries, without wasting his powers 
 in foolish evolutions that lead to nothing. If his face relaxes into a 
 Laugh, his features generally become strait on a sudden, as though 
 92 B B
 
 USD THE BRITISH SOLDIER, 
 
 he had forgot himself. Even tho jounger men rarely indulge In a 
 " spree," and never in a "lark"' of any magnitude. From the very 
 large proportion of Irish who are incorporated in our regiments, it 
 might have been expected that their influence would have had its 
 natural effect, But no: the steady, undeviating power of mili- 
 tary subordination orders, regulations, and fixed associations of the 
 mind with long-established forms and old memories absorbs all 
 character and genuine ebullition within itself. We would not say 
 that a few exceptions of gratuitous merriment may not sometimes 
 be displayed among regiments where they are nearly all Irish ; yet, 
 even in this case, they scarcely ever break through the bounds of 
 subordination and strict discipline. Military regulations have a 
 strange transforming power ; to all appearance, they half change an 
 Irishman into a Scotchman ; they turn an awkward, slovenly, loung- 
 ing, abject clodhopper, with nothing but earth in his mind, into a 
 Steady-footed, clear-starched, upright marching figure, that carries 
 a proud air with it, as of inward strength ; and they change a bawl. 
 jug, disunited, run-away mob, with no conviction of the vital truth 
 of the very principle in support of which it assembled, into a silent, 
 united, convinced, thorough -going body, scarcely ever to be broken 
 or resisted. Perhaps the transformation as to external appearance 
 is the most astonishing, when the clown who, only three years ago, 
 stood in a field, clad in a smock-frock, with a pitch^fork in his hand, 
 and the flies passing in and out of his mouth as he stared, gaping, 
 over a hedge at the passing of one of the long coaches-^is seen 
 seated on his black charger in full appointment, as sentry at the 
 Jlorse Guards ; his look and whole bearing rendered imperturbably 
 grave with the sense of the dignity and importance of his regiment, 
 himself, his horse, and his post of duty. Can it be the same man ? 
 It may be so, but to the eye it is incredible, The more you look 
 at him, the less you can identify the two individuals as one man j 
 the more you think of. the fact that it is 30, the more is you* 
 memory and belief confounded by the ocular demonstration of the. 
 antagonist man, in all b,is " pride, pompi fcnd circumstance," 
 
 The gravity of the British Soldier seems by far the most con- 
 spicuous in the infantry, In the cavalry, the individual ia half horse } 
 and the gravity between the two parts, being equal, as you lock 
 alternately at the two faces, carries with, it a cerfain air of propriety, 
 standing above human weakness and all its low hilarities, But, 
 ;!,o infantry, it is a case of simple man; and the long line of 
 ii faces, standing "attention"' "eyes front"-=-aU with the 
 rigid expression, which gaaaw unchangeable, has a catalysing
 
 fl-IE BRITISH SOLDIER, ggi 
 
 effect upon those who are not accustomed to the sight. Well may 
 the boys stare at the soldiers ! The stolid look of a line of English 
 infantry standing attention, has a cold, facinating power. It is just 
 like a wall of figures, fed on pipe-clay and red brick. But behold 
 this wall suddenly kindled into life and thrown into action : " The 
 ramparts crowded with dark figures, and glittering arms, were seen 
 on the one side ; and on the other, the red columns of the British, 
 deep and broad, were coming on like streams of burning lava." 
 
 There is not much to be said about the Soldier in time of peace 
 that would be very interesting to general readers. Among the in- 
 numerable swarms of little books of unnecessary " knowledge," no in* 
 dividual has yet been hardy enough to suppose there Would be any 
 demand for a work entitled " Life in Barracks." The publication 
 of the " Regimental Orders" would answer all the purpose. It has 
 no variety from day to day, from year to year ; and few attempts are 
 made at inward resources. Sometimes you hear a flute. It sounds 
 as if something had gone astray among the buildings, and could not 
 find its way home. Some of the sergeants and corporals, also prac^ 
 ti-e the violin, but generally give it up when they have turned 
 forty-five. Games of hockey, hurley, snow-balling, and athletic sports, 
 are now and then indulged in ; but rather to keep themselves warm 
 than with any regular purpose of enjoyment. Practical jokes are 
 also of rare occurrence. It certainly may happen that, in looking 
 into the precincts of our barracks, you chance to see a Soldier with- 
 out his coat, and his trowsers supported by one brace across his 
 shoulders, standing astride at a pump, his attention being divided 
 between filling his can, avoiding splashes, and discovering the 
 quarter from whence certain stones are discharged at him, by art 
 immense effort of humour in some one or more of his comrades* 
 But, in general, you hear nothing but the sound of a flute or a 
 violin, in the earlier stage of practice, and see nothing but white 
 buckskin gloves hanging out of the windows above, and a few drum* 
 tner boys below, playing at dumps, 
 
 It has been shewn to the world that the re-actions of all this 
 gravity, dulness, and stolidity, when the Soldier is wrought up to his 
 highest excitement in the field of battle, are terrible and irresistible 
 in their effect. It is to be feared that, as " extremes meet," the long 
 periods of unchangeable dulness and discipline find relief in fierce 
 excesses during the sacking of conquered towns. At these times, 
 though it last but a few hours, the British Soldier is lost to all sub- 
 ordination and order. But, after his long-suppressed fury has had its 
 full outpouring, he is generous and humane to a vanquished foe.
 
 332 THE BRITISH SOLDIEH. 
 
 General Foy says, with equal truth and humour, " You cannot 
 say of the English, they were brave in this or that particular action. 
 They are brave at all times, when they have ate, drank, and slept. 
 Glory never makes them forget that they are hungry, or that their 
 shoes are worn out." Certainly there is no indisposition in the 
 British Soldier to be " snug" whenever he can ; but, whatever 
 admissions we may make to the accusations of General Foy on the 
 score of " porter and roast beef," we must repudiate as a calumny, 
 the hints he gives, that rum, brandy, or other ardent spirits, are 
 necessary to the courage of our soldiers. Those things are, often, 
 no doubt, " a pretty addition ;" of which, as Colonel Napier con- 
 fesses, our Soldiers are much too fond ; but the true man can do as 
 well without. When thoroughly roused, his nature needs no other 
 stimulus than the enemy to whom he is opposed ; and his martial 
 excitements, though generally attended by a deadly self-government, 
 are, at times, bordering on madness. He will conquer ; and, if this 
 be impossible, there are occasions on which he a ill die. 
 
 During one of the sieges of Badajos, the attacks of the English 
 were continually ineffectual, owing to the great strength of the 
 place, the deficiency in our engineering department, and the skill 
 and gallantry of the besieged. The carnage among the British 
 was dreadful, yet the assaults were repeated with the same energy 
 as at first. At length a breach was made. The soldiers bounded up 
 towards it, but found at the very top a glittering range of sword- 
 blades, sharp-pointed and double-edged, firmly fixed in ponderous 
 beams, which were chained together, and set deep in the ruins. 
 Behind these, stood the defenders of Badajos, each man armed with 
 several muskets, and pouring a volley into the very breasts of the 
 British as they rushed close up to the range of sword-blades. Still 
 repulsed and slaughtered, fresh parties still ascended, and, in their 
 fury, the hindermost absolutely endeavoured to drive and impale the 
 foremost of their comrades upon the sword-blades, so as to make a 
 bridge over their writhing bodies into the fortress. All their at- 
 tempts were vain, and they fell backwards, in heaps, before the volleys 
 of the French on the other side, who, tauntingly, asked them, " Why 
 they did not come into Badajos?" At the next assault, a British 
 Soldier of the 95th ran close up to the breach, seized the chains of 
 the sword-blades in his hands, and thrust his head underneath the 
 beams. By these means, he certainly got his head into Badajos. 
 And there he left it ; for he persisted in keeping his position, while 
 the soldiers on the other side knocked out his brains with the butt* 
 epf1 of thii- M7--Vfc.
 
 THE CHKLSEA PENSIONER. 
 
 Shouldered his crutch.'anJ shewed how rlelos were won. 
 
 GOLDSMITH.
 
 BY K; H. HORNE-. 
 
 IN the gardens belonging to the veteran pensioners of Chelseil 
 Hospital, there is a large summer-house paved with small pebbles, 
 intermingled with the round bottoms of wine-bottles turned upside 
 down. It contains a seat, which might, perhaps, hold some thirty 
 men at a time, in close array ; but probably not more than half 
 that number usually occupy it together the old soldiers now re- 
 quiring " open order" for the free use and display of crutches, 
 sticks, and wooden legs ; and for the more dignified extension of 
 the elbow in commanding the evolutions of the smoke from their* 
 pipes. Over this seat is a large board, bearing the following 
 rough-spun and appropriate verses : 
 
 " Battered with war in many a hard campaign, 
 
 Though the maimed soldier quits the martial plain/ 
 
 Fancy restores him to the battle's rage, 
 
 And temporary youth inflames his age. 
 
 Again he fights the foe ! counts o'er his scars * 
 
 Though Chelsea's now the seat of all his wars ; 
 
 And, fondly hanging on the lengthened tale, 
 
 Re-slays his thousands o'er a mug of ale. 
 
 The veteran hero cries (with erected crest) 
 
 'Twas for my King! Zounds! I have done my best'* 
 
 It is not our purpose to enter into any account of the archi- 
 tectural merits of Chelsea Hospital, further than a passing remark 
 on the formal yet commodious quadrangles, with their seats, and 
 squared out plots of green grass ; nor shall we pursue any sys- 
 tematic order in describing the wards, or other portions of this 
 noble and extensive range of buildings. It will be more in 
 accordance with our subject the tired and dismembered old sol- 
 dier to stroll, as fancy or accident may lead us, from ward to 
 quadrangle, from garden to smoking-room, from hall to chapel, 
 without any set purpose of description or reflection.
 
 S34 JHE CHELSEA PENSIONER. 
 
 Very comfortable indeed, are these old men. Everything 
 that could be thought of, even approaching, as it ought, to a 
 trifling superfluity, seems to have been accorded to the Chelsea 
 Pensioner. An additional care is also bestowed on all those who, 
 debilitated from sickness, from extreme age, from incurable com- 
 plaints, from the pain of old gunshot or other wounds and muti- 
 lations, are incapable of walking about and assisting themselves. 
 These latter have an infirmary ward, apart from the rest ; are 
 allowed the most delicate food, and constantly attended by nurses. 
 But let us now walk through the other wards, where it may per- 
 chance be expected we shall find our friends, in cocked hats, seated 
 round the fire. 
 
 The first thing you are struck with in the wards, is the length 
 of the rooms ; the second, their extreme cleanness. Most of the 
 Windows are full of flowers and shrubs, among which the favourites 
 are evidently myrtle and geranium. There are, however, a few 
 pots of mignionette ; a few deep crimson coxcombs ; with here 
 and there a plant of bigonia. Each Pensioner has his own little 
 room or berth. These little boxes extend along the sides of the 
 wards ; on one side only of the long wards, and on two sides of 
 the square chambers, very like the cabins in the gun-room of 
 a frigate, and about the same size. Those of the sergeants at the 
 head and centre of the ward, are somewhat larger. The outsides 
 of these little rooms are ornamented in different ways, according to 
 the veteran's taste. All of them have curtains of various kinds to 
 the upper half of the open door-frame, and to the window hole 
 facing the windows of the ward. Many have pictures of great com- 
 manders stuck outside, and on the upper ridge of several may be seen 
 pasteboard or wooden fortifications, turrets, and batteries, of course 
 stuck full of dreadful guns. Certain huge effigies of the " crown" 
 may also be seen, manufactured in pasteboard and paint, and having 
 a few bits of scoured tin inserted, by way of a close representation 
 of the diamonds of the regalia. The inside of the berth contains a 
 little bed, and sundry ornaments, such as highly-coloured prints of 
 battles, and commanders with cheeks as red as poppies, drawn swords 
 of the same colour, and bright blue, carmine, or brickdust coloured 
 uniforms, as the case may happen. Seldom you will find such a 
 thing as a caricature. The Pensioner is generally too grave a man 
 for that ; or, if of a humorous turn, there may be many loyal (and 
 some personal) reasons why he should eschew caricatures, as offensive 
 towards great folks, and impertinent towards the individual pecu- 
 liarities of age and hard service. Some of the relics of youthful
 
 THE CHELSEA PENSIONER. 8M 
 
 days of battle or of love they hang upon the walls. In one of them 
 (just at his bed's head), we saw a portrait of the veteran's deceased 
 wife, " who," he said, was quite as handsome as that, fifty years ago;" 
 and, on the other side, two long ringlets of her hair were hanging on 
 a nail, and reaching down so as just to touch the pillow. 
 
 The other arrangements of these small interiors are simple and 
 few. Two chairs, and a leaf of a table, with a box or drawer 
 underneath it, usually constitute all that remains, except old clothes 
 on pegs, blacking-brushes, and a large stone bottle containing Bar- 
 clay and Perkins's best porter. In order to keep it fresh, the veteran 
 puts some lumps of burnt bread into it, and this, added to the 
 natural deep colour, gives it the appearance, when first poured out, 
 of a very superior rich sort of jet blacking. On settling down, 
 however, it gradually assumes the more genial and inviting look of 
 a horse-medicine, and is drank (by those who know how excellent 
 it ready is) with great satisfaction. A few canary birds are hung 
 about the wards. The favourite ornament, however, of the walls is 
 evidently a clock. The Chelsea Pensioner is very fond of a clock. 
 There is something in the precision and steady march of its move* 
 rnents which reminds him of old times, and he listens with evident 
 complacency to the regular tick-tack of the pendulum, as he sits 
 with closed eyes and folded arms. Many of these clocks are in 
 every ward, gravely hanging side by side, or facing each other, 
 There must be a great number in the hospital. We counted seventy 
 in a very short time. The amusing circumstance attending this 
 fancy of the old soldier for clocks, is that they regulate them 
 exactly by the College clock, all the hour-hands and all tha 
 minute-hands of this Dutch brigade constantly pointing exactly to 
 the same figure, and all striking together. If any clock should 
 strike in advance, or after the fugle-clock of the College, the awk- 
 ward individual thus forgetting the " regulation time," is presently 
 gent to drill ; and this very often happens, as may be supposed. 
 And yet the old soldier has no idea that his clock is not of great 
 utility. Each one helps, he thinks, as of old. The more proofs 
 of the time they have, the more certain they are that it is the 
 yijrht time. In front of the pensioner's little room there often 
 stands a halbert, and generally a regulation chest for his especial 
 use. On a small side-table of the ward, a large bible and prayer 
 book are placed for general reading. In front of the fire there is a 
 large wooden semicircular screen, with a bench inside. No smok- 
 ing is permitted in the wards ; but here the pensioner often sits 
 warming his knees, and dozing or gossiping ; sometimes with the
 
 836 THE CHELSEA PENSIONER. 
 
 red light shining upon his thin white locks, or bald head, though not 
 unf'rcquently surmounted by a night-cap, by his cocked hat, never. 
 The old soldier damns his cocked hat. 
 
 Ranging ourselves on the side of our battered defenders, and 
 coinciding in their feelings and opinions in the matter, we must 
 offer one passing remark on the subject of this "d d cocked hat." 
 Most of the pensioners are old and infirm men, requiring protection 
 irom the variations of our climate. Now, the only good of this 
 cocked hat is to hold hail, rain, and snow, in the upper part ; it does 
 not protect his face and eyes from the sun, the dust, or the wind. It 
 hurts his forehead, and lets in the cold behind. Being without the 
 additional warmth of wearing powder and a queue, there is no excuse 
 for it. The pensioner hates his cocked hat ; he calls it a smoke-jack. 
 He has petitioned several times to have a round hat instead ; but 
 with no avail. Every year he has a new cocked hat given him, 
 though the old one is hardly soiled ; because he has bought a warm 
 hat out of his own pocket, and only worn the other when on duty, or 
 on great occasions. It is a positive fact, that the veterans generally 
 sell their last year's cocked hat for eight^pence to the coalheavers. 
 The gold laee being taken off-~the sharp corner, forming the back, 
 being turned to the front the broad, upright flap being let down, 
 over the shoulders, and an additional fall of leather added to it 
 the new hat for the coalheaver jg complete. 
 
