The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 17, No. 469, January 1, 1831

The divine, by the sacred nature of his calling, and the higher character of his duties, is, perhaps, farther removed from an immediate contact with society; his labours are of a more exalted order, and the results of those labours not open to ordinary observation; but the lawyer in full practice knows the designs and devices of half our acquaintance; it is true, professional decorum seals his lips, but he has them all before him in his "mind's eye,"—all their litigations and littlenesses,—all their cuttings, and carvings, and contrivings. He knows why a family, who hate the French with all the fervour of British prejudice, visits Paris, and remains there for a year or two; he can give a good reason why a man who delights in a well preserved property in a sporting country, with a house well built and beautifully situated, consents to "spare it," at a reduced price, to a man for whom he cares nothing upon earth: and looks at the world fully alive to the motives, and perfectly aware of the circumstances, of three-fourths of the unconscious actors by whom he is surrounded.

The eminent medical man stands, if not upon higher ground, at least in a more interesting position. As he mingles with the gay assembly, or visits the crowded ball, he knows the latent ills, the hidden, yet incurable disorders of the laughing throng by which he is encircled; he sees premature death lurking under the hectic flush on the cheek of the lovely Fanny, and trembles for the fate of the kind-hearted Emily, as he beholds her mirthfully joining in the mazy dance. He, too, by witnessing the frequently recurring scenes of death, beholds the genuine sorrow of the bereaved wife, or the devoted husband—and can, by the constant unpremeditated exhibitions of fondness and feeling, appreciate the affection which exists in such and such places, and understand, with an almost magical power, the value of the links by which society is held together.

Middle Life

There is more healthful exercise for the mind in the uneven paths of middling life, than there is on the Macadamized road of fortune. Were the year all summer, how tiresome would be the green leaves and the bright sunshine—as, indeed, those will admit, who have lived in climates where vegetation is always at work.

Unwelcome Truth

Plain speaking was Mousetrap's distinctive characteristic; his conversation abounded in blunt truisms, founded upon a course of thinking somewhat peculiar to himself, but which, when tried by the test of human vice and human folly, proved very frequently to be a great deal more accurate than agreeable.

Stockbrokers

"I know some of them brokering boys are worth a million on Monday, and threepence on Thursday—all in high feather one week, and poor waddling creturs the next."

Mercantile Life

A dark hole of a counting-house, with a couple of clerk chaps, cocked up upon long-legged stools, writing out letters—a smoky fireplace—two or three files, stuck full of dirty papers, hanging against the wall—an almanack, and a high-railed desk, with a slit in a panel, with "bills for acceptance" painted over it. They are the chaps "wot" makes time-bargains—they speculate for thousands, having nothing in the world—and then at the wind-up of a week or two, pay each other what they call the difference: that is to say, the change between what they cannot get, and what they have not got.

The Secret Spring

There are with all great affairs smaller affairs connected, so that in the watch-work of society, the most skilful artist is sometimes puzzled to fix upon the very little wheel by which the greater wheels are worked.

"Bad Company."

The subject under discussion was the great advantages likely to arise from the establishment of the North Shields Sawdust Consolidation Company, in which Apperton told Maxwell there were still seventy-four shares to be purchased: they were hundred pound shares, and were actually down at eighty-nine, would be at fifteen premium on the following Saturday, and must eventually rise to two hundred and thirty, for reasons which he gave in the most plausible manner, and which were in themselves perfectly satisfactory, as he said, to the "meanest capacity;" a saying with which it might have been perfectly safe to agree.

Love

What does Sterne say? That love is no more made by talking of it, than a black pudding would be. Habit, association, assimilation of tastes, communion of thought, kindness without pretension, solicitude without effort, a tacit agreement and a silent sympathy; these are the excitements and stimulants of the only sort of love that is worth thinking of.

