The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 536, March 3, 1832

Bells before a Wedding.—The bells were already ringing loud and blithely; and the near vicinity of the church to the house brought that sound, so inexpressibly buoyant and cheering, to the ears of the bride, with a noisy merriment, that seemed like the hearty voice of an old-fashioned friend who seeks, in his greeting, rather cordiality than discretion.

The Murderer's Unction.—Ay, all is safe! He will not again return; the dead sleeps without a witness.—I may lay this working brain upon the bosom that loves me, and not start at night and think that the soft hand around my neck is the hangman's gripe.

Hogarth.—Nothing makes a picture of distress more sad than the portrait of some individual sitting indifferently looking on in the back-ground. This was a secret Hogarth knew well. Mark his death-bed scenes:—Poverty and Vice worked up into Horror—and the physicians in the corner wrangling for the fee!—or the child playing with the coffin—or the nurse filching what fortune, harsh, yet less harsh than humanity, might have left.

Change of Circumstance.—In our estimate of the ills of life, we never sufficiently take into consideration the wonderful elasticity of our moral frame, the unlooked for, the startling facility with which the human mind accommodates itself to all change of circumstance, making an object and even a joy from the hardest and seemingly the least redeemed conditions of fate. The man who watched the spider in his cell, may have taken, at least, as much interest in the watch, as when engaged in the most ardent and ambitious objects of his former life; and he was but a type of his brethren; all in similar circumstances would have found similar occupation.

Eternal Punishment.—So wonderful in equalizing all states and all times in the varying tide of life, are the two rulers yet levellers of mankind, Hope and Custom, that the very idea of an eternal punishment includes that of an utter alteration of the whole mechanism of the soul in its human state, and no effort of an imagination, assisted by past experience, can conceive a state of torture, which custom can never blunt, and from which the chainless and immaterial spirit can never be beguiled into even a momentary escape.

Prison Solitude.—I have been now so condemned to feed upon myself, that I have become surfeited with the diet.—Aram.

Sensibility.—We may triumph over all weaknesses but that of the affections.

Silence of Cities.—The stillness of a city is far more impressive than that of Nature; for the mind instantly compares the present silence with the wonted uproar.

Suspense.—Of all the conditions to which the heart is subject, suspense is the one that most gnaws, and cankers into the frame. One little month of that suspense, when it involves death, we are told, in a very remarkable work lately published by an eye-witness,[7 - Wakefield on "The Punishment of Death."] is sufficient to plough fixed lines and furrows in a convict of five-and-twenty—sufficient to dash the brown hair with grey, and to bleach the grey to white.

Consolation.—Her high and starry nature could comprehend those sublime inspirations of comfort, which lift us from the lowest abyss of this world to the contemplation of all that the yearning visions of mankind have painted in another.

It is a fearful thing to see men weep.

We are seldom sadder without being also wiser men.

What is more appalling than to find the signs of gaiety accompanying the reality of anguish.

Consolation.—If we go at noon day to the bottom of a deep pit,[8 - The remark is in Aristotle. Buffon quotes it in, I think, the first volume of his great work.] we shall be able to see the stars which on the level ground are invisible. Even so, from the depths of grief—worn, wretched, seared, and dying—the blessed apparitions and tokens of heaven make themselves visible to our eyes.

Progress of Crime.—Mankind are not instantly corrupted. Villany is always progressive. We decline from right—not suddenly, but step after step.—Aram's Defence.

SKETCHES FROM THE TOUR OF A GERMAN PRINCE, VOL. III

Mrs. Fitzherbert

"A very worthy and amiable woman, formerly, they say, married to the King, but at present wholly without influence in that quarter, but no less beloved and respected, d'un excellent ton et sans pretension."

Her Majesty

"The Duchess of Clarence honoured the feast with her presence; and all pressed forward to see her, for she is one of those rare Princesses whose personal qualities obtain for them much more respect than their rank, and whose unceasing benevolence and highly amiable character, have obtained for her a popularity in England, of which we Germans may well be proud—the more so, since in all probability she is destined to be one day the Queen of that country."

The King

"I had the honour of dining with the Duke of Clarence, where I also met the Princess Augusta, the Duchess of Kent and her daughter, and the Duchess of Gloucester. The Duke makes a most friendly host, and is kind enough to retain a recollection of the different times and places where he has before seen me. He has much of the English national character, in the best sense of the word, and also the English love of domestic arrangement. The daughters of the Duke are d'un beau sang, all extraordinarily handsome, though in different styles of beauty. Among the sons Colonel Fitzclarence is, in many respects, the most distinguished. Rarely, indeed, do we meet with a young officer of such various accomplishments."