 The Chelsea Pensioner is a man who feels quite above all the 
 vanities of war; the uniform, the gold lace, the arms and accoutre- 
 ments he knows all about them, and he has done with them long 
 gince. The great object of his pride is the faded and tattered 
 banners taken from the enemy in various parts of the world, which 
 hang like drooping cobwebs along the chapel and dining-hall. He 
 likes to see the little birds, who get through the high lattuces, perch 
 upon the flag-staffs, or upon the wings of the French eagles. In the 
 dining-hall, the sparrows continually fly across, squeaking and chir- 
 ruping, particularly at breakfast time, when the bread is placed 
 on the table. The veteran takes care to make plenty of crumbs 
 for the boldest to come and seize, and smiles to see how the spar- 
 rows, directly the cheese is brought, fly away from the bread and 
 attack the more savoury booty. The majority of the pensioners, 
 however, do not eat their meals in the dining-hall. They receive 
 it from an aperture in the wall, and are allowed to carry it away to 
 their wards, and thence to their own little rooms, or to the lodgings 
 of their wives, relatives, or friends. The pensioner is not allowed 
 to have his wife resident with him in the College. Having a lodging
 
 THE CHELSEA PENSIONER. 337 
 
 in the neighbourhood, they visit each other constantly instead. It 
 is a pleasant thing to see one of the veterans sitting -in his little 
 room, earnestly conversing or laughing with his wife, his daughter, 
 or his granddaughter, opposite to him, their knees almost touching 
 from the smallness of the space. And it is unavoidable that all this 
 should be seen, from the ludicrous circumstance of there being a 
 standing order that none of these shattered old soldiers should close 
 his door when there is a fair one on a visit, in case it should 
 happen not to be his wife, his daughter, or his granddaughter. 
 
 An extraordinary exception, however, to this antipathy to the 
 admission of women as residents in the College, is upon record in 
 the person of one Catharine Cavenaugh alias Catharine Welch 
 alias Catharine Davies alias (and here we may suppose her days of 
 matrimony or amour ceased, and she became an old camp follower) 
 Mother Ross. She was an Irishwoman, born in 1667. Concealing 
 her sex in man's attire, she had seen much hard fighting, both as a 
 dragoon and a foot soldier. She had received several wounds in 
 the service; and in 1717, her just claims as a veteran being recog- 
 nised, she was admitted a pensioner in Chelsea Hospital. 
 
 The character of the Chelsea Pensioner may be described gene- 
 rally as that of a quiet, good-natured, rough, honest-hearted old 
 fellow, who has seen a prodigious deal of life, without ever becoming 
 what is called a man of the world. An excess of activity has made 
 him very glad of all this rest. He is contented and grateful ; and 
 this feeling has made him benevolent in all his thoughts and habits. 
 He wishes everybody was as comfortable and happy as himself. 
 Whatever he might have been in his youth, this asylum for his age 
 has thoroughly humanised him. His look is dignified by age ; by 
 pain and endurance ; by the memory of great events and overwhelm- 
 ing sensations. He would act very differently, he thinks, if his life 
 came over again. He has had time to think of what he has been 
 doing. His face shews this. It has a totally different expressior 
 from every soldier's face you may observe in barracks, whether o. 
 or off duty. The veteran has found out the secret ; he has settlet 
 tl.e question between war and humanity. His face is full of the 
 past, and sinks under it as he sits and thinks ; but he rallies with 
 the recollection of present comforts, and often seeks aid in religion. 
 Old comrades, relatives, and friends are about him ; he has his 
 amusements ; he is honoured as a gallant and well-approved servant 
 of his country 
 
 Notwithstanding the heaven-upon-earth of all this rest and 
 leisure, there is a tendency to listlessness, and occasional peevish- 
 93 fis
 
 838 THE CHELSEA PENSIONER. 
 
 ness or dissatisfaction, from the monotony of unemployed hours. 
 This has been foreseen, and various little occupations have been 
 devised for the veteran; and those more recently superadded have 
 proved very efficient. Chelsea College ranks as a royal garrison ; 
 and there is accordingly a guard regularly mounted. It is a half- 
 comic, half-pathetic scene, when a guard is suddenly turned out 
 for duty, consisting of old men of sixty and seventy years of age ; 
 some with one arm, some with a wooden leg, some with one eye, 
 or a battered nose. We ought not to omit that the Colonel of 
 Chelsea Hospital has a wooden leg, and the General but one arm. 
 The pensioners take their post as sentries in turn. They carry 
 no arms, merely a cane or a walking-stick. But though the duty 
 itself is a good, the period of two hours is too long for such old men 
 to stand sentry ; and in some of the posts of the corridors there is 
 a terrible rush of cold air, particularly in winter. But if asentry 
 left his post now and then " to get a warm," or fell asleep in a chair 
 behind a door, he would certainly not be brought to a court-martial 
 and shot for it. Every kindness and consideration is shewn to the 
 veterans. Though some abuses still exist,* there is no government 
 establishment, the true objects of which are better carried out than 
 this, very few a tenth part as well. 
 
 Blessed is the pensioner who can read, and who loves a book. 
 It vastly helps a lame soldier over the stiles of time. There is a 
 library attached to the College, and though books are not allowed 
 to be taken out of the room (except in cases of sickness), the pen- 
 sioner has no difficulty in obtaining his ticket of admission. The 
 contents of the shelves are chiefly volumes of travels, voyages, mili- 
 tary exploits, good stirring novels, lives of great generals, and reli- 
 gious instruction. It is to be feared that the pensioner does not 
 avail himself so much of the library as would be conducive to his 
 ease and happiness of mind. He much prefers the smoking-room. 
 -This is an excellent provision for the old boy. Here he " can blow 
 his cloud" in the winter season, and tell his tale, or sit and meditate, 
 between the whiffs, on foreign lands and by-gone days. This is all 
 very good, though there may be too great a danger of the renewal 
 of excitements, perhaps even of some passing touches of angry pas- 
 sions, in the gambling that constantly occurs in the smoking-room, 
 
 * Soldiers, or men who have been soldiers, are sought out, and put into every 
 lituatjon for which they are qualified ; and the time will, I trust, yet arrive, when 
 by soldiers, or by men who have served in the army, the hospital shall in all its 
 d'partments be peopled." Gleiz's Chelsea Hospital, Book III. TThe soonej 
 lie better- R, H. H.]
 
 1MB CHELSEA PENSIONER. 830 
 
 Here the old soldiers, with their empty sleeves and wooden legs 
 adjusted in all sorts of grotesque attitudes, sit down over their game, 
 perhaps half the day. They chiefly play at cribbage, all fours, 
 dominoes, and blind hookey. The stake is generally a halfpenny 
 a game; but sometimes a trifle beyond "instances have been 
 known ; " and it is upon record that a corporal, some years ago 
 a man, too, who had seen a great deal of service, and always come 
 off pretty safely actually lost ten shillings. However, this is their 
 affair. The old cocks have fully earned the right, after so much 
 hard work, to amuse themselves as they please. The games pro- 
 gress amidst a dense cloud of smoke, equal to that of a battle-field, 
 though of a different smell. In the smoking-room, there are some- 
 times upwards of a hundred pipes " firing" at the same time. 
 
 But a better resource against listlessness and vacuity has been 
 derived from the recent addition to the College of a piece of waste 
 ground, which was once a part of the "festive Ranelagh" of our 
 ancestors. It has been turned into a garden, and appropriated to 
 the use of the pensioners, by the kind consideration and good judg- 
 ment of Lord John Russell. The veteran has his own little spot of 
 ground, and this he cultivates after his own pleasure. At their 
 advanced period of life, with the freedom from military discipline, 
 and the consciousness of the kind feelings with which they are re- 
 garded, it would seem that, in this close communication with nature 
 and mother earth, the old soldier forgets something of the uniformity 
 and strict order of his army education and regulation habits, and 
 gives play to individual character. The cultivation and produce of 
 these little morsels of ground are amusingly characteristic, and sug- 
 gestive to the speculating fancy of the visitor. It is true that each 
 of these old gardeners generally keeps to one sort of thing, as his 
 own favourite idea of a regiment, but he does not imitate the pro- 
 ceedings of any neighbouring commanders. Here you may see a 
 heavy brigade of stout savoy cabbages; -in the next strip of garden," 
 a column of tall Scotch kale, the undoubted offspring of some old 
 grenadier. In your front, perhaps, you see a garden covered with 
 onions and leeks, flourishing their green leaves in the wind ; wifh 
 carnations and marigolds on your right and left flanks, and fly-away 
 scarlet beans in the rear. These of course belong to the light-horse, 
 lancers, and hussars. A little farther on, you come in view of a plot 
 occupied by files of rough-and-ready radishes, formed in squares or 
 parallellograms, drawn out, you may be sure, by veterans of the 
 infantry. Some grow nothing but celery, fortified with trenches 
 and embankments ; others nothing but great guns and mortars, in
 
 340 THE CHELSEA PENSIONER. 
 
 the shape of gourds and cucumbers. Certainly these have all sprung 
 from the prolific brain of grey-headed artillerymen and engineers. 
 One piece of ground is (at the time this is written) entirely de- 
 voted to the musk plant, now in full flower and fragrance. We do 
 not pretend to conjecture who planted this, except that it was one 
 of a certain refinement, whom accident placed in the uncongenial 
 battle field, and good luck, with other pleasurable sensations, helped 
 to get safe out of it. In one of these small allotments, scarlet run- 
 ners are set all over the ground, and trained towards an arbour in 
 the centre, which they ascend ; and after terminating in a peak, 
 flourish their redundancies in the air. The arbour is a diminutive 
 structure, scarcely three feet high, with a seat inside almost close to 
 the ground. A man without arms might just creep into it, and leave 
 two wooden legs sticking out in front below, with the bowl of a pipe 
 above, rising between. The long wall on one side of this collection 
 of unique gardens is extremely picturesque and beautiful. It is 
 covered with over-hanging swathes and masses of Virginia creeper, 
 ivy, clematis (now in full flower), wild roses (in full berry), and 
 various green runners. 
 
 Some of the old soldiers prefer to have their gardens more con- 
 stantly under their eye, and in a portable shape. Myrtles and 
 geraniums meet you at every turn about the wards. Goats graze 
 on the grass plots, which are marked off by chains in some of the 
 squares of the buildings, the goats having also their chains, which 
 was found very necessary, as they often used to eat the myrtles 
 standing on the floors of the passages and entrances. One old 
 soldier had a myrtle he said he would 'nt have taken five shillings 
 for it eaten right down to the earth three times by the same goat. 
 The plant jumped up again twice in the spring time ; but the third 
 time it rose no more. After keeping the flower-pot, with the earth 
 and roots just as it stood, for two years, in case it might get up 
 again as there was no knowing the nature of things the old man 
 emptied it out, and stuck it topsy-turvy in his garden, as if some- 
 thing very choice was underneath it. 
 
 The chapel, with its many flags, taken from the enemy in various 
 wars, and its sturdy array of regulation bibles and prayer books 
 ranged along the seats, is the last thing we shall mention, except the 
 burial ground, where the old soldier finally rests his weary limbs, or 
 such of them as were not left in foreign lands. No stone, no tablet, 
 or name, marks his grave; nor are they necessary to one who de- 
 voutly expects that, like the myrtle, he may rise again when the 
 winter of death has passed.
 
 THE BRITISH SAILOR. 
 
 The mariner of England ! 
 Who guards our native seas ; 
 Wnose flag has braved a thousand rears 
 The bafle and the breeze. 
 
 DlBDl.v.
 
 THE BRITISH SAILOR. 
 
 BY EDWARD HOWARD. 
 
 No undertaking can be more difficult than that of attempting to 
 give the generic character of the Sailor. He has a very distinct 
 conventional one, which, whenever he endeavours to act up to 
 when he is on shore, poor fellow, he invariably makes a fool of 
 himself. Most writers who have essayed to describe him, have 
 melo-dramatised honest Jack : they have put T. P. Cooke and his 
 unexceptionable pigtail into sounding sentences, and vainly said, 
 " Behold a British tar !" Let the 'long shore lubbers depend upon 
 it that Jack is, like themselves, a very variable animal. By lub- 
 bers, we mean the rest of the community, including the learned, 
 the witty, and the wise ; for, as all who are not of the clergy 
 are laical, so all who are not Sailors are, In forecastle dialectics, 
 lubbers. Jack has often been admonished to correct this manner 
 of speaking, and to substitute, for " lubbers," the term " civi- 
 lians ;" but he, thinking of the Jews and land-sharks, holds that 
 this would be carrying civility too far, and so we, on shore, must 
 be content to be lubbers still, until we mend our morals, and 
 make all Jews upright and all lawyers honest. 
 
 On his own element, noble John is the epitome of all that 
 is manly, generous, and brave each individual seaman seeming to 
 have embarked with him the virtues of ten thorough English 
 landsmen, and left their vices on shore, which, too often, when he 
 returns from a cruise, he attempts to shuffle into; and, they fitting 
 him like ill-made garments, he becomes not only profligate, but 
 ridiculous, seeing that the fashionable tailor, Hypocrisy, never yet 
 could take Jack's measure. On board, he is the man, with the 
 guilelessness of the child ; on shore, the child, with all the vicious- 
 ness of the man. But his follies always shorten the career of his 
 vices ; and then want drives him again to sea, where he has the 
 leisure to repent, and to reflect what an egregious ass he has 
 made of himself.
 
 342 THE BRITISH SAILOR 
 
 To pretend to fix the sterling worth of a genuine, unadulterated 
 British Sailor, in the words of facetiousness, would be swindling 
 him out of the half of the nobility of his character with false 
 coin. He is never ridiculous, excepting when he is not himself. 
 But, to individualise our idea of him, we wiU single out one 
 of the species. Reality will offer you hundreds better, thousands 
 quite as good, and tens of thousands worse. He must be a nian- 
 o'-war's-man, of course. There are good men and true in the 
 merchant service, yet they always want the chivalry of character 
 and the lofty bearing of the king's men. 
 
 We will not take our specimen from the boys of the Marine 
 Society. These youths are apt to grow conceited with their " little 
 learning," that " very dangerous thing," and are not much im- 
 proved by being made officers' servants. They generally ripen 
 into loblolly-boys, and become, in due season, captains', ward- 
 room officers', and pursers' stewards, all consummate idlers, with 
 a very prudent horror of going aloft. No, we will have none of 
 these. But here is John Boltrope, just pressed from a Newcastle 
 collier ; nothing could be better. You see that he is a sturdy 
 youth of eighteen, with a ruddy complexion begrimed with dirt, 
 his flaxen hair matted with coal-dust, with a slouching manner 
 and a rolling gait. Notwithstanding his awkwardness, he is strong 
 as a young Hercules. There is much virtue in that rough-spun 
 lad. He can humour his craft in a gale of wind with the helm, 
 as daintily as a mother manages her child in convulsions ; he can 
 hang on the lee yard-arm, whilst the ship is dancing in the waves 
 like a mad Irishman at a wake ; and no night shall be either too 
 cold or too dark for him, to give you the soundings by the lead- 
 line, with as much sang-froid, and a great deal more accuracy, 
 than your tailor will run over the items of your bill. 
 
 John Boltrope finds himself on board of a crack frigate. He 
 don't like it at first, everything is so awfully clean and so offen- 
 sively regular. He sulks the first day, grows conversable with 
 his new shipmates on the second, and cheerfully enters himself 
 on the third. For the present, he is only rated ordinary seaman, 
 and stationed in the mizen-top. 
 
 In a month's time, you would not know him, 'although his own 
 mother might, and very proud, indeed, would she be of him. He 
 is no longer the half chimney-sweep half merman that you saw him 
 enact on board of the William and Mary of Shields. He is scrupu- 
 lously clean and decidedly genteel ; not genteel with the gentility of 
 the drawing-room, or of the. pave in Recent Street, but fully endued
 
 THE BRITISH SAILOR. 3-13 
 
 with that consciousness of his own powers, mental and corporeal, 
 that bestows upon him self-esteem, making him graceful in his own 
 station, and preventing him from feeling awkward in any other. 
 His handsome countenance is not less ruddy than in its semi- 
 oblivion of dirt, but infinitely more engaging; his once matted hair 
 now curls gaily over his head, and falls in seductive ringlets on each 
 side of his face ; his handkerchief is tied round his otherwise bare 
 neck, with a piquancy that he means to be aggravating, and which 
 really is sc to the fair sex ; his jacket and trousers fit him loosely, 
 yet gracefully ; and his small shoe upon his small foot is quite un- 
 exceptionable. 
 
 But the greatest improvement is in his mien and his deport- 
 ment. His step is light and elastic ; he moves with the rapidity of 
 a swallow, and stands with the firmness and decision of a sculp- 
 tured hero. The activity with which he sculls up aloft, and lies out 
 to make fast the weather-earing on the topsail-yard his quiet, re- 
 spectful behaviour and the uniform neatness of his appearance, have 
 attracted the notice of the first lieutenant ; so he is one day called 
 aft, and, all blushes and confusion, he is publicly commended, and told 
 that the captain has been pleased to rate him " able seaman." 
 
 That is a great day for young Jack. In his own words, he " gets 
 drunk upon the strength of it;" yet the ship's corporals don't see it; 
 the master-at-arms sees it, but does not report it ; when the midship- 
 man musters his men at quarters, he can't find John Boltrope upon 
 the quarter-bill ; and yet, somehow, the dreaded first luff knows all 
 about it and says nothing, but, perhaps, next morning, as Jack, 
 looking sheepishly, scuds past him on the quarter-deck, may hold 
 up a cautionary forefinger, and smile significantly. 
 
