CHAPTER VIII.

“ALL is quiet, thank Heaven! the Captain is as fast as a church,” thought Madame Doppeldick, as she stood in nocturnal dishabille, on the little landing-place, at the stair-head. “Now then, my own Dietrich,” she whispered, “are you ready to run?” For like the best of wives, as she was, she did not much care to go anywhere without her husband.

But the deliberate Dietrich was not prepared to escort her. He had chosen to undress as usual, with his transcendental pipe in his mouth; indeed it was always the last thing that he took off before getting into bed, so that till all his philosophy was burned to ashes, his mind would not consent to any active corporeal exertion, especially to any locomotion so rapid as a race. At last he stood balancing, made up for the start; his eyes staring, his teeth clenched, his fists doubled, and his arms swinging, as if he were about to be admitted a burgess of Andernach--that is to say, by leaping backwards over a winnowing fan, with a well poised pail of water in his arms, in order to show if he accomplished it neatly.

“The night-light may be left burning where it is, Dietrich.”

“Now then, Malchen!”

“Now then Dietrich,--and run gently--on your toes!”

No sooner said than done. The modest Malchen with the speed of a young wild elephant made a rush across the room, and, with something of a jump and something more of a scramble, plunged headlong into the bed. The phlegmatic Dietrich was a thought later, from having included the whole length of the landing-place in his run, to help him in his leap, so that just as his bulk came squash! upon the coverlet, his predecessor was tumbling her body, skow-wow, bow-wow, any-how, over the side of the bedstead.

[Illustration: COUNTRY QUARTERS.]

“Sancta Maria!” sobbed Madame Doppeldick, as she settled into hysterics upon the floor.

“Potz-tausend!” said Mr. Doppeldick, as he crawled backwards out of the bed like a crab.

“Ten thousand devils!” bellowed Captain Schenk--a suppressed exclamation that the first shock had driven from his mouth into his throat, from his throat into his lungs, and from thence into his stomach; but which the second shock had now driven out again in full force.

[Illustration: THE BEARER OF THE GREAT SEAL.]

* * * * *

“Why, I thought, Mister Jean Paul Nemand (says the reader), that we left the Captain safe and sound, in his own bed, next the window, with the patch-work coverlet?”

“And so we did, Mister Carl Wilhelm Jemand (says the author,) but it was so short, that in five minutes he caught the cramp. Wherefore, as there was a second spare bed in the room, and as honest Dietrich had said nothing of other lodgers, and as of all blessings we ought to choose the biggest, the Captain determined to give it a trial--and between you and me he liked the bed well enough, till he felt a sort of smashing pain all over his body, his eyes squeezing out of his face, his nose squeezing into it, and his precious front teeth, at a gulp, going uninvited down his gullet!”

[Illustration: “WHY DID YOU SUP ON PORK?”]

ODE FOR THE NINTH OF NOVEMBER.

O Lud! O Lud! O Lud! I mean of course that venerable town, Mention’d in stories of renown, Built formerly of mud;-- O Lud, I say, why didst thou e’er Invent the office of a Mayor, An office that no useful purpose crowns, But to set Aldermen against each other, That should be Brother unto Brother,-- Sisters at least, by virtue of their gowns But still if one must have a Mayor To fill the Civic chair, O Lud, I say, Was there no better day To fix on, than November Ninth so shivery And dull for showing off the Livery’s livery?

[Illustration: FINDING A MAY’R’S NEST.]

Dimming, alas! The Brazier’s brass, Soiling th’ Embroiderers and all the Saddlers, Sopping the Furriers, Draggling the Curriers, And making Merchant Tailors dirty paddlers: Drenching the Skinners’ Company to the skin, Making the crusty Vintner chiller, And turning the Distiller To cold without instead of warm within;-- Spoiling the bran-new beavers Of Wax-chandlers and Weavers, Plastering the Plasterers and spotting Mercers, Hearty November-cursers-- And showing Cordwainers and dapper Drapers Sadly in want of brushes and of scrapers; Making the Grocer’s company not fit For Company a bit; Dying the Dyers with a dingy flood, Daubing incorporated Bakers, And leading the Patten-makers, Over their very pattens in the mud,-- O Lud! O Lud! O Lud!

“This is a sorry sight,” To quote Macbeth--but oh, it grieves me quite, To see your Wives and Daughters in their plumes-- White plumes not white-- Sitting at open windows catching rheums, Not “Angels ever bright and fair,” But angels ever brown and sallow, With eyes--you cannot see above one pair, For city clouds of black and yellow-- And artificial flowers, rose, leaf, and bud, Such sable lilies And grim daffodilies Drooping, but not for drought, O Lud! O Lud!

I may as well, while I’m inclined, Just go through all the faults I find: Oh Lud! then, with a better air, say June, Could’st thou not find a better tune To sound with trumpets, and with drums, Than “See the Conquering Hero comes,” When he who comes ne’er dealt in blood! Thy May’r is not a War Horse, Lud, That ever charged on Turk or Tartar, And yet upon a march you strike That treats him like-- A little French if I may martyr-- Lewis Cart-Horse or Henry Carter!

[Illustration: ARMS FOUND.]

O Lud! I say Do change your day To some time when your Show can really show; When silk can seem like silk, and gold can glow. Look at your Sweepers, how they shine in May Have it when there’s a sun to gild the coach, And sparkle in tiara--bracelet--brooch-- Diamond--or paste--of sister, mother, daughter; When grandeur really may be grand-- But if thy Pageant’s thus obscured by land-- O Lud! it’s ten times worse upon the water! Suppose, O Lud, to show its plan, I call, like Blue Beard’s wife, to sister Anne. Who’s gone to Beaufort Wharf with niece and aunt To see what she can see--and what she can’t; Chewing a saffron bun by way of cud, To keep the fog out of a tender lung, While perch’d in a verandah nicely hung Over a margin of thy own black mud, O Lud!

Now Sister Anne, I call to thee, Look out and see: Of course about the bridge you view them rally And sally,

With many a wherry, sculler, punt, and cutter; The Fishmongers’ grand boat, but not for butter, The Goldsmiths’ glorious galley,-- Of course you see the Lord Mayor’s coach aquatic, With silken banners that the breezes fan, In gold all glowing, And men in scarlet rowing, Like Doge of Venice to the Adriatic; Of course you see all this, O Sister Anne? “No, I see no such thing! I only see the edge of Beaufort Wharf, With two coal lighters fasten’d to a ring: And, dim as ghosts, Two little boys are jumping over posts; And something farther off, That’s rather like the shadow of a dog, And all beyond is fog. If there be any thing so fine and bright, To see it I must see by second sight. Call this a Show? It is not worth a pin! I see no barges row, No banners blow; The show is merely a gallanty-show, Without a lamp or any candle in.”

But sister Anne, my dear, Although you cannot see, you still may hear? Of course you hear, I’m very sure of that, The “Water parted from the Sea” in C, Or “Where the Bee sucks,” set in B, Or Huntsman’s chorus from the Freyschutz frightful, Or Handel’s Water Music in A flat.

Oh music from the water comes delightful! It sounds as no where else it can: You hear it first, In some rich burst, Then faintly sighing, Tenderly dying Away upon the breezes, Sister Anne.

“There is no breeze to die on; And all their drums and trumpets, flutes and harps, Could never cut their way with ev’n three sharps Through such a fog as this, you may rely on. I think, but am not sure, I hear a hum,

Like a very muffled double drum, And then a something faintly shrill, Like Bartlemy Fair’s old buz at Pentonville. And now and then hear a pop, As if from Pedley’s Soda Water shop.

I’m almost ill with the strong scent of mud, And, not to mention sneezing, My cough is, more than usual, teasing; I really fear that I have chill’d my blood, O Lud! O Lud! O Lud! O Lud! O Lud!”

[Illustration: THE HOUSE ADJOURNED.]

SONNET.

THE sky is glowing in one ruddy sheet;-- A cry of fire! resounds from door to door; And westward still the thronging people pour;-- The turncock hastens to F. P. 6 feet, And quick unlocks the fountains of the street; While rumbling engines, with increasing roar, Thunder along to luckless Number Four, Where Mr. Dough makes bread for folks to eat. And now through blazing frames, and fiery beams, The Globe, the Sun, the Phœnix, and what not, With gushing pipes throw up abundant streams, On burning bricks, and twists, on rolls--too hot-- And scorching loaves,--as if there were no shorter And cheaper way of making toast-and-water!

RONDEAU.

[EXTRACTED FROM A WELL-KNOWN ANNUAL.]

O CURIOUS reader, didst thou ne’er Behold a worshipful Lord May’r Seated in his great civic chair So dear? Then cast thy longing eyes this way, It is the ninth November day, And in his new-born state survey One here! To rise from little into great Is pleasant; but to sink in state From high to lowly is a fate Severe. Too soon his shine is overcast, Chill’d by the next November blast; His blushing honours only last One year! He casts his fur and sheds his chains, And moults till not a plume remains-- The next impending May’r distrains His gear. He slips like water through a sieve-- Ah, could his little splendour live Another twelvemonth--he would give One ear!

[Illustration: FANCY PORTRAIT:--THE LORD MAYOR.]

LONDON FASHIONS FOR NOVEMBER.

REMARKS.

NO season has offered such _variétés_ in costume as the early part of the present month. Fancy dresses of the most _outré_ description have appeared, even in the streets. Short waists and long, full sleeves and empty, broad skirts and narrow, whole skirts, half skirts, and none at all, have been indifferently worn. For the _Promenade_, rags and tatters of all kinds have been in much favour; very few buttons are worn; and the coats, waistcoats, and pantaloons, have been invariably padded and stuffed with hay or straw. We observed several _exquisites_ making morning calls in scare-crow great-coats; the skirts, lappels, collars, and cuffs, picturesquely, but not too formally, jagged _à la Vandyke_. The prevailing colours--all colours at once. Wigs have been very general--both _en buzz_ and _frizzé_; these have been commonly composed of deal shavings; but in some cases of tow, and sometimes horse-hair. For the evening party, a few squibs and crackers are stuck in the _perruque_ or hat, and the boots and shoes are polished up with a little pitch or tar; sometimes a Catherine wheel has been added _en coquarde_. Frills, collars, and ruffles, of _papier coupé_, have entirely superseded those of cambric or lace, and shirts of every description are quite discarded. Paint has been in much request, and ruddle seems to have been preferred to _rouge_; patches are also much worn, not on the countenance, but on the clothes; for these the favourite _matériel_ is tartan, plush of any colour, or corduroy. Several dandies appeared on the 5th with gloves, but they are not essential requisites to be in the _ton_: canes are discarded; even a riding-whip would be reckoned to evince _mauvais goût_, but a half-penny bunch of matches “_à la main_” is indispensable to a fashionable aspirant. The old practice of being carried abroad in chairs has been universally revived; and it must be confessed, that it exhibits the Figure to much advantage.

[Illustration]

Amongst the _Nouveautés_, we observed the following _Caractère_, as making a felicitous _début_. The coast was _à-la-militaire_, of the colour formerly so much in vogue under the name of _fumée de Londres_, turned up with _flamme d’enfer_. It was _garni_ with very dead gold; and slashed _à l’Espagnole_, back and front. The pantaloons were equally _bizarre_; one leg being composed of Scotch tartan, and the other of blue striped bed-ticking, made very full, _en matelot_, in compliance with the prevailing taste for navals. The wig was made of green and white willow shavings, with a large link for a _queue_, tied on with a _nœud_ of red tape. The hat, brown, somewhat darker than the Devonshire beaver, but disinclining to black. It had no brim, and was without a crown. A tarnished badge of the Phœnix Fire Office, on the bust, gave a _distingué_ air to the whole Figure, which was going down Bond-street, and excited a sensation quite _à-l’envie_ by its appearance in the World of Fashion.

N.B.--We are requested to state that the above described figure was entirely invented and manufactured by little Solomon Levy, of Hollywell-street, Strand, who has a variety always on show, about the metropolis.

SYMPTOMS OF OSSIFICATION.

“An indifference to tears, and blood, and human suffering, that could only belong to a _Boney-parte_.”--_Life of Napoleon._

TIME was, I always had a drop For any tale or sigh of sorrow; My handkerchief I used to sop Till often I was forced to borrow; I don’t know how it is, but now My eyelids seldom want a drying; The doctors, p’rhaps, could tell me how-- I fear my heart is ossifying!

O’er Goethe how I used to weep, With turnip cheeks and nose of scarlet, When Werter put himself to sleep With pistols kiss’d and clean’d by Charlotte; Self-murder is an awful sin, No joke there is in bullets flying, But now at such a tale I grin-- I fear my heart is ossifying!

The Drama once could shake and thrill My nerves, and set my tears a stealing, The Siddons then could turn at will Each plug upon the main of feeling; At Belvidera now I smile, And laugh while Mrs. Haller’s crying; ’Tis odd, so great a change of style-- I fear my heart is ossifying!

That heart was such--some years ago, To see a beggar quite would shock it, And in his hat I used to throw The quarter’s savings of my pocket: I never wish--as I did _then_!-- The means from my own purse supplying, To turn them all to gentlemen-- I fear my heart is ossifying!

We’ve had some serious things of late, Our sympathies to beg or borrow, New melo-drames, of tragic fate, And acts and songs, and tales of sorrow; Miss Zouch’s case, our eyes to melt, And sundry actors sad good-bye-ing. But Lord!--so little have I felt, I’m sure my heart is ossifying!

THE POACHER.

A SERIOUS BALLAD.

But a bold pheasantry, their country’s pride, When once destroyed can never be supplied.

GOLDSMITH.

BILL BLOSSOM was a nice young man, And drove the Bury coach; But bad companions were his bane, And egg’d him on to poach.

They taught him how to net the birds, And how to noose the hare; And with a wiry terrier, He often set a snare.

Each “shiny night” the moon was bright, To park, preserve, and wood He went, and kept the game alive, By killing all he could.

[Illustration: A BUCK-ANEER!]

Land-owners, who had rabbits, swore That he had this demerit-- Give him an inch of warren, he Would take a yard of ferret.

At partridges he was not nice; And many, large and small, Without Hall’s powder, without lead, Were sent to Leaden-Hall.

He did not fear to take a deer, From forest, park, or lawn; And without courting lord or duke, Used frequently to _fawn_.

Folks who had hares discovered snares-- His course they could not stop: No barber he, and yet he made Their hares a perfect crop.

To pheasant he was such a foe, He tried the keeper’s nerves; They swore he never seem’d to have _Jam_ satis of _preserves_.

The Shooter went to beat, and found No sporting worth a pin, Unless he tried the _covers_ made Of silver, plate, or tin.

In Kent the game was little worth, In Surrey not a button; The Speaker said he often tried The _Manors_ about _Sutton_.

No county from his tricks was safe: In each he tried his lucks, And when the keepers were in _Beds_, He often was at _Bucks_.

And when he went to _Bucks_, alas! They always came to _Herts_; And even _Oxon_ used to wish That he had his deserts.

But going to his usual _Hants_, Old _Cheshire_ laid his plots: He got entrapp’d by legal _Berks_, And lost his life in _Notts_.

[Illustration: LUNAR CAUSTIC.]

SKETCHES ON THE ROAD.

THE SUDDEN DEATH.

THERE are several objections to one-horse vehicles. With two wheels, they are dangerous; with four, generally cruel inventions, tasking one animal with the labour of two. And, in either case, should your horse think proper to die on the road you have no survivor to drag your carriage through the rest of the stage; or to be sent off galloping with the coachman on his back for a coadjutor.

That was precisely Miss Norman’s dilemma.

If a horse could be supposed to harbour so deadly a spite against his proprietor, I should believe that the one in question chose to vent his animosity by giving up the ghost just at the spot where it would cause most annoyance and inconvenience. For fourteen months past he had drawn the Lady in daily airings to a point just short of the Binn Gate;--because that fifty yards further would have cost sixpence; a sum which Miss Norman could, or believed she could, but ill spare out of a limited income. At this very place, exactly opposite the tall elm which usually gave the signal for turning homeward, did Plantagenet prefer to drop down stone dead: as if determined that his mistress should have to walk every inch of it, to her own house.

