Nuts and Nutcrackers

Man is the most imitative of all animals: nothing can surpass the facility he possesses of simulating his neighbour; and I question much if the press, in all the plentitude of its power, has done as much for the spread of good or evil, as the spirit of mimicry so inherent in mankind. The habits of high life are transmitted through every grade of society: and the cheesemonger keeps his hunters, and damns his valet, like my lord; while his wife rolls in her equipage, and affects the graces of my lady. So long as wealth is present, the assumption of the tastes and habitudes of a different class, can merely be looked upon as one of those outbreaks of vanity in which rich but vulgar people have a right, if they like, to indulge. Why shouldn’t they have a villa at Twickenham – why not a box at the opera – a white bait dinner at Blackwall – a yacht at Southampton? They have the money to indulge their caprice, and it is no one’s affair but their own. They make themselves ridiculous, it is true; but the pleasure they experience counterbalances the ridicule, and they are the best judges on which side lies the profit. Wealth is power: and although the one may be squandered, and the other abused, yet in their very profusion, there is something that demands a kind of reverence from the world; and we have only to look to France to see, that when once you abolish an hereditary noblesse, your banker is then your great man.

We may smile, if we please, at the absurd pretensions of the wealthy alderman and his lady, whose pompous mansion and splendid equipage affect a princely grandeur; yet, after all, the knowledge that he is worth half a million of money, that his name alone can raise the credit of a new colony, or call into existence the dormant energy of a new region of the globe, will always prevent our sarcasm degenerating into contempt. Not so, however, when poverty unites itself to these aspirings, you feel in a moment that the poor man has nothing to do with such vanities; his poverty is a scanty garment, that, dispose it as he will, he can never make it hang like a toga; and we have no compassion for him, who, while hunger gnaws his vitals, affects a sway and dominion his state has denied him. Such a line of conduct will often be offensive – it will always be absurd – and the only relief presented by its display, is in the ludicrous exhibition of trick and stratagem by which it is supported. Jeremy Diddler, after all, is an amusing person; but the greater part of the pleasure he affords us is derived from the fact, that, cunning as he is in all his efforts to deceive us, we are still more so, for we have found him out.

Were I to characterise the leading feature of the age, I should certainly say it is this pretension. Like the monkeys at Exeter ’Change, who could never bear to eat out of their own dish, but must stretch their paws into that of their neighbour, so every man now-a-days wishes to be in that place most unsuitable to him by all his tastes, habits, and associations, and where once having attained to, his life is one of misery and constraint. The hypocrisy of simulating manners he is not used to, is not more subversive of his self-respect, than his imitation is poor, vulgar, and unmeaning.

Curran said that a corporation was, a “thing that had neither a body to be kicked, nor a soul to be damned.” And, verily, I begin to think that masses of men are even more contemptible than individuals. A nation is a great household; and if it have not all the prestige of rank, wealth, and power, it is a poor and miserable thing. England and France, Germany and Russia, are the great of the earth; and we look up to them in the political world, as in society we do to those whose rank and station are the guarantees of their power. Many other countries of Europe have also their claims upon us, but still smaller in degree. Italy, with all its association of classical elegance – Spain, whose history shines with the solemn splendour of an illuminated missal, where gold and purple are seen blending their hues, scarce dimmed by time; but what shall we say of those newly-created powers, which springing up like mushroom families, give themselves all the airs of true nobility, and endeavour by a strange mockery of institutions and customs of their greater neighbours, to appear of weight and consequence before the world. Look, for instance, to Belgium the bourgeois gentilhomme of politics, which, having retired from its partnership with Holland, sets up for a gentleman on its private means. What can be more ludicrous than its attempts at high-life, its senate, its ministry, its diplomacy; for strange enough the ridicule of the individual can be traced extending to a nation, and when your city lady launched into the world, displays upon her mantelpiece the visiting cards of her high neighbours, so the first act of a new people is, to open a visiting acquaintance with their rich neighbours, and for this purpose the first thing they do is to establish a corps of diplomacy.

Now your city knight may have a fat and rosy coachman, he may have a tall and portly footman, a grave and a respectable butler; but whatever his wealth, whatever his pretension, there is one functionary of a great household he can never attain to – he can never have a groom of the chambers. This, like the “chasseur” abroad, is the appendage of but one class, by constant association with whom its habits are acquired, its tastes engendered, and it would be equally absurd to see the tall Hungarian in all the glitter of his hussar costume, behind the caleche of a pastrycook, as to hear the low-voiced and courteous minion of Devonshire House announce the uncouth, unsyllabled names, that come east of St. Dunstan’s.