 And now, new honours await him. He is promoted to the bow- 
 oar in the captain's gig, and the captain himself sometimes con- 
 descends to speak to him, and sends him with neatly-sealed three- 
 cornered notes, with strict injunctions to put them into certain 
 hands only, at certain times and in certain places. By this time, 
 Jack's chin has grown stubbly, and he has hacked it a good deal 
 in trying to learn to shave. He has also nearly attained a fathom 
 in altitude ; so he is moved into the fore-top, and made second 
 captain of the bow-gun on the forecastle. In the meantime, he has 
 learned to dance all imaginable double-shuffles and hornpipes; has 
 tried the flute, and, failing, damned it as spooney; been in three 
 well-contested actions, and in prize-money sacked a cool hundred 
 and twenty pounds. He then comes home from a seven years' 
 spell in a foreign station, is paid off, gets a liberty-ticket for a
 
 3-14 THE BRITISH SAILOE. 
 
 month, and finds himself, for the first time in his life, a free agent, 
 at the Point at Portsmouth, with two hundred pounds in his pos- 
 session, all in new bank notes ; some of which he sticks between the 
 riband and his hat, some he pins upon Poll's bosom for bows, and 
 some are thrust into the hand of the first Jew who will call him 
 " his honour." 
 
 In a week, his money is gone, his poll kicks him out of doors, 
 and his Jew threatens him with the stocks as a drunken swab. So, 
 before his leave of absence has expired, he sneaks on board again, 
 cursing everything but his own folly. He is obliged to go into the 
 doctor's list for a month ; and then, generally, a little wiser and a 
 little better man, he finds that he has squandered away his money 
 and his youth, with but little advantage to any party, but his own 
 country, which will, in due time, prove that she is not ungrateful. 
 
 Though Jack's youth was a short one, he makes up for it in his 
 middle age. He is now too heavy for the gig, so, as he has always 
 been a steady, good man, he at present pulls the strcke-oar in 
 the barge. He no longer cultivates his side locks, but has strange 
 hankerings after a pig-tail ; but, queues not being encouraged lately, 
 he shakes his head all the lighter for it, as he deplores the dege- 
 neracy of the times. His features have become weather-worn, and 
 the ruddiness of his cheeks has changed to a well-tanned brown 
 of a very warm tint. His countenance is very bluff, and, when 
 animated, rich with a droll humour, and decidedly good naturecl, 
 although, when in perfect repose, somewhat stern. His chest is 
 deep, his shoulders immensely wide, and his neck always uncovered, 
 coarsely grained, and brawney 
 
 At thirty years of age, he still dances, but requires some solicita- 
 tion, and an extra glass of grog to induce him to shew off; and 
 then he does it with a gentle scorn of himself, and exhibits to some 
 purpose. The younkers look on, and hope, in time, to equal it. 
 He has become very sensible and observant ; patronises the younger 
 seamen who display any talent, and grows generally respected fore 
 and aft. He is made a petty-officer, and rated captain of the fore- 
 top, and begins seriously to deplore his want of book learning, for 
 a warrant is not too remote for his ambition ; for, has not the cap- 
 tain said that " John Boltrope would make an excellent gunner or 
 boatswain, if he were only scholar enough to keep his accounts ? " 
 Poor fellow! when he is half-seas over, and in fits of desperation, 
 he takes manfully to his A. B. C., but he can make nothing of it, 
 although he knows his own name when he sees it written in a legible 
 hand.
 
 THE BRITISH SAILOR 345 
 
 In Ida morale he is now perfect. Himself skilful, he is the best 
 of instruments in skilful hands. In the war of the elements, or that 
 worse than elemental war, th war of human strife, whatever man 
 can do, Jack will do : he will stretch the line of the possible, all but 
 to the other side of impossibility. In those dangers of the storm, 
 when hope is dead, even in his own bosom, where it dies the last, 
 his firmness of purpose still survives ; and, though he perish, he will 
 not perish vanquished, but crushed. At the gun, nothing can dis- 
 tract his attention from his duty. Flash all that is horrible in 
 slaughter, and bring all that is terrible to hear and to see before him, 
 he is still cool, he levels his thirty-two pounder, and swerves not. 
 Call on him to board, a grove of pikes shall be ready for his bosom, 
 the musketry shall pour down upon him its leaden hail, and the 
 cannon vomit forth its grape-shot, the ship's sides be high, and the 
 chasm that he has to leap fearful, be all this and more, call on 
 him to board, and he boards or dies. 
 
 He does these desperate things not with an air of desperation, 
 but methodically ; and with method of dreadful force and rapidity. 
 Unlike other vaunted warriors, he requires not first to be blinded 
 by enthusiasm, or maddened by despair, to do great actions. To 
 dare and to achieve seem natural to him. He knows that there 
 must be some chance of success, or his officers would not have 
 ordered the service ; and he knows, at the same time, that those 
 chances must be made certainty by his exertions alone. He does 
 not stop to reason, or, peradventure, he would falter ; but he has 
 learned that it is more reasonable to let those above him reason for 
 him. He is content to act, and he acts well. 
 
 During his middle age, Jack sees much and trying service. He 
 gets slightly wounded in a genel action, and does some deed of 
 singular service, and is mentioned, by name, in the dispatches. 
 The Lords of the Admiralty write to the captain to enquire if he is 
 qualified to be made a warrant-officer. The hands are turned up, 
 and the letter is read to him publicly on the quarter-deck, and his 
 glory is at its zenith. Jack studies his spelling-book again for a 
 fortnight, and then gives it up for ever, or, in his own language, 
 " fairly cuts and runs ;" so he gets a small pension and a great deal 
 of respect instead of his promotion. 
 
 At this period of his life, he usually marries; and as, in all pro- 
 bability, his wife is some worthless slut, Jack serves her as he did 
 his spelling-book, " cuts and runs again." Most probably he tries 
 another, and another: he calls this seeking for good holding-ground ; 
 for, with all his virtues, it must be confessed that Jack is an incorri- 
 
 94 
 
 T T
 
 34f> THK BRITISH SAILOR. 
 
 gible bigamist. We rather think that he is less attached to a 
 plurality of wives than to a plurality of weddings, for, next to a 
 regular row or engagement at sea, a regular nuptial engagement 
 on shore is his delight. He thinks tl em both bores when they last 
 too long, each of them being the very thing for a short shindy. 
 
 We must suppose that our friend has now passed his middle age, 
 but, being sound, wind and limb, he do n't like to bear up for Green- 
 wich Hospital. He has lately been captain of the forecastle, and re- 
 fused the office of chief boatswain's-mate. He is consequently made 
 quartermaster, and becomes a veteran of great dignity. He moves 
 along the deck with a grave and slow step, and his features have 
 become sharpened, and, on occasions, he can throw all the bitterness 
 of a wintry north-easter into the severity of his countenance. How- 
 ever, he is a good-natured fellow still, in the main ; and, if you will 
 but take his reproof submissively, you will then find how much affec- 
 tion he bears you. It was merely his manner of shewing kindness. 
 
 No officer, whatever his rank, is now disparaged by conversing 
 familiarly with John Boltrope ; indeed, the superior officers rather 
 encourage the young gentlemen to seek his conversation. Much 
 practical seamanship must be always learned by it. But it is abso- 
 lutely necessary to confine his disquisitions to the ocean ; if, for once 
 he gets on shore why, the ladies may God bless them and still 
 preserve them the perfect beings that they are the ladies would 
 suffer for it for, according to the old quartermaster, a greater curse 
 and pestilence a more dishonest, leud, scurvy oh, fie upon you, 
 John Boltrope ! 
 
 We must not disguise the matter, for, by this time, Jack has be- 
 come positively and incontestably ugly. What he has done with his 
 enormous whiskers, himself only knows ; but his once curling and 
 flaxen locks are now reduced so much that he can only muster a 
 few tufts of very white hair about his temples, although they still 
 cluster thickly round the back of his neck. He is still robust and 
 very upright, and his laugh young and richly hilarious. 
 
 He is a wise old man after his generation, and now dresses as 
 wise old men, who are seamen, should. He is addicted to pea- 
 jackets, and always wears a flannel banyan under his shirt, and it is 
 very seldom you see him without a comforter about his neck we 
 do n't mean any one of his wives. His throat is now never un- 
 covered ; and I dare say, whenever the weather is cold, it would be 
 found that he had on two pairs of trousers but this is rather a 
 delicate subject. In his youth, he was not much addicted to chew- 
 ing tobacco, but did it more to prove his manliness than from
 
 THE BRITISH SAILOR. 347 
 
 any positive affection to the weed ; but now, the quid is never 
 out of his mouth not even in his sleep excepting when he eats. 
 His appetite is not quite so good as it was, but his thirst is peren- 
 nial. He is never found absolutely tipsy, but more often than is 
 quite becoming in a state of blessedness not quite so itpochryphal 
 as that of wedded bliss. But he is as valuable and as necessary to 
 the ship as one of its old timbers, which, though it grows dark and 
 shrinks a little from age, must not be lightly parted with. 
 
 Generally, about this time, he devotes his leisure hours in 
 building and rigging a mimic fir^t-rate ; it is but a toy but what 
 a splendid one ; it has only one fault it never will be finished. 
 It is a glorious subject to talk about: and gloomy would be the 
 day after that on which he had pronounced it completed. As 
 years creep on him, he is rarely called upon for active duty, 
 except on very stirring emergencies, as, when the ship is scudd-ing 
 before the storm under bare poles, and the nicest accuracy at 
 the wheel is indispensable to the general safety. He is, however, 
 appointed to teach the young gentlemen to knot and splice, and 
 to play all manner of fantastic tricks with the threads of the 
 cordage, from the cable to the log-line. 
 
 And thus, without exaggeration, and wishing to eschew the melo- 
 dramatic, we have given the head of a regular man-o'-war's-man. 
 May it be long, very long, before such heads become matters of 
 history only. While they exist, England still will be the great nation 
 she now is. Let the British seamen be the last class who shall be 
 touched with the enervating hand of refinement. Always re- 
 member, that to make him the effective power that he has always 
 proved himself, you must keep him a mere instrument a most 
 glorious one, truly but still only an instrument. Give him back his 
 grog, and let him preserve his recklessness, and never forget that 
 some of his failings are your safety. Teach him too much, and he 
 will calculate ; if he calculates, he hesitates ; and, if he hesitates, he 
 will no longer do those acts of daring which have made his enemies 
 fearful even to conquer him. But we must say one more word 
 fcbout Jack. In spite of flannels and double clothing, hot grog and 
 no night-watches, the rheumatism has stiffened his limbs at last, 
 end the brave old tar has, at length, ripened into the GREENWICH 
 PENSIONER.
 
 THE GREENWICH PENSIONER. 
 
 BY EDWARD HOWARD. 
 
 " PENSIONER" there is a shade of moral degradation in the term ; 
 add " Greenwich" to it, and what a thrice-glorious association of 
 images there is of well-tried worth, bravery, and all that dignifies 
 humanity ! Greenwich Pensioners, though they be, generally, 
 but withered samples of heroism, lopped of their just proportions 
 mutilated, shrunk up, and many with one and a few with both dead- 
 lights shipped they are, like British oak, sound at the core, heart- 
 whole : war may have trimmed off their branches, many storms dis- 
 figured their bark, and the dry-rot of age sapped the vigour of their 
 latter days, yet the heart that has for so many years " braved the 
 battle and the breeze " perishes not. The Pensioner has nailed to 
 it the colours of his undying intrepidity, and he will meet his end 
 cheerfully ; for he knows that, alow and aloft, he has done his duty, 
 and, strengthened by faith, believes that that duty which he has well 
 done below, will be well rewarded aloft. 
 
 Let us view him with his three-cornered hat his quaint, old- 
 fashioned, yet age-becoming coat, with its patches of gold lace 
 here and there his full-dress smalls, " all too loose for his shrunk 
 shanks " his worsteds, and shoes with their huge buckles ; is he 
 not every inch a gentleman ? Of the old school, if you like it, but 
 a gentleman, still. He has been to sea to learn manners ; the days 
 of his schooling have been many, and his lessons severe ; but he 
 leaves with his terms well kept ; and, though his bow be not of the 
 " court, couitly," he is a perfect master of the humanities. He is 
 the seaman well ripened by service, not rotted by corruption ; and 
 he would, as he has the right to do, carry his head high, were it not 
 for the cruel crampings of age. 
 
 The best time, perhaps, to view him, is when the spring winds 
 are a little bleak, and the grass looks fresh, and the lilac is just be- 
 ginning to blossom. He is then a gregarious animal, and you will
 
 THE GREENWICH PENSIONER 
 
 I'm a seaman and only three-sccre : 
 
 A d d bad joke that this battered old hulk 
 
 Can't be fitted out for sea once more.
 
 THE GREENWICH PENSIONER. 349 
 
 see him crowding, with others of his genus, upon the sunny side of 
 one of the noble compartments of his glorious habitation. He 
 seems greedy of as much of heaven's warmth as he can get on this 
 side of the grave. And there they sit, a row of battered heroes, 
 remnants and fragments of warriors, and, in their ruins, almost 
 awful to contemplate. Some of them are nodding their heads in a 
 luxurious drowsiness in the sunbeams ; some gaily conversing ; and 
 many alas! too many are wincing under the infliction of those 
 numerous pains " that flesh is heir to," an inheritance that the said 
 flesh is sure to enjoy, providing that it last long enough. 
 
 The quadrangles in Greenwich Hospital are fine peripatetic 
 schools for the study of humanity. You may there learn how to 
 bear suffering ; and, in order to escape from the pangs of the 
 body, try to make yourself as much mind as you can. Hundreds of 
 examples are before your eyes. In many and in some of the best 
 senses of the word, every Greenwich Pensioner is a philosopher. 
 He knows how to make his physical subservient to his morale we 
 have no choice in the phrase, for there are no English words that 
 would so well express our meaning. 
 
 But all the pensioners do not suffer ; and, whether they suffer or 
 not, they must still have much scope for enjoyment. How glorious is 
 the palace that roofs the pensioner in ! -Where is the king or empe- 
 ror that might not envy him his last and lofty home ? The nation's 
 glory, to which he has so much contributed, is settled upon his brow ; 
 and, though on crutches, or with a wooden leg, he walks proudly 
 about the temple of honor which is his dwelling place ; for he feels 
 that he is worthy of his station, and that he dignifies his place 
 among the humbly great. No weight of obligation lies upon hia 
 bosom. He and his country are quits. Now she is doing well for 
 him in his old age ; but, for her, how well did he, through the years 
 of his bright youth and the long term of his vigorous manhood ! 
 
 But this, our readers may say, is the golden side of the shield. 
 Has it not also a brazen one ? Yes, for even your Greenwich Pensioner 
 is but one of the frail and feeble sons of humanity. But you cannot 
 divest him of the merits of his past life ; his name is recorded on 
 the tablets of his country's glory ; History, till she turn arrant liar, 
 cannot refuse to tell, that more than once he, and he alone, has 
 saved his nation from all the terrors of invasion, and, perhaps, but for 
 him, her name would have been blotted out from the list of king- 
 doms. True, they are but the sad remnants of a once mighty host 
 their companions lie deep and quiet beneath the waves that wit- 
 nessed their triumphs, and these that are left to us are but a trem-
 
 350 THE GREENWICH PENSIONER. 
 
 Wing, querulous set of old men. Let us then cherish and honour 
 them the more. The others are lost to and for us. They have 
 slipped away from our gratitude, but their brethren are still with 
 us and yet, but a very little while. Oh, let us deeply honour and 
 reverence them ! I cannot pass a knot of these gallant veterans but 
 my hand involuntarily finds its way to my hat ; and, if I do not 
 take it off and bow my head in humility to those who have deserved 
 well of their country, it is because I fear that they might regard 
 that as a mockery which was meant as a tribute. 
 
 Hitherto we have given only the abstract, not the personal 
 character of the Greenwich Pensioner; and even our attempt at 
 personification must be an abstraction ; for the peculiarities of each 
 individual of the class are most strongly marked, and each Pensioner 
 is as much unlike every other, as a Pensioner himself is unlike all 
 the rest of the world. 
 
 Seeing this, we cannot do better than trace our man-o" -war's 
 sailor, John Boltrope, from the decks of his last ship to the terraces 
 and wards of Greenwich Hospital. Being a petty officer, he is 
 distinguished by a little extra gold lace, of which he is not in the 
 least proud. Not having suffered the loss either of limb or of eye- 
 tight, he is still a stately figure, and wears his cocked hat with a 
 rear-admiral sort of hauteur. He constantly carries a cane, more 
 for dignity than use ; and he is not slow to lift it up threateningly 
 when he observes any young vagabond who dares to be too facetious 
 at his expense. 
 
 Though John has now nothing to complain of, excepting a 
 trifling twitch now and then of the rheumatism, a comfortable growl 
 has great charms for him. But take care not to chime in ; for, 
 should you, he'll turn upon you like a worried tiger, and prove that 
 he is, as he ought to be, the happiest and most contented man in 
 her Majesty's dominions, whom, at the same time, he will reverently 
 ask God to bless. People should oftener reflect that a personal 
 lamentation is a sort of private property, and, as such, ought to be 
 held sacred. 
 