But Miss Norman never walked.

[Illustration: “TAKE CARE OF THE PENCE, AND THE POUNDS WILL TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES.”]

Pedestrianism was, in her opinion, a very vulgar exercise, unavoidable with the poor, and to some people, as Postmen, Bankers’ clerks, Hawkers, and the like, a professional mode of progression, but a bodily exertion very derogatory to persons of birth and breeding. So far was this carried, that she was once heard to declare, speaking of certain rather humble obsequies, “she would rather live for ever than have a walking funeral!” On another occasion, when the great performance of Captain Barclay, in walking a thousand miles in a thousand hours, was submitted to her opinion, she said “it was a step she did not approve.”

[Illustration: DESCENDED FROM THE CONQUEROR.]

It might be surmised from such declarations, that she was incapable of personal locomotion, through some original infirmity, for instance, such as results from the rickets; whereas, so far from allowing any deficiency on the part of her nurse or parents, in putting her to her feet, Miss Norman professed to have the perfect command of all her limbs, and would have felt extremely offended at a hint that she could not dance. It was quite another weakness than any bodily one which restricted her promenades, and made her feet almost as useless to her as those of the female Chinese. Pride was in fault; and partly her surname, for suggesting to one of her ancestors that he was a descendant of William the First of England: a notion, which, after turning his own head, had slightly crazed those of his successors, who all believed, as part and parcel of their inheritance, on the strength of the “Norman” and some dubious old pedigree, that the Conqueror was their great Progenitor.

The hereditary arrogance engendered by this imaginary distinction, had successively displayed itself by outbreaks of different character, according to the temperament of the individual who happened to be head of the family: with Miss Norman, the last of _her_ line, it took the form of a boast that every branch and twig of her illustrious tree had always ridden “in their own carriage.” I am not quite sure whether she did not push this pretension further back than the date of the invention of “little houses on wheels” would warrant; however, it held good, in local tradition, for several generations, although the family vehicle had gradually dwindled down from an ample coach to a chariot, a fly, and, finally, the one-inside sedan-chair upon wheels, which the sudden death of Plantagenet left planted fifty yards short of the Binn Gate. To glance at the whole set-out, nobody would ever have attributed high birth and inherent gentility to its owner. ’Twas never of a piece. For once that the body was new-painted, the arms were thrice refreshed and touched up, till the dingy vehicle, by the glaring comparison, looked more ancient than the quarterings. The crest was much oftener renewed than the hammer-cloth; and Humphrey, the coachman, evidently never got a new suit all at once. He had always old drab to bran-new bright sky-blue plush; or _vice versâ_. Sometimes a hat in its first gloss got the better of its old tarnished band; sometimes the fresh gold lace made the brown beaver look still more an antique. The same with the harness and the horse, which was sometimes a tall spanking brute, who seemed to have outgrown the concern; at other times, a short pony-like animal, who had been put into the shafts by mistake. In short, the several articles seemed to belong the more especially to Miss Norman because they belonged so little to each other. A few minutes made a great change in her possessions, instead of a living horse, hight Plantagenet, she was proprietor of certain hundred-weights of dogs’-meat.

[Illustration: “WARRANTED QUIET TO RIDE OR DRIVE.”]

It was just at this moment that I came up with my gig; and knowing something of the lady’s character, I pulled up in expectation of a scene. Leaving my own bay, who would stand as steady as a mute at death’s door, I proceeded to assist the coachman in extricating his horse; but the nag of royal line was stone dead: and I accompanied Humphrey to the carriage-door to make his report.

A recent American author has described as an essential attribute of high birth and breeding in England, a certain sort of quakerly composure, in all possible sudden emergencies, such as an alarm of the house on fire, or a man falling into a fit by one’s side; in fact, the same kind of self-command which Pope praises in a lady who is “mistress of herself, though China fall.” In this particular Miss Norman’s conduct justified her pretensions. She was mistress of herself, though her horse fell. She did not start--exclaim--put her head out of the window, or even let down the front glass: she only adjusted herself more exactly in the middle of the seat, drew herself bolt upright, and fixed her eyes on the back of the coach-box. In this posture Humphrey found her.

“If you please, Ma’am, Planty-ginit be dead.” The lady acquiesced with the smallest nod ever made.

“I’ve took off the collar, and the bit out, and got un out o’ harness entirely; but he be as unanimate as his own shoes;” and the informant looked earnestly at the lady to observe the effect of the communication. But she never moved a muscle; and honest Humphrey was just shutting the coach-door, to go and finish the laying out of the corpse, when he was recalled.

“Humphrey!”

“What’s your pleasure, Ma’am?”

“Remember, another time----”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“When a horse of mine is deceased----”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Touch your hat.”

The abashed coachman instantly paid up the salute in arrear. Unblessed by birthright with self-possession, he had not even the advantage of experience in the first families, where he might have learned a little from good example: he was a raw uncouth country servant, with the great merit of being cheap, whom Miss Norman had undertaken to educate; but he was still so far from proficient, that in the importance of breaking the death to his mistress, he had omitted one of those minor tokens of respect which she always rigorously exacted.

It was now my own turn to come forward, and as deferentially as if she had been indeed the last of the Conqueror’s Normandy pippins, I tendered a seat in my chaise, which she tacitly declined, with a gracious gesture of head and hand.

“If you please, Ma’am,” said Humphrey, taking care to touch his hat, and shutting his head into the carriage so that I might not overhear him, “he’s a respectable kind of gentleman enough, and connected with some of the first houses.”

“The gentleman’s name?”

“To be sure, Ma’am, the gentleman can’t help his name,” answered Humphrey, fully aware of the peculiar prejudices of his mistress; “but it be Huggins.”

[Illustration: “ONE MAY GO FARTHER AND FARE WORSE”--AS THE HORSE SAID]

“Shut the door.”

It appeared, on explanation with the coachman, that he had mistaken me for a person in the employ of the opulent firm of Naylor and Co., whose province it was to travel throughout Britain with samples of hardware in the box-seat of his gig. I did not take the trouble to undeceive him, but determining to see the end of the affair, I affected to hope that the lady would change her mind; and accordingly I renewed, from time to time, my offer of accommodation, which was always stiffly declined. After a tolerably long pause on all sides, my expectation was excited by the appearance of the W---- coach coming through the Binn Gate, the only public vehicle that used the road. At sight of the dead horse, the driver (the noted Jem Wade) pulled up--alighted--and standing at the carriage-door with his hat off, as if he knew his customer, made an offer of his services. But Miss Norman, more dignified than ever, waved him off with her hand. Jem became more pressing, and the lady more rigid. “She never rode,” she condescended to say, “in _public_ vehicles.” Jem entreated again; but “she was accustomed to be driven by her _own_ coachman.” It was in vain that in answer he praised the quietness of his team, the safety of his patent boxes, besides promising the utmost steadiness and sobriety on his own part. Miss Norman still looked perseveringly at the back of her coach-box; which, on an unlucky assurance that “he would take as much care of her as of his own mother,” she exchanged for a steady gaze at the side-window, opposite to the coachman, so long as he remained in the presence.

“By your leave, Ma’am,” said Humphrey, putting his hand to his hat, and keeping it there, “Mr. Wade be a very civil-spoken careful whip, and his coach loads very respectable society. There’s Sir Vincent Ball on the box.”

“If Sir Vincent Ball chooses to degrade himself, it is no rule for _me_,” retorted the lady, without turning her head; when, lo! Sir Vincent appeared himself, and politely endeavoured to persuade her out of her prejudices. It was useless. Miss Norman’s ancestors had one and all expressed a very decided opinion against stage-coaches, by never getting into one; and “she did not feel disposed to disgrace a line longer than common, by riding in any carriage but her own.” Sir Vincent bowed and retreated. So did Jem Wade, without bowing, fervently declaring “he would never do the civil thing to the old female sex again!”

[Illustration: “JACK’S AS GOOD AS HIS MASTER.”]

The stage rattled away at an indignant gallop; and we were left once more to our own resources. By way of passing the time, I thrice repeated my offers to the obdurate old maiden, and endured as many rebuffs. I was contemplating a fourth trial, when a signal was made from the carriage window, and Humphrey, hat in hand, opened the door.

“Procure me a post-chaise.”

“A po-shay!” echoed Humphrey, but, like an Irish echo, with some variation from his original--“Lord help ye, Ma’am, there bean’t such a thing to be had ten miles round--no, not for love nor money. Why, bless ye, it be election time, and there bean’t coach, cart, nor dog-barrow, but what be gone to it!”

“No matter,” said the mistress, drawing herself up with an air of lofty resignation. “I revoke my order; for it is far, very far from the kind of riding that I prefer. And Humphrey----”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Another time--”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Remember once for all--”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“I do not choose to be blest, or the Lord to help me.”

Another pause in our proceedings, during which a company of ragged boys, who had been black-berrying, came up, and planted themselves, with every symptom of vulgar curiosity, around the carriage. Miss Norman had now no single glass through which she could look without encountering a group of low-life faces staring at her with all their might. Neither could she help hearing some such shocking ill-bred remarks as, “Vy don’t the frizzle-vigged old Guy get into the gemman’s drag?” Still the pride of the Normans sustained her. She seemed to draw a sort of supplementary neck out of her bosom, and sat more rigidly erect than ever, occasionally favouring the circle, like a mad bull at bay, with a most awful threatening look, accompanied ever by the same five words:

“I CHOOSE to be alone.”

It is easy to say choose, but more difficult to have one’s choice. The blackberry boys chose to remain; and in reply to each congé only proved by a general grin how very much teeth are set off to advantage by purple mouths. I confess I took pity on the pangs even of unwarrantable pride, and urged my proposal again with some warmth; but it was repelled with absolute scorn.

“Fellow, you are insolent.”

“Quis Deus vult perdere,” thought I, and I determined to let her take her fate, merely staying to mark the result. After a tedious interval, in which her mind had doubtless looked abroad as well as inward, it appeared that the rigour of the condition, as to riding only in her own carriage, had been somewhat relaxed to meet the exigency of the case. A fresh tapping at the window summoned the obsequious Humphrey to receive orders.

“Present my compliments at the Grove--and the loan of the chariot will be esteemed a favour.”

“By your leave, Ma’am, if I may speak--”

“You may _not_.”

Humphrey closed the door, but remained for a minute gazing on the panel, at a blue arm, with a red carving-knife in its hand, defending a black and white rolling-pin. If he meditated any expostulation, he gave it up, and proceeded to drive away the boys, one of whom was astride on the dead Plantagenet, a second grinning through his collar, and two more preparing to play at horses with the reins. It seemed a strange mode enough that he took to secure the harness, by hanging it, collar and all, on his own back and shoulders; but by an aside to me, he explained the mystery, in a grumble,

“It be no use in the world. I see the charrot set off for Lonnon. I shan’t go compli_ment_ing no Grove. I’se hang about a bit at the George, and compli_ment_ a pint o’ beer.”

Away he went, intending, no doubt, to be fully as good as his word: and I found the time grow tedious in his absence. I had almost made up my mind to follow his example, when hope revived at the sound of wheels, and up came a tax-cart carrying four insides, namely, two well-grown porkers, Master Bardell the pig-butcher, and his foreman Samuel Slark, or, as he was more commonly called, Sam the Sticker. They were both a trifle “the worse for liquor,” if such a phrase might honestly be applied to men who were only a little more courageous, more generous, and civil and obliging to the fair sex, than their wont when perfectly sober. The Sticker, especially--in his most temperate moments a perfect sky-blue-bodied, red-faced, bowing and smirking pattern of politeness to females, was now, under the influence of good ale, a very Sir Calidore, ready to comfort and succour distressed damsels, to fight for them, live or die for them, with as much of the chivalrous spirit as remains in our times. They inquired, and I explained in a few words the lady’s dilemma, taking care to forewarn them, by relating the issue of my own attempts in her behalf.

“Mayhap you warn’t half purlite or pressing enough,” observed Sam, with a side wink at his master. “It an’t a bit of a scrape, and a civil word, as will get a strange lady up into a strange gemman’s gig. It wants warmth-like, and making on her feel at home. Only let me alone with her, for a persuader, and I’ll have her up in our cart--my master’s that is to say--afore you can see whether she has feet or hoofs.”

In a moment the speaker was at the carriage-door, stroking down his sleek forelocks, bowing, and using his utmost eloquence, even to the repeating most of his arguments twice over. She would be perfectly safe, he told her, sitting up between him and master, and quite pleasant, for the pigs would keep themselves to themselves at the back of the cart, and as for the horse, he was nothing but a good one, equal to twelve mile an hour--with much more to the same purpose. It was quite unnecessary for Miss Norman to say she had never ridden in a cart with two pigs and two butchers; and she did not say it. She merely turned away her head from the man, to be addressed by the master, at the other window, the glass of which she had just let down for a little air. “A taxed cart, Madam,” he said, “mayn’t be exactly the wehicle, accustomed to, and so forth; but thereby, considering respective ranks of life, why, the more honour done to your humbles, which, as I said afore, will take every care, and observe the respectful; likewise in distancing the two hogs. Whereby, every thing considered, namely, necessity and so forth, I will make so bold as hope, Madam, excusing _more_ pressing, and the like, and dropping ceremony for the time being, you will embrace us at once, as you shall be most heartily welcome to, and be considered, by your humbles, as a favour besides.”

[Illustration: “NONE BUT THE BRAVE DESERVE THE FAIR.”]

The sudden drawing up of the window, so violently as to shiver the glass, showed sufficiently in what light Miss Norman viewed Master Bardell’s behaviour. It was an unlucky smash, for it afforded what the tradesman would have called “an advantageous opening” for pouring in a fresh stream of eloquence; and the Sticker, who shrewdly estimated the convenience of the breach, came round the back of the carriage, and as junior counsel “followed on the same side.” But he took nothing by the motion. The lady was invincible, or, as the discomfited pair mutually agreed, “as hard for to be _convinced into a cart_, as any thing on four legs.” The blackberry boys had departed, the evening began to close in, and no Humphrey made his appearance. The butcher’s horse was on the fret, and his swine grumbled at the delay. The master and man fell into consultation, and favoured me afterwards with the result, the Sticker being the orator. It was man’s duty, he said, to look after women, pretty or ugly, young or old; it was what we all came into the world to do, namely, to make ourselves comfortable and agreeable to the fair sex. As for himself, purtecting females was his nature, and he should never lie easy agin, if so be he left the lady on the road; and providing a female wouldn’t be purtected with her own free will, she ought to be forced to, like any other ’live beast unsensible of its own good. Them was his sentiments, and his master followed ’em up. They knowed Miss Norman, name and fame, and was both well-known respectable men in their lines, and I might ax about for their characters. Whereby, supposing I approved, they’d have her, right and tight, in their cart, afore she felt herself respectfully off her legs.

Such were the arguments and the plan of the bull-headed pair. I attempted to reason with them, but my consent had clearly been only asked as a compliment. The lady herself hastened the catastrophe. Whether she had overheard the debate, or the amount of long pent-up emotion became too overwhelming for its barriers, I know not, but Pride gave way to Nature, and a short hysteric scream proceeded from the carriage. Miss Norman was in fits! We contrived to get her seated on the step of the vehicle, where the butchers supported her, fanning her with their hats, whilst I ran off to a little pool near at hand for some cold water. It was the errand only of some four or five minutes, but when I returned, the lady, only half conscious, had been caught up, and there she sate, in the cart, right and tight, between the two butchers, instead of the two Salvages, or Griffins, or whatever they were, her hereditary supporters. They were already on the move. I jumped into my own gig, and put my horse to his speed; but I had lost my start, and when I came up with them, they were already galloping into W----. Unfortunately her residence was at the further end of the town, and thither I saw her conveyed, struggling in the bright blue, and somewhat greasy, arms of Sam the Sticker, screaming in concert with the two swine, and answered by the shouts of the whole rabblement of the place, who knew Miss Norman quite as well, by sight, as “her own carriage!”