Brighton

Brighton will be as good a residence as any other; there's nobody there knows much of either of you; and the place has got so big, that you may be as snug as you please; a large town and a large party, are the best possible shelters for love matters. Ay, go to Brighton—the prawns for breakfast, the Wheatears (as the Cockneys delicately call them, without knowing what they are talking about) for dinner, and the lobsters for supper, with a cigar, and a little ginnums and water, whiffing the wind, and sniffing the briny out of one of the bow-window balconies—that's it—Brighton's the place, against the world.

Murder

A gentleman criminal is too rich a treat to be overlooked; and a murder in good society forms a tale of middling life, much too interesting to be passed over in a hurry.

A Love Errand

He went to look for something which he had not left there, and whither she followed him, to assist in a pursuit which she knew went for nothing.

MOORE'S LIFE OF BYRON, VOL. II

The publication of this work, bonâ fide, has not yet taken place; but we are enabled by the aid of the Athenæum to quote a page.

The volume commences with the following powerful review of Lord Byron's mind and fortune at the time he left England:—

"The circumstances under which Lord Byron now took leave of England were such as, in the case of any ordinary person, could not be considered otherwise than disastrous and humiliating. He had, in the course of one short year, gone through every variety of domestic misery;—had seen his hearth ten times profaned by the visitations of the law, and been only saved from a prison by the privileges of his rank. He had alienated (if, indeed, they had ever been his) the affections of his wife; and now, rejected by her, and condemned by the world, was betaking himself to an exile which had not even the dignity of appearing voluntary, as the excommunicating voice of society seemed to leave him no other resource. Had he been of that class of unfeeling and self-satisfied natures from whose hard surface the reproaches of others fall pointless, he might have found in insensibility a sure refuge against reproach; but, on the contrary, the same sensitiveness that kept him so awake to the applauses of mankind rendered him, in a still more intense degree, alive to their censure. Even the strange, perverse pleasures which he felt in painting himself unamiably to the world did not prevent him from being both startled and pained when the world took him at his word; and, like a child in a mask before a looking-glass, the dark semblance which he had half in sport, put on, when reflected back upon him from the mirror of public opinion, shocked even himself.

"Thus surrounded by vexations, and thus deeply feeling them, it is not too much to say, that any other spirit but his own would have sunk under the struggle, and lost, perhaps, irrecoverably, that level of self-esteem which alone affords a stand against the shocks of fortune. But in him,—furnished as his mind was with reserves of strength, waiting to be called out,—the very intensity of the pressure brought relief by the proportionate reaction which it produced. Had his transgressions and frailties been visited with no more than their due portion of punishment, there can be little doubt that a very different result would have ensued. Not only would such an excitement have been insufficient to waken up the new energies still dormant in him, but that consciousness of his own errors, which was for ever livelily present in his mind, would, under such circumstances, have been left, undisturbed by any unjust provocation, to work its usual softening and, perhaps, humbling influences on his spirit. But,—luckily, as it proved, for the further triumphs of his genius,—no such moderation was exercised. The storm of invective raised around him, so utterly out of proportion with his offences, and the base calumnies that were everywhere heaped upon his name, left to his wounded pride no other resource than in the same summoning up of strength, the same instinct of resistance to injustice, which had first forced out the energies of his youthful genius, and was now destined to give him a still bolder and loftier range of its powers.

"But the greatest of his trials, as well as triumphs, was yet to come. The last stage of this painful, though glorious, course, in which fresh power was, at every step, wrung from out of his soul, was that at which we are now arrived, his marriage and its results,—without which, dear as was the price paid by him in peace and character, his career would have been incomplete, and the world still left in ignorance of the full compass of his genius. It is indeed worthy of remark, that it was not till his domestic circumstances began to darken around him that his fancy, which had long been idle, again arose upon the wing,—both the Siege of Corinth and Parisina having been produced but a short time before the separation. How conscious he was, too, that the turmoil which followed was the true element of his restless spirit may be collected from several passages of his letters, at that period, in one of which he even mentions that his health had become all the better for the conflict:—'It is odd,' he says, 'but agitation or contest of any kind gives a rebound to my spirits, and sets me up for the time.'