 His man-o'-war's habits so far stick to him, that he would be 
 a very cleanly old man were it not for his excess in tobacco. He 
 has now made the abomination of the weed threefold, for he chews, 
 smokes, and snuffs it. Consequently his visage looks constantly 
 dusty. He was always a good spell at the grog-bottle, but he has 
 now attained the inestimable art of drinking himself muddy, and 
 being able so to remain any given time, so long as you will give 
 him the needful. He is not very brilliant in his conversation on.
 
 THE GREENWICH PENSIONER. 3ol 
 
 these occasions, for it runs invariably upon his many wives, and 
 their few virtues ; for, although he is such a polygamist himself, he 
 lays it down as law, and profanely adds, as gospel too, that every 
 man takes one wife too many whenever he is such a fool as to 
 marry the first. 
 
 In the right vein, he is exquisitely amusing ; wijl fight over 
 again all his battles, and be not only animated, but powerful in the 
 description ; nor will he too much lard his narrative with technical 
 terms. But he will exact the most profound attention ; and woe be 
 with you, should you forget any name that he may have mentioned. 
 Sancho Panza was not more arbitrary on this point. Farewell to 
 your hopes of the rest of the story. His manner of spinning his 
 yarn is something in this fashion, always laying great emphasis on 
 "D'ye see?" " So, d'ye see? Lieutenant Cummins was standing 
 at the breech of the gun, d'ye see? with the monkey's tail in his 
 right hand, d'ye see ? and the lanyard in his left ; he was our third 
 luff, d'ye see? So he calls to Mr. Thompson, to run and tell 
 Mr. Johnson, master's-mate, d'ye see? to ask the gunner, Old 
 Parabola Portfire, if there was never a box of langridge, d'ye see ? 
 in his stores, d'ye see ?" Now, if you remember all the names he 
 mentioned to you, and all their stations on the watch and quarter 
 bills, you will grow gracious in his eyes. 
 
 But, if he suspects you to be very green by which he does not 
 mean that you are not a sailor, or used to sailors' ways, but that 
 you are one of the credulous, and too sappy to throw a good yarn 
 away upon he will quiz you most unmercifully, and, having no fear 
 of any sort before him, lie most abominably. Should he give you 
 credit for common sense, he will treat you with respect, and exact 
 it for himself. 
 
 If you wish to put his patience to a severe test, although it is 
 not quite fair, talk to him about steam-boats. It is his questio 
 vexata the hedge-hog that he cannot help attacking, though he 
 knows that he will suffer by it. He will tell you that these smoky, 
 dirty craft will ruin all good seamanship, and put all valour and 
 gallant bearing out of the world. Although he hates a steamer as 
 a nuisance, and damns it as an impertinence, he has a secret and 
 superstitious dread of it, and holds it to be a machination of the 
 devil. Thus runs his opinion : 
 
 " While things was as they was, d' ye see ? we blue jackets had 
 it all our own way ; for, d' ye see ? if Johnny Crapau fought, we 
 wopped him; if he burlt more ships, we took 'em, d'ye see ? And 
 8 ! Belzebub grew spiteful, and he says, ses he, whilst a British
 
 352 THE GREENWICH PENSIONER. 
 
 sailor gets his grog and his prog, d' ye see ? I shall never be able to 
 shove my oar in his boat and turn the world topsy-turvy, says he, 
 d' ye see ? So he plans with the tee-totallers and the saints, and 
 tries to disrate the grog-tub and promote the tea-kettle, d' ye see ? 
 But he could only do that job by halves, for which, d' ye see ? may 
 there be an eternal frost in his fire-place, and coals run short. So, 
 having partly failed, what does the devil do ? Having got hold of 
 the right hint, he turns the tea-kettle into a boiler, claps wheels on 
 the ships' sides as if they were no better than hackney-coaches, or so 
 many dung-carts and thus ruins, d' ye see ? the out-and-out blue 
 water English sailor for ever. I 've done it ! says he, d' ye see ? and 
 I never hears one of those varmint steamers a-sputtering, fizzing, 
 and hissing, but I thinks I hears the devil a saying, ' Ah, Jack, you 
 willain, I 've done ye at last!' d' ye see ? " 
 
 Of course, we progressive men know that this is only a foolish 
 prejudice of Old Boltrope, which we may very safely let him enjoy, 
 and very long may he be happy in it. We well know that he may 
 be said to live only in the past ; his notions, therefore, of what we 
 of a wiser generation are doing at the present, may be safely deemed 
 as obsolete as a square stern to a seventy-four. 
 
 We were going to say something about a certain yellow robe, 
 very gorgeous to look upon, but the magnificence of which is not 
 particularly coveted by the Greenwich Pensioner. We have not 
 lately met with this decoration in our walks about the hospital ; and 
 as we are much too delicately minded to make enquiries on such a 
 peculiar subject, we will suppose that sobriety has become the order 
 of the day, and that tee-totalism has penetrated into the stronghold 
 of its most formidable enemies. The pensioners are much and very 
 kindly humoured by their officers ; and they have as much latitude 
 given to them as is consistent with the military decorum and the 
 decency of deportment that should characterise veteran warriors. 
 
 Though everything is admirably arranged for the dignified com- 
 fort and the health and exercise of the Greenwich Pensioner, we 
 may be allowed to hint that something might be done for his amuse- 
 ment also ; and a bowling-green would be the very thing. There 
 are hundreds among them who are equal to, and would greatly 
 enjoy, the exertion. It was a favourite resort of my Uncle Toby, 
 and we will not allow him to be called a fictitious character. The 
 lookers-on would enjoy the sport quite as much, or more, than the 
 players. There would be so much scope for giving excellent, 
 unregarded advice. The grotesque figures of the spectators and 
 the contrivances of the maimed, the agility of the one-legged and
 
 THE GREENWICH PENSIONER. 353 
 
 the dexterity of the one-handed, would form an admirable picture 
 of blithe happiness, and make the summers' evenings of the old 
 hard-a-weather tars delightful. 
 
 This recreation would keep them away from the more ignoble 
 skittles at the ale-house, and prove as healthful to their morals as to 
 their bodies. We do not think that the arrangement could be fairly 
 objected to, on the score of economy ; and we should always re- 
 member that a deserving, worn-out seaman is, in this princely 
 asylum, to be looked upon as an honoured guest of the nation, and, 
 as such, the nation should remember its magnanimity, and do its 
 best to amuse as well as to maintain him. 
 
 We will not mar the picture that we have already given, by 
 presenting to our friends a description that, over-true as it would 
 be, would rather distress than interest them. We must pass over 
 the decrepid and infirm pensioners in silence. There is nothing 
 peculiar in their sufferings, and if ever they are displayed in a ludi- 
 crous manner, it would be inhuman to attempt to be humorous upon 
 them. They must bear their visitations in common with all, and 
 they do so manfully, for, evrn in the worst cases, they are sur- 
 rounded by alleviating circumstances. Most of the usual worldly 
 anxieties they are free from. They have only to exert their for- 
 titude, and fix their regards strongly on the future, when no hope 
 of relief can be offered them in the present world. 
 
 Happy should be the evening of the life of the Greenwich Pen- 
 sioner. As he has lived bravely, he should prepare himself to die 
 gracefully ; not by always dwelling upon the thoughts of death ; 
 but by living in peace and good-will with all those around him, 
 and remembering the high destinies that he has fulfilled, prepare 
 himself for the fulfilment of still higher. He should never dis- 
 grace the superb temple of benevolence, that is but worthy of him 
 whilst he is himself. The flag under which, for so many years, 
 he has sailed, fought, and conquered, still proudly waves above hi 
 head, and, though in no deadly strife, under which he will die. 
 May his life be prolonged to the extreme verge of enjoyment, and 
 then may he depart in peace, with the glad assurance in his mind, 
 that he understood and always acted up to the glorious admoni 
 tion of his immortal leader, Nelson " ENGLAND EXPECTS EVERY 
 MAN TO DO HIS DUTY.'"' 
 
 95 u v
 
 THE RADICAL M. P. 
 
 EY AKOLOL'THOS. 
 
 " BUT the chosen band of pure patriot brothers is small, counting 
 only some thirty, seated now on the extreme tip of the left, separate 
 from the world;" so says Thomas Carlyle in "the sword-in-hand" 
 chapter of his " French Revolution." 
 
 Can we count up thirty pure patriot brothers ? 
 
 Here, at ministerial back, sit, lounge, and loll, at full length, 
 the incorruptible Brummagem Brown ; Patriotic Smith, sent from 
 Spinnerston ; Indomitable Dumkins, "chosen" of Wapping ; and 
 People's friend" Podder, M.P. for Peckham. 
 
 Here rest they, and grunt, and groan (the true tone of the lower 
 parliament), as the representatives of the huge creature Plebs of 
 some fifteen millions of men possessing ideas, as wholesome and 
 good as those of the five thousand squireens, &c., who sent in the 
 other six hundred members. In Tory eye, they are counted as the 
 " vox et prseterea nihil " of nobody (defined by Fielding, all the 
 people in Great Britain except about one thousand two hundred). 
 To the eye of uninflamed and unprejudiced sight, they seem the 
 faint and puerile voice of a young lion (growling louder, though 
 every day), which enters the house with a sort of " do n't know 
 the place " air, uttering, nevertheless, now and then, sounds that 
 smack of the independent and honest spirit of the creature it arti- 
 culates for, a meagre echo of the rampant, roaring Radical outside ; 
 an echo of the unfortunately increasing popular idea, " that it was 
 never merry world in England, since gentlemen came up." Reader, 
 hast thou not oftentimes met a tall, strong-built Titan-sized man, 
 with a very weak struggling puny voice ? Such is the Radical and 
 the radical's representative. 
 
 And where 's the Linnaeus to classify these radical representa- 
 tives ? Each one being a radix or root sui generis. 
 
 Conservatives may herd together, and so too may Whigs ; but 
 Radicals never : no stronger antagonism in nature than two Ra- 
 dicals. Every individual member Radical, is like the Spaniard
 
 THE RADICAL M.P. 
 
 Burn all the records of the realm : 
 
 My mouth shall he the parliament of England. 
 
 1I-KXHY VI, Part 2.
 
 THE RADICAL M. P 355 
 
 who thought the world a very creditable production, but which would 
 have been much improved had he been consulted at its creation. A 
 few years ago he was no better than a Jacobin a revolutionist a 
 political Cloaca a Thersites, to whom every Tory or Whig Ulysses 
 gave foul words and hard blows. Now you may shake him by the 
 hand without loss of caste 
 
 Who shall say what a Radical member is now-a-days, when all 
 politics are " flat, stale, and unprofitable." Once, Reform in Par- 
 liament marked the class ; but how many like to be called Radicals 
 that vote for Mr. Grote's annual ballot motion ? Neither corn-laws, 
 nor education for the people, nor extension of suffrage, nor ballot, nor 
 poor-laws, are nowindices. Half the supporters of such measures 
 call themselves Whigs. What radical head shall be caught and 
 preserved in our museum as a specimen of the genus ? Where 's a 
 second species like Mr. Hume, or Mr. Warburton, or Mr. Muntz ? 
 In what is Charles Bullet like Fielden ; or the latter like Hawes or 
 Mark Philipps ? Sir W. Molesworth, Mr. Grote, and Mr. Leader 
 seem to row in the same boat ; but how many political features have 
 they in common ? They may only be classified by that easy dis- 
 tinction, the breeches pockets. The Hibernian we omit, for you 
 may find him every day in " The Times ;" besides, the fellow is too 
 fond of the argument " ad baculum," to be held up as a senator. 
 
 There is the rich Radical, an oiT-set from the aristocracy, and the 
 rich Radical cotton lord, or banker ; but, for the most part, as re- 
 spects worldly wealth, the Radical will be able to pass through the 
 eye of a needle on his way to heaven. 
 
 The Radical M. P. the rich and rare has chosen his line of 
 politics in the hope of standing out in " Periclean " eminence, 
 with a Pharos- like brilliancy amongst his fellow men. Observing 
 and deducing from his observation, that his talents, mental and 
 pecuniary, will not see much day in the obscurity of a ministerial 
 hanger-on-ship, and incited by a judicious feeling for singularity, he 
 consents to thrust himself forth as an advocate for the " struggling 
 millions" the true s >urce of legitimate power. Guided in his politi- 
 cal choice by a dete.mination about as rational as that which induces 
 gentlemen who can roll in silk-lined carriages to " handle the ri- 
 bands," and perspire over the labours of directing a four-horsed coach. 
 For actual utility, he has been said somewhere to resemble a champ- 
 ing, noisy, crib-biting Flemish stallion, which, after all his pride and 
 head-lifting in his stall, when taken out, trudges lazily and spirit- 
 Icssly on. Nevertheless, he is often wonderfully and when least 
 expecting it borne on by popular liking far beyond his will ; which,
 
 356 THE RADICAL M. P. 
 
 mind you, is to control, not to be controlled by, his constituency ; to 
 make use of, not to be used by, the impulsive mob : he thus some- 
 times reminds one of the occupier of an Irish post-chaise, who (we 
 trse Leigh Hunt's version of the joke), without quitting it, had to 
 take to his heels: 
 
 "It was going down hill as fast as wind and the impossibility of 
 stopping could make it, when the foot passengers observed a couple 
 of legs underneath, emulating with all their might the rapidity of the 
 wheels. The bottom had come out, and the gentleman was obliged to 
 run for his life." * 
 
 He likes to be looked upon as one who soars above the pre- 
 judices which the possession of wealth instils ; keeps lots of flunkies 
 out of livery, because he says the badge of it lowers them as fellow 
 men ; and always (how significant are these trifles !) has his hand 
 gloved when he shakes hands with Constituent Muggins. His pity 
 for the woes of his electors is merely varnished contempt. His 
 affable address and familiarity, the pride that apes humility. As 
 a swimmer, buffeting the rude, yet friendly waves, he fancies it is 
 all his own skill which keeps him up. 
 
 Inside the house, he dislikes the noisy unmeaning eloquence of 
 Irish members v/ho follow his speech ; and when cast iuto the shade 
 in debate, calls the Hibernians to order for factious opposition. He 
 rebukes the Agitator for foul language, and calls the constituents who 
 dare to interrogate his votes, "sneaking reptiles " and " buzzing pis- 
 mires." He is quick and sudden in quarrel ; often declares he will 
 throw up his seat ; and, as often (after a few mutual compliments) re- 
 tracts the threat, graciously stating his determination to live and die 
 their member. 
 
 By great fobbing and fudging, he sends out vague unattackable 
 pamphlets "for promoting effectual relief from general distress;" 
 blunders boldly on joint-stock banks (in which he is much con- 
 cerned); has extensive free- trade principles; conscientiously declaims 
 against the Bank charter ; thinks that " taking anything from the 
 church, on any ground, is good," as he is a great church reformer ; 
 (he bought a living, though, the other day for his youngest son who 
 was too foolish for anything but the church ;) and holds that, as to 
 tithes, the people should pay the ministers they like, or rather no 
 ministers at all. He annually sends the house to sleep with a three 
 hours' speech on purity of election ; has three large factories 
 which give him paramount interest in his borough ; and, Sally of " The 
 Pig and Pumpkin " can tell of the rare doings when the house was 
 kept open three whole weeks, on the buff interest, at the last election
 
 THE RADICAL M. P. 357 
 
 for ter; for our Radical, rich or poor, seldom gets in for a 
 
 shire. Alas ! like everything mortal, when full of promise, he droops, 
 and suddenly secedes from public notice. In a farewell letter to his 
 constituents, he says that the cares of life, the thickening cares of 
 politics above all, are too much for his constitution ; that his future 
 career, if he is ever sufficiently recruited to endure public life again, 
 will bear the same attachment to the constitution as ever ; and that 
 he cannot but congratulate the country at large, on the excessive 
 liberal policy which its present government pursues. The fact is, 
 our rich Radical has been tempted by a baronetcy. Dining, too, a few 
 times at Holland House, he finds the society of a ministerial coterie 
 more agreeable than that of the vulgar brother Radicals who were 
 in the habit of meeting every Wednesday at his dinner table, to de- 
 termine their line of political consistency. He has now shed his skin 
 as grub, and steps out shortly, a butterfly decked and adorned by the 
 suffrages of one of the close boroughs of the Marquis of M 
 
 The younger, and, therefore, purer specimen of the Radical 
 M. P. " Dives," has far more intelligent, more active, and more dis- 
 interested sympathies than those possessed by him we have just left. 
 There is much attraction in liberalism for a young spirit, when open 
 and uncontracted by selfish interests ; knowing not the ways of life 
 it goes gleeful, trusting all, sympathising with all, clothing even 
 politics in its fresh, bright, smiling colours. 
 