[Illustration: “I’M AFRAID I’M IN LOW COMPANY!”]

[Illustration: A MINOR CANON.]

I CANNOT BEAR A GUN.

“Timidity is generally reckoned an essential attribute of the fair sex, and this absurd notion gives rise to more false starts than a race for the Leger. Hence screams at mice, fits at spiders, faces at toads, jumps at lizards, flights from daddy longlegs, panics at wasps, _sauve qui peut_ at sight of a gun. Surely, when the military exercise is made a branch of education at so many ladies’ academies, the use of the musket would only be a judicious step further in the march of mind. I should not despair, in a month’s practice, of making the most timid British female fond of small-arms.”--HINTS BY A CORPORAL.

IT can’t be minced, I’m quite convinced All girls are full of flam, Their feelings fine and feminine Are nothing else but sham. On all their tricks I need not fix, I’ll only mention one, How many a Miss will tell you this, “I cannot bear a gun!”

There’s cousin Bell can’t ’bide the smell Of powder--horrid stuff! A single pop will make her drop, She shudders at a puff. My Manton near, with aspen fear Will make her scream and run: “It’s always so, you brute, you know I cannot bear a gun!”

About my flask I must not ask, I must not wear a belt, I must not take a punch to make My pellets, card or felt; And if I just allude to dust, Or speak of number one, “I beg you’ll not--don’t talk of shot, I cannot bear a gun!”

Percussion cap I dare not snap, I may not mention Hall, Or raise my voice for Mr. Joyce, His wadding to recall; At Hawker’s book I must not look, All shooting I must shun, Or else--“It’s hard, you’ve no regard, I cannot bear a gun!”

The very dress I wear no less Must suit her timid mind, A blue or black must clothe my back, With swallow-tails behind; By fustian, jean, or velveteen, Her nerves are overdone: “Oh do not, John, put gaiters on, I cannot bear a gun!”

E’en little James she snubs, and blames His Liliputian train, Two inches each from mouth to breach, And charged with half a grain-- His crackers stopp’d, his squibbing dropp’d. He has no fiery fun, And all thro’ her “How dare you, Sir? I cannot bear a gun!”

[Illustration: “JAMES’S POWDER.”]

Yet Major Flint,--the Devil’s in’t! May talk from morn to night, Of springing mines, and twelves and nines, And volleys left and right, Of voltigeurs and tirailleurs, And bullets by the ton: She never dies of fright, or cries “I cannot bear a gun!”

It stirs my bile to see her smile At all his bang and whiz, But if I talk of morning walk, And shots as good as his, I must not name the fallen game: As soon as I’ve begun, She’s in her pout, and crying out, “I cannot bear a gun!”

Yet, underneath the rose, her teeth Are false, to match her tongue: Grouse, partridge, hares, she never spares, Or pheasants, old or young-- On widgeon, teal, she makes a meal, And yet objects to none: “What have I got, it’s full of shot! I cannot bear a gun!”

At pigeon-pie she is not shy, Her taste it never shocks, Though they should be from Battersea, So famous for blue rocks; Yet when I bring the very thing My marksmanship has won, She cries “Lock up that horrid cup, I cannot bear a gun!”

Like fool and dunce I got her once A box at Drury Lane, And by her side I felt a pride I ne’er shall feel again: To read the bill it made her ill, And this excuse she spun, “Der Freyschütz, oh, seven shots; you know, I cannot bear a gun!”

Yet at a hint from Major Flint, Her very hands she rubs, And quickly drest in all her best, Is off to Wormwood Scrubbs. The whole review she sits it through, With noise enough to stun, And never winks, or even thinks, “I cannot bear a gun!”

[Illustration: WOOLWICH WARREN.]

She thus may blind the Major’s mind In mock-heroic strife, But let a bout at war break out, And where’s the soldier’s wife, To take his kit and march a bit Beneath a broiling sun? Or will she cry, “My dear, good-bye, I cannot bear a gun?”

If thus she doats on army coats, And regimental cuffs, The yeomanry might surely be Secure from her rebuffs; But when I don my trappings on, To follow Captain Dunn, My carbine’s gleam provokes a scream, “I cannot bear a gun.”

It can’t be minced, I’m quite convinced, All girls are full of flam, Their feelings fine, and feminine, Are nothing else but sham; On all their tricks I need not fix, I’ll only mention one, How many a Miss will tell you this, “I cannot bear a gun!”

TRIMMER’S EXERCISE, FOR THE USE OF CHILDREN.

Here, come, Master Timothy Todd, Before we have done you’ll look grimmer, You’ve been spelling some time for the rod, And your jacket shall know I’m a Trimmer.

You don’t know your A from your B, So backward you are in your Primer; Don’t kneel--you shall go on _my_ knee, For I’ll have you to know I’m a Trimmer.

This morning you hinder’d the cook, By melting your dumps in the skimmer; Instead of attending your book,-- But I’ll have you to know I’m a Trimmer.

To-day, too, you went to the pond, And bathed, though you are not a swimmer: And with parents so doting and fond-- But I’ll have you to know I’m a Trimmer.

After dinner you went to the wine, And help’d yourself--yes, to a brimmer; You couldn’t walk straight in a line, But I’ll make you to know I’m a Trimmer.

[Illustration: FANCY PORTRAIT--MRS. TRIMMER.]

You kick little Tomkins about, Because he is slighter and slimmer; Are the weak to be thump’d by the stout? But I’ll have you to know I’m a Trimmer.

Then you have a sly pilfering trick, Your school-fellows call you the nimmer,-- I will cut to the bone if you kick! For I’ll have you to know I’m a Trimmer.

To-day you made game at my back: You think that my eyes are grown dimmer, But I watch’d you, I’ve got a sly knack! And I’ll have you to know I’m a Trimmer.

Don’t think that my temper is hot, It’s never beyond a slow simmer; I’ll teach you to call me Dame Trot, But I’ll have you to know I’m a Trimmer.

Miss Edgeworth, or Mrs. Chapone, Might melt to behold your tears glimmer; Mrs. Barbauld would let you alone, But I’ll have you to know I’m a Trimmer.

[Illustration: LITTLE JACK AND HIS TRIMMER.]

SOME ACCOUNT OF WILLIAM WHISTON.

“That boy is the brother of Pam----.”--JOSEPH ANDREWS.

“WILLIAM certainly _is_ fond of whist!”

This was an admission drawn, or extracted, as Cartwright would say, like a double tooth from the mouth of William’s mother; an amiable and excellent lady, who ever reluctantly confessed foibles in her family, and invariably endeavoured to exhibit to the world the sunny side of her children.

There can be no possibility of doubt that William _was_ fond of whist. He doted on it. Whist was his first passion--his first love; and in whist he experienced no disappointment. The two were made for each other.

[Illustration: CARDY MUMS.]

William was one of a large bunch of children, and he never grew up. On his seventh birthday a relation gave him a miniature pack of cards, and made him a whist-player for life. Our bias dates much earlier than some natural philosophers suppose. I remember William, a mere child, being one day William of Orange, and objecting to a St. Michael’s because it had no pips.

At school he was a total failure; except in reckoning the odd tricks. He counted nothing by honours, and the schoolmaster said of his head what he has since said occasionally of his hand that “it held literally nothing.”

At sixteen, after a long maternal debate between the black and red suits, William was articled to an attorney: but instead of becoming a respectable land-shark, he played double-dummy with the Common-Law Clerk, and was discharged on the 6th of November. The principal remonstrated with him on a breach of duty, and William imprudently answered that he was aware of his duty, like the ace of spades. Mr. Bitem immediately banged the door against him, and William, for the first time in his life--to use his own expression, “got a slam.”

William having served his time, and, as he calls it, followed suit for five years, was admitted as an attorney, and began to play at that finessing game, the Law. _Short-hand_ he still studied and practised; though more in parlours than in court.

William at one period admired Miss Hunt, or Miss Creswick, or Miss Hardy, or Miss Reynolds; a daughter of one of the great card-makers, I forget which--and he cut for partners, but without “getting the Lady.” His own explanation was that he “_was discarded_.” He then paid his addresses to a Scotch girl, a Miss MacNab, but she professed religious scruples about cards, and he _revoked_. I have heard it said that she expected to match higher; indeed William used to say she “looked over his hand.”

William is short, and likes shorts. He likes nothing of _longs_, but the St. John of them: and he only takes to _him_, because that saint is partial to a _rubber_. Whist seems to influence his face as well as form; it is like a knave of clubs. I sometimes fancy whist could not go on without William, and certainly William could not go on without whist. His whole conversation, except on cards, is wool-gathering; and on that subject is like wool--carded. He “speaks by the card,” and never gives equivocation a chance. At the Olympic once he had a quarrel with a gentleman about _the lead_ of Madame Vestris or Miss Sydney: he was required to give his card, and he gave the “Deuce of Hearts.” This was what he termed “calling out.”

Of late years William only goes out like a bad rushlight, earlyish of a night, and quits every table that is not covered with green baize with absolute disgust. The fairies love by night to “_gambol_ on the _green_,” and so does William, and he is constantly humming with great gusto,

“Come unto these yellow sands, _And then take hands_.”

The only verses, by the way, he ever got by heart. He never cared to play much with the Muses. They stick, he used to say, at Nine.

William can sit longer--drink less--say as little--pay or receive as much--shuffle as well--and cut as deeply as any man on earth. You may leave him safely after dinner, and catch him at breakfast time without alteration of attitude or look. He is a small statue erected in honour of whist, and like Eloquence, “holds his hand well up.” He is content to ring the changes on thirteen cards a long Midsummer night; for he does not _play_ at cards--he _works_ at them, and considering the returns, for very low wages. William never was particularly lucky; but he bears the twos and threes with as much equanimity as any one, and seems, horticulturally speaking, to have grafted Patience upon Whist. I do not know whether it is the family motto, but he has upon his seal--with the great Mogul for a crest--the inscription of “Packs in Bello.”

William is now getting old (nearly fifty-two), with an asthma; which he says makes him rather “weak in trumps.” He is preparing himself accordingly to “take down his score,” and has made his will, bequeathing all he has or has not, to a whist club. His funeral he directs to be quite private, and his gravestone a plain one, and especially “that there be no cherubims carved thereon, forasmuch,”--says this characteristic document, “that they never hold Honours.”

[Illustration: A DOUBLE AT LONG’S.]

THE FOX AND THE HEN.

A FABLE.

Speaking within _compass_, as to fabulousness I prefer _Southcote_ to _Northcote_.--PIGROGROMITUS.

ONE day, or night, no matter where or when, Sly Reynard, like a foot-pad, laid his pad Right on the body of a speckled Hen, Determined upon taking all she had; And like a very bibber at his bottle, Began to draw the claret from her throttle; Of course it put her in a pretty pucker. And with a scream as high As she could cry, She called for help--she had enough of sucker.

Dame Partlet’s scream Waked, luckily, the house-dog from his dream, And with a savage growl In answer to the fowl, He bounded forth against the prowling sinner. And, uninvited, came to the Fox Dinner.

[Illustration: NATIVES OF THE SILLY ISLANDS.]

Sly Reynard, heedful of the coming doom, Thought, self-deceived, He should not be perceived, Hiding his _brush_ within a neighbouring _broom_; But quite unconscious of a Poacher’s snare, And caught in copper noose, And looking like a goose, Found that his fate “had hung upon a _hare_;” His tricks and turns were rendered of no use to him, And, worst of all, he saw old surly Tray Coming to play Tray-Deuce with him.

Tray, an old Mastiff bred at Dunstable, Under his Master, a most special constable, Instead of killing Reynard in a fury, Seized him for legal trial by a Jury; But Juries--Æsop was a sheriff then-- Consisted of twelve Brutes and not of Men.

But first the Elephant sat on the body-- I mean the Hen--and proved that she was dead, To the veriest fool’s head Of the Booby and the Noddy.

Accordingly, the Stork brought in a bill Quite true enough to kill; And then the Owl was call’d--for mark, The Owl can witness in the dark. To make the evidence more plain, The Lynx connected all the chain. In short there was no quirk or quibble At which a legal Rat could nibble; The Culprit was as far beyond hope’s bounds, As if the Jury had been _packed_--of hounds.

Reynard, however, at the utmost nick, Is seldom quite devoid of shift and trick; Accordingly our cunning Fox, Through certain influence, obscurely channel’d, A friendly Camel got into the box, When ’gainst his life the Jury was impanel’d.

Now, in the Silly Isles such is the law, If Jurors should withdraw, They are to have no eating and no drinking, Till all are starved into one way of thinking.

Thus Reynard’s Jurors, who could not agree, Were lock’d up strictly, without bit or mummock, Till every beast that only had _one_ stomach, Bent to the Camel who was blest with _three_.

To do them justice, they debated From four till ten, while dinner waited When thirst and hunger got the upper, And each inclined to mercy, and hot supper: “Not guilty” was the word, and Master Fox Was freed to murder other hens and cocks.

MORAL.

What moral greets us by this tale’s assistance But that the Solon is a sorry Solon, Who makes the full stop of a Man’s existence Depend upon a _Colon_?

[Illustration: PRO BONO PUBLICO.]

THE COMET.

AN ASTRONOMICAL ANECDOTE.

“I cannot fill up a blank better than with a short history of this self-same _Star_ling.”--STERNE’S SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.

AMONGST professors of astronomy, Adepts in the celestial economy, The name of H*******l’s very often cited, And justly so, for he is hand and glove With ev’ry bright intelligence above; Indeed, it was his custom so to stop, Watching the stars upon the house’s top, That once upon a time he got be-knighted.

In his observatory thus coquetting With Venus--or with Juno gone astray, All sublunary matters quite forgetting In his flirtations with the winking stars, Acting the spy--it might be upon Mars-- A new André; Or, like a Tom of Coventry, sly peeping, At Dian sleeping; Or ogling thro’ his glass Some heavenly lass Tripping with pails along the Milky Way; Or looking at that Wain of Charles the Martyrs:-- Thus he was sitting, watchman of the sky, When lo! a something with a tail of flame Made him exclaim, “_My_ stars!”--he always put that stress on _my_-- “_My_ stars and garters!” “A comet, sure as I’m alive! A noble one as I should wish to view; It can’t be Halley’s though, _that_ is not due Till eighteen thirty-five. Magnificent!--how fine his fiery trail! Zounds! ’tis a pity, though he comes unsought-- Unask’d--unreckon’d,--in no human thought-- He ought--he ought--he ought To have been caught With scientific salt upon his tail!”

[Illustration: “POSSE COMETATIS.”]

“I look’d no more for it, I do declare, Than the Great Bear! As sure as Tycho Brahe is dead, It really enter’d in my head No more than Berenice’s Hair!”

Thus musing, Heaven’s Grand Inquisitor Sat gazing on the uninvited visitor Till John, the serving-man, came to the upper Regions, with “Please your Honour, come to supper.”

“Supper! Good John, to-night I shall not sup Except on that phenomenon--look up!” “Not sup!” cried John, thinking with consternation That supping on a _star_ must be _star_vation, Or ev’n to batten On Ignes Fatui would never fatten, His visage seem’d to say,--that very odd is,-- But still his master the same tune ran on, “I can’t come down,--go to the parlour, John, And say I’m supping with the heavenly bodies.”

“The heavenly bodies!” echoed John, “Ahem!” His mind still full of famishing alarms, “’Zooks, if your Honour sups with _them_, In helping, somebody must make long arms!” He thought his master’s stomach was in danger, But still in the same tone replied the Knight, “Go down, John, go, I have no appetite; Say I’m engaged with a celestial stranger.”-- Quoth John, not much au fait in such affairs, “Wouldn’t the stranger take a bit down stairs?”