So, in the same way, your new nations may get up a king and a court, a senate, an army, and a ministry, but let them not meddle with diplomacy – the moment they do this they burn their fingers: your diplomate is like your chasseur, and your groom of the chambers; if he be not well done, he is a miserable failure. The world has so many types to refer to on this head, there can be no mistake. Talleyrand, Nesselrode, Metternich, Lord Whitworth, and several more, have too long given the tone to this peculiar walk to admit of any error concerning it; however, your little folk will not be denied the pleasures of their great acquaintance. They will have their diplomacy, and they will be laughed at: look at the Yankees. There is not a country in Europe, there is not a state however small, there is not a Coburgism with three thousand inhabitants and three companies of soldiers, where they haven’t a minister resident with plenipotentiary powers extending to every relation political and commercial, although all the while the Yankees would be sorely puzzled to point out on the map the locale of their illustrious ally, and the Germans no less so to find out a reason for their embassy. Happily on this score, the very bone and marrow of diplomacy is consulted, and secrecy is inviolable; for, as your American knows no other tongue save that spoken on the Alleghanies, he keeps his own counsel and theirs also.

Have you never in the hall of some large country house, cast your eye, on leave-taking, at the strange and motley crew of servants awaiting their masters – some well fed and handsomely clothed, with that look of reflected importance my lord’s gentleman so justly wears; others, in graver, but not less respectable raiment, have that quiet and observant demeanour so characteristic of a well-managed household. While a third class, strikingly unlike the other two, wear their livery with an air of awkwardness and constraint, blushing at themselves even a deeper colour than the scarlet of their breeches. They feel themselves in masquerade – they were at the plough but yesterday, though they are in powder now. With the innate consciousness of their absurdity, they become fidgetty and uneasy, and would give the world for “a row” to conceal the defaults of their breeding. Just so, your petty “diplomate” suffers agony in all the quiet intercourse of life. The limited opportunities of small states have circumscribed his information. He is not a man of the world, nor is he a political character, for he represents nothing; nothing, therefore, can save him from oblivion or contempt, save some political convulsion where any meddler may become prominent; he has thus a bonus on disturbance: so long as the company behave discreetly, he must stay in his corner, but the moment they smash the lamps and shy the decanters, he emerges from his obscurity and becomes as great as his neighbour. For my part, I am convinced that the peace and quietness of Europe as much depends on the exclusion of such persons from the councils of diplomacy, as the happiness of every-day life does upon the breeding and good manners of our associates.

And what straits, to be sure, are they reduced to, to maintain this absurd intercourse, screwing the last shilling from the budget to pay a Chargé d’affaires, with an embroidered coat, and a decoration in his button-hole.

The most amusing incidents might be culled from such histories, if one were but disposed to relate them.

Balzac mentions, in one of his novels, the story of a physician who obtained great practice, merely by sending throughout Paris a gaudily-dressed footman, who rang at every door, as it were, in search of his master; so quick were the fellow’s movements, so rapid his transitions, from one part of the city to the other, nobody believed that a single individual could ever have sufficed for so many calls; and thus, the impression was, not only that the doctor was greatly sought after, but that his household was on a splendid footing. The Emperor of the Brazils seems to have read the story, and profited by the hint, for while other nations are wasting their thousands in maintaining a whole corps of diplomacy, he would appear like the doctor to have only one footman, whom he keeps moving about Europe without ceasing: thus The Globe tells us one day that the Chevalier de L – , the Brazilian ambassador, has arrived in London to resume his diplomatic functions; The Handelsbad of the Hague mentions his departure from the Dutch Court; The Allgemeine Zeitung announces the prospect of his arrival at Vienna, and The Moniteur Parisien has a beautiful article on the prosperity of their relations with Mexico, under the auspices of the indefatigable Chevalier: “non regio terræ,” exempt from his labours. Unlike Sir Boyle Roche, he has managed to be not only in two, but twenty places at once, and I should not be in the least surprised to hear of his negotiations for sulphur at Naples, at the same moment that he was pelting snowballs in Norway. Whether he travels in a balloon or on the back of a pelican, he is a wonderful man, and a treasure to his government.

The multiplicity of his duties, and the pressing nature of his functions, may impart an appearance of haste to his manner, but it looks diplomatic to be peremptory, and he has no time for trifling.

Truly, Chevalier de L – , thou art a great man – the wandering Jew was but a type of thee.