"This buoyancy it was—this irrepressible spring of mind,—that now enabled him to bear up not only against the assaults of others, but what was still more difficult, against his own thoughts and feelings. The muster of all his mental resources to which, in self-defence, he had been driven, but opened to him the yet undreamed extent and capacity of his powers, and inspired him with a proud confidence, that he should yet shine down these calumnious mists, convert censure to wonder, and compel even those who could not approve to admire.

"The route which he now took, through Flanders and by the Rhine, is best traced in his own matchless verses, which leave a portion of their glory on all that they touch, and lend to scenes, already clothed with immortality by nature and by history, the no less durable associations of undying song."

The Gatherer

A snapper up of unconsidered trifles.

    SHAKSPEARE.

SELDEN,

Towards the close of his life, was so thoroughly convinced of the superior value of the Holy Scriptures, as to declare that the 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th verses of the second chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to Titus, afforded him more solid satisfaction than all he had ever read.

H.B.A

FULL-BOTTOMED WIGS

The full-bottomed wigs which unfortunately envelope and cloud some of the most distinguished portraits of former days, were in fashion during the reigns of our William and Mary. Lord Bolingbroke was one of the first that tied them up, with which the queen was much offended, and said to a by-stander, "he would soon come to court in his night-cap." Soon after, tie wigs, instead of being an undress, became the high court dress.

H.B.A

A WINDOW THE CAUSE OF A WAR

When the Palace of Trianon was building for Louis XIV. at the end of Versailles' Park, that monarch went to inspect it, accompanied by Louvois, secretary of war, and superintendent of the building. Whilst walking arm in arm with him, he remarked that one of the windows was out of shape, and smaller than the rest—this Louvois denied, and asserted that he could not perceive the least difference. Louis XIV. having had it measured, and finding that he had judged rightly, treated Louvois in a contumelious manner before his whole court. This conduct so incensed the minister, that when he arrived home he was heard to say, that he would find better employment for a monarch than that of insulting his favourites: he was as good as his word, for by his insolence and haughtiness he insulted the other powers, and occasioned the bloody war of 1688.

In 1306, Bruce having taken shelter in the Isle of Arran, sent a trusty person into Carrick, to learn how his vassals stood affected to his cause; with instructions, that, if he found them disposed to assist him he should make a signal at a time appointed, by lighting a fire on an eminence near the Castle of Turnbury. The messenger found the English in possession of Carrick, the people dispirited, and none ready to take arms; he therefore did not make the signal. But a fire being made about noon on the appointed spot, (possibly by accident) both Bruce and the messenger saw it. The former with his associates put to sea to join his supposed party; the latter to prevent his coming. They met before Bruce reached the shore, when the messenger acquainted Bruce with the unpromising state of his affairs, and advised him to go back; but he obeying the dictates of despair and valour, resolved to persevere; and attacking the English, carelessly cantoned in the neighbourhood of Turnbury, put a number of them to the sword, and pillaged their quarters. Percy, from the castle, heard the uproar, yet did not sally forth against them, not knowing their strength. Bruce with his followers not exceeding three hundred in number, remained for some days near Turnbury; but succours having arrived from the neighbouring garrisons, he was obliged to seek safety in the mountainous parts of Carrick.

C.D

"WILLIE WASTLE."

When Oliver Cromwell was at Haddington, he sent a summons to the governor of Hume Castle, ordering him to surrender. The governor answered,

"That he, Willie Wastle, stood firm in his castle,
That all the dogs of his town should not drive Willie Wastle down."

This anecdote gave rise to the amusement of Willie Wastle among children.

When the Irish Union was effected in 1801, the Ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir John Parnell, was the reigning toast. Being one evening in a convivial party, he jocularly said that by the Union he had lost his bread and butter. "Ah, my dear sir," replied a friend, "never mind, for it is amply made up to you in toasts."

CURIOUS LEGACY