“No,” said the master, smiling, and no wonder, At such a blunder, “The stranger is not quite the thing you think, He wants no meat or drink, And one may doubt quite reasonably whether He has a mouth, Seeing his head and tail are joined together. Behold him,--there he is, John, in the South.” John look’d up with his portentous eyes, Each rolling like a marble in its socket. At last the fiery tad-pole spies, And, full of Vauxhall reminiscence, cries, “A rare good rocket!”

“A what! A rocket, John! Far from it! What you behold, John, is a comet; One of those most eccentric things That in all ages Have puzzled sages And frighten’d kings; With fear of change that flaming meteor, John, Perplexes sovereigns, throughout its range”-- “Do he?” cried John; “Well, let him flare on, _I_ haven’t got no sovereigns to change!”

[Illustration: THE HARVEST MOON.]

LITERARY REMINISCENCES.

No. III.

MY first acquaintance with the press--a memorable event in an author’s experience--took place in Scotland. Amongst the temporary sojourners at our boarding-house, there came a legal antiquarian who had been sent for from Edinburgh, expressly to make some unprofitable researches amongst the mustiest of the civic records. It was my humour to think, that in Political as well as Domestic Economy, it must be better to sweep the Present than to dust the Past; and certain new brooms were recommended to the Town Council in a quizzing letter, which the then editor of the Dundee Advertiser or Chronicle, thought fit to favour with a prominent place in his columns. “’Tis pleasant sure,” sings Lord Byron, “to see one’s self in print,” and according to the popular notion I ought to have been quite up in my stirrups, if not standing on the saddle, at thus seeing myself, for the first strange time, set up in type. Memory recalls, however, but a very moderate share of exaltation, which was totally eclipsed, moreover, by the exuberant transports of an accessory before the fact, whom, methinks, I still see in my mind’s eye, rushing out of the printing-office with the wet sheet steaming in his hand, and fluttering all along the High Street, to announce breathlessly that “we were in.” But G. was an indifferent scholar, even in English, and therefore thought the more highly of this literary feat. It was this defective education, and the want of a proper vent for his abundant love nonsense in prose or verse, that probably led to the wound he subsequently inflicted on his own throat, but which was luckily remedied by “a stitch in time.” The failure of a tragedy is very apt to produce something like a comedy, and few afterpieces have amused me more than the behaviour of this Amicus Redivivus, when, thus dramatising the saying of “cut and come again,” he made what ought to have been a posthumous appearance amongst his friends. In fact, and he was ludicrously alive to it, he had placed himself for all his supplementary days in a false position. Like the old man in the fable, after formally calling upon Death to execute a general release, he had quietly resumed his fardel, which he bore about, with exactly the uneasy ridiculous air of a fine-would be gentleman, who is sensitively conscious that he is carrying a bundle. For the sake of our native sentimentalists who profess dying for love, as well as the foreign romanticists who affect a love for dying, it may not be amiss to give a slight sketch of the bearing of a traveller who had gone through half the journey. I had been absent some months, and was consequently ignorant of the affair, when lo! on my return to the town, the very first person who accosted me in the market-place was our felo-de-se; and truly, no Bashful Man, “with all his blushing honours thick upon him,” in the presence of a damp stranger, could have been more divertingly sheepish, and awkwardly backward in coming forward as to manner and address. Indeed, something or the embarrassment of a fresh introduction might naturally be felt by an individual, thus beginning again, as the lawyers say, _de novo_, and renewing ties he had virtually cast off. The guilty hand was as dubiously extended to me as if it had been a dyer’s,--its fellow meanwhile performing sundry involuntary motions and manipulations about his cravat, as if nervously mistrusting the correctness of the ties or the stability of a buckle. As for his face, there was a foolish, deprecatory smile upon it that would have puzzled the pencil of Wilkie; and even Liston himself could scarcely have parodied the indescribable croak with which, conscious of an unlucky notoriety, he inquired “if I had heard”--here, a short husky cough--“of anything particular?”

“Not a word,” was the answer.

“Then you don’t know”(--more fidgeting about the neck, the smile rather sillier, the voice more guttural, and the cough worse than ever)--“then you don’t know”--but, like Macbeth’s amen, the confession literally stuck in the culprit’s throat; and I was left to learn, an hour afterwards, and from another source, that “Jemmy G*** had _fought a duel with himself_, and cut his own weazand, about a lady.”

For my own part, with the above figure, and all its foolish features vividly imprinted on my memory, I do not think that I could ever seriously attempt “what Cato did, and Addison approved,” in my own person. On the contrary, it seems to me that the English moralist gave but an Irish illustration of “a brave man struggling with the storms of fate,” by representing him as wilfully scuttling his own hold, and going at once to the bottom. As for the Censor, he plainly laid himself open to censure, when he used a naked sword as a stomachic--a very sorry way, by the way, when weary of conjectures, of enjoying the benefit of the doubt, and for which, were I tasked to select an inscription for his cenotaph, it should be the exclamation of Thisby, in the Midsummer Night’s Dream--

“This is old Ninny’s tomb.”

_Mais revenons à nos moutons_, as the wolf said to her cubs. The reception of my letter in the Dublin Newspaper encouraged me to forward a contribution to the Dundee Magazine, the Editor of which was kind enough, as Winifred Jenkins says, to “wrap my bit of nonsense under his Honour’s Kiver,” without charging anything for its insertion. Here was success sufficient to turn a young author at once into “a scribbling miller,” and make him sell himself, body and soul, after the German fashion, to that minor Mephistopheles, the Printer’s Devil! Nevertheless, it was not till years afterwards, and the lapse of term equal to an ordinary apprenticeship, that the Imp in question became really my Familiar. In the meantime, I continued to compose occasionally, and, like the literary performances of Mr. Weller Senior, my lucubrations were generally committed to paper, not in what is commonly called written hand, but an imitation of print. Such a course hints suspiciously of type and antetype, and a longing eye to the Row, whereas, it was adopted simply to make the reading more easy, and thus enable me the more readily to form a judgment of the effect of my little efforts. It is more difficult than may be supposed to decide on the value of a work in MS., and especially when the handwriting presents only a swell mob of bad characters, that must be severally examined and re-examined to arrive at the merits or demerits of the case. Print settles it, as Coleridge used to say; and to be candid, I have more than once reversed, or greatly modified a previous verdict, on seeing a rough proof from the press. But, as Editors too well know, it is next to impossible to retain the tune of a stanza, or the drift of an argument, whilst the mind has to scramble through a patch of scribble scrabble, as stiff as a gorse cover. The beauties of the piece will as naturally appear to disadvantage through such a medium as the features of a pretty woman through a bad pane of glass; and without doubt, many a tolerable article has been consigned hand over head to the Balaam Box for want of a fair copy. Wherefore, O ye Poets and Prosers, who aspire to write in Miscellanies, and above all, O ye palpitating Untried, who meditate the offer of your maiden essays to established periodicals, take care, pray ye take care, to cultivate a good, plain, bold, round text. Set up Tomkins as well as Pope or Dryden for a model, and have an eye to your pothooks. Some persons hold that the best writers are those who write the best hands, and I have known the conductor of a magazine to be converted by a crabbed MS. to the same opinion. Of all things, therefore, be legible; and to that end, practise in penmanship. If you have never learned, take six lessons of Mr. Carstairs. Be sure to buy the best paper, the best ink, the best pens, and then sit down and do the best you can; as the schoolboys do--put out your tongue, and take pains. So shall ye haply escape the rash rejection of a jaded editor; so, having got in your hand, it is possible that your head may follow; and so, last not least, ye may fortunately avert those awful mistakes of the press which sometimes ruin a poet’s sublimest effusion, by pantomimically transforming his roses into noses, his angels into angles, and all his happiness into pappiness.

THE OCEAN.

CONSIDERED PER SE.

“A man whom both the waters and the wind, in that vast tennis-court have made the ball for them to play upon, entreats you pity him.”--PERICLES.

IT was during a voyage to Margate, many summers ago--before steam _was_--that the little episode occurred which I am going to relate, by way of text, to some observations on the ocean.

The importance of the Mariner’s Compass to the sailor is as well known universally as the utility of the little one-eyed instrument, for which Whitechapel is so famous, to the tailor: but its mode of action, and the manner of its application, must be far less generally understood. Whether the plougher of the deep mends his checked shirts with the Needle, or sews the canvas into sails with it, or uses it, after a battle, to extract the splinters from his hard tarry hand, are speculations likely enough to be entertained by the plougher of the land; at least by those clod-_compelling_ turners of the furrows, mid-county born and bred, who, despite of their predilection for such naval ballads as Tom Bowling and Jack Junk, have never set their simple eyes on ship or sailor, or the sea which they subdue. To many Londoners even, who jostle the tar in the streets, and behold tier after tier of masted vessels from their lower Bridge,--who have perchance stood and stared at the Compass itself in some shop-window of Leadenhall, or the still more maritime Minories, the Card with its _Card_-inal Points, is an undeciphered hieroglyphic. It did not violently surprise me, therefore, to see a simple-looking creature of this latter class go and take a long wondering look into the binnacle, like a child peeping at the tortoise in an Italian’s show-box; and doubtless, to his callow apprehension, the veering Guide was as much a thing of life and instinct as the outlandish reptile to the urchin. It was not until after a tedious poring at it--long enough, if there were any truth in animal magnetism, for the Needle and the Man to have understood one another by mutual sympathy--that the wonderer made up to the steersman, and begged for an elucidation of the marine mystery. Fortunately for the querist, the helmsman, along with all the characteristic good-nature of his fraternity, had none of the coyness, as to the secrets of the craft, with which the ripe sailor is apt to treat the raw voyager; perhaps not without cause. The nautical truths, masonic, may deserve to be obtained by degrees of probation: in the present case the unreserved communication of occult knowledge led to anything but a satisfactory result. No one could take more pains--call them pleasures rather--than the honest man at the wheel, to explain the use and properties of the Compass: he boxed it again and again for the benefit of the gaping neophyte; a benevolent smile, and the twinkling of his blue eyes, declaring that he felt amply repaid by the supposed proficiency of his pupil,--when, all of a sudden, his well-earned pride was dashed to the deck by the pupil’s turning away on his heel, with a hunch of his shoulders, a blank look, and a dissatisfied grunt, exclaiming,

“Well, arter all, I don’t see how the turning round of that ’ere little needle can move about the rudder!”

I should have been no Christian man, but a brute beast, had I not sympathised with the feelings of the steersman. Contempt took the lead. All “the dismal hiss of universal scorn,” ascribed to Milton’s devils, seemed condensed into his whistle. Next came Resentment, wishing back the Cockney-Tailor to his shop-board, sitting on his own needle--and then came Pity, inducing the milder reflection,

“I wonder the poor gentleman’s friends allows him to go about by himself!”

I doubt whether the force of contempt and pity could further go: and yet--to confess a truth--shall I?--dare I?--say, that to the intense sea-ignorance which incurred the scorn, anger, and compassion of our Palinurus, I look back with ENVY?

Methinks, every British Heart of Oak recoils, and every British head of the same material shakes itself, at such an avowal! Every lip that ever helped to chorus Rule Britannia, curls itself up--noses which never sniffed sea-weed tacitly snub me,--eyes which never glimpsed the ocean avert themselves in disgust. I am bespattered with salt-water oaths and tobacco-juice. The Thames Yacht Clubs, on the strength of having learned to bellow “Elm a-lee!”--“Ard-hup!” and “Oist-away!” agree to run me down. The very clerks of the Navy Pay Office propose to seize me up to the dingy fresh-water Neptune in their fore-court. Captain Basil Hall swears, on his best anchor-button, to keel-haul me daily, for six months, in “the element which never tires.” The last of the Dibdins asks for my card. Campbell flares up with the “Meteor Flag of England,” and vows to knock me down with its staff;--nay, our Sailor King himself repudiates me, as a subject, for not relishing his _High Seas_!

It can’t be helped. When one is confessing, there is no place under the sun like the Ocean for “making a clean breast of it:”--and am not I here staggering and tumbling--soberly tipsy--aboard a lubberly Dutch-built hull, becalmed in a heavy swell--dreaming, when I can sleep, that I am a barrel-churn, revolving with my inside full of half-turned cream or incipient butter;--and finding, when I awake, that dreams do not go so altogether by contraries?

If this perpetual motion hold, the cargo of cheeses we shipped at Dordrecht, flat as single Glo’sters, will be delivered in London spherical as bowls! The Jung Vrouw herself, before she reaches the Nore, will be a washing-tub! I have doubts whether the salt beef, produced at this day’s luncheon, was, originally, a round. The leathern conveniency that I brought aboard, a fair and square trunk, is already almost a portmanteau;--and, what is worse, every several morsel I have swallowed this blessed day without bliss, seems rolling itself into a bolus or a pill,--whether of opium or ipecacuanha, I leave you to divine. If the calm should continue, I may become--who knows?--a Ball myself--a Master Biffin! Every half-hour, on feeling my knees and elbows, I find joints by this friction losing some of their asperities, and getting obtuser. A little more, and I shan’t have a good point about me!

Is such as this a season to be squeamishly retentive in delivering one’s sentiments? Or, rather, is not open candour inevitable; seeing that you cannot have any reserve even with the merest stranger? It is impossible to keep your feelings to yourself. In spite, then, of Britannia, the Yacht Club, the Navy Pay,--of Dibdin, Campbell, and Basil Hall,--of the Lords of the Admiralty, with Portsmouth, Devonport, and Gosport, to boot--in spite of the Royal William, nay, in spite of my very self, the truth will out!--not sneaking out, or stepping out, or backing out, but bolting out, in a plain unequivocal straightforward style. I DO envy the simple man, with his sheer ignorance about rudders and compasses. I _do_ detest and abominate the ocean--or to phrase it more mildly--the sea and I cannot agree with each other--there is sure to be falling-out between us--we can never be bosom friends.

The Marine Society must despise me for it; my Elder Brethren of the Trinity House will long to dispose of me as Joseph was made _away with_ by _his_ elder Brethren; Boatswain Smith will preach, write Tracts and distribute them, against me: the Greenwich Pensioners will bind themselves by a round robin to kick me with me with their knottiest legs; Long Tom Coffin himself will be for fetching me, with a shroud in one hand, and a dead-light in the other; but I cannot eat my words.

[Illustration: SEE-SAW.]

It is no time, when you cannot keep your legs, to “stand bandying compliments with your sovereign,” that is, Neptune. If he were present at this moment, in this cabin, I would tell him, from this my seat on its floor, that he might very much improve his paternal estate, to wit, by levelling, and still more by draining it. I would flatly say to him, lying flat on my face as it now happens, that a few little gravel walks, merely across and across it, would be of rare advantage both for show and use. For ’tis a sorry pleasure-garden that is all fish-pond; and, finally, I would broadly hint to him, from the broad of my back, as I am at this present---- But this is bullying Taurus behind his back. There is no sea-god present, only the Skipper. How he skips in such weather, give him his pick of all the ropes in the ship, is a miracle I would fain see ere I believe in it. For my own part I cannot even step deliberately over a thread. Perhaps, without going too curiously into the Doctrine of Predestination, as regards the soul, it may hold good as concerns the body. Undoubtedly there be some men born to sit fast upon horses; others to fall off therefrom as if they had soaped saddles. Some to slide and skate upon the ice; others only to slip, straddle, and sprawl upon it. Some to walk, or at least waddle, on ships’ decks; others to flop, flounder, wallow, and grovel thereon. That is my destiny. None can be more safe on the Serpentine, or sure in the saddle;--but Fate, long before my great-great-great-grandfather was put to his feet, forbade me sea-legs. An average pedestrian on land, on the caulked plank I am a born cripple, hopeless of cure. Put me apprentice to the Goodwin, or the Dudgeon Light, at the end of my term you shall find me as unsafe on my soles as when I first paid my footing. Even now, whilst Hans Vandergroot and his crew are comfortably promenading, I rock and totter, balancing one end against the other, like a great rickety babe, until, after some posturing and scrambling, I trip up over nothing, and fall flat on everything. An earthquake in London, when its streets are what is called greasy, could not more puzzle my centre of gravity; if, indeed, I was not born a mathematical monster, devoid of that material point!