 Some of the strongest Conservatives were once popular advo- 
 cates. The early enthusiam of a dazzled unsteady vision has passed 
 away ; and, as Sir F. Burdett and Mr. Greenacre, the two promi- 
 nently public characters during the Westminster strife of 1837, 
 observed " the atrocities of youthful Radicalism are atoned for by 
 the yearnings which impel us to the bosom of Conservatism." 
 
 Cambridge debating societies first inspired our young liberal ; 
 ambition influences his choice a little ; still it is mostly the free im- 
 pulses of his knowledge and education which make him embrace the 
 popular cause. We once caught a glimpse of, and made some ex- 
 tracts from, the journal of one of the most favourable of the young 
 Radical M. P.'s; and though the subjects have passed away, the sen- 
 timent, indicative of the spirit, remains the same. With this com- 
 ment, let us introduce him characterised by his own mouth. 
 
 " Tuesday, May 9. A long railway debate. When I came in, 
 six members were speaking on six points of order successively raised 
 on each other's speeches. Borthwick and Trevor, an hour each, on 
 the former's motion for addressing the King to call the Convocation 
 together ; as if there was not nonsense enough talked every day as it is,
 
 358 THE RADICAL M. P. 
 
 without two more legislative assemblies of parsons. Trevor, very 
 nearly burked the house ; and Pryme, on tobacco, perfectly succeeded. 
 We got away in time for me to hear almost the whole of the opera. 
 If I had moved the counting, I should be much better prepared to 
 answer to my constituents for that sin, than for that of listening to 
 Borthwick and Trevor. "Don Giovanni" was quite as interesting to 
 the public as Prymes's motion ; and I do not hesitate to aver that I 
 think I was better employed in listening to Lablache than to Peter. 
 
 " A Dull and Useless Wednesday. Robinson made a free trade 
 motion on principles of monopoly, or rather of nonsense. The mo- 
 tion met with the fate due, not to its own merits, but to those of its 
 maker. After this, O'Connell's Libel Bill was discussed, and met 
 the fate which I think its demerits richly deserved. Its object appa- 
 rently was to increase the freedom of the press, merely for purposes 
 of private slander. It proposed to do nothing for the liberty of poli- 
 tical discussion. His bill, if passed, would have nowise increased 
 the freedom of the press, which is wanted. It would have merely 
 given further scope and greater impunity to its blackguardism, which 
 no one wants except the aristocracy and the parsons, who patronise 
 slander. 
 
 *' Thursday, May 11. Whalley moved for the Repeal of the 
 Window Tax ; and Rice answered him. No one would listen to 
 either ; and the division took place immediately. Owing to the very 
 general propensity which has prevailed uninterruptedly from the 
 passing of the Reform Bill up to a very recent period, there is 
 nothing which has always interested the Reformed Parliament so 
 little as notices about retrenchment and relief from taxation. There 
 is a little bird singing in my ear that this will not be the case this 
 time next year. The House then made a fool of itself by giving 
 Agnew leave to bring in his outrageous Sabbath Bill once more. 
 Of course the House can never let the bill pass ; and the only effect 
 of granting this, must be the wasting another night on the second 
 reading, and perhaps one or two more in committee ; and then every 
 body complains that public business is delayed. Why do they give 
 Agnew leave to stop the way ? Colonel Thompson brought a new 
 argument against the Sabbath, which, though startling, seems to me 
 sound. He argued that, if in obedience to the Mosaic Law we ob- 
 serve the Jewish Sabbath, we ought to observe all its other ordinances, 
 abstinence from pork arid circumcision among others. Colonel 
 Thompson urged, therefore, that in consistency Mr. Speaker and the 
 rest of the members should likewise be circumcised. Wakley got up 
 immediately after, and everybody supposed he meant to offer his
 
 THE RADICAL M. P. 350 
 
 Surgical aid for the purpose. One stout man here got so frightened 
 that lie swore he would ask for the Chiltern Hundreds immediately." 
 This is all quite refreshing for its dashing, good-tempered openness, 
 after all the sneaking, cringing, artful manoeuvres on which the 
 science of politics is said to be built. 
 
 The poor Radical M. P (above all, the Hibernian) leads a 
 life of continual buffeting, struggling, noisy anxiety : morning, 
 noon, and night, he is ever in strife : may be, as editor of " The 
 Rotherhithe Star," or " Finsbury Review," he has to answer 
 and emit bullying, browbeating, carnying, complimentary, letters. 
 The government regard his journal with no favourable eye ; his 
 constituents jealously watch its character and tone. Nevertheless, 
 for these editorial performances (which, remember, are his sole 
 support) he never must sacrifice his parliamentary duties. The 
 clog and patten trade in his borough are petitioning against the 
 caoutchouc monopoly amongst shoemakers : he must attend their 
 public meeting ; 't is true, he gets a luncheon from the com- 
 mittee; but then, Mr. Meagrim's letter, so splenetic about his 
 last vote, must remain unanswered in his paper. He has now 
 to rush down to the World (introduces a constituent who has 
 treated him to a dinner) ; and here he has consummate art to 
 display : he must never vote with a Conservative ; hatefully shun 
 a Whig ; and act in entire independence under the absolute con- 
 trol of his electors. His cry here must ever be loud and lawless 
 against every one. His evenings or nights, rather, after the 
 adjournment of the House are devoted to the infinite labours 
 of the Press. This may be called a private day. 
 
 Sometimes he has three public meetings to attend (one of them 
 a Loan Society, where they pay him for attendance) ; then comes 
 a public dinner, in honour of John Grumble Snooks, who has pa- 
 triotically refused to pay house-rent or taxes to his rich, over- 
 swollen landlord : these, perhaps, are the moments \vher. he most 
 enjoys the loftiness of his position. Four gentlemen with black 
 wands (black is the colour of resistance), precede him from the 
 waiting room to the upper table ; and he is received at the moment 
 of appearing on the platform with loud and long-continued cheers. 
 The business of dinner is invariably long with him on these occa- 
 sions ; and after the company have had a good stare at him a real 
 M.P. condescending to sit at trencher with them, he reviews the 
 tables for his acquaintance, and you see him bowing, and lifting his 
 glass (enviable distinction !) to Mr. Grough, the hatter ; Mr. Smears, 
 the tailor and churchwarden ; Mr. Oxe, the butcher ; and four or five
 
 360 THE RADICAL M. P. 
 
 other independent friends, whose small accounts he satisfies for the 
 time by this condescension. Here his character from his constituents 
 reminds us of that of a jovial cook on board a merchant- vessel. The 
 sailors, in speaking of him, used always to say, "Ah, he is a devili.-h 
 bad cook, but a d d fine fellow." " Ah," say the friends of the 
 poor member, " he is a sad, never-paying customer, but an awful 
 good M. P," His speech after dinner is like the lecture of George 
 Cruikshank's philosopher : " Gentlemen, it is all nothing, earth, 
 air, skies, water all nothing. Gentlemen, it is all nothing, Queen, 
 Parliament, ministers all nothing ; they govern you that is to 
 say, nothing governs you." 
 
 The people's idol at length runs his course of Radical existence ; 
 and when, for want of a better man, he is most in favour with the 
 " commune ;" and (as he himself has observed) is floating like a straw, 
 pointing out the current of popular opinion, he is gently swallowed 
 up in a government eddy, and sinks placidly and peacefully into a 
 commissionership, or snug berth in the Treasury, convenient 
 earthly abodes, " where the wicked cease from troubling, and the 
 weary are at rest." 
 
 At home, the Radical holds free notions on marriage, which he 
 thinks should be dissoluble at the will of either party (one of the 
 loudest in this declaration had a second Xantippe for a wife) ; and I 
 heard one professor, before he was taught the contrary, assert that 
 wives were no better than upper housemaids. 
 
 With the war-shout of utility he crusades against everything 
 beautiful ; stifles sentiment with logic ; regards poetry as no better 
 than push-pin ; can't tolerate music (being unable to distinguish 
 "God save the Queen" from " Tulloch Gorum"); grubs up every 
 flower in his garden as a thing useless, which toils not, nor spins ; 
 and as for the sweetest of God's creation children he would turn 
 them out of the nursery into some undefinable great national educa- 
 tion factory.
 
 THE LORD MAYOR. 
 
 S c where it comes bet aviour, what wert thou, 
 Till this man shewed tbee ? and what art thou now ? 
 
 LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.
 
 CORPORATION HEADS. 
 
 BY LAMAN BLANCHARa 
 
 THE Municipal Heads of the People claim the distinction of a 
 separate compartment of the Universal Gallery of Character. They 
 have no brothers, and are like no brothers. In their individual 
 characters, their personal habits and pursuits, indeed, they may 
 have already figured in various niches of our gallery ; even Mayors 
 are but men, Aldermen are flesh and blood, and partake, in their 
 moral as well as physical qualities, of the common nature of the 
 stock they spring from. But, then, they have an "official capacity," 
 that gives them distinctness, peculiarity, and prominence. It is in 
 this capacity that they are here presented. See them out of their 
 finery, and they would appear as much like other people, with as 
 little of the picturesque about them, as the three knights of the 
 civic pageant when their polished armour has been taken off. But, 
 in their official habits, they resemble nobody ; their very mothers 
 would not know them again. 
 
 For the very reason that they have so little resemblance, offi- 
 cially, to other people, there is a great resemblance among them- 
 selves. Corporations have long been famous for a general likeness 
 that consanguinity cannot always attain. It is, for this reason, that 
 our portraits have been taken from a bird's-eye view in the ancient 
 Guildhall of London. The difference in Guildhalls is only in degree, 
 and these metropolitan Corporation Heads are designed to fit the 
 shoulders of the entire " body corporate" of the kingdom. 
 
 THE LORD MAYOR. 
 
 THE LORD MAYOR is every inch a king the sovereign of the City 
 monarch of all he surveys, within the boundaries the veritable 
 King of Little Britain. For the time being, he is wisest of the 
 wise men of the east. Nor does he flinch from a comparison with 
 potentates throned in the west ; on the contrary, he looks upon the 
 
 <m v v
 
 f!2 THE LOUD MAYOR. 
 
 monarchs of the world, past and present, but as so many Lord 
 Mayors spoiled. For example, he laments it as a misfortune, that 
 his most gracious majesty George IV. should have been born 
 westward of Temple Bar ; being firmly of opinion that the illus- 
 trious person so designated would have made an exemplary Lord 
 Mayor; that, under more fortunate circumstances, he would have 
 been the very man for the civic chair, so luxuriant were his tastes, 
 so consummate and thorough-bred his dignity. The Lord Mayor 
 is convinced that dignity is the grand essential among the qualifi- 
 cations for his high office ; and he justly felicitates himself on the 
 fact that, in him, the rare and exquisite quality is, in its rarest and 
 most exquisite form, pre-eminently conspicuous. 
 
 His dignity commences the very moment the choice of his 
 fellow-citizens falls upon him ; he is dignified when the announce- 
 ment is made, and when he returns thanks ; and when his health 
 is proposed as Lord Mayor Elect at the Mansion House dinner pre- 
 vious to the festival on the 9th of November, he is very dignified. 
 But there is a fluttering about his manner nevertheless, an anxiety, 
 an eagerness, an excited consciousness of something to come, that 
 prevents him from fully assuming the air of serenity and repose 
 befitting the occupant of the civic chair. A sense of secure pos- 
 session can alone beget this. His true dignity begins on the morn- 
 ing of the 9th ; when his golden dream is out, and ambition draws 
 back his curtains, and bids him jump out of bed with dignity, and 
 repair in state to the judges at Westminster, to be sworn in. From 
 this moment, he feels himself something more than man ; " wings at 
 his shoulders seem to play ; " he 
 
 " Assumes the god, affects to nod, 
 And seems to shake the spheres." 
 
 He understands, at once, the sublime flight of the bard who paints 
 Jupiter as the Lord Mayor of the sky ; this he esteems the highest 
 reach of poetry. 
 
 The pronoun "you" now swells into "your lordship;" from 
 plain "Tony" with his familiars, or plain "Mr." among his trading 
 connexions, or "A. Something, Esq.," among the gentry of his neigh- 
 bourhood in or out of town, he has become " The Right Honourable 
 Anthony So-and-so ; " his daughters, replying to his query whether 
 Rundle and Bridge had sent home their new ornaments, lisp out, 
 " Yes, my lord," with a most delicious sense of novelty in tlxs 
 sound ; and his wife, presiding at breakfast, bids Tom who had 
 acted as errand-boy when his master first commenced business, to 
 hand his lordship the muffins.
 
 THE LORI> MAYOR. 365 
 
 The one infirmity of human nature though scarcely of civic 
 nature that the Lord Mayor has to guard himself against most 
 religiously, is, a falling short in the established practice of hospitality. 
 A Lord Mayor, who should spend no more than the bare sum, large 
 as it is, which his fellow-citizens provide for the maintenance of the 
 duties and dignities of his office, would be looked upon as degene- 
 rate, and the day of his retirement would be a holiday even in his 
 own ward and in the hall of his own company ; but the Lord Mayor 
 who should meditate the saving of money, the non-expenditure of the 
 sum allowed, the putting by a portion of the funds required for hos- 
 pitality and the support of civic grandeur, to indemnify himself for 
 private loss and neglect of business during his mayoralty for such 
 a Mayor, what acres of vellum would be sufficient to contain the vote 
 of censure that must be passed, and the signatures of his indignant 
 judges. Guildhall would come down with their reverberated shouts 
 of execration. It must be hoped that proof of such delinquency will 
 never disgrace the civic records ; bare suspicion of it has very rarely 
 existed. To the honour of the Lord Mayor be it said, that his hos- 
 pitality is only bounded, in the great majority of instances, by the 
 length and breadth of his table. He waits for no signal to throw 
 his cellar-door wide open, or to give carte blanche to his purveyors, 
 but the simple issue of cards for dinner, whether east or west. St 
 Mary Axe and Threadneedle Street fare as well with him as Park 
 Lane and Pimlico. Holt and Son, ship-chandlers, are not made to 
 look small, because a royal duke and a handful of venerable judges 
 have honoured his lordship with their company ; nor is Jobson, the 
 hatter, insulted with a shabby dinner to-day, because the noble lord 
 at the head of her Majesty's government, or his Grace the great 
 Captain, has promised to pay a visit to the Mansion House to-mor- 
 row. With few exceptions, the Lord Mayor thoroughly understands 
 the principle of hospitality ; and well he may ; for, from the hour 
 in which he was first chosen churchwarden in his own parish, he 
 lias lived in unceasing experience of its enjoyments. 
 
 The day on which the Premier or the Lord Chancellor proposed 
 his health, and declared that on no previous occasion whatever had 
 civic dignity been so sustained, or hospitality been so munificent, is, 
 perhaps, the golden one of his mayoralty. He refers with natural 
 exultation to that event ; and quotes, with pardonable vanity, the 
 novel remarks which he hazarded in returning thanks for the honour 
 that had been done him when he observed, "that the present 
 moment was the happiest of his life," and that " the feelings under 
 which he then laboured might be more easily conceived than de-
 
 304 THE LORD MAYOR. 
 
 scribed." He is satisfied that this was the most brilliant and suc- 
 cessful of all his oratorical performances. He is resolved, should 
 a general election take place during his mayoralty, to offer himselt 
 to his fellow-citizens as their representative in Parliament ; but, 
 should no such event occur, he is not without hopes of a seat in the 
 Upper House ; for a certain cabinet minister he mentions no 
 names had been extremely confidential with him one day after 
 dinner ; and had even hinted of course* it is not for him to reveal 
 state secrets but, over the last magnum of claret, something had 
 been whispered which might not unnaturally lead to a supposition, 
 that an illustrious personage either now, or at a former period of 
 history, on the throne had been heard to express an opinion, that 
 " it was hard the Mayor should lose his title with his office ! " He 
 cannot say how long ago, but he knows he knows that such a 
 declaration was actually made by a British Sovereign ; it would be 
 a betrayal of ministerial confidence to say another word ; only this, 
 he may, perhaps, be allowed to say, without impropriety, that the 
 subject cannot just now be more particularly adverted to! 
 
 Before the end of his year of happiness, he begins to find out 
 that Lord Mayors are rather apt to make a "toil of a pleasure;" 
 and, upon " honouring the theatre with his presence," when " Cin- 
 derella" was performed for some charity benefit a cause in which 
 he ever signalises himself he becomes rather melancholy at seeing 
 a state-carriage, as fine and glittering as his own, turning suddenly 
 into the gourd out of which it was constructed. He thinks of what 
 he may himself be on the 10th of the ensuing November. His 
 trust is in the royal declaration, which is, " not to be more par- 
 ticularly adverted to." He feels heavily, also, the pressure of 
 duties in his own magisterial court ; and naturally fancies, from 
 tne number of offenders brought before him every morning, that 
 people must be particularly proud of being examined before a Lord 
 Mayor; and that small crimes are committed solely for the sake of 
 the honour of a reprimand from the chief magistrate. Indeed, 
 when he enquires into the state of his wine-cellars, and the returns 
 of empty bottles are laid before him, he only wonders that many 
 more persons are not brought to the bar of his court on charges of 
 intoxication ; and conceives that the time is approaching when the 
 mornings of the Lord Mayor will be exclusively devoted to the in- 
 fliction of five-shilling fines upon the numerous distinguished per- 
 sons who had dined with him the evening before. He has comfort 
 in the thought, that, at the worst though his confidential friend, 
 the cabinet minister, should forget to give him even a baronetcy
 
 THE LADY MAYORESS. 
 