A NUT FOR FOREIGN TRAVEL

Of all the popular delusions that we labour under in England, I scarcely know of one more widely circulated, and less founded in fact, than the advantages of foreign travel. Far be it from me to undervalue the benefits men of education receive by intercourse with strangers, and the opportunities of correcting by personal observation the impressions already received by study. No one sets a higher price on this than I do; no one estimates more fully the advantages of tempering one’s nationality by the candid comparison of our own institutions with those of other countries; no one values more highly the unbiassed frame of mind produced by extending the field of our observation, and, instead of limiting our experience by the details of a book, reading from the wide-spread page of human nature itself. So conscious, indeed, am I of the importance of this, that I look upon his education as but very partial indeed who has not travelled. It is not, therefore, against the benefits of seeing the world I would inveigh – it is rather against the general application of the practice to the whole class of our countrymen and countrywomen who swarm on the continent. Unsuited by their tastes – unprepared by previous information – deeming a passport and a letter of credit all-sufficient for their purpose – they set out upon their travels. From their ignorance of a foreign language, their journey is one of difficulty and embarrassment at every step. They understand little of what they see, nothing of what they hear. The discomforts of foreign life have no palliation, by their being enabled to reason on, and draw inferences from them. All the sources of information are hermetically sealed against them, and their tour has nothing to compensate for its fatigue, and expense, save the absurd detail of adventure to which their ignorance has exposed them.

It is not my intention to rail in this place against the injury done to the moral feeling of our nation, by intimate association with the habits of the Continent. Reserving this for a more fitting time, I shall merely remark at present, that, so far as the habits of virtue are concerned, more mischief is done among the middle class of our countrymen, than those of a more exalted sphere.

Scarcely does the month of May commence, when the whole tide of British population sets in upon the coast of France and Flanders. To watch the crowded steamers as they arrive in Antwerp, or Boulogne, you would say that some great and devastating plague had broken out in London, and driven the affrighted inhabitants from their homes. Not so, however: they have come abroad for pleasure. With a credit on Coutts, and the inestimable John Murray for a guide, they have devoted six weeks to France, Belgium, and the Rhine, in which ample time they are not only to learn two languages, but visit three nations, exploring into cookery, customs, scenery, literature, and the arts, with the same certainty of success that they would pay a visit to Astley’s. Scarcely are they launched upon their travels when they unite into parties for personal protection and assistance. The “morgue Britannique,” so much spoken of by foreigners, they appear to have left behind them; and sudden friendships, and intimacies, spring up between persons whose only feeling in common is that of their own absurd position. Away they go sight-seeking in clusters. They visit cathedrals, monuments, and galleries; they record in their journals the vulgar tirades of a hired commissionaire; they eat food they detest, and they lie down to sleep discontented and unhappy. The courteous civility of foreigners, the theme of so much eulogy in England, they now find out to be little more than selfishness, libertinism, and impertinence. They see the country from the window of a diligence, and society from a place at the table d’hôte, and truly both one and the other are but the vulgar high roads of life. Their ignorance of the language alone protects them from feeling insulted at the impertinences directed at themselves and their country; and the untutored simplicity of their nature saves them the mortification of knowing that the ostentatious politeness of some moustached acquaintance is an exhibition got up by him for the entertainment of his friends.

Poor John Bull, you have made great sacrifices for this tour. You have cut the city, and the counting-house, that your wife may become enamoured of dress, and your daughter of a dancing-master – that your son may learn to play roulette and smoke cigars, and that you yourself may ramble some thousand miles over paved roads, without an object to amuse, without an incident to attract you. While this is a gloomy picture enough, there is another side to the medal still worse. John Bull goes home generally sick of what he has seen, and much more ignorant of the Continent than when he set out. His tour, however, has laid in its stock of foreign affectation, that renders his home uncomfortable; his daughters pine after the flattering familiarities of their whiskered acquaintances at Ems, or Wiesbaden; and his sons lose all zest for the slow pursuit of competence, by reflecting on the more decisive changes of fortune, that await on rouge et noir. Yet even this is not the worst. What I deplore most of all, is the false and erroneous notions continental nations procure of our country, and its habits, from such specimens as these. The Englishman who, seen at home, at the head of his counting-house, or in the management of his farm, presents a fine example of those national traits we are so justly proud of – honest, frank, straightforward in all his dealings, kind and charitable in his affections; yet see him abroad, the sphere of his occupations exists no longer – there is no exercise for the manly habits of his nature: his honesty but exposes him to be duped; his frankness degenerates into credulity; the unsuspecting openness of his character makes him the butt of every artful knave he meets with; and he is laughed at from Rotterdam to Rome for qualities which, exercised in their fitting sphere, have made England the greatest country of the universe. Hence we have the tone of disparagement now so universally maintained about England, and Englishmen, from one end of the Continent to the other. It is not that our country does not send forth a number of men well qualified to induce different impressions of their nation; but unfortunately, such persons move only in that rank of foreign society where these prejudices do not exist; and it is among a different class, and unhappily a more numerous one also, that these undervaluing opinions find currency and belief.