By way of clincher, Fate, who never does things by halves, whilst foredooming me incapable of standing my ground at sea, has also denied me the power of settling it. A camp-stool is sure to decamp with me; a chair, as if it stood on Siberian ice, suddenly throws itself on its back, and behold me in an extempore sledge! Barrels roll from under me; coils of rope shuffle me off. Even on the plain bare hard deck, or cabin floor, I throw demi-summersets, as if I had been returned to Parliament to represent the Antipodes by sitting on the back of my head.

To complete the Sea Curse,--there are three Fates, and each had a boon for me at my birth--it was ordained that, like the great Nelson, I should never sail from fresh water into salt, without knowing it by a general rising and commotion, which might be called figuratively, a Mutiny at the Nore.

Like the standing and sitting infirmity, it is incurable. On my voyage outwards I tried every popular recipe; the hard ones first, to wit, raw carrots, raw onions, sailors’ biscuit with Dutch cheese, hard-boiled eggs, hard dumplings, raw stockfish. Next the easy ones: namely, cream cheese, Welsh rabbits, maccaroni, very hasty pudding, and insupportable soup. Then the neutrals: such as chewed blotting-paper, dry oatmeal, pounded egg-shells, scraped chalk, and unbaked dough.

To wash these down, I took, by prescription, tea without milk, coffee without sugar, bark without wine, water without brandy; and these formulæ all failing, I then tried them, as witches pray, backwards; brandy without water, wine without bark, and so forth. The experimental combinations followed; rum and milk, and mustard; eggs and wine, and camomile tea; gin and beer, and vinegar; sea-water and salad-oil, mulled, with sugar and nutmeg. Of which last, I drank by advice most prodigiously, the Doctors of the Marine College dispensing always on the Homœopathic principle, that a large dose of anything, whereof a little would set you wrong on the land, will set you right on the sea.

I need hardly say that, with my predisposed _necessitarian_ viscera, all these infallible remedies failed of any effect, except to aggravate my case. Nothing short of liquid lead, maybe, or potable plaster of Paris, would have proved a settler.

Happy the man who hath never been driven in his despair to test, detest, invoke, evoke, swallow, and unswallow, such drugs and draughts of the naval Pharmacopœia! Thrice happy civic simpleton who hath never learned how the rudder revolveth, at the risk of _turning round_ himself!

Vandergroot is visibly in course of transformation. At every visit to the cabin he looks more and more like a Dutch-pin. He talks to me roundly, and gets blunter and blunter! The last time I felt, I had no small to my back. If I may guess at my own figure, it is now about an oval. I must look like one of Leda’s babies, just emerged, with their insignificant buds of legs and arms, from the egg! From an oval to a circle is but a step. Heaven help me when I get landed, round and sound, as they say of cherries! How shall I get home--how get up--(there will be a short way down)--mine own stairs? How shall I sit? Instead of my old library chair, I must borrow its three-legged stool of the terrestrial globe!

Either my head swims, or the cabin is getting circular! I shall roll about in it like a bolus in its box! If I am not merely giddy, I am already as spherical as the earth; a little flatted, or so, that is, towards the poles. What a horrible rough calm! I will down on my knees, if I have knees, and with clasped hands, if hands remain to me, pray, beg, and supplicate for a dismal storm to batter me into shape again, though it be but nine-bobble-square!

I get more and more candid and communicative every moment. I can keep nothing to myself: you shall have my whole heart. I abhor, loathe, execrate, the sea! If I could throw up my hat, my cry would be “Land for ever!” A fico for Tom Tough! Down with Duncan Howe, and Jervis! No Dibdin!

If ever I get ashore, able to chalk upon a wall, you shall read--Ask for Stoke Pogis! Try Lupton Parva! If ever I get to a dry desk again, to write verse upon,--and the poetry of the ocean is all on the land, its prose only upon the sea, you shall have a rare new melody, published by Power, to some such strain as this:--

The sea! the D----! The terrible horrible sea! The stormy, tumbling, Qualmy-jumbling, Spirit-humbling, Shingle-stumbling, Sea-weed fumbling, Wearing, crumbling, Mischief-mumbling, Growling, grumbling, Like thunder far off rumbling-- --

That last line halteth in its feet, as well it may, when the poet cannot keep his legs. Oh! it is well for Cornwall, born perchance “with one foot on sea and one foot on shore” at the Land’s End,--I have seen a picture of it by Turner, a bare bleak rocky promontory, with some nineteen gulls and cormorants sitting thereon, each with its tail turned contemptuously towards the barren granite, feldspar, and like sordid soils which there represent land.--It is well enough for him to chaunt laudations of the briny element, and cry up those amphibia, his first cousins almost, the Nereids and Tritons. Or it may become those others, born in a berth, and christened in brine, with Neptune for sponsor, to sing slightingly of the dry ground, on which they cannot claim even a parish. But my nativity was otherwise cast--I am a grass lamb, yeaned on the green sward--oh sweet sweet sweet Cropton-le-Moor, down in dear dear Wiltshire!

[Illustration: “HOW ARE YOU OFF FOR MONEY?”

“WHY I’M OFF WITH ALL MY MASTER’S.”]

That pastoral reminiscence hath made me worse. It has given me an appetite--for acres. Methinks I yearn and long and crave for nice clay, delicious mould, and crisp pebbles, in a paroxysm of that strange bulimy that attacks the African Dirt Eater. Something of Nebuchadnezzar’s grazing propensity comes along with it. Gracious Heaven! can it be possible that, after having been battered and shaken out of all shape,--a mere mass of living flesh, like the unlicked ursine cub,--this same Circean Jung Vrouw has taken it into her figure-head to beat, bang, bump, and rumbledy-thump me into another form, a horse, a ram, or a brindled bull!

Thrice brute and beast-hyæna! Were-wolf! Dragon! horned Devil! that thou wast, my Land-steward, Peter Stuckey! after counselling me before thy last audit to abate my rents, to volunteer to reduce them thyself by absconding, across sea, with the whole receipt! Thrice Soland goose, booby, noddy, sea-calf, land-donkey, and loggerhead turtle was I, thus impoverished, instead of economising, to pursue thee on an element where I cannot control my out-goings!

Donner and Blitzen! what a crash! my rash prayer was heard: there is a storm coming--as the Powers proposed to storm Angiers in King John’s days--from all the four quarters at once! I must needs turn in: but how vilely this bed is made with the foot two yards higher than the head! No, the head is highest--perpendicular. I designed to lie down, and here I am standing bolt erect on my heels--no, on my head. It must be getting cold: the very trunks, stools and tables are making a move towards the stove--nay, now we are in some sudden peril, for they are all doing their best to rush up the cabin-stair. Whew--that sea last shipped must needs have put all the Dutchmen’s pipes out. Another plunge; and a flood of brine soaks me through, shirt, sheet, and blankets. There is no washing put out here, I perceive; ’tis all done at home. What a complex, chaotic motion,--the ship tosses and flings like a wild desert-born horse, that is trying to rear, kick up behind, turn round and round, and roll on his back at one and the same moment. This is no Dutch ship, but a Dutch fair--with the drums, gongs, speaking-trumpets, and other discords, all braying together; and I am on the rocking-horse, the round-about, in the up-and-down, and each of the swings, all at once! Another crash! The Jung Vrouw is bereaved of her little one, alias the long-boat. How kind of Vandergroot to come down to tell me of it, direct through the sky-light, instead of going round by the stair! How kind of that table, lying on its back, to catch him in its legs! Angels of grace be near us! He tells me, as he sways up and down, partly in High, partly in Low Dutch, that the Jung Vrouw herself is washed overboard! But no--I misconstrued him. ’Tis only her great ruddy staring figure-head--which the blundering Holland shipwrights had stuck astern, on the crown of the tiller--that is gone adrift. Oh how I wish from my soul of souls that I could see the Commodore of the Thames Yachts now pulling, within hail, in the Wenus! Or, the last Dibdin taking a chair--or the chair taking him--in this cabin! Or, Campbell essaying to write down a new sea-song on yon topsy-turvy table! And oh! to behold the author of “The deep deep Sea” sitting on the poop, singing to that floating Young Woman’s head and bust, taken by mistake for a mermaid’s!

Another shout. Pieter Pietersoon, in heaving the lead, hath chucked himself in along with it! I do not wonder; he heaveth after my own fashion, by wholesale. Have I not within the last two hours rejected, discharged, and utterly cast from me in disgust, the whole ocean, nay all the oceans, German, Atlantic, Pacific--the Arctic last, its solid calms, the next best things to Terra Firma, not so violently disagreeing with me as the rest. And do I not know and feel that I am now about to give up Neptune, trident and all, with the whole salt-water mythology? I warrant, ere ten minutes to come, there shall not remain within me so much as a syren’s mirror, or her tortoise-shell comb:--not one solitary Triton will be left on my stomach. Some unsavoury odour about the cabin--marvellously like the smell of oil paint--hath just given me a new turn, by conjuring up all the nauseous pictures of marine allegories, which even on steady dry land, used to stir and provoke my spleen.

Oh! that they were all here, President, R.A., and A.R.A., in a string, climbing after me up this perilous slippery stair, to the more perilous slippery deck, there to crawl on all-fours to the ship’s side, and clinging like cats or monkeys to the quarter boards, take a trembling peep at what Vandergroot calls “den wild zee!” What an awful sight! The tempest-tost sky is as troubled as the ocean: whilst betwixt the jagged base of the low black cloud, and the still jaggeder crest of the sea, the red angry lightning restlessly darts to and fro, as if in search of whatever presuming mortal dares fare between them! Oh tell me, Mister Elias Martin--if you a’nt dead--is the tossing crest of yonder mad black billow, that comes racing after us, at all like the black worsted fringe which your brethren are apt to hang on the necks of their marine Arabians? But hush, yonder comes Neptune himself, in his state-coach--aye, hats off--the wind hath taught ye manners. Lo! yonder he stands,--Pshaw! no, no, no,--Zounds! you are all gaping at honest Hans Vandergroot. Look to starboard--to the left hand! That’s the gentleman, without his castor, nor indeed overwell togged otherwise for wet weather--with his beard lather’d but not shaved--standing up in an oyster-shell drag, and attempting, like a sorry whip as he is, to tool his team of bokickers with a potato-fork. Did you ever see four such unbroke brutes as he hath to keep together--neither reined-up, nor down, nor indeed, any ribbons to hold at all--and as I would have laid a pony to nothing, there they go, no pace at all, cause why? they are just come to some invisible sea obelisk, and each horse is for going down a road of his own. Did you ever set eyes on such action? No stepping out--but all pawing and prancing and putting their feet down again where they picked them up, like Ducrow’s dancing stud; as sure as I’m a judge, they have all got the string-halt in their fore-legs, because they can’t have it in their hinder ones! You may swear safely that they have four bad colds besides, and look what a rabble of naked postillions are hanging on by their manes, because they have no saddles, and if they had, they would never be able to sit in them with those salmon tails! Between ourselves, Elias, ’tis no great shakes of a show; the Lord Mayor’s pageant on the water beats it all to sticks; and if you make a picture of it, you will be a fool for your pains. Yet have I seen paintings by first-rate hands as like to this same trumpery Sadlers’ Wells water spectacle----

Murder! murder! Help! help! O Lord! A surgeon and a shutter, if there be such comfortable things in this unneighbourly neighbourhood. O! oh! oh! oh! Woe is me! I am not--I am now certain and sure I am not a Ball! I have limbs and members! legs and arms! like other people’s, only they’re broke; and a very distinct back. My head! Oh! my head, my head; there are nine lumps thereon, and there are nine cabin stairs.

The real Sea-King, in resentment, I suppose, of my untimely caricature of him and his state-coach, after spitting nine gallons of foam in my face, knocked me flat with a wave, and then kicked me down stairs; and here I am again trying to anoint my bruises with trunks, and bind them up with stools and tables, on the hard-hearted oak planks of the cabin-floor. Yet is it easier with me than I first feared. My legs are not broken but merely bent. I am only bandy and not lame for life; but my sea-sickness is not cured. Am I likely to put up, better or worse, think you, with Neptune and his satellites, for this unhandsome usage?

[Illustration: “FRIEND! DOST THEE CALL THIS THE PACIFIC?”]

The Jung Vrouw, meanwhile, is as giddy as ever, nay, worse ten times told. She hath taken a tinge of high-flying, deep-living, German Romanticism into her wooden head, and is trying, plunge after plunge, to drown herself, and to make me commit wilful suicide along with her, whether I will or not. After that, there is no hope; but oh! yet oh, my Fates, let me die upon land. I have a horror of shipboard! The idea of severing all ties in this cabin is trebly agonising. Why, the very table is tied to the floor, the candlestick to the table, the snuffers to the candlestick, the extinguisher to the snuffers. Only the burning candle is unattached, and there--there it jumps into bed! No matter; it could as soon set fire to the Thames. Another squall! How she groans, creaks, squeaks, strains, grinds, and squeezes, like a huge walnut in Neptune’s crackers? Accursed Jung Vrouw! thou wilt be the widowing of my poor dear old one! Accursed Peter Stuckey, thou wilt be the murdering of my poor deaf old self!

I know not, for a surety, by reason that everything about me is quaking and shaking, but I suspect I am trembling like an aspen. It is impossible to hear, in the midst of this universal hubbub, but methinks, I am wailing and weeping aloud. But one may as well make a manly exit. Like other men, in such sea extremities, I would fain betake me to the rum-cask; but either Hans Vandergroot sails on Temperance principles, or I have looked in the wrong place. I will try a stave or two instead.

“Full fathom five--”

[Illustration: THE BEST BOWER ANCHOR.]

Alas! it will not go down. I am too much out of sorts for even the “delicate Ariel.” It was one thing for Shakspeare, sailing, hugging the shore, never out of sight of land, on the safe serene coasts of Bohemia, to compose such a sea song for the wood and canvas Tempests of the stage; but it is another guess thing to hear it, as I do, howled through hoarse ship-ropes, by Boreas himself, in a real storm. What comfort to me that everything about me shall suffer a sea-change?--that my bones shall turn, forsooth, into coral? I would not give a bad doit, with some of these poor metacarpal bones of mine to be rubbing the gums of the Royal Infant of Spain. I am not so blindly ambitious as to wish that these two precious useful balls of mine, turned into pearls, should shine in the British crown itself, or, what is more tempting, in the hair of the beautiful Countess of B. What if some economical jeweller--I think I feel him at it--should take it into his head to split them, for setting in a ring? As for the Syren’s knell, I would as lief have it as long hereafter as may be, from the plain prosaic old sexton of St. Sepulchre’s. I have no depraved yearning to be first wet-nursed to death, and then “lapped in Elysium,” by Mermaids, the most cold, flabby, washy, fishy, draggletails ever invented to give any human fancy the ague--half-and-half monsters, neither fish, nor flesh, nor good red herring. A whole cargo of them, nay a glut of them, leaping alive, unfit for loving or eating, is not worth one loveable real woman at Billingsgate, or one of the eatable maids on her stall. I could never imagine the boldest and gallantest boatswain encountering such a sea-witch, on a lone beach--combing the shrimps out of her wet sandy mud-coloured hair, and wriggling her foolish tail about, curling, or stretching it, or trying to put it into her pocket, forgetting that she has no pockets, as a shy man in company does not know what to do with his hands--I could never fancy him looking on such a creature, however attached to the fair sex, without his recoiling till he tumbled over his own pigtail, singing out, with a slight variation of a line of Dibdin’s,

“Avert yon ’oman, gracious Heaven!”