 Beir g a wcrnan, I will not be slack, 
 To play nay part in fortune's pageant. 
 
 HENRY IV., P*RT !
 
 THE LADY MAYORESS. 365 
 
 at the end of the year his official robe flung off, he himself will 
 possess his former privilege of drinking, without fear, as freely as 
 his fellow-citizens. As it is, he is nervously alive to his own con- 
 vivial transgressions, and only quiets his conscience with the re- 
 flection that no Lord Mayor ever did fine himself five shillings ; 
 and the Lord Mayor, clinging to old precedents, never establishes 
 a new one. 
 
 THE LADY MAYORESS. 
 
 ONE very dull, but propitious and duly anticipated, morning in 
 November, the Lady Mayoress awoke, and found herself famous. 
 She went to bed a grub, and arose a butterfly. No fog could ob- 
 scure her colours, or damp her determination to shine. As Jeannie 
 Deans sagaciously observes, " Ladies are more particular about titles 
 than gentlemen ;" and the Lord Mayor's sense of dignity is less 
 profound than that of the Lady Mayoress. Her residence, the 
 Mansion House, is No. 1 in the Universe. Though not of a logical 
 understanding, she can demonstrate that there is none like unto her 
 in station throughout the earth ; for, as Europe is the first quarter 
 of the world, England the first country of Europe, London the first 
 city of England, the Lord Mayor the first personage in London, 
 and she the better half of the Lord Mayor, it follows that her 
 husband would have been the greatest of created beings, had not 
 his wife alone been superior to him. The Lady* Mayoress, then, is 
 the head and front of humanity nothing less. The Mansion House 
 she looks upon as the finest specimen of architecture in existence ; 
 finer than the East India-house, and out of all comparison with 
 Bridewell. She reigns another Cleopatra in that Egyptian Hall ; 
 and, although she may feel it necessary to assert, her right to her 
 station, more than some of her distinguished visitors have any occa- 
 sion to do although this may appear in a little over-display, some 
 excess of the superb yet she so thoroughly enjoys her proud pre- 
 eminence, that she maintains it with grace, receives a royal compli- 
 ment as a matter of course, and takes her seat at. the table as though a 
 duke conducted her to it every day. Her's is the ease of intense satis- 
 faction, the repose of perfect blissfulness. You would think she must 
 have been born Lady Mayoress. She is at home in the very strange- 
 ness of her elevation, and wears her honours as things of custom. 
 
 The only shock she is liable to one which her strongest sense 
 of present power and patronage can hardly withstand is when his
 
 3(36 THE LAD-V MAYORESS. 
 
 lordship takes it into his head to entertain their company with an 
 account of his first travelling up to London, when a mere lad, with 
 all his worldly goods encompassed in a little spotted pocket-hand- 
 kerchief; how he turned the said worldly goods into the sum of 
 fifteen shillings, and bought brass buttons, which he sold for one 
 p nind six ; how he bought more, and sold them for two pounds 
 one ; and so acquired fifty guineas, and took a little shop and stocked 
 it; and then took unto himself a warehouse, and a wife with five 
 hundred pounds, and became wealthy, and got on till he was chosen 
 Sheriff, and so at last came to be Lord Mayor,, and to ride in a 
 coach and six, with the eyes of Cheapside upon him admiringly. 
 The Lady Mayoress has no patience with these eccentricities, and in- 
 timates that his lordship had always such a passion for the romantic, 
 and will have his joke, in or out of season. At least, as she warns 
 him in private, he might elevate the little spotted pocket-hand- 
 kerchief into a small, neat portmanteau so much genteeler, a 
 bundle being such an odd thing to boast of. She discharges a 
 thoughtless servant once a month for calling his master " Sir," 
 when looking over the accounts with him. She has a violent 
 struggle to prevent the horrid "ledger" from being brought into the 
 drawing-room, and only admits it at last, on condition of its being 
 splendidly bound, to match her choice music-books. 
 
 One of the evils to which she is exposed, is the constant neces- 
 sity, when abroad, of keeping the blinds of the carriage up, to avoid 
 the impertinent curiosity of the crowd, who will keep staring at 
 the Lady Mayoress. This, as she justly says, is the penalty at- 
 tached to high station, and living for the public good. She thinks 
 the carts and omnibuses might just as well be ordered to keep to 
 the back streets, that the principal thoroughfare to the west-end 
 might be clearer for private carriages. She contrives, when con- 
 versing with her friends on the duties of her station, to droop, with 
 graceful fatigue, over the idea of keeping up a continual round of 
 visits to the palace and the houses of the aristocracy ; yet this life 
 she must lead, these calls she must make ; the court expects it, she 
 remarks, for all the people thereabouts have taken such a liking to 
 her ; and, as for her daughters, it is no slight labour to drag the 
 poor things every day out of the arms of six countesses at a time. 
 
 S"he never glances at her offspring, male or female, without 
 wondering, tenderly, whether the number of them will be increased 
 during the mayoralty. His lordship so fondly desires such an 
 event; and she owns, for herself, that the "silver cradle" which 
 modern stinginess, called economy, could not withhold, would be a
 
 THE SWORD-BEARER. 
 
 Officious and net valiant.
 
 THE SWORD-BEARER. 367 
 
 very desirable heir-loom in the family. She begins late in the year 
 to have her doubts ; and, as she passes Bow Church, devoutly 
 wishes that the bells would chime to the tune of the old prophecy 
 in Dick Whittington's time ; she is willing to compound for the 
 chance of " thrice," with a second edition of the mayoralty. As 
 the year rolls round, and November comes again, the hope dies ; 
 and she comforts her heart with the reflection that ministers will 
 have no excuse with posterity, should his lordship's title actually 
 cease on the 9th. A day or two before this eventful period, she 
 confesses to an old friend, who lives at Hackney, that the aristo- 
 cracy, though very kind, very polite, are apt to be troublesome, 
 that there are positive bores even in high life, that Lady Fitz- 
 blue's parties were shabby, and the Countess of Mumpshire's stupid, 
 that there is such a thing as having too many duchesses about 
 one. She promises to come and take tea at Hackney very shortly ; 
 and recollects she cannot tell how it has happened that she has 
 not been there for a twelvemonth. " And the Hubbards," she 
 cries ; " why, I declare I have quite lost sight of those dear girls 
 for a whole year ! How are they all ? Well, I do so wish they 
 were boys, and his lordship should put them all into the Blue-coat 
 School." 
 
 It should be added, that her ladyship has a just claim to the 
 exercise of such patronage on behalf of her friends, for she is a 
 liberal supporter of all charitable institutions. No sooner is she 
 installed Lady Mayoress, than she sends what she calls her first 
 year's subscription to all that are of established excellence, and that 
 first year's rarely proves the last. When did woman, from the 
 Lady Mayoress downwards, content herself with only one act of 
 kindness and benevolence ! that is to say, when the absolute want 
 of necessaries at Howell and James's every woman has her Howell 
 and her James in some part of the town will permit her to gratify 
 her taste for luxuries. 
 
 THE SWORD-BEARER. 
 
 THE SWORD-BEARER, who says nothing, yet speaks for himself or 
 rather, like Macduff's, his voice is in his sword. Never was gentle- 
 ness so linked to ferocity. He is a civic contradiction ; the picture 
 of Death and the Lady presents the best notion of him. He is the 
 personification of meekness carrying the symbol of massacre. He is 
 as a dove bearing, not an olive-branch, but a thunder- bolt. He
 
 THE SWORD-BEAR^H. 
 
 looks as though he were bound over to keep at once the peace, and 
 the sword that is its enemy. He is Placidity representing Agitation 
 Pantaloon playing Sir Paladin. His appearance conjures up, at the 
 same instant, ideas of the Battle of Waterloo and a Quakers' gather- 
 ing. A " quaker" in one sense he might be deemed, though not in 
 another, for his garb well befitteth the gaity and grandeur of the 
 state-carriage. He is a gentleman ex officio, and is addressed " Mr. 
 Sword-Bearer. " It has an odd sound, yet the designation aptly 
 describes his compound character, constituted, as it is, of the civic 
 and the chivalric Mr. Sword-Bearer ! He is a human embodiment 
 of brandy-and-water the water preponderating ; of war and peace 
 peace having decidedly the best of it. As, seated in the same coach 
 with my Lord Mayor on all state occasions, he grasps the superbly- 
 mounted weapon whereof he is the guardian, you see that he is won- 
 dering what the sword is for; and his wonder heightens into exquisite 
 perplexity, when he reflects that the chief magistrate accepts no 
 challenges a late Lord Mayor having been prohibited by the universal 
 sentiment from going out to mortal combat at Battersea, though 
 pressingly invited by a brother magistrate. He possibly concludes 
 that the sword is introduced under such circumstances, for the pur- 
 pose which still keeps the statues of Shakspere on their pedestals in 
 k Orury Lane Theatre to denote the total absence of the thing sym- 
 oolised. Perhaps he wonders sometimes whether there is really a 
 sword in the scabbard or not ; the blade is manifestly a superfluity, 
 probably a nonentity ; it may be all outside, as many a swashing 
 gallant's has been ; but as for gratifying his curiosity, by attempting 
 to bare and to look upon the gleaming steel, a timid maiden, fore- 
 warned, would as soon dream of peeping into Bluebeard's chamber. 
 It is a sword, in fact, like Sir Giles's, that " will not be drawn." 
 The City has confided to him the care of a weapon which is always 
 to remain in its sheath ; as the careful father in the story gave his 
 daughters a guinea a-piece, with strict injunctions never to change it. 
 The Heads of the People, as the "show" passes along, are in no 
 danger from the Sword-Bearer the men in armour are not more 
 harmless. The head of the Sword-Bearer himself is alone in dan- 
 ger remote danger ; for, should the sharp edge of the blade, in the 
 constant motion of the carriage, take effect upon the sheath, and cut 
 its bright way through, after the wear and tear of years, he might fall 
 a victim to the law of friction, and finish his journey after the fashion 
 of St. Denis. May he long live to hold the sword steadily with both 
 hands ; and may he rather have the good fortune to be mistaken by 
 the populace for the commander-in-chief, nay, in some quarters for
 
 THE CHAMBERLAIN. 
 
 Dost thou think because tbou art virtuous, there shall te nc more cakes and ale. 
 
 TWKtFTH MIGHT.
 
 THE CHAiiBKKLAIN. 303 
 
 the Duke of Wellington himself, than the ill-luck of being even mo- 
 mentarily confounded with Ramo Samee, employed to swallow the 
 sword when the show is over, for the gratification of the guests in 
 Guildhall. May he never need armour less convenient and comfort- 
 ing to his shrunk limbs than linsey-woolsey, but still be recognised 
 as a warrior on the peace establishment as a blank letter with a 
 black seal as a proclamation of war terminating in a treaty of amity 
 as a great gun, warranted not to go off; in short, as a very odd 
 specimen of a sword-fish, only found in the Pacific ! 
 
 THE CHAMBERLAIN. 
 
 THE grand function of the Chamberlain is to give good advice, but 
 not gratis. He is the municipal Mentor the civic schoolmaster, who 
 is never abroad the social usher of the black rod. He is the ex- 
 pounder of the " Whole Duty of Boys." The apprentice who has 
 once seen him, carries the image of him in his mind's eye ever after 
 who has once heard him, feels his voice tingling its warnings in 
 his ears all through life 
 
 The object of the Chamberlain is to make the incipient artisan, 
 the tender juvenile who comes before him as a candidate for the 
 knowledge of some trade or calling, feel that he is bound apprentice. 
 The boy is bound to the master, and though the master is by the 
 tame indenture bound to the boy, that fact never comes uppermost, 
 and the verb to bind is especially set for the youthful party to the 
 contract to conjugate. The great moral principle, that every man 
 shall be accounted innocent until he is proved guilty, he fully admits ; 
 but then he thinks it applicable only to man to that maturity which 
 the 'prentice-taking master presents in his own person ; it does not 
 follow that every boy shall have the benefit of the maxim ; in the 
 case of apprentices, morality consists in assuming every lad to be 
 guilty until proved innocent ; and substantiated innocence he looks 
 upon as a proof of extreme obstinacy and self-confidence. A bad 
 boy is a real blessing to the Chamberlain, but a good one will serve 
 for want of a worse ; people cannot have everything as they would 
 like it in this world. 
 
 Bad or good, there are three scarcely divisible ideas to be im- 
 planted in the youthful mind, dread of the master, horror of Bride- 
 well, and awe extreme awe of the Chamberlain. He is both morn- 
 ing and afternoon lecturer, but his chapel is not one of ease to the 
 younger portion of his congregation. His duty is to remind the 
 97 w w
 
 370 THE CHAMBERLAIN. 
 
 apprentice that, if he should be treat*: il with undue rigour, hft would 
 have the incalculable advantage of knowing by experience the dif- 
 ference between justice and injustice ; and that when his master uses 
 him ill, it will thus be only for his good. He should instil into his 
 fourteen-year-old listener the moral grandeur of half a breakfast, 
 heightened by the effect of a mouldy tint upon the bread ; he should 
 descant on the gratefulness of thin gruel to the boyish stomach ; 
 the virtuous elevation of rising at five in winter, and the enlightening 
 beauty of going to bed in the dark, supperless, independent and con- 
 tent. He should assure the young beginner of toil, the budding arti- 
 ficer, that a Sunday out once a month is an indulgence too liberal 
 when the sins of this world are considered meet only for an angel 
 turned twenty-one, and not fit for frail flesh and blood in their teens. 
 His office requires him to enlarge upon the enormity of boyish 
 wickedness, as evinced in habits of playing at leap-frog in the work- 
 shop stopping for two minutes together, when going on an errand, to 
 look at Punch and Judy, and, above all, the ruinous and desolating 
 practice of eating lumps of sugar in secret. Figs he pronounces to be 
 flagitious. He is also to inveigh against the low vice of " toss half- 
 penny ;" a species of gambling which, it may justly be remarked, is 
 held in disdain by the upper classes. Ogling a master's daughter is 
 also a deadly offence, and quite out of the pale of pardon. Books and 
 pictures he must strictly interdict during apprenticeship, excepting 
 perhaps the moral play of " George Barnwell, :> written (as the Cham- 
 berlain should take care to inform the boy) by the excellent Mr. 
 Addison ; and the instructive prints of " The Idle and Industrious 
 Apprentices," for which he might add, we are indebted to the genius 
 of the great Benjamin West. It is his especial duty to caution 
 every lad against reading " Jack Sheppard," the direct and clearly- 
 ascertained tendency of which is to cause people to leap off the 
 Monument on Fish Street Hill ; and he might also refer to the 
 curiously retrospective influence of this work, citing the cases of 
 numerous unhappy victims to it in the days of his own youth, 
 many years before it was written. This exposition of facts, if given 
 with due solemnity, is sure to serve the ends of morality. He is 
 to recommend every apprentice, when quite incorrigible, to be 
 sober, quiet, honest, diligent, industrious, obliging, cheerful, quick, 
 obedient, painstaking, frugal, continent, religious, but, above all, 
 submissive to his worthy master ; and, being these, he will find 
 himself apprenticed to happiness, aud be transported for the full 
 term of seven years. The sum of the advice is to love hard labour 
 and hard fare, and despise holidays and pocket-money.
 
 THE ALDERMAN. 
 
 Fat paur.cnes have lean pates ; and dainty bits 
 Make rich the ribs, but bank'rout quite the wits. 
 
 IXiVh'a L.4BO-. 's LOST.
 
 THE ALDEKMAN. ol 
 
 The Chan.berlain is never so eloquent as when the lad to be lec- 
 tured is reported to be guilty of exhibiting some signs of genius. 
 If convicted of having written a sonnet, or tried his hand at a bit 01 
 machinery, or drawn a few geometrical lines, a dreary admonition 
 awaits him ; but if proved to have penned a lampoon on his master, 
 the reprimand is awful. The Chamberlain then warns the lad that 
 Le will come to a bad end, and never, like Harry Lovework, ride in a 
 coach and six. When he hears of Master Bidder, the calculating boy, 
 he feels that he should like to call him to an account. He is shocked 
 at the idea of Master Betty, who was always playing. He longs to 
 lecture the Siamese twins, for the pleasure of killing two apprentices 
 with one sermon; and, as Shakspere found sermons in stones, so 
 can Chamberlains find stones in sermons. When, after the severe 
 morality of the day, he recreates a little in the evening, and hears a 
 young lady squeaking " Cupid 's a mischievous boy," he turns sigh- 
 ingly from the piano, ejaculating " Ah ! if they would only bring 
 Cupid before me!" He would have him forthwith committed as a 
 rogue and vagabond as a truant, a runaway and the son of Venus 
 would be sent to pick oakum ! 
 