There is nothing more offensive than the continual appeal made by Frenchmen, Germans, and others, to English habits, as seen among this class of our countrymen. It is in vain that you explain to them that these people are neither among the more educated nor the better ranks of our country. They cannot comprehend your distinction. The habits of the Continent have produced a kind of table-land of good-breeding, upon which all men are equals. Thus, if you rarely meet a foreigner ignorant of the every-day convenances of the world, you still more rarely meet with one unexceptionably well-bred. The table d’hôte, like the mess in our army, has the effect of introducing a certain amount of decorum that is felt through every relation of life; and, although the count abroad is immeasurably beneath the gentleman at home, here, I must confess, that the foreign cobbler is a more civilized person than his type in England. This is easily understood: foreign breeding is not the outward exhibition of an inward principle – it is not the manifestation of a sense of mingled kindness, good taste, and self-respect – it is merely the rigid observance of a certain code of behaviour that has no reference whatever to any thing felt within; it is the mere popery of politeness, with its saint-worship, its penances, and its privations. An Englishman makes way for you to accommodate your passage; a foreigner – a Frenchman I should say – does so for an opportunity to flourish his hat or to exhibit an attitude. The same spirit pervades every act of both; duty in one case, display in the other, are the ruling principles of life; and, where persons are so diametrically different, there is little likelihood of much mutual understanding or mutual esteem. To come back, however, the great evil of this universal passion for travelling lies in the opportunity afforded to foreigners, of sneering at our country, and ridiculing our habits. It is in vain that our institutions are models of imitation for the world – in vain that our national character stands pre-eminent for good-faith and fidelity – in vain the boast that the sun never sets upon a territory that girths the very globe itself, so long as we send annually our tens of thousands out upon the Continent, with no other failing than mere unfitness for foreign travel, to bring down upon us the sneer, and the ridicule, of every ignorant and unlettered Frenchman, or Belgian, they meet with.

A NUT FOR DOMESTIC HAPPINESS

Our law code would, were its injunctions only carried out in private life, effect most extraordinary reformations in our customs and habits. The most singular innovations in our tastes and opinions would spring out of the statutes. It was only a few days ago where a man sought reparation for the greatest injury one could inflict on another, the great argument of the defendant’s counsel was based on the circumstance that the plaintiff and his wife had not been proved to have lived happily together, except on the testimony of their servants. Great stress was laid upon this fact by the advocate; and such an impression did it make on the minds of the jury, that the damages awarded were a mere trifle. Now, only reflect for a moment on the absurdity of such a plea, and think how many persons there are whose quiet and unobtrusive lives are unnoticed beyond the precincts of their own door – nay, how many estimable and excellent people who live less for the world than for themselves, and although, probably for this very reason, but little exposed to the casualty in question, would yet deem the injustice great that placed them beyond the pale of reparation because they had been homely and domestic.

Civilisation and the march of mind are fine things, and doubtless it is a great improvement that the criminal is better lodged, and fed, in the prison, than the hungry labourer in the workhouse. It is an admirable code that makes the debt of honour, the perhaps swindled losses of the card-table, an imperative obligation, while the money due to toiling, working industry, may be evaded or escaped from. Still, it is a bold step to invade the privacy of domestic life, to subvert the happiness we deem most national, and to suggest that the world has no respect for, nor the law no belief in, that peaceful course in life, which, content with its own blessings, seeks neither the gaze of the crowd, nor the stare of fashion. Under the present system, a man must appear in society like a candidate on the hustings – profuse in protestations of his happiness and redolent of smiles; he must lead forth his wife like a blooming debutante, and, while he presents her to his friends, must display, by every endeavour in his power, the angelic happiness of their state. The coram publico endearments, so much sneered at by certain fastidious people, are now imperative; and, however secluded your habits, however retiring your tastes, it is absolutely necessary you should appear a certain number of times every year before the world, to assure that kind-hearted and considerate thing, how much conjugal felicity you are possessed of.

It is to no purpose that your man-servant and your maid-servant, and even the stranger within your gates, have seen you in the apparent enjoyment of domestic happiness: it is the crowd of a ball-room must testify in your favour – it is the pit of a theatre – it is the company of a steam-boat, or the party on a railroad, you must adduce in evidence. They are the best – they are the only judges of what you, in the ignorance of your heart, have believed a secret for your own bosom.

Your conduct within-doors is of little moment, so that your bearing without satisfy the world. What a delightful picture of universal happiness will England then present to the foreigner who visits our salons! With what ecstasy will he contemplate the angelic felicity of conjugal life! Instead of the indignant coldness of a husband, offended by some casual levity of his wife, he will now redouble his attentions, and take an opportunity of calling the company to witness that they live together like turtle-doves. He knows not how soon, if he mix much in fashionable life, their testimony may avail him; and the loving smile he throws his spouse across the supper-table is worth three thousand pounds before any jury in Middlesex.

Romance writers will now lose one stronghold of sentiment. Love in a cottage will possess as little respect as it ever did attraction for the world. The pier at Brighton, a Gravesend steamer, Hyde Park on a Sunday, will be the appropriate spheres for the interchange of conjugal vows. No absurd notions of solitude will then hold sway. Alas! how little prophetic spirit is there in poetry! But a few years ago, and one of our sirens of song said,

“When should lovers breathe their vows?
When should ladies hear them?
When the dew is on the boughs —
When none else is near them.”