For other sea-temptations, I would not give my old white pony, that stumbles over every stone in his road, and some out of it, to ride like that Lord Godolphin Arion over the seas on the fairest fish that was ever foaled. Speaking under fear of death, I would rather, waving all the romance, ride in a rill by a roadside on a stickle-back. On my solemn word, I would far liefer bestride even a pond perch with his dorsal fin erect. But hark! What means that dreadful cry? Our death-bell is tolling in Dutch--“Del, del, is verlooren!”

I must scramble, crawl, haul myself, spite of my sprained ankles, up unto the deck how I may. Next best unto witnessing our own funeral is the seeing how we are done to death.

What a sight! Here is the tiller tied hard a-port, or hard a-lee, as hard as they can tie it. Further back is the Skipper himself, entangled dismally by some cord or other to the stern-rails; and yonder is his mate, with a hundred and fifty turns of rope round himself and the mizen-mast, which he seems trying to strengthen. The gunner, as I take him to be, with a preposterous superfluity of breeching, is made fast to look through a hole, which seems to have been meant for a window to a cannon; and the carpenter, well pinioned and tethered by a stout rope to the back-stay, is sheepishly dangling therefrom, whenever his side of the ship is uppermost, like unto the Lamb of the Order of the Golden Fleece. The cook, having given away both his hands, is spliced, as if for life, unto the capstan. Adam Vaart is double-turned and double-knotted to the main-mast, and Hendrick his brother is belayed down, on the broad of his back, in the place of the lost long-boat. Should the anchor be dropped, Jan Bart is sure, even from head to foot, to go along with it. Poor little Yacob Yops, the apprentice, hath been turned over, and re-bound into a ring-bolt, by articles which are called rope-yarns; and lo, up yonder, lashed by his legs to the rattlines, hangs Diedrick Dumm-Kopf, head downwards, like a split cod left there to dry, in the main shrouds!

Oh! that I were bound myself round and round all the ribs, from the top to the bottom, with good six-twist, lest even thus, in articulo mortis, I burst, split my sides, and die with excess of laughter. The Skipper, honest Hans, with much difficulty, for he grievously mistrusts his breathing to the beating of the wave, opening his mouth when it comes, and sealing up his lips when it is gone, hath let me into the whole secret. Considering the wild sea, he saith, and that no man can tie himself so surely as another man can, to some more steadfast substance, they had been all fastened, at their own special wish and agreement, to such hold-fasts as pleased them best, by Diedrick Dumm-Kopf, who was afterwards to provide for his safety as he judged surest, in order that he might liberate them again when the storm should be blown over. That accordingly, after first tying them all as securely as he was able, the said Diedrick betook himself to the main rigging, about half way up, to which he lashed himself by the ankles, holding on likewise with his hands, and his great clasp-knife in his mouth. That the Jung Vrouw driving before the wind and sea, they made shift, as they were to navigate her pretty comfortably for some twenty minutes or thereby, when all of a sudden they saw Diedrick, being seized with a vertigo, let go his hold and drop into his present posture, from which he could never recover himself; and it was that dismal sight which had extorted the universal outcry that I heard.

I am sicker of the sea than ever! Is the safety of a Christian man’s life, and soul maybe, of no more interest than to be gambled away by such a set of Dutch Bottoms with Asses’ heads on their shoulders! Oh! that the worthy Chairman and all the Underwriters of Lloyd’s were here present on this deck--the mere sight of the Skipper’s countenance there, with not so much meaning in it as a smoked pig’s face, for _that_ means to be eaten, would scare them from all sea-risks for ever!

Thanks be to Heaven! yonder’s a sail. It makes straight towards us--they come aboard. A Pilot?--well said! Oh, honest, good, dear Pilot, as you love a distressed poor countryman--as you understand the compass and how rudders are turned--if you know what a rope’s end is,--take the biggest bit of a cable you can pick, and give yonder Dutch sea-calves a round dozen a piece; ’twill cost you no great pains, seeing they are tied up ready to your hand. Pish! never mind their offence; they have mutinied against themselves. Smite, and spare not. I will go ashore meanwhile, in your boat. Hollo there! help me down. Take heed to my footing. Catch me, all of you, in your arms. Now I am in. No, I an’t! I an’t! I an’t!

If ye had not hauled me in again with that same boat-hook, I was drown’d. My shoulder bleeds for it, but I forgive. Never heed me: look to your helms and sails. ’Tis only a gallon or two of sea-water, just swallowed, that is indisposed to go on shore with me. I am used to it, indeed I am. Pray, what is the name of this blessed boat? The Lively Nancy. Lively indeed! The Jung Vrouw was a Quakeress to her! At every jump she takes, my heart leaps also. Pray, pray, pray take in some canvas. You think you be sailing, but you are committing suicide. They mind me no more than stones. Oh! oh! I am out of Danger’s frying-pan into its fire! Peter Stuckey will be a murtherer after all!

What a set of dare-devils! They grin like baboons whilst she is driving with half her deck under water! I will shut mine eyes and hold fast by something. I am worse than ever. I give myself up. Oh! oh! what an awful roaring, hissing, grinding noise we are come into! The bottom of the sea is coming out, or else the bottom of the boat! Hah! Help! help! I am heels upward! Why did not some kindly soul forewarn me that she was going to stop short on the beach? Stand all aside, and let me leap upon the sand. Ah! I have made my nose spout gore in my over-haste to kiss my native land!

[Illustration: “WHY DON’T YOU LOOK OUT FOR WORK?”]

Blessed be dry ground! Farewell, ocean! farewell, Jung Vrouw and Lively Nancy! Take my advice, and get married both of you to young farmers. Farewell, ye hang-dogs that saved me! Share my blessing amongst you; ’tis all I have upon me or in me. Farewell, Neptune! We’ll part friends. If you ever come to Cropton-le-Moor, I shall be glad to see you, and not till then. Hans! Jan! Pieter! farewell one and all of you; “and if a merry meeting may be wished, God prohibit it.” Now for a sweet, safe, still, silent land-bed! Set me but within a run and a jump of one, and in two clipped current minutes I will be fast asleep in it, even like the Irishman who forgot to say his prayers, but remembered to say amen.

LOVE AND LUNACY.

The Moon--who does not love the silver moon, In all her fantasies and all her phases? Whether full-orb’d in the nocturnal noon, Shining in all the dewdrops on the daisies, To light the tripping Fairies in their mazes, Whilst stars are winking at the pranks of Puck; Or huge and red, as on brown sheaves she gazes; Or new and thin, when coin is turn’d for luck; Who will not say that Dian is a Duck?

But, oh! how tender, beautiful and sweet, When in her silent round, serene and clear, By assignation loving fancies meet, To recompense the pangs of absence drear! So Ellen, dreaming of Lorenzo, dear, But distant from the city mapp’d by Mogg, Still saw his image in that silver sphere, Plain as the Man with lantern, bush, and dog, That used to set our ancestors a-gog.

And so she told him in a pretty letter, That came to hand exactly as Saint Meg’s Was striking ten--eleven had been better; For then he might have eaten six more eggs, And both of the bedevill’d turkey-legs, With relishes from East, West, North, and South, Draining, beside, the teapot to the dregs; Whereas a man, whose heart is in his mouth, Is rather spoilt for hunger and for drouth.

[Illustration: ABSTRACTION.]

And so the kidneys, broiling hot, were wasted; The brawn--it never enter’d in his thought; The grated Parmesan remained untasted; The potted shrimps were left as they were bought, The capelings stood as merely good for nought, The German sausage did not tempt him better, Whilst Juno, licking her poor lips, was taught There’s neither bone nor skin about a letter, Gristle, nor scalp, that one can give a setter.

Heav’n bless the man who first devised a mail! Heav’n bless that public pile which stands concealing The Goldsmiths’ front with such a solid veil! Heav’n bless the Master, and Sir Francis Freeling, The drags, the nags, the leading or the wheeling, The whips, the guards, the horns, the coats of scarlet, The boxes, bags, those evening bells a-pealing! Heav’n bless, in short, each posting thing, and varlet That helps a Werter to a sigh from Charlotte.

So felt Lorenzo as he oped the sheet, Where, first, the darling signature he kiss’d, And then, recurring to its contents sweet With thirsty eyes, a phrase I must enlist, He _gulp’d_ the words to hasten to their gist; In mortal ecstasy his soul was bound-- When, lo! with features all at once a-twist, He gave a whistle, wild enough in sound To summon Faustus’s Infernal Hound!

Alas! what little miffs and tiffs in love, A snubbish word, or pouting look mistaken, Will loosen screws with sweethearts hand and glove, Oh! love, rock firm when chimney-pots were shaken, A pettish breath will into huffs awaken, To spit like hump-back’d cats, and snarling Towzers! Till hearts are wreck’d and founder’d, and forsaken, As ships go to Old Davy, Lord knows how, Sirs, While heav’n is blue enough for Dutchmen’s trowsers!

“The moon’s at full, love, and I think of you”-- Who would have thought that such a kind P.S. Could make a man turn white, then red, then blue, Then black, and knit his eyebrows and compress His teeth, as if about to effervesce Like certain people when they lose at whist! So look’d the chafed Lorenzo, ne’ertheless, And, in a trice, the paper he had kiss’d Was crumpled like a snowball in his fist!

Ah! had he been less versed in scientifics, More ignorant, in short, of what is what: He ne’er had flared up in such calorifics; But he _would_ seek societies, and trot To clubs, Mechanics’ institutes, and got With Birkbeck--Bartley--Combe--George Robins--Rennie, And other lecturing men. And had he not That work, of weekly parts, which sells so many, The Copper-bottomed Magazine--or “Penny?”

But, of all learned pools whereon, or in, Men dive like dabchicks, or like swallows skim, Some hardly damp’d, some wetted to the skin, Some drown’d like pigs when they attempt to swim, Astronomy was most Lorenzo’s whim, (’Tis studied by a Prince amongst the Burmans); He loved those heavenly bodies which, the Hymn Of Addison declares, preach solemn sermons, While waltzing on their pivots like young Germans.

Night after night, with telescope in hand, Supposing that the night was fair and clear, Aloft, on the house-top, he took his stand, Till he obtained to know each twinkling sphere Better, I doubt, than Milton’s “Starry Vere;” Thus, reading thro’ poor Ellen’s fond epistle, He soon espied the flaw--the lapse so sheer That made him raise his hair in such a bristle, And like the Boatswain of the Storm-Ship whistle.

“The moon’s at full, love, and I think of thee,”-- “Indeed! I’m very much her humble debtor, But not the moon-calf she would have me be, Zounds! does she fancy that I know no better?” Herewith, at either corner of the letter He gave a most ferocious, rending, pull;-- “O woman! woman! that no vows can fetter, A moon to stay for three weeks at the full! By Jove! a very pretty cock-and-bull!

“The moon at full! ’twas very finely reckon’d! Why so she wrote me word upon the first-- The twelfth, and now upon the twenty-second-- Full!--yes--it must be full enough to burst! But let her go--of all vile jilts the worst”-- Here with his thumbs he gave contemptuous snaps, Anon he blubber’d like the child that’s nurs’d, And then he hit the table frightful raps, And stamped till he had broken both his straps.

“The moon’s at full--and I am in her thought-- No doubt; I do believe it in my soul!” Here he threw up his head, and gave a snort Like a young horse first harness’d to a pole: “The moon is full--aye, so is this d--d bowl!” And, grinning like the sourest of curmudgeons, Globe--water--fishes--he dash’d down the whole, Strewing the carpet with the gasping gudgeons; Men do the strangest things in such love-dudgeons.

“I fill her thoughts--her memory’s vice-gerent? No, no,--some paltry puppy--three weeks old-- And round as Norval’s shield”--thus incoherent His fancies grew as he went on to scold; So stormy waves are into breakers roll’d, Work’d up at last to mere chaotic wroth-- This--that--heads--tails--thoughts jumbled uncontroll’d As onions, turnips, meat, in boiling broth, By turns bob up, and splutter in the froth.

[Illustration: HOME’S DOUGLAS.]

“Fool that I was to let a baby face-- A full one--like a hunter’s--round and red-- Ass that I am, to give her more a place Within this heart”--and here he struck his head. “’Sdeath are the Almanack-compilers dead? But no--’tis all an artifice--a trick, Some newer face--some dandy under-bred-- Well--be it so--of all the sex I’m sick!” Here Juno wonder’d why she got a kick.

“‘The moon is full’--where’s her infernal scrawl? ‘And you are in my thought: that silver ray Will ever your dear image thus recall’-- My image? Mine! She’d barter it away For Pretty Poll’s on an Italian’s tray! Three weeks, full weeks,--it is too plain--too bad-- Too gross and palpable! Oh cursed day! My senses have not crazed--but if they had-- Such moons would worry a Mad Doctor mad!

“Oh Nature! wherefore did you frame a lip So fair for falsehood? Wherefore have you drest Deceit so angel-like?” With sudden rip He tore six new buff buttons from his vest And groped with hand impetuous at his breast, As if some flea from Juno’s fleecy curls Had skipp’d to batten on a human chest, But no--the hand comes forth, and down it hurls A lady’s miniature beset with pearls.

Yet long upon the floor it did not tarry, Before another outrage could be plann’d: Poor Juno, who had learn’d to fetch and carry, Pick’d up and brought it to her master’s hand, Who seized it, and the mimic feature scann’d; Yet not with the old loving ardent drouth, He only saw in that fair face, so bland, Look how he would at it, east, west, north, south. A moon, a full one, with eyes, nose, and mouth.

“I’ll go to her,”--herewith his hat he touch’d, And gave his arm a most heroic brandish; “But no--I’ll write”--and here a spoon he clutch’d, And ramm’d it with such fury in the standish, A sable flood, like Niger the outlandish, Came rushing forth--Oh Antics and Buffoons! Ye never danced a caper so ran-dan-dish; He jump’d, thump’d--tore--swore, more than ten dragoons, At all nights, noons, moons, spoons, and pantaloons!

But soon ashamed, or weary, of such dancing, Without a Collinet’s or Weippert’s band, His rampant arms and legs left off their prancing, And down he sat again, with pen in hand, Not fiddle-headed, or King’s-pattern grand, But one of Bramah’s patent Caligraphics; And many a sheet it spoil’d before he plann’d A likely letter. Used to pure seraphics, Philippics sounded strangely after Sapphics.

Long while he rock’d like Yankee in his chair, Staring as he would stare the wainscot through, And then he thrust his fingers in his hair, And set his crest up like a cockatoo; And trampled with his hoofs, a mere Yahoo: At last with many a tragic frown and start, He penn’d a billet, very far from doux, ’Twas sour, severe--but think of a man’s smart Writing with lunar caustic on his heart!

The letter done and closed, he lit his taper, And sealing, as it were, his other mocks, He stamped a grave device upon the paper, No Cupid toying with his Psyche’s locks, But some stern head of the old Stoic stocks-- Then, fiercely striding through the staring streets, He dropt the bitter missive in a box, Beneath the cakes and tarts, and sugar’d treats, In Mrs. Smelling’s window full of sweets.

[Illustration: BROKE BY A FALL OF THE STOCKS.]

Soon sped the letter--thanks to modern plans, Our English mails run little in the style Of those great German wild-beast caravans, _Eil_-wagons--tho’ they do not “go like _ile_,”-- But take a good twelve minutes to the mile-- On Monday morning, just at ten o’clock, As Ellen humm’d “The young May Moon” the while, Her ear was startled by that double knock Which thrills the nerves like an electric shock!

Her right hand instantly forgot its cunning, And down into the street it dropt, or flung, Right on the hat and wig of Mr. Gunning, The jug that o’er her ten-week stocks had hung; Then down the stairs by twos and threes she sprung, And through the passage like a burglar darted. Alas! how sanguine are the fond and young-- She little thought, when with the coin she parted, She paid a sixpence to be broken-hearted!

[Illustration: “WHEN WILL IT REACH LONDON?”]