The Duchess of St. A–

"According to the earliest recollections or her Grace, she found herself a forsaken, starving, frozen child, in an outshed of an English village. She was taken thence by a gipsy-crew, whom she afterwards left for a company of strolling players. In this profession, she obtained some reputation by a pleasing exterior, a constant flow of spirits, and a certain originality—till by degrees she gained several friends, who magnanimously provided for her wants. She long lived in undisturbed connexion with the rich banker C–, who, at length, married her, and, at his death, left her a fortune of 70,000l. a year. By this colossal inheritance, she afterwards became the wife of the Duke of St. A–, the third English Duke in point of rank, and, what is a somewhat singular coincident, the descendant of the well-known actress Nell Gwynn, to whose charms the Duke is indebted for his title, in much the same way (though a hundred years earlier) as his wife is now for hers.

"She is a very good sort of woman, who has no hesitation in speaking of the past—on the contrary, is rather too frequent in her reminiscences. Thus she entertained us the whole evening, with various representations of her former dramatic characters. The drollest part of the affair was, that she had taught her husband, a very young man, thirty years under her own age—to play the lover's part, which he did badly enough. Malicious tongues were naturally very busy, and the more so, as many of the recited passages gave room for the most piquant applications."

Fortune-telling

"I dined to-day with Lady F. Her husband was formerly Governor in the Isle of France, and she had there purchased from a negress, the pretended prophesying book of the Empress Josephine, who is said to have read therein her future greatness and fall, before she sailed for France. Lady F. produced it at tea, and invited the company to question fate, according to the prescribed forms. Now, listen to the answers, which are really remarkable enough. Mrs. Rothschild was the first—and she asked if her wishes would be fulfilled. Answer: 'Weary not fate with wishes—one who has obtained so much, may well be satisfied.' Next came Mr. Spring Rice, a celebrated parliamentary speaker, and one of the most zealous champions of the Catholic Question. He asked, whether on the following day when the question was to be brought forward in the upper house, it would pass. I should here remark, that it is well known here that it will not pass—but that in all probability in the next session it will. The laconic answer of the book ran thus:—'You will have no success this time.' They then made a young American lady ask if she should soon be married. 'Not in this part of the world,' was the answer."

The Gatherer

Shakspeare and Garrick.—At the opening dinner of the Garrick Club, the company forgot to drink the Memory of SHAKSPEARE; and the health of our living dramatists was only proposed when the party had dwindled from 200 to 20! Where would be the fame of Garrick but for Shakspeare.

Talent has lately been liberally marked by royal favour. Among the last batch of knights are Mr. Smirke, the architect; Dr. Meyrick, the celebrated antiquarian scholar; and Col. Trench.

"Passing Strange."—The Court Journal, speaking of the deputation of boys from Christ's Hospital at the Drawing-room, says, "The number of boys appointed to attend on this occasion is 40; but, owing to the indisposition of one of them, there were no more than 39 present."

Millinery Authorship.—"We must acknowledge our prejudice in favour of an opportunity for the display of that most courtly of all materials, the train of Genoa velvet; where (as Lord Francis Levison expresses it)

Finger-deep the rich embroidery stiffens.

    Court Journal.
In a puff precipitate of a play, we are told that M– "is pleased with his character."

Two cats were placed within a cage,
And resolving to quarrel, got into a rage,
They fought so clean, and fought so clever,
The devil a bit was left of either.

notes

1

How pleasingly is the substance of these observations embodied in one of our "Snatches from Eugene Aram:"—"It has been observed, and there is a world of homely, ay, of legislative wisdom in the observation, that wherever you see a flower in a cottage garden, or a bird at the window, you may feel sure that the cottagers are better and wiser than their neighbours." Vol. i. p. 4. Yet with what wretched taste is this morality sought to be perverted in an abusive notice of Mr. Bulwer's Eugene Aram, in a Magazine of the past month, by a reference to Clark and Aram's stealing flower-roots from gentlemen's gardens to add to the ornaments of their own. The writer might as well have said that Clark and Aram were fair specimens of the whole human race, or that every gay flower in a cottage garden has been so stolen.

2

Gardeners' Magazine, No. XXXIII. August, 1831.

3

Family Library, No. XXVII.

4

By M.M. Concanen, jun. and A. Morgan.

5

"On doors the sallow milk maid chalks her gains.
Oh! how unlike the milk-maid of the plains!"

6

They say that no town in Europe is without a Scotchman for an inhabitant. This trade in London is generally professed by North Britons, and it is always a cause of alarm to a stranger if he notices the enormous column of black smoke which is emitted from their premises at the dawn, of the morning.