Not a word of it! The appropriate place is amid the glitter of jewels, the glare of lamps, the crush of fashion, and the din of conversation. The private boxes of the opera are even too secluded, and your happiness is no more genuine, until recognised by society, than is an exchequer bill with the mere signature of Lord Monteagle.

The benefits of this system will be great. No longer will men be reduced to the cultivation of those meeker virtues that grace and adorn life; no more will they study those accomplishments that make home happy and their hearth cheerful. A winter at Paris and a box at the Varietés will be more to the purpose. Scribe’s farces will teach them more important lessons, and they will obtain an instructive example in the last line of a vaudeville, where an injured husband presents himself at the fall of the curtain, and, as he bows to the audience, embraces both his wife and her lover, exclaiming, “Maintenant je suis heureux – ma femme – mon meilleur ami!” He then may snap his fingers at Charles Phillips and Adolphus: he has not only proved his affection to his wife, but his confidence in his friend. Let him lay the damages at ten thousand, and, with a counsel that can cry, he’ll get every shilling of the money.

A NUT FOR LADIES BOUNTIFUL

Jean Jacques tells us, that when his wife died every farmer in the neighbourhood offered to console him by one of their daughters; but that a few weeks afterwards his cow having shared the same fate, no one ever thought of replacing his loss by the offer of another; thereby proving the different value people set upon their cows and children – this seems absurd enough, but is it a bit more so, than what is every day taking place in professional life? How many parsons are there who would not lend you five pounds, would willingly lend you their pulpit, and the commonest courtesy from a hospital surgeon is, to present his visitor with a knife and entreat him to carve a patient. He has never seen the individual before, he doesn’t know whether he be short-sighted, or nervous, or ignorant, or rash, all he thinks of, is doing the honours of the institution; and although like a hostess, who sees the best dish at her table mangled by an unskilful carver, he suffers in secret, yet is she far too well-bred to evince her displeasure, but blandly smiles at her friend, and says “No matter, pray go on.” This, doubtless, is highly conducive to science; and as medicine is declared to be a science of experiment, great results occasionally arise from the practice. Now that I am talking of doctors – what a strange set they are, and what a singular position do they hold in society; admitted to the fullest confidence of the world, yet by a strange perversion, while they are the depositaries of secrets that hold together the whole fabric of society, their influence is neither fully recognised, nor their power acknowledged. The doctor is now what the monk once was, with this additional advantage, that from the nature of his studies and the research of his art, he reads more deeply in the human heart, and penetrates into its most inmost recesses. For him, life has little romance; the grosser agency of the body re-acting ever on the operations of the mind, destroy many a poetic daydream and many a high-wrought illusion. To him alone does a man speak “son dernier mot:” while to the lawyer the leanings of self-respect will make him always impart a favourable view of his case. To the physician he will be candid, and even more than candid – yes, these are the men who, watching the secret workings of human passion, can trace the progress of mankind in virtue and in vice; while ministering to the body they are exploring the mind, and yet, scarcely is the hour of danger passed, scarcely the shadow of fear dissipated, when they fall back to their humble position in life, bearing with them but little gratitude, and, strange to say, no fear!

The world expects them to be learned, well-bred, kind, considerate, and attentive, patient to their querulousness, and enduring under their caprice; and, after all this, the humbug of homœopathy, the preposterous absurdity of the water cure, or the more reprehensible mischief of Mesmerism, will find more favour in their sight than the highest order of ability accompanied by great natural advantages.

Every man – and still more, every woman – imagine themselves to be doctors. The taste for physic, like that for politics, is born with us, and nothing seems easier than to repair the injuries of the constitution, whether of the state or the individual. Who has not seen, over and over again, physicians of the first eminence put aside, that the nostrum of some ignorant pretender, or the suggestion of some twaddling old woman, should be, as it is termed, tried? No one is too stupid, no one too old, no one too ignorant, too obstinate, or too silly, not to be superior to Brodie and Chambers, Crampton and Marsh; and where science, with anxious eye and cautious hand, would scarcely venture to interfere, heroic ignorance would dash boldly forward and cut the Gordian difficulty by snapping the thread of life. How comes it that these old ladies, of either sex, never meddle with the law? Is the game beneath them, where the stake is only property, and not life? or is there less difficulty in the knowledge of an art whose principles rest on so many branches of science, than in a study founded on the basis of precedent? Would to heaven the “Ladies Bountiful” would take to the quarter-sessions and the assizes, in lieu of the infirmaries and dispensaries, and make Blackstone their aid-de-camp —vice Buchan retired.