Too dear at any price--had she but paid Nothing and taken discount, it was dear; Yet, worthless as it was, the sweet-lipped maid Oft kissed the letter in her brief career Between the lower and the upper sphere, Where, seated in a study bistre-brown, She tried to pierce a mystery as clear As _that_ I saw once puzzling a young clown-- “Reading Made Easy,” but turned upside down.

Yet Ellen, like most Misses in the land, Had sipped sky blue, through certain of her teens, At one of those establishments which stand In highways, byeways, squares, and village greens; ’Twas called “The Grove,”--a name that always means Two poplars stand like sentries at the gate-- Each window had its close Venetian screens And Holland blind, to keep in a cool state The twenty-four Young Ladies of Miss Bate.

But when the screens were left unclosed by chance, The blinds not down, as if Miss B. were dead, Each upper window to a passing glance Revealed a little dimity white bed; Each lower one a cropp’d or curly head; And thrice a week, for soul’s and health’s economies, Along the road the twenty four were led, Like coupled hounds, whipped in by two she-dominies With faces rather graver than Melpomene’s.

And thus their studies they pursued:--On Sunday, Beef, collects, batter, texts from Dr. Price; Mutton, French, pancakes, grammar--of a Monday; Tuesday--hard dumplings, globes, Chapone’s Advice; Wednesday--fancy-work, rice-milk (no spice); Thursday--pork, dancing, currant-bolsters, reading; Friday--beef, Mr. Butler, and plain rice; Saturday--scraps, short lessons and short feeding, Stocks, back-boards, hash, steel-collars, and good breeding

From this repertory of female learning, Came Ellen once a quarter, always fatter! To gratify the eyes of parents yearning. ’Twas evident in bolsters, beef, and batter, Hard dumplings, and rice-milk, she did not smatter, But heartily, as Jenkins says, “demollidge;” But as for any learning, not to flatter, As often happens when girls leave their college, She had done nothing but grow out of knowledge.

[Illustration: PRACTICE DRIVES ME MAD.]

At Long Division sums she had no chance, And History was quite as bad a balk; Her French it was too small for Petty France, And Priscian suffered in her English talk: Her drawing might be done with cheese or chalk; As for the globes--the use of the terrestrial She knew when she went out to take a walk, Or take a ride; but, touching the celestial, Her knowledge hardly soared above the bestial.

Nothing she learned of Juno, Pallas, Mars; Georgium, for what she knew, might stand for Burgo, Sidus, for Master: then, for northern stars, The Bear she fancied did in sable fur go, The Bull was Farmer Giles’s bull, and, ergo, The Ram the same that butted at her brother; As for the Twins, she only guessed that Virgo, From coming after them, must be their mother; The Scales weighed soap, tea, figs, like any other.

As ignorant as donkeys in Gallicia, She thought that Saturn, with his Belt, was but A private, may be, in the Kent Militia; That Charles’s Wain would stick in a deep rut, That Venus was a real West-End slut-- Oh, Gods and Goddesses of Greek Theogony! That Berenice’s Hair would curl and cut, That Cassiopëia’s Chair was good Mahogany, Nicely French-polished,--such was her cosmogony!

Judge, then, how puzzled by the scientifics Lorenzo’s letter came now to dispense; A lizard, crawling over hieroglyphics, Knows quite as much of their Egyptian sense; A sort of London fog, opaque and dense, Hung over verbs, nouns, genitives, and datives. In vain she pored and pored, with eyes intense; As well is known to oyster-operatives, Mere looking at the shells won’t open natives.

Yet mixed with the hard words, so called, she found Some easy ones that gave her heart the staggers: Words giving tongue against her, like a hound At picking out a fault--words speaking daggers. The very letters seemed, in hostile swaggers, To lash their tails, but not as horses do, Nor like the tails of spaniels, gentle waggers, But like a lion’s, ere he tears in two A black, to see if he is black all through.

With open mouth, and eyeballs at full stretch, She gazed upon the paper sad and sorry, No sound--no stir--quite petrified, poor wretch! As when Apollo, in old allegory, Down-stooping like a falcon, made his quarry Of Niobe, just turned to Purbeck stone; In fact, since Cupid grew into a worry, Judge if a suing lover, let alone A lawyer, ever wrote in such a tone.

[Illustration: A POUTER.]

“Ellen, I will no longer call you mine, That time is past, and ne’er can come again; However other lights undimmed may shine, And undiminishing, one truth is plain, Which I, alas! have learned,--that love can wane. The dream is pass’d away, the veil is rent, Your heart was not intended for my reign; A sphere so full, I feel, was never meant With one poor man in it to be content.

“It must, no doubt, be pleasant beyond measure, To wander underneath the whispering bough With Dian, a perpetual round of pleasure. Nay, fear not,--I absolve of every vow,-- Use,--use your own celestial pleasure now, Your apogee and perigee arrange. Herschel might aptly stare and wonder how, To me that constant disk has nothing strange-- A counterfeit is sometimes hard to change.

“Oh Ellen! I once little thought to write Such words unto you, with so hard a pen; Yet outraged love will change its nature quite, And turn like tiger hunted to its den-- How Falsehood trips in her deceits on men! And stands abash’d, discover’d, and forlorn! Had it been only cusp’d--but gibbous--then It had gone down--but Faith drew back in scorn, And would not swallow it--without a horn!

“I am in occultation,--that is plain: My culmination’s past,--that’s quite as clear. But think not I will suffer your disdain To hang a lunar rainbow on a tear. Whate’er my pangs, they shall be buried here; No murmur,--not a sigh,--shall thence exhale: Smile on,--and for your own peculiar sphere Choose some eccentric path,--you cannot fail, And pray stick on a most portentous tail!

“Farewell! I hope you are in health and gay; For me, I never felt so well and merry-- As for the bran-new idol of the day, Monkey or man, I am indifferent--very! Nor e’en will ask who is the Happy Jerry; My jealousy is dead, or gone to sleep, But let me hint that you will want a wherry, Three weeks’ spring-tide, and not a chance of neap, Your parlours will be flooded six feet deep!”

[Illustration: POND’S ASTRONOMY.]

“Oh Ellen! how delicious was that light Wherein our plighted shadows used to blend, Meanwhile the melancholy bird of night-- No more of that----the lover’s at an end. Yet if I may advise you, as a friend, Before you next pen sentiments so fond, Study your cycles--I would recommend Our Airy--and let South be duly conn’d, And take a dip, I beg, in the great Pond.

“Farewell again! it is farewell for ever! Before your lamp of night be lit up thrice, I shall be sailing, haply, for Swan River, Jamaica, or the Indian land of rice, Or Boothia Felix--happy clime of ice! For Trebizond, or distant Scanderoon, Ceylon, or Java redolent of spice, Or settling, neighbour of the Cape baboon, Or roaming o’er--The Mountains of the Moon!

“What matters where? my world no longer owns That dear meridian spot from which I dated Degrees of distance, hemispheres, and zones, A globe all blank and barren and belated. What matters where my future life be fated? With Lapland hordes, or Koords or Afric peasant, A squatter in the western woods located, What matters where? My bias, at the present, Leans to the country that reveres the Crescent!

“Farewell! and if for ever, fare thee well! As wrote another of my fellow-martyrs: I ask no sexton for his passing-bell, I do not ask your tear-drops to be starters, However I may die, transfix’d by Tartars, By Cobras poisoned, by Constrictors strangled, By shark or cayman snapt above the garters, By royal tiger or Cape lion mangled, Or starved to death in the wild woods entangled,

“Or tortured slowly at an Indian stake, Or smother’d in the sandy hot simoom, Or crush’d in Chili by earth’s awful quake, Or baked in lava, a Vesuvian tomb, Or dirged by syrens and the billows’ boom Or stiffen’d to a stock mid Alpine snows, Or stricken by the plague with sudden doom, Or suck’d by Vampyres to a last repose, Or self-destroy’d, impatient of my woes,

“Still fare you well, however I may fare, A fare perchance to the Lethean shore, Caught up by rushing whirlwinds in the air, Or dash’d down cataracts with dreadful roar: Nay, this warm heart, once yours unto the core, This hand you should have claim’d in church or minster Some cannibal may gnaw”--she read no more-- Prone on the carpet fell the senseless spinster, Losing herself, as ’twere, in Kidderminster!

Of course of such a fall the shock was great, In rush’d the father, panting from the shop, In rush’d the mother, without cap or tête, Pursued by Betty Housemaid with her mop; The cook to change her apron did not stop, The charwoman next scrambled up the stair,-- All help to lift, to haul, to seat, to prop, And then they stand and smother round the chair, Exclaiming in a chorus, “Give her air!”

One sears her nostrils with a burning feather, Another rams a phial up her nose; A third crooks all her finger-joints together, A fourth rips her up laces and her bows, While all by turns keep trampling on her toes, And, when she gasps for breath, they pour in plump A sudden drench that down her thorax goes, As if in fetching her--some wits so jump-- She must be fetched with water like a pump!

[Illustration: “SHE’S BLACK IN THE FACE!”]

No wonder that thus drench’d, and wrench’d, and gall’d, As soon as possible from syncope’s fetter Her senses had the sense to be recall’d, “I’m better--that will do--indeed I’m better,” She cried to each importunate besetter; Meanwhile, escaping from the stir and smother, The prudent parent seized the lover’s letter, (Daughters should have no secrets with a Mother) And read it thro’ from one end to the other.

From first to last she never skipp’d a word-- For young Lorenzo of all youths was one So wise, so good, so moral she averr’d, So clever, quite above the common run-- She made him sit by her, and call’d him son, No matrimonial suit, e’en Duke’s or Earl’s, So flatter’d her maternal feelings--none! For mothers always think young men are pearls Who come and throw themselves before their girls.

[Illustration: DECAPITATION.]

And now, at warning signal from her finger, The servants most reluctantly withdrew, But list’ning on the stairs contrived to linger; For Ellen, gazing round with eyes of blue, At last the features of her parent knew, And summoning her breath and vocal pow’rs, “Oh, mother!” she exclaimed--“Oh, is it true-- Our dear Lorenzo”--the dear name drew show’rs-- “_Ours_,” cried the mother, “pray don’t call him ours!”

“I never liked him, never, in my days!” [“Oh yes--you did”--said Ellen with a sob,] “There always _was_ a something in his ways--” [“So sweet--so kind,” said Ellen, with a throb,] “His very face was what I call a snob, And, spite of West-end coats and pantaloons, He had a sort of air of the swell mob; I’m sure when he has come of afternoons To tea, I’ve often thought--I’ll watch my spoons!”

“The spoons!” cried Ellen, almost with a scream, “Oh cruel--false as cruel--and unjust! He that once stood so high in your esteem!” “He!” cried the dame, grimacing her disgust, “I like him?--yes--as any body must An infidel that scoffs at God and Devil: Didn’t he bring you Bonaparty’s bust? Lord! when he calls I hardly can be civil-- _My_ favourite was always Mr. Neville.

“Lorenzo?--I should like, of earthly things, To see him hanging forty cubits high; Doesn’t he write like Captain Rocks and Swings? Nay, in this very letter bid you try To make yourself particular, and tie A tail on--a prodigious tail!--Oh, daughter! And don’t he ask you down his area--fie! And recommend to cut your being shorter, With brick-bats round your neck in ponds of water?”

Alas! to think how readers thus may vary A writer’s sense!--What mortal would have thought Lorenzo’s hint about Professor Airy And Pond to such a likeness could be brought! Who would have dreamt the simple way he taught To make a comet of poor Ellen’s moon, Could furnish forth an image so distraught, As Ellen, walking Regent Street at noon, Tail’d--like a fat Cape sheep, or a racoon!

[Illustration: “STICK AS YOU BE--THAT’S THE COMET.”]

And yet, whate’er absurdity the brains May hatch, it ne’er wants wet-nurses to suckle it! Or dry ones, like a hen, to take the pains To lead the nudity abroad, and chuckle it; No whim so stupid but some fool will buckle it To jingle bell-like on his empty head, No mental mud--but some will knead and knuckle it, And fancy they are making fancy-bread;-- No ass has written, but some ass has read.

No dolts could lead if others did not follow ’em. No Hahnémann could give decillionth drops, If any man could not be got to swallow ’em; But folly never comes to such full stops. As soon, then, as the Mother made such swaps Of all Lorenzo’s meanings, heads and tails, The Father seized upon her malaprops-- “My girl down areas--of a night! ’Ods nails! I’ll stick the scoundrel on his area-rails!”

[Illustration: TAILS OF THE HAUL BY CRAB.]

“I will!--as sure as I was christen’d John! A girl--well born--and bred,--and school’d at Ditton-- Accomplish’d--handsome--with a tail stuck on! And chuck’d, Zounds! chuck’d in horseponds like a kitten I wish I had been by when that was written!”-- And doubling to a fist each ample hand, The empty air he boxed with, a-la-Bitton, As if in training for a fight, long plann’d, With Nobody--for love--at No Man’s Land!

[Illustration: A FOWL WIND.]

“I’ll pond--I’ll tail him!”--In a voice of thunder He recommenced his fury and his fuss, Loud, open-mouth’d, and wedded to his blunder, Like one of those great guns that end in buss. “I’ll teach him to write ponds and tails to us!” But while so menacing this-that-and-t’others, His wife broke in with certain truths, as thus: “Men are not women--fathers can’t be mothers,-- Females are females”--and a few such others.

So saying, with rough nudges, willy-nilly, She hustled him outside the chamber-door, Looking, it must be own’d, a little silly; And then she did as the Carinthian boor Serves (Goldsmith says) the traveller that’s poor! _Id est_, she shut him in the outer space, With just as much apology--no more-- As Boreas would present in such a case, For slamming the street door right in your face.

And now, the secrets of the sex thus kept, What passed in that important tête-à-tête ’Twixt dam and daughter, nobody except Paul Pry, or his Twin Brother, could narrate-- So turn we to Lorenzo, left of late, In front of Mrs. Snelling’s sugar’d snacks, In such a very waspish stinging state, But now at the Old Dragon, stretch’d on racks, Fretting, and biting down his nails to tacks;

Because that new fast four-inside--the Comet, Instead of keeping its appointed time, Had deviated some few minutes from it, A thing with all astronomers a crime, And he had studied in that lore sublime; Nor did his heat get any less or shorter For pouring upon passion’s unslaked lime A well-grown glass of Cogniac and water, Mix’d stiff as starch by the Old Dragon’s daughter.

At length, “Fair Ellen” sounding with a flourish, The Comet came all bright, bran new, and smart: Meanwhile the melody conspired to nourish The hasty spirit in Lorenzo’s heart, And soon upon the roof he “topped his part,” Which never had a more impatient man on, Wishing devoutly that the steeds would start Like lightning greased,--or, as at Ballyshannon Sublimed, “greased lightning shot out of a cannon.”

For, ever since the letter left his hand, His mind had been in vacillating motion, Dodge-dodging like a fluster’d crab on land, That cannot ask its way, and has no notion If right or left leads to the German Ocean-- Hatred and Love by turns enjoy’d monopolies, Till, like a Doctor following his own potion, Before a learned pig could spell Acropolis, He went and booked himself for our metropolis.

“Oh, for a horse,” or rather four,--“with wings!” For so he put the wish into the plural-- No relish he retained for country things, He could not join felicity with rural, His thoughts were all with London and the mural, Where architects--not paupers--heap and _pile_ stones; Or with the horses’ muscles, called the crural, How fast they could macadamize the milestones Which pass’d as tediously as gall or bile stones.

Blind to the picturesque, he ne’er perceived In Nature one artistical fine stroke; For instance, how that purple hill relieved The beggar-woman in the gipsy-poke, And how the red cow carried off her cloak; Or how the aged horse, so gaunt and grey, Threw off a noble mass of beech and oak! Or, how the tinker’s ass, beside the way, Came boldly out from a white cloud--to bray!