 The Chamberlain is a living finger-post, always pointing 
 
 To Bridewettt 
 
 THE ALDERMAN. 
 
 IF we fail in presenting an image of the Alderman, no one save the 
 Alderman will deem our portrait unlike, for we copy from universal 
 report, and record merely the impressions of all mankind. It would 
 be like "flying in the face of Providence" to entertain two ideas of 
 the Alderman. The one idea of him is simply that of a practical 
 philosopher, who thinks that good living necessarily constitutes a 
 good life. We can form no other. We can conceive an Alderman 
 to be a pin-maker, but we cannot imagine him to be a lean pin- 
 maker, sparing in his diet. We can see through him readily, but we 
 cannot therefore associate thinness with his condition. People have 
 the same notion of a thin abstemious Alderman, that they have of a 
 fat chamelion or a fleet-footed snail. The Alderman's belief differs 
 not materially from the creed which fixes the earth, for its necessary 
 support, on the back of a tortoise ; for " tortoise" he reads "turtle," 
 which he deems indeed the support of the world. His experience 
 furnishes a contradiction to the venerable maxim, that one swallow
 
 37. 
 
 THE ALDERMAN. 
 
 makes not a summer, lor his summer is but one swallow. Ho re- 
 verses in his practice another ancient axiom, that a contented mind 
 is a continual feast ; for with him a continual feast is the only source 
 of a contented mind. Being, like Falstaff, too large in the girth to 
 run, and not liking to lard the lean earth even as he walks along, he 
 conceives that the best way to " pursue" happiness in this world, is to 
 tuck your feet under the table, and not stir an inch for many hours. 
 What the first of philosophers calls " great greatness " consists in 
 this. The Alderman thus rises from table a person of increased 
 weight in society. A stout man embodies his idea of a great man. 
 Shakspere was wrong for once, when he said " robes and furred 
 gowns hide all." What robe or furred gown ever hid an Alderman, 
 wrapping him wholly from view ? It is as though a hen were to 
 gather the chick of an ostrich under her inefficient wing. 
 
 The Alderman, well off in the world, has a very definite idea of 
 misery that it is an affair of the will in this world, and to be em- 
 braced or avoided as people choose and as their tastes impel them. 
 He knows that thousands annually starve ; but he asks why, being 
 hungry, do they not instantly go to dinner ? If they have no bread, 
 why not eat buns ? The perversity of the human character in this 
 respect astounds him. He sees people indulging in a habit (indulg- 
 ing !) of not arriving until the soup has actually been once round. 
 This he looks upon as a misdemeanor that should be made punish- 
 able by statute ; and declares our criminal code to be shamefully im- 
 perfect, in passing over the still more flagrant offence of keeping 
 dinner waiting. The table, he insists, is the only thing pre-ordained 
 to groan ; man was not made to mourn, but to masticate. He be- 
 lieves in the possibility of perfect bliss to all by the institution of 
 an universal college of cookery. If Ude could be spared he should 
 be sent on his travels being a Cook far better qualified than the 
 Captain to circumnavigate the globe and civilise mankind. Ude's 
 immortal work figures in the Alderman's select library, with a new 
 title in gilt letters on the back " Paradise Regained." If reminded 
 that he has borrowed the title from the poem so called, he says he 
 never read it ; but that he has nevertheless an enthusiastic reverence 
 for Milton, being a particular admirer of the delicate flavour of the 
 oysters associated with his name. 
 
 As he has a horror of keeping dinner waiting, so he dislikes the 
 cwstom of appointing the dinner-hour "five for six;" it is trifling 
 with the sacredness of time tampering with the finest feelings of 
 humanity ; " six for five precisely " he says would be a decided 
 improvement. He secretly thinks that the Lord Mayor should be
 
 THE COMMON-COUNCILMAN. 
 
 I'll cavil on the ninth part of^a hair. 
 
 UL.M.1 tV , PAJ.T I.
 
 THE COMMON-COUNCILMAN. 373 
 
 compelled to give more than three hundred and sixty-five dinners 
 a-year. Present customs, he feels, approach too near to total absti- 
 nence. He wonders that no government has offered a reward for the 
 invention of a new meal. So much for the false usages of man. 
 With regard to the law of nature, he holds it to be a pity that appe- 
 tite should suffer diminution from merely dining. For himself, he 
 does not know what excess means. When twelve are to dine, he 
 likes covers to be laid for four-and-twenty ; yet never, at home or 
 abroad, felt that he had over-dined. He likes every delicacy of the 
 season, except delicacy to a guest who eats sparingly. Like the 
 parson who preached himself down to the bare sexton, he thinks a 
 man bound to dine himself down to the bare table-cloth. 
 
 The Alderman, though famous for "mixing" as the phrase is 
 for "mixing" a good deal in society, is not one of those topers who 
 lose time in walking from tavern to tavern. He sits still and fulfils 
 his destiny, which is to dine, and die with a short interval for 
 internal thankfulness occasionally, that he has not been doomed to 
 lay down his knife and fork at the end of the second course. Life's 
 long dinner over, the Alderman has we should not say his full- 
 length, but his full-width portrait hung up in the hall of his com- 
 pany. His corpulency tells its own story his bulk is its own bio- 
 grapher ; you see at a glance that he must have occupied the bench. 
 
 Yet the Alderman, in these times, must experience something of 
 the anxiety of the stout gentleman whose perpetual enquiry was, 
 " Am I thinner?" He must feel the decrease, not which he desires, 
 but which he dreads. Since the cry of retrenchment and temperance 
 went forth in the City since municipal festivities began to be 
 abridged in quantity and diminished in number the Alderman has 
 assuredly shrunk considerably shrunk ; he can now squeeze through 
 Temple Bar sideways. 
 
 THE COMMON-COUNCILMAN. 
 
 IF there be one sceptic alive, who, wandering in all directions but 
 the right one, has ever the same unanswered query in his mouth 
 " What is a fact ?" let him instantly knock at the door of a Com- 
 mon-Councilman. He collects facts as some men collect fossil bones ; 
 not because they are of any absolute use in themselves now, but be- 
 cause they are the remains of things that have been of use in former 
 days. He doats upon facts. A genuine fact is a feast to him and all 
 his feasts rank among the most delightful of his facts, If it be ever
 
 874 THE COMMON-COUNCILMAN. 
 
 so slight, so insignificant, he will contrive to make it go a great way. 
 Should he be unable to find one ready to his hand, he invents ; 
 or gives a new aspect to an old one by turning it inside out. He 
 will set a figure of 6 upside down, and make a 9 of it in no time. 
 The figure in its subverted position he calls an undoubted fact ; 
 and it is often of great use to him in his arguments. He prefers 
 the figures of arithmetic to those of rhetoric, because in them there 
 can be no mistake. He has a wonderful eye for a flaw in a public 
 account if drawn up by any hand but his own ; and he regards 
 every sum-total that he has not cast up, as a palpable imposture. 
 By incredible labour and profound research, night and day, for two 
 years together, he detects an overcharge of one-and-threepence in 
 the returns relative to the management of City lands. He finds 
 the pounds to be right, but triumphantly demonstrates the existence 
 of an error both in the shillings and the pence. He feels it to be 
 a duty he owes his country, to oppose the motion for a return of 
 the number of dinners and water excursions, with the cost of the 
 same, which had been supplied out of the public funds, in the 
 course of prosecuting the above enquiry and effecting that vast 
 saving. He makes the best speech of his life in refuting the ar- 
 guments in favour of such a return. 
 
 Such is his abhorrence of jobbing, that he opposes the motion 
 for erecting a new pump in the ward, because a distant relative 
 of the mover is suspected of being a retired plumber. Having 
 defeated the scandalous project, he afterwards takes up the ques- 
 tion himself, and carries it unanimously ; his brother the mason and 
 his uncle the ironmonger being appointed a committee to construct 
 the new work, and the pump is erected with an appropriate in- 
 scription, setting forth his disinterested zeal for the public service. 
 He admits that the roads require immediate and extensive repair ; 
 but he votes against amendment, because he devoutly believes that 
 the contractor, who is not related to or connected with him in any 
 way, and against whom therefore he .cannot have a prejudice, 
 would profit largely by the speculation. 
 
 But it must be confessed that his opposition to these and other 
 measures of similar importance is not grounded on such reasons 
 alone. He has an insuperable aversion to supporting any line of 
 policy not projected by himself. To advocate a measure which he 
 did not originate, is, as he insists, only bringing corn to fill another 
 man's bushel. Now he is always ready to find the bushel, if his neigh- 
 bour will supply corn. He does not decidedly object to seconding 
 a motion, providing the mover promises to do himself no credit,
 
 THE SHERIFF. 
 
 Fjr the law of writ, and the liberty, these are the only ir.eu. 
 
 HAMLET.
 
 THE SHERIFF. 375 
 
 and omit the facts or he will bring it on, and find his own facts. 
 One of the principal points to which his genius has, for a quarter 
 of a century, been directed, is an annual motion for the appoint- 
 ment of a committee to examine the beadle's capes, with a view 
 to a reduction of the number of the same, a limitation of the lace, 
 and a substitution of worsted for silk. He also demonstrates that 
 an immense saving might be effected by an abolition of the super- 
 fluous buttons on the coats of charity-boys ; and shews that, by 
 simply restricting the indulgence to two buttons per boy, three 
 extra venison feasts would annually accrue to the city. 
 
 This enthusiasm for the public good draws, of course, the eyes 
 of Europe upon him ; and great is- the desire, in distant parts of the 
 country, to see him quitting the Court of Common-Council for the 
 legislative assembly. The appeals that are made to his patriotism, 
 by all the great towns in the kingdom, to submit to be sent, free of 
 expense, to Parliament, are, as he justly observes, unknown. He 
 can hardly get up Ludgate Hill for the deputations that are throng- 
 ing to his door. But, though he affects a parliamentary tone and 
 by now and then substituting " Mr. Speaker " for " My Lord 
 Mayor," and by designating his brother commoner, Mr. Braggs, as 
 " the honourable member for Cheap" anticipates the great day 
 when he is to become Chancellor of the Exchequer, he still re- 
 mains unseduced ; and never, as he declares, will he desert his 
 post, until that post that post with four new handsome crown- 
 lidded lamps which he has so long maintained to be absolutely 
 essential to the enlightenment of Moorfields, has been, under Pro- 
 vidence, erected at the public cost ! 
 
 THE SHERIFF 
 
 THE SHERIFF, like Happiness, was born a twin. He floats double. 
 Sheriff does Sheriff, like his shade, pursue. The pair are as like 
 each other as two writs, or the two necks of " The Swan" in Lad 
 Lane, and to describe one is to describe both. The couple, therefore, 
 may be called "the Sheriff." 
 
 In all London, in all Middlesex added to it, there is no man who 
 hath such care of his fellow-creatures, who takes so deep an interest 
 in their safety, who provides for them so largely. All creditors are 
 hard-hearted, and all debtors are honest and unfortunate. This the 
 Sheriff knows, and in the bounty of his heart he offers to the poor 
 pursued by the rich, the weak worried by the strong, a sanctuary
 
 876 THE SHERIFF. 
 
 and an asylum. No sooner has he received information that the man 
 of money has set his mark on the man of misery that the legal 
 persecution of poverty has commenced that the creditor has put in 
 operation the magical apparatus of the law, by which the debtor is 
 to be compelled to draw a specified number of pounds and shillings 
 out of an empty pocket than the Sheriff is on the alert to save the 
 impoverished wight from the lot of a wanderer from utter house- 
 lessness. He has his officers in all directions lurking in all crevices, 
 creeping through every key-hole sprites that can put a girdle 
 round about the town in forty minutes indefatigable in their search 
 after the doomed one, whom, when found, they greet with a friendly 
 tap a most pressing invitation in their master's name, to come and 
 reside some time at one of his town mansions, or be his guest at 
 some snug establishment in the suburbs. It is in vain quite to 
 decline the hospitable offer ; the Sheriff will take no denial ; he 
 insists upon the stranger's acceptance, and, in fact, there is no getting 
 away from him. 
 
 Such is the philanthropist who is falsely accused of favouring the 
 oppressive designs of the hard-hearted creditor of lacking sym- 
 pathy with the penniless debtor ! Who else would afford him shelter 
 in his pennilessness ! Who, but the Sheriff, would provide that re- 
 fuge for the destitute ! What lover of the " luxury of doing good " 
 would so throw open his gates, and not only give lodging to the 
 houseless, but absolutely prevent the rejection of his hospitality by 
 turning the key and enforcing a prolonged visit. This is sympa- 
 thising with the hard-hearted creditor, is it ? Why, if the debtor 
 were let loose and allowed to pursue his avocation, the creditor 
 might, perhaps, in a little time get every farthing of the money owing 
 to him his abominable persecution might be successful and that 
 shameful practice of expecting payment, in full, merely because the 
 amount happens to be due, would thus be directly encouraged. The 
 Sheriff does all he legally can (the law allowed him to do much 
 more until lately), to prevent this immoral result, and to ensure 
 the poor debtor an ample revenge upon his persecutor. 
 
 The spirit of reform, in these days, has considerably abridged 
 the Sheriff's power in this respect, and fewer are his guests in the 
 various mansions that call him master. But his hospitality, as far as 
 it extends, is as earnest and irresistible as before, and its effects upon 
 the barbarous creditor, whose cruelty has awakened all his care and 
 attention for the forlorn debtor, is the same. To that spirit, also, 
 must be attributed the decrease of those opportunities which he 
 ormerly enjoyed, at least once a week of shewing kindness and
 
 THE SHERIFF. 877 
 
 humanity to criminals in their last moments. Such occasions are 
 now presented to him, but at rare intervals; and if, from being 
 matters of less frequency, those scenes become more painful if that 
 liard feeling which custom often creates, now melts into a feeling 
 of awe and trouble, hard, indeed, to bear he feels rewarded for the 
 increased acuteness of emotion, by the justice, the wisdom, and the 
 beneficence of the humanising change. It is to one who had been a 
 Sheriff that we owe this sublime bit of common sense : " The worst 
 use that you can put a man to, is to hang him." 
 
 While the Sheriff is thus busied with the guardianship of other 
 people, lo ! an event happens by which others are, all on a sudden, 
 charged with the guardianship of him. In other words, while the 
 Sheriff is employed, as usual, in locking up such prisoners as the 
 law now allows him to catch, he is himself caught and locked up, 
 with little more ceremony than one of his own turnkeys would ob- 
 serve towards a ragged raff of a debtor, who never saw a receipt- 
 stamp in his life, not liking, perhaps, to put his creditor to super- 
 fluous expenses. Being a two-fold functionary, a Sheriff and his 
 double, he finds himself provided with two masters, and called upon 
 to yield obedience to two conflicting authorities. He writhes on 
 buth horns of a dilemma, and roasts between two fires. If he would 
 escape, he must fly to the right and the left at the same time. It is 
 not enough that he is a " swan with two necks ; " but he is expected 
 to realise the miracle hitherto peculiar to Irish ornithology, and to 
 be a bird in two places at once. It makes him feel much like a 
 ^oose. It is quite clear that he must make his appearance at the 
 very same instant in the House of Commons and in Westminster 
 Hall. Either authority is supreme and final ; and he has taken an 
 oath, which, in its full sense, includes submission to both powers. 
 The one he must obey, the other he must not disobey; this he must 
 not resist, to that he must yield. He is a double-barrelled gun, and 
 must shoot east and west. There is no getting out of the scrape. 
 Unless he performs an impossibility, he, who has hundreds in cus- 
 tody, must into custody be given. The world talks, writes, thinks, 
 dreams of nothing else. Yet nobody hits upon the easy adjust- 
 ment of the difficulty ; nobody sees why two Sheriffs " swan and 
 shadow " are appointed ; nobody proposes that, the two function- 
 aries having taken one oath, it should be understood that they have 
 two consciences between them ; nobody suggests the simple, natural, 
 equitable arrangement, that one Sheriff shall obey the Court of 
 Queen's Bench, and that the other Sheriff must obey the House oi 
 Commons ! This, which would save the dignity of all parties, which 
 
 J8 Y V
 
 378 THE CITV PLEADER. 
 
 would be an equal offering on the shrine of compromise, which 
 would cut the Gordian knot without dividing a thread, is unthought 
 of; and into durance dreary are the Sheriffs cast. It is like two 
 Napoleons going to one St. Helena ! 
 
 " The desolater desolate, 
 
 The victor overthrown ; 
 The arbiter of others' fate, 
 A suppliant for his O'Arn." 
 
 And prisoners the pair would have remained while Parliament has 
 a sitting, but that it is satisfactorily proved at the bar of the house 
 that the necks of Sheriffs, by some peculiar law of nature, never 
 grow longer by confinement in Parliamentary apartments. This 
 fact ascertained, the question is settled. The swan is about to sing 
 his death-song dying in music to the air of " Rule Britannia " 
 when his two necks are discovered to be too short. This cuts short 
 his long suffering. The Sheriff wins the race of conscience only 
 by a neck. 
 