A NUT FOR THE PRIESTS

here would be no going through this world if one had not an India-rubber conscience, and one could no more exist in life without what watch-makers call accommodation, in the machinery of one’s heart, than a blue-bottle fly could grow fat in the shop of an apothecary. Every man’s conscience has, like Janus, two faces – one looks most plausibly to the world, with a smile of courteous benevolence, the other with a droll leer seems to say, I think we are doing them. In fact, not only would the world be impossible, and its business impracticable, but society itself would be a bear-garden without hypocrisy.

Now, the professional classes have a kind of licence on this subject; just as a poet is permitted to invent sunsets, and a painter to improvise clouds and cataracts, so a lawyer dilates upon the virtues or attractions of his client, and a physician will weep you good round substantial tears, at a guinea a drop, for the woes of his patient; but the church, I certainly thought, was exempt from this practice. A paragraph in a morning paper, however, disabused my ignorance in the most remarkable manner. The Roman Catholic hierarchy have unanimously decided that all persons following the profession of the stage, are to be considered without the pale of the church, they are neither to be baptized nor confirmed, married nor buried; they may get a name in the streets, and a wife there also, but the church will neither bless the one, nor confirm the other; in fact, the sock and the buskin are proclaimed in opposition to Christianity, and Madame Lafarge is not a bit more culpable than Robert Macaire. A few days since, one of the most fashionable churches in Paris was crowded to suffocation by the attraction of high mass, celebrated with the assistance of the whole opera choir, with Duprez at their head. The sum contributed by the faithful was enormous, and the music of Mozart was heard to great effect through the vaulted aisles of Notre Dame, yet the very morning after, not an individual of the choir could receive the benediction of the church – the rationale of all which is, that the Dean of Notre Dame, like the Director of the Odeon, likes a good house and a heavy benefit. He gets the most attractive company he can secure, and although he makes no scruple to say they are the most disreputable acquaintances, still they fill the benches, and it will be time enough to damn them when the performance is over!

Whenever the respectable Whigs are attacked for their alliance with O’Connell, they make the same reply the priest would probably do in this circumstance – How can we help it? We want a mob; if he sings, we have it – we know his character as well as you; so only let us fill our pockets, and then – I do not blame them in the least, if the popery of their politics has palled upon the appetite; if they can work no more miracles of reform and revolution, I do not see how they can help calling in aid from without.

Dan, however, will not consent, like Duprez, to be damned when he is done with; he insists on a share of the profits, and, moreover, to be treated with some respect too. He knows he is the star of the company, and can make his own terms; and, even now, when the house is broken up, and the manager beggared, and the actors dismissed, like Matthews, he can get up a representation all to himself, and make a handsome thing of it besides.

If one could see it brought about something in the fashion of Sancho’s government of Barrataria, I should certainly like to see O’Connell on the throne of Ireland for about twenty-four hours, and to salute King Dan, par la grace de diable, king of Erin, just for the joke’s sake!

A NUT FOR LEARNED SOCIETIES

We laugh at the middle ages for their trials by ordeal, their jousts, their tournaments, their fat monasteries, and their meagre people; but I am strongly disposed to think, that before a century pass over, posterity will give us as broad a grin for our learned societies. Of all the features that characterise the age, I know of none so pre-eminently ridiculous, as nine-tenths of these associations would prove; supported by great names, aided by large sums, with a fine house, a library and a librarian, they do the honours of science pretty much as the yeomen of the guard do those of a court on a levee day, and they bear about the same relation to literature and art, that do the excellent functionaries I have mentioned, to the proceedings around the throne.

An old gentleman, hipped by celibacy, and too sour for society, has contracted a habit of looking out of his window every morning, to observe the weather: he sees a cloud very like a whale, or he fancies that when the wind blows in a particular direction, and it happens to rain at the same time, that the drops fall in a peculiarly slanting manner. He notes down the facts for a month or two, and then establishes a meteorological society, of which he is the perpetual president, with a grant from Parliament to extend its utility. Another takes to old volumes on a book-stall; and becoming, as most men are who have little knowledge of life, fascinated with his own discoveries, thinks he has ascertained some curious details of ancient history, and communicating his results to others as stupid and old as himself, they dub themselves antiquarians, or archæologists, and obtain a grant also.

Now, one half of these societies are neither more nor less than most impertinent sarcasms on the land we live in. The man who sets himself down deliberately to chronicle the clouds in our atmosphere, and jot down the rainy days in our calendar, is, to my thinking, performing about as grateful a task, as though he were to count the carbuncles on his friend’s nose. We have, it is true, a most abominable climate: the sun rarely shows himself, and, when he does, it is through a tattered garment of clouds, dim and disagreeable; but why throw it in our teeth? and, still more, why pay a body of men to publish the slander? Then again, as to history, all the world knows that since the Flood the Irish have never done any thing else than make love, illicit whiskey, and beat each other. What nonsense, then, to talk about the ancient cultivation of the land, of its high rank in literature, and its excellence in art. A stone bishop, with a nose like a negro, and a crosier like a garden-rake, are the only evidences of our ancestors’ taste in sculpture; and some doggrel verses in Irish, explaining how King Phelim O’Toole cheated a brother monarch out of his small-clothes, are about the extent of our historic treasures. But, for argument’s sake, suppose it otherwise; imagine for a moment that our ancestors were all that Sir William Betham and Mr. Petrie would make them – I do not know how other people may feel, but I myself deem it no pleasant reflection to think of their times and look at our own. What! we were poets and painters, architects, historians, and musicians! What have we now among us to represent these great and mighty gifts? I am afraid, except our Big Beggarman, we have not a single living celebrity; and is this a comfortable reflection, is this a pleasing thought, that while, fourteen hundred years ago, some Irish Raphael and some Galway Grisi were the delight of our illustrious ancestors – that while the splendour of King Malachi, with his collar of gold, astonished the ladies in the neighbourhood of Trim – we have nothing to boast of, save Dan for Lord Mayor, and Burton Bindon’s oysters? Once more, I say, if what these people tell us be facts, they are the most unpalatable facts could be told to a nation; and I see no manner of propriety or good-breeding in replying to a gipsy who begs for a penny, by the information, that “his ancestors built the Pyramids.”

Again, if our days are dark, our nights are worse; and what, in Heaven’s name, have we to do with an observatory and a telescope as long as the Great Western? The planets are the most expensive vagabonds to the Budget, and the fixed stars are a fixed imposition. Were I Chancellor of the Exchequer, I’d pension the Moon, and give the Great Bear a sum of money as compensation. Do not tell me of the distresses of the people, arising from cotton, or corn, China, or Chartists – it is our scientific institutions are eating into the national resources. There is not an egg-saucepan of antiquity that does not cost the country a plum, and every wag of a comet’s tail may be set down at half-a-million. I warrant me the people in the Moon take us a deuced deal more easily, and give themselves very little trouble to make out the size of Ireland’s eye or the height of Croaghpatrick. No, no; let the Chancellor of the Exchequer come down with a slapping measure of retrenchment, and make a clear stage of all of them. Every man with money to buy a cotton umbrella is his own meteorologist; and a pocket telescope, price eight-and-fourpence, is long enough, in all conscience, for any man in a climate like ours; or, if such a course seem too peremptory, call on these people for their bill, and let there be a stated sum for each item. At Dolly’s chop-house, you know to the exact farthing how much your beefsteak and glass of ale will cost you; and if you wish, in addition, a slice of Stilton with your XX, you consult your pocket before you speak. Let not the nation be treated worse than the individual: let us first look about us, and see if a year of prosperity and cheap potatoes will permit us the indulgence of obtaining a new luminary or an old chronicle; then, when we know the cost, we may calculate with safety. Suppose a fixed star, for instance, be set down at ten pounds; a planet at five; Saturn has so many belts, I would not give more than half-a-crown for a new one; and, as for an eclipse of the sun, I had rather propose a reward for the man who could tell us when we could see him palpably.

For the present I merely throw out these suggestions in a brief, incomplete manner, intending, however, to return to the subject on another occasion.

A NUT FOR THE LAWYERS

uthors have long got the credit of being the most accomplished persons going – thoroughly conversant not only with the features of every walk and class in life, but also with their intimate sentiments, habits of thought, and modes of expression. Now, I have long been of opinion, that in all these respects, lawyers are infinitely their superiors. The author chooses his characters as you choose your dish, or your wine at dinner – he takes what suits, and leaves what is not available to his purpose. He then fashions them to his hand – finishing off this portrait, sketching that one – now bringing certain figures into strong light, anon throwing them into shadow: they are his creatures, who must obey him while living, and even die at his command. Now, the lawyer is called on for all the narrative and descriptive powers of his art, at a moment’s notice, without time for reading or preparation; and worse than all, his business frequently lies among the very arts and callings his taste is most repugnant to. One day he is to be found creeping, with a tortoise slowness through all the wearisome intricacy of an equity case – the next he is borne along in a torrent of indignant eloquence, in defence of some Orange processionist or some Ribbon associate: now he describes, with the gravity of a landscape gardener, the tortuous windings of a mill-stream; now expatiating in Lytton Bulwerisms over the desolate hearth and broken fortunes of some deserted husband. In one court he attempts to prove that the elderly gentleman whose life was insured for a thousand at the Phœnix, was instrumental to his own decease, for not eating Cayenne with his oysters; in another, he shows, with palpable clearness, that being stabbed in the body, and having the head fractured, is a venial offence, and merely the result of “political excitement” in a high-spirited and warm-hearted people.