Such things have no delight for worried men, That travel full of care and anxious smart: Coachmen and horses, are your artists then: Just try a team of draughtsmen with the Dart, Take Shee, for instance, Etty, Jones, and Hart, Let every neck be put into its noose, Then tip ’em on the flank to make ’em start, And see how they will draw!--Four screws let loose Would make a difference--or I’m a goose!

Nor cared he more about the promised crops, If oats were looking up, or wheat was laid, For flies in turnip, or a blight in hops, Or how the barley prosper’d or decay’d; In short, no items of the farming trade. Peas, beans, tares, ’taters, could his mind beguile; Nor did he answer to the servant maid, That always asked at every other mile, “Where do we change, Sir?” with her sweetest smile.

[Illustration: “LORD, JOHN, HERE’S A BURROW!”]

Nor more he listened to the Politician, Who lectured on his left, a formal prig, Of Belgium’s, Greece’s, Turkey’s sad condition, Not worth a cheese, an olive, or a fig; Nor yet unto the critic, fierce and big, Who, holding forth, all lonely, in his glory, Called one a sad bad Poet--and a Whig, And one, a first-rate proser--and a Tory; So critics judge, now, of a song or story.

Nay, when the coachman spoke about the ’Leger, Of Popsy, Mopsy, Bergamotte, and Civet, Of breeder, trainer, owner, backer, hedger, And nags as right, or righter than a trivet, The theme his crack’d attention could not rivet, Though leaning forward to the man of whips, He seem’d to give an ear,--but did not give it, For Ellen’s moon (that saddest of her slips) Would not be hidden by a “new Eclipse.”

[Illustration: THE HEAD WAITER AT HATCHETT’S.]

If any thought e’er flitted in his head Belonging to the sphere of Bland and Crocky, It was to wish the team all thorough-bred, And every buckle on their backs a jockey: When spinning down a steep descent, or rocky, He never watch’d the wheel, and long’d to lock it, He liked the bolters that set off so cocky: Nor did it shake a single nerve or shock it Because the Comet raced against the Rocket.

Thanks to which rivalry, at last the journey Finish’d an hour and a quarter under time, Without a case for surgeon or attorney, Just as St. James’s rang its seventh chime, And now, descending from his seat sublime, Behold Lorenzo, weariest of wights, In that great core of brick, and stone, and lime, Call’d England’s Heart--but which, as seen of nights, Has rather more th’ appearance of its lights.

[Illustration: FREE TRADE.]

Away he scudded--elbowing, perforce, Thro’ cads, and lads, and many a Hebrew worrier, With fruit, knives, pencils,--all dirt cheap of course, Coachmen, and hawkers of the Globe and “Currier;” Away!--the cookmaid is not such a skurrier, When, fit to split her gingham as she goes, With six just striking on the clock to hurry her, She strides along with one of her three beaux, To get well placed at “Ashley’s”--now Ducrow’s.

“I wonder if her moon is full to-night!” He mutter’d, jealous as a Spanish Don, When, lo!--to aggravate that inward spite, In glancing at a board he spied thereon A play-bill for dramatic folks to con, In letters such as those may read, who run, “‘KING JOHN’--oh yes,--I recollect King John! ‘My Lord, they say five moons’--_five_ moons!--well done! I wonder Ellen was content with one!

“Five moons--all full!--and all at once in heav’n! She should have lived in that prolific reign!” Here he arrived in front of number seven, Th’ abode of all his joy and all his pain; A sudden tremor shot through every vein, He wish’d he’d come up by the heavy waggon, And felt an impulse to turn back again, Oh, that he ne’er had quitted the Old Dragon! Then came a sort of longing for a flagon.

His tongue and palate seem’d so parch’d with drouth,-- The very knocker fill’d his soul with dread, As if it had a living lion’s mouth, With teeth so terrible, and tongue so red, In which he had engaged to put his head, The bell-pull turn’d his courage into vapour, As though ’t would cause a shower-bath to shed Its thousand shocks, to make him sigh and caper-- He look’d askance, and did not like the scraper.

“What business have I here? (he thought) a dunce A hopeless passion thus to fan and foster, Instead of putting out its wick at once; She’s gone--it’s very evident I’ve lost her,-- And to the wanton wind I should have toss’d her-- Pish! I will leave her with her moon, at ease, To toast and eat it, like a single Gloster, Or cram some fool with it, as good green cheese, Or make a honey-moon, if so she please.

“Yes--here I leave her,” and as thus he spoke, He plied the knocker with such needless force, It almost split the panel of sound oak; And then he went as wildly through a course Of ringing, till he made abrupt divorce Between the bell and its dumfounded handle, Whilst up ran Betty, out of breath and hoarse, And thrust into his face her blown-out candle, To recognise the author of such scandal.

Who, presto! cloak, and carpet-bag to boot, Went stumbling, rumbling, up the dark one pair, With other noise than his whose “very foot Had music in’t as he came up the stair:” And then with no more manners than a bear, His hat upon his head, no matter how, No modest tap his presence to declare, He bolted in a room, without a bow, And there sat Ellen, with a marble brow!

Like fond Medora, watching at her window, Yet not of any Corsair bark in search-- The jutting lodging-house of Mrs. Lindo, “The Cheapest House in Town” of Todd and Sturch. The private house of Reverend Doctor Birch, The public-house, closed nightly at eleven, And then that house of prayer, the parish church, Some roofs, and chimneys, and a glimpse of heaven, Made up the whole look-out of Number Seven.

[Illustration: “MEET ME BY MOONLIGHT ALONE.”]

Yet something in the prospect so absorbed her, She seemed quite drowned and dozing in a dream; As if her own belov’d full moon still orb’d her, Lulling her fancy in some lunar scheme, With lost Lorenzo, may be, for its theme-- Yet when Lorenzo touch’d her on the shoulder, She started up with an abortive scream, As if some midnight ghost, from regions colder, Had come within his bony arms to fold her.

“Lorenzo!” “Ellen!” then came “Sir!” and “Madam!” They tried to speak, but hammer’d at each word, As if it were a flint for great Mac Adam: Such broken English never else was heard, For like an aspen leaf each nerve was stirr’d, A chilly tremor thrill’d them through and through, Their efforts to be stiff were quite absurd, They shook like jellies made without a due And proper share of common joiner’s glue.

“Ellen! I’m come--to bid you--fare--farewell!” They thus began to fight their verbal duel; “Since some more hap--hap--happy man must dwell--” “Alas--Loren--Lorenzo!--cru--cru--cruel!” For so they split their words like grits for gruel. At last the Lover, as he long had plann’d, Drew out that once inestimable jewel, Her portrait, which was erst so fondly scann’d, And thrust poor Ellen’s face into her hand.

“There--take it, Madam--take it back, I crave, The face of one--but I must now forget her, Bestow it on whatever hapless slave Your art has last enticed into your fetter-- And there are your epistles--there! each letter! I wish no record of your vow’s infractions, Send them to South--or Children--you had better-- They will be novelties--rare benefactions! To shine in Philosophical Transactions!

“Take them--pray take them--I resign them quite! And there’s the glove you gave me leave to steal-- And there’s the handkerchief, so pure and white, Once sanctified by tears, when Miss O’Neill-- But no--you did not--cannot--do not feel A Juliet’s faith, that time could only harden! Fool that I was, in my mistaken zeal! I should have led you,--by your leave and pardon-- To Bartley’s Orrery, not Covent Garden!”

[Illustration: “I RAN IT THRO’ E’EN FROM MY BOYISH DAYS.”]

“And here’s the birth-day ring--nor man nor devil Should once have torn it from my living hand, Perchance ’twill look as well on Mr. Neville; And that--and that is all--and now I stand Absolved of each dissever’d tie and band-- And so farewell, till Time’s eternal sickle Shall reap our lives; in this, or foreign land Some other may be found for truth to stickle Almost as fair--and not so false and fickle!”

And there he ceased: as truly it was time, For of the various themes that left his mouth, One half surpass’d her intellectual climb: She knew no more than the old Hill of Howth About that “Children of a larger growth,” Who notes proceedings of the F. R. S.’s; Kit North, was just as strange to her as South, Except the south the weathercock expresses, Nay, Bartley’s Orrery defied her guesses.

Howbeit some notion of his jealous drift She gather’d from the simple outward fact, That her own lap contained each slighted gift; Though quite unconscious of his cause to act So like Othello, with his face unblack’d; “Alas!” she sobbed, “your cruel course I see These faded charms no longer can attract; Your fancy palls, and you would wander free, And lay your own apostacy on me!”

“_I_, false!--unjust Lorenzo!--and to _you_! Oh, all ye holy gospels that incline The soul to truth, bear witness I am true! By all that lives, of earthly or divine-- So long as this poor throbbing heart is mine-- _I_ false!--the world shall change its course as soon! True as the streamlet to the stars that shine-- True as the dial to the sun at noon, True as the tide to ‘yonder blessed moon’!”

And as she spoke, she pointed through the window, Somewhere above the houses’ distant tops, Betwixt the chimney-pots of Mrs. Lindo, And Todd and Sturch’s cheapest of all shops For ribbons, laces, muslins, silks, and fops:-- Meanwhile, as she upraised her face so Grecian, And eyes suffused with scintillating drops, Lorenzo looked, too, o’er the blinds venetian, To see the sphere so troubled with repletion.

“The Moon!” he cried, and an electric spasm Seem’d all at once his features to distort, And fix’d his mouth, a dumb and gaping chasm-- His faculties benumb’d and all amort-- At last his voice came, of most shrilly sort, Just like a sea-gull’s wheeling round a rock-- “Speak!--Ellen!--is your sight indeed so short? The Moon!--Brute! savage that I am, and block! The Moon! (O, ye Romantics, what a shock!) Why that’s the new Illuminated Clock!”

[Illustration: ST. BLAISE.]

[Illustration: “THOSE EVENING BELLS.”]

THOSE EVENING BELLS.

“I’D BE A PARODY.”

THOSE Evening Bells, those Evening Bells, How many a tale their music tells, Of Yorkshire cakes and crumpets prime, And letters only just in time!--

The Muffin-boy has pass’d away, The Postman gone--and I must pay, For down below Deaf Mary dwells, And does not hear those Evening Bells,

And so ’twill be when she is gone, That tuneful peal will still ring on, And other maids with timely yells Forget to stay those Evening Bells.

[Illustration: BALL-PRACTICE.]

LINES

TO A FRIEND AT COBHAM.

’Tis pleasant, when we’ve absent friends, Sometimes to hob and nob ’em With Memory’s glass--at such a pass Remember me at Cobham!

Have pigs you will, and sometimes kill, But if you sigh and sob ’em, And cannot eat your home-grown meat, Remember me at Cobham!

Of hen and cock, you’ll have a stock, And death will oft unthrob ’em,-- A country chick is good to pick-- Remember me at Cobham!

Some orchard trees of course you’ll lease And boys will sometimes rob ’em, A friend (you know) before a foe-- Remember me at Cobham!

You’ll sometimes have wax-lighted rooms, And friends of course to mob ’em, Should you be short of such a sort, Remember me at Cobham!

THE QUAKERS’ CONVERSAZIONE.

“Dost thou love silence, deep as that before the winds were made? Go not into the wilderness; descend not into the profundities of the earth; shut not up thy casements; nor pour wax into the cells of thine ears, with little-faith’d, self-mistrusting Ulysses. Retire with me into a Quakers’ Meeting.”--ESSAYS OF ELIA.

IT may not, or rather it cannot, be generally known, that an attempt was made last winter, by certain influential members of the Society of Friends, to establish a Conversazione at Tottenham, a neighbourhood especially favoured by that respectable and substantial sect. The idea originated with a junior female branch of the opulent family of the Mumfords, which has been seated, time out of mind, in the vicinity of Bruce Castle; the notion was broached to a select few of the sisterhood, during a Sabbath walk homewards from the conventicle: the suggestion was relished; and a conference was called, at which the scheme was seriously brought forward, and gravely considered. At first there was a little boggling at the proposed title, as savouring, it was thought, of Loquacity; but the objection was dropped, on an explanation that although the word implied conversation, no one would be bidden to discourse against their own inclination; nay that, even amongst other persuasions, the conversazioni were frequently as distant as possible from a Negro “Talk,” or a Red Indian “Palaver.” This little demur excepted, the plan went on swimmingly, and was finally adopted with the subdued hum which, in that quiet-loving community, is equivalent to acclamations. A secretary was formally proposed, and tacitly chosen unanimously; being no other than the fair Foundress herself, the mild-spoken and meek-eyed Ruth Mumford. A few brief rules were then drawn up, and, after no debate, agreed to--some of them, considering the constitutional taciturnity of the sect, being sufficiently superfluous, as guarding against what Bubb Doddington called “a multiplicity of talk.” For instance, the 9th rule provided, that “no brother or sister should indulge in rambling irrelevant discourse, embracing a profusion of topics, wide of the matter in hand.” The 10th, that “no two or more Friends should disburden themselves of speech at one and the same time;” and the 12th, that “no member of this society shall deliver himself or herself with unreasonable continuity, to the prevention of other Friends who might desire to speak to the matter.” From the list of subjects to be “spoken to” politics and polemics were excluded; but poetry was allowed, or at least connived at, the excellent example of Bernard Barton and the Howitts having happily relaxed the primitive rigour of that proscription. Besides, it was well known, between Friends, that several of the younger female members, the fair secretary included, occasionally struck, or rather, as Quakers ought not to strike anything, twanged the lyre. For the rest, the society was modelled after other private literary associations; it was to meet twice weekly, visiting the houses of the members in rotation, when original essays or papers were to be read, and afterwards discussed; provided always, that they afforded any Debateable Land to make a stand upon, seeing that at the end of the rules and regulations, a special article earnestly recommended, that in the selection of subjects all such topics should be avoided “as might lead to differences of opinion amongst the brethren.”

Such was--for it is defunct--the Tottenham Friends’ Conversazione; of whose existence I became aware but by accident. It was my good fortune, till lately, to live next door to a family of Quakers, and to make acquaintance with the eldest daughter, a young lively maiden just wearing out the last of her teens. I am afraid in the austere brown eyes of her parents she was not strictly considered as the flower of their flock, being a sort of nonconformist among nonconformists, as was especially to be seen in comparing her with her younger sisters, who seemed to have been brought up, or stuck up, under the most starched discipline. Instead of their plain close caps,--mere casts of their skulls taken in muslin,--she wore an airy fanciful structure of blonde and white ribbon, that a Parisian woman might have put on--at least of a morning. In lieu of their sleek mohair braids, her auburn ringlets flowed down her neck in all the “Unloveliness of Love-locks.” To her star-like hazel eyes she allowed a little planetary liberty of circulation; whereas it seemed the object of the others, to keep their demure brown orbs as immoveable in their faces, as bad halfpence nailed to counters. Instead of screwing up her lips, as if she had just come, minus a masticator, out of Cartwright’s into an east wind, she sometimes gave her ivory teeth an airing, by smiling at some innocent fancy, to which she would give utterance, without trying to send her clear sweet voice, by a New North-West Passage, through her nose. As for her figure, it was none of those shapes which have no shape, and may be swaddled up without detriment in dingy drabs, olives, slates, and snuffy browns,--shapes which nature makes on her basin-pudding days, instead of using her best jelly-moulds--shapes like the bonnet-shapes which balance baskets of live mackerel. To see the symmetrical Rachel standing near either of her sisters, you would think you beheld (borrowing a local image) Tottenham High Cross, beside the Waithman Obelisk. Accordingly, the orthodox warp of her glossy satin was always _shot_ with a woof of some one of those gayer prismatic tints, to wear which is reckoned, among the severer Foxites, “a profanation of the Rainbow, deserving a second deluge.” As will be seen hereafter, she put a little blue into her superfine silken hose; sometimes I even fancied that I detected a tinge of the more fleshy pink--in short, she was a Quakeress, but not of the sad-brown sort--only a brunette.

[Illustration: DISCOVERY