 This is a turn of affairs not contemplated formerly. The Sheriff 
 had his heavy responsibilities, his multiplicity of onerous duties ; he 
 had to take creditor and debtor, prosecutor and criminal under his 
 protection ; he haJ his court to preside over, and the longest day 
 would have been too short for his labours, but that all under-sheriffs, 
 and all officers of and belonging to a Sheriff, are so remarkable for 
 superhuman activity and alertness. But now his responsibilities 
 are increased to an unprecedented degree of difficulty and danger. 
 To stand actions for false arrest, or to be fixed with debt and costs by 
 a rascally ruler who passes the boundary line and forgets to return, 
 was bad enough ; but to have the law of arrest, in its most per- 
 emptory form, turned against himself is worse than bad, and not to 
 be atoned for by the pleasure of labouring night and day for the 
 public ; and the distinction of parading a superb, but costly equipage, 
 with the privilege of dining half London and Middlesex " regardless 
 of expense," 
 
 THE CITY PLEADER. 
 
 THE CITY PLEADER is well-skilled in the law and gastronomy of his 
 country. His opinions are sound, his appetite excellent, and his 
 digestion easy. He would elsewhere be called the standing counsel ; 
 but a protracted stay at table in, the civic regions, renders it expe-
 
 THE CITY PLEADER. 
 
 Nor e'er looks forward further than, his nose. 
 
 ror E .
 
 THE CITY MARSHAL. 
 
 With ridiculous and awKward action he pageants us. 
 
 TROILUS AND CKBSSIDA.
 
 THB CITY MARSHAL. 379 
 
 pedient to designate him, with his three learned brethren associated 
 in the office of pleadership, the sitting counsel for the city. He 
 knows every point on which it is safe for London to go to law : 
 when to attack, when to resist, what to hold fast, what to sur- 
 render. Is any right or immunity brought into question ; has a 
 " street widened at the expense of the corporation," been cut 
 through debateable ground ; has a sturgeon, lawful property of any 
 lord mayor, been claimed by some rival authority ; has some rebel- 
 spirit disputed the chief magistrate's jurisdiction ; has some old 
 worm-eaten and illegible charter become a subject of doubt to the 
 illiterate moderns in the city ; is it proposed, in the comprehensive- 
 ness of an impulse of reform, to make Smithfield a perfect Paradise 
 all the year round, by sweeping away, at once and for ever, the 
 intolerable nuisance of shows, stalls, gilt gingerbread, and penny 
 trumpets, by which, at the festival of St. Bartholomew, its pre- 
 cincts have been once a-year desecrated ; has a question of law, on 
 land or water, arisen? it is the City Pleader who settles it, and 
 sends the Mayor to bed with a clear conscience and a mind made up. 
 While he has the City Counsel at his elbow, he has the law on his 
 side, and feels like a king who can do no wrong. The Pleader is 
 generally a safe adviser; for, although he may not " bleep upon it" 
 as some of our lawyers do, he always dines upon it ; and, as the 
 twelfth bottle appears upon the table, the four Pleaders deliver their 
 opinion in a quartett. The cases submitted for opinion are of the 
 most opposite range; from a question affecting the dignity of the 
 city and the preservation of the municipal charter, the Pleader is 
 officially called upon to state, whether, according to his impression 
 of the consistency of bodies, six pigeons in a pie are justly to be 
 considered crowded ; but on all the Pleader decides, not merely 
 according to his conscience and that sense of the fascination of a 
 fee, which is the spur to a lawyer's sagacity, but also according to 
 the dignity of that great civic body whose adviser he is, and accord- 
 ing to his own dignity which so well befits it. 
 
 THE CITY MARSHAL 
 
 THE CITY MARSHAL is a very grand and imposing personage. He 
 has the gravest sense of his duties, and throughout the year is 
 never known to indulge for more than one moment in a feeling of 
 levity, and that is, when he laughs outright, like a cock crowing
 
 BW THE CHAPLAIN. 
 
 at day-break, at hearing that the Sword-Bearer had been mis- 
 taken, by a country gentleman looking at the Lord Mayor's show, 
 for his Grace the Duke of Wellington. In that laugh, there is a 
 sharp and bitter scorn not to be expressed by word or louk. He 
 has the profoundest respect for Mr. S word-Bearer, who, he says, is 
 an officer of distinction, and rides in the same carriage with my 
 Lord Mayor ; but to mistake him for the Duke of Wellington, when 
 the City Marshal was seen prancing at the head of the procession in 
 all the glory of scarlet ! when to nine-tenths of the beholders he 
 was the Duke of Wellington ; and to the rest appeared but as some 
 gieat warrior who tried net to look like him, and failed ! The City 
 Marshal knows well that the very apprentices, and the still smaller 
 fry of kennel-roving urchins, said, in their inmost hearts, "It's the 
 Duke ! " as his horse's hoofs clattered up Cheapside. But there is 
 no vanity in his spirit, except, perhaps, when he takes all his family 
 into the centre box at Astley's, to see the "Battle of Waterloo " per- 
 formed, looking with repressed contempt upon his grace's repre- 
 sentative, but pointing out with marked interest the person of 
 Napoleon, towards whom he feels as to a sort of illustrious rival 
 departed. As he quits the theatre, he says, inwardly, " Ah ! the 
 Emperor was a great man ; but at the head of the grand army he 
 would never have been able to stop the Lord Mayor in St. Paul's 
 Church-yard, with me to head the line of procession ! " 
 
 He looks forward, in after years, to a destiny similar in degree 
 to the Duke's. The Duke is Constable of the Tower : the City 
 Marshal's ambition is to be Governor of Newgate. In his present 
 office, he is but secondary to that responsible functionary ; but, 
 then, he has the advantage of appearing secondary to none. He 
 hath a horse to ride and a weapon to wear ; and forty governors 
 of Newgate would seem inferior in dignity. He is a sharp bright 
 blade, that, as the dagger did by Macbeth, marshals the Lord 
 Mayor the way that he is going. 
 
 THE CHAPLAIN. 
 
 OF the Chaplain to the Lord Mayor, it is proverbially said that 
 he enters upon his ministry a thin man, and quits it at the end 
 of a twelvemonth a fat man. What little he takes he relishes, 
 and it prospers with him most marvellously. Perhaps the Lord 
 Mayor has enticed him up to the great city from some obscuro
 
 THE LORD MAYOR'S CHAPLAIN. 
 
 Just made first chaplain to his patnon lord. 
 
 COWPER.
 
 THE CHAPLAIN. 381 
 
 and quiet village, where he had dozed away his first years upon 
 a curacy that hardly kept him in clean shirts and boiled turnips ; 
 and now, at the end of his year of glory and happiness, to the 
 1 retired scene he may return, so changed in rosiness and 
 r tundity as to be unrecognisable, but with a presentiment that 
 tiie turnip-field must be revisited ; that fat will waste away ; that 
 a red nose will turn blue ; that fame is but vanity ; and banquets 
 but the precursors of vexation of spirit. He must now live upon 
 his reputation as a martyr to municipal honours. He was willing 
 to submit to a whole lingering year's endurance of the feastings 
 and luxuries of the world, in the scene of their greatest pro- 
 fusion (this must be his argument) in order that he might bring 
 back to his peaceful retreat, for the benefit of the poor, a terrible 
 example of the flush and the fatness that ensue from yielding 
 to temptation and faring sumptuously in profane cities. 
 
 Perhaps, however, this sometimes happens, he may have 
 the good luck to establish his footing in town, and thus be enabled 
 to extend the benefits of the example referred to in a hundred 
 different directions. He has many chances of a prize in the Lord 
 Mayor's lottery. There are the various occasions on which it is 
 his fate to preach at St. Paul's before the Corporation and its 
 Chief; there is the celebrated 'Spital sermon especially; and he 
 must have very bad luck in the choice of texts very absurd zeal 
 in the deprecation of all worldly-mindedness, sensuality, riotous 
 living, and the love of riches or else he must make his sermons 
 very long, and keep the Corporation ten minutes from their 
 luncheon if all these promising tickets turn up blanks. 
 
 But he has finer opportunities even than -these for obtaining 
 that permanent position in society which would enable him to 
 demonstrate, by a perpetual rubicundity of visage and increasing 
 roundness of body, the. unseemliness of living too well in the 
 world. There are his hundreds of opportunities of saying " grace" 
 before meat and after ; a task in which a young clergyman of 
 taste may always commend himself as a discreet and pious mem- 
 ber of the church to every guest ; in which, on the other hand, 
 wanting that taste, he may as easily ruin himself irretrievably. 
 For his. sermons (when short, and not too personal ; great men are 
 pretty sure to get preached at in church, and nobody likes it), he 
 ought to get something more than that formal "vote of thanks" 
 which the Chaplain carries away with him, as something that is 
 twin-sister to nothing; and for his mode of saying grace (if it in- 
 dicate a proper concern fo v '.' r fVi - n*rt?rvitors), he
 
 382 
 
 THE CITT REMEMBRANCER 
 
 ought to secure some less questionable benefit than the compli- 
 ment of a challenge to drink wine with a newly-appointed judge, 
 or with the honourable Alderman who represents the citizens of 
 London. 
 
 There are, moreover, the infinite opportunities he has above all 
 men of promoting his spiritual desires, by exercising what influence 
 he may command among the fairer portion of civic creation. What 
 are the festive scenes within doors what the excursions up the 
 Thames, in galleys that "burn on the water" what the luncheons 
 at Fulham with the Bishop's palace in view, and the dinners at 
 Twickenham by the grotto, which (as he is pleased to inform the 
 company) was erected in a former age to shelter the Pope, who was 
 concealed therein for some years, like Guy Fawkes's gunpowder 
 under the houses of Parliament what are the trips, to and fro, ter- 
 minating successively at every stage, from Oxford to the Nore but 
 opportunities accorded to the Chaplain to win the sympathies and 
 suffrages of the ladies ! Unless he resist the temptations of his for- 
 tune, he must be irresistible. It is absolutely his own fault if he 
 ever taste boiled turnips again. The vicarage of Great Bottleby, 
 with the perpetual curacy of Calipash, are before him in his patli as 
 plain as St. Paul's. 
 
 THE CITY REMEMBRANCER. 
 
 THE REMEMBRANCER! Who can say what his Pleasures of Memory 
 may be He has none of Hope ; for success in that continual effort 
 of his, to recollect something of vital importance to the whole cily, 
 is evidently past hoping for. He is a man who passes his whole life 
 in wondering why the deuce he is scratching his head. For the 
 last half-century he has been internally repeating the words " Let 
 me see ! " and the tip of his nose is still invisible to his naked eye. 
 His crest is a forefinger with a needleful of thread fastened round 
 it, the motto " Non mi ricordo." He has always a knot tied in 
 his pocket-handkerchief, and he never can tell why. His confusion 
 of memory is exquisite ; it is not so much that he fails to remember 
 a thing, as that he forgets whether he remembers it or no't. His 
 triumph consists in distinctly recollecting that he has forgotten all 
 about the matter. On the 10th of November, he could not, for his 
 life, recal to mind the show of the day before ; and he wonders why 
 on eaith it was put off. Like the " oldest inhabitant," whose por-
 
 THE CITY REMEMBRANCER. 
 
 Lulled in. the countless chambers of the brain. 
 
 BOOEM.
 
 THE RECORDER. 
 
 Bring ic.e no mere reports 
 
 8UAK.-Pi.RB.
 
 THE RECORDER. 38.) 
 
 trait we once painted, he knows that he is of an ancient family, 
 but concludes that his forefathers must be dead, as he has not seen 
 them a long time ; like him, he remembers that " the name of the 
 head-master of Christ's Hospital, in the days of his boyhood, was 
 the Reverend Cornelius Nepos ; one of his schoolfellows was called 
 Alcibiades ; he is not certain that Julius Cassar was in the same 
 class with himself, but he has a vague notion that they were a good 
 deal in each other's company." He knows, too, that " he passed 
 much of his time at a place called Troy, though he cannot call to 
 mind the county in which it is situate." 
 
 Of all public characters, " he best recollects the person of 
 Junius." He has a lively sense of the positive refusal of Alderman 
 Wilkes to serve the office of member of parliament, when returned 
 by the freeholders of Essex ; and also of the patriotic speech which 
 George II. addressed to Alderman Beckford. He can remember, 
 too, very clearly, the Speaker of the House of Commons being sent 
 to the Tower by Sir Francis Burdett. The London event which he 
 most distinctly recollects is the visit of the Allied Sovereigns to the 
 city, when, as he says, the " the veteran Blucher and Arthur Duke 
 of Marlborough dined with Sir Richard Whittington, in the Guild- 
 hall." London, to this "oldest inhabitant," is situate on the banks 
 of Lethe. They drink the health of other officers in the city ; 
 but in his case, the toast should be "the Memory of the City 
 Remembrancer ! " 
 
 THE RECORDER. 
 
 TIMES are changed for the better, since the Recorder was apl to go 
 out of town on a Saturday, for a day or two's relaxation from the 
 heavy and gloomy duties of his office, having in his pocket the re- 
 prieve of a criminal, sentenced to be hanged over the Debtors'-door 
 on the Monday morning following. The black cap was then so 
 often on his head, that it seemed to hang as comfortably there as 
 a night-cap; and after a day's fatigue, the judge's patience being 
 sorely tried by the provoking number of witnesses necessary to a 
 single conviction, it was, perhaps, with a sort of coziness of feeling 
 that he put it on, and dozed through the sentence so as to eke out 
 the time till dinner. Times are indeed changed for the better. 
 
 The Recorder of to-day, the great administrator of criminal jus- 
 tice iu the east, the civic judge, is little distinguishable from other
 
 334 THE RECORDER. 
 
 judges, venerable by their station, and respectable by their character. 
 Some of the ancient usages of his office have been in modern days 
 discontinued ; chiefest and most important among them, the custom 
 of making a report in person to the sovereign at the termination 
 of every session. The omission of this form, which other criminal 
 judges were not called upon to observe, affords a just and welcome 
 relief to our Lady Sovereign, gentle and gracious, whose feelings of 
 tenderness and delicacy would else have been unnecessarily wounded 
 by the frequent ceremonial of receiving into her presence the re- 
 porter of crime, the harbinger of death or of that life in death 
 which has been substituted for it, wisely and benignantly. 
 
 And what a scene has the Recorder to survey, hour by hour, 
 sessions after sessions, year after year ! From the seat he occupies, 
 he seems to command at a glance that whole wide prospect, various 
 and terror-striking, the Crime of the Great City ! "What an array of 
 guilt, of misery, of desolation, is ever before him ! What endless 
 diversities of villany and suffering of early contagion and incurable 
 disease ! To the first apprehension of the beholder, it would appear 
 that half the space of this large arena of life, half the entire ground 
 circumscribed by the limits of the wonderful metropolis, is required 
 for its poor-houses, its mad-houses, and its prisons. And yet how 
 little of the actually existing mass of crime and wretchedness does 
 that solemn spectator survey from his seat of judgment in the cri- 
 minal court. What vice, wretchedness, abomination, is continually 
 being practised undetected, and beyond his sphere. The offences of 
 which he is the judge and witness, are but a fraction of the awful 
 reality. He sees only the % crime which the laws have made punish- 
 able, the criminals whom it is his duty to doom ; his eye takes not in 
 that far wider and sometimes drearier spectacle, the offences of man 
 against man, of which he is not as a judge cognisable which do not 
 appear in the calendar on which he .has no jury to address on 
 which he can make no report for which he can assign no punish- 
 ment ! How bounded how narrow is his vision in reality ! 
 
 The scene he witnesses wears, perhaps, no appalling aspect to 
 him ; he gazes on it without a shudder. Habit reconciles him to 
 the spectacle ; and familiarity begets just so much insensibility to 
 the dreadful amount of crime, as is necessary to his cool judgment 
 of it in detail. He sits there, a practical philosopher, contemplating 
 and deciding upon the ever-shifting scenes of life. Instead of mo- 
 notonous misery, all is to him incessant change : fresh prosecutors, 
 new witnesses, other prisoners. The Common-Serjeant in the next 
 Court, the worthy Alderman by his side, he sees again and again
 
 THE RECORDER. 
 
 385 
 
 continuously ; but all else move on, the stream glides away, "nor 
 knows retiring ebb." He outlives many Mayors ; he sees the plain 
 citizen the mere chandler of to-day, a lord on the morrow, and 
 then quitting his mansion of luxury to make room for somebody 
 else. The Sheriffs who wait upon him this year are not the Sheriffs 
 of the next ; others succeed to them ; the Recorder is their guest 
 as before, and they, in turn, are put aside. Each has his appointed 
 hour of usefulness, and disappears ; each has his little time of pomp 
 and vanity, and departs. It is a moth-like flutter in the flame, 
 and a sinking to rest ! What a scene has the Recorder to survey !
 
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