These are all clever efforts, and demand consummate powers, at the hand of him who makes them; but what are they to that deep and critical research with which he seems, instinctively, to sound the depths of every scientific walk in life, and every learned profession. Hear him in a lunacy case – listen to the deep and subtle distinctions he draws between the symptoms of mere eccentricity and erring intellect – remark how insignificant the physician appears in the case, who has made these things the study of a life long – hear how the barrister confounds him with a hail-storm of technicals – talking of the pineal gland as if it was an officer of the court, and of atrophy of the cerebral lobes, as if he was speaking of an attorney’s clerk. Listen to him in a trial of supposed death by poison; what a triumph he has there, particularly if he be a junior barrister – how he walks undismayed among all the tests for arsenic – how little he cares for Marsh’s apparatus and Scheele’s discoveries – hydro-sulphates, peroxydes, iodurates, and proto-chlorides are familiar to him as household words. You would swear that he was nursed at a glass retort, and sipped his first milk through a blow-pipe. Like a child who thumps the keys of a pianoforte, and imagines himself a Liszt or Moschelles, so does your barrister revel amid the phraseology of a difficult science – pelting the witnesses with his insane blunders, and assuring the jury that their astonishment means ignorance. Nothing in anatomy is too deep – nothing in chemistry too subtle – no fact in botany too obscure – no point in metaphysics too difficult. Like Dogberry, these things are to him but the gift of God; and he knows them at his birth. Truly, the chancellor is a powerful magician; and the mystic words by which he calls a gentleman to the bar, must have some potent spell within them. The youth you remember as if it were yesterday, the lounger at evening parties, or the chaperon of riding damsels to the Phœnix, comes forth now a man of deep and consummate acquirement – he whose chemistry went no further than the composition of a “tumbler of punch,” can now perform the most difficult experiments of Orfila or Davy, or explain the causes of failure in a test that has puzzled the scientific world for half a century. He knows the precise monetary value of a deserted maiden’s affections – he can tell you the exact sum, in bank notes, that a widow will be knocked down for, when her heart has been subject to but a feint attack of Cupid. With what consummate skill, too, he can show that an indictment is invalid, when stabbing is inserted for cutting; and when the crown prosecutor has been deficient in his descriptive anatomy, what a glorious field for display is opened to him. Then, to be sure, what droll fellows they are! – how they do quiz the witness as he sits trembling on the table – what funny allusions to his habits of life – his age – his station – turning the whole battery of their powers of ridicule against him – ready, if he venture to retort, to throw themselves on the protection of the court. And truly, if a little Latin suffice for a priest, a little wit goes very far in a law court. A joke is a universal blessing: the judge, who, after all, is only “an old lawyer,” loves it from habit: the jury, generally speaking, are seldom in such good company, and they laugh from complaisance; and the bar joins in the mirth, on that great reciprocity principle, which enables them to bear each other’s dulness, and dine together afterwards. People are insane enough to talk of absenteeism as one of the evils of Ireland, and regret that we have no resident aristocracy among us – rather let us rejoice that we have them not, so long as the lawyers prove their legitimate successors.

How delightful in a land where civilization has still some little progress before it, and where the state of crime is not quite satisfactory – to know that we have those amongst us who know all things, feel all things, explain all things, and reconcile all things – who can throw such a Claude Lorraine light over right and wrong, that they are both mellowed into a sweet and hallowed softness, delightful to gaze on. How the secret of this universal acquirement is accomplished I know not – perhaps it is the wig.

What set me first on this train of thought, was a trial I lately read, where a cross action was sustained for damage at sea – the owners of the brig Durham against the Aurora, a foreign vessel, and vice versâ, for the result of a collision at noon, on the 14th of October. It appeared that both vessels had taken shelter in the Humber from stress of weather, nearly at the same time – that the Durham, which preceded the Prussian vessel, “clewed up her top-sails, and dropped her anchor rather suddenly; and the Aurora being in the rear, the vessels came in collision.” The question, therefore, was, whether the Durham came to anchor too precipitately, and in an unseamanlike manner; or, in other words, whether, when the “Durham clewed up top-sails and let go her anchor, the Aurora should not have luffed up, or got sternway on her,” &c. Nothing could possibly be more instructive, nor anything scarcely more amusing, than the lucid arguments employed by the counsel on both sides. The learned Thebans, that would have been sick in a ferry-boat, spoke as if they had circumnavigated the globe. Stay-sails, braces, top-gallants, clews, and capstans they hurled at each other like bon bons at a carnival; and this naval engagement lasted from daylight to dark. Once only, when the judge “made it noon,” for a little refection, did they cease conflict, to renew the strife afterwards with more deadly daring, till at last so confused were the witnesses – the plaintiff, defendant, and all, that they half wished, they had gone to the bottom, before they thought of settling the differences in the Admiralty Court. This was no common occasion for the display of these powers so peculiarly the instinctive gift of the bar, and certainly they used it with all the enthusiasm of a bonne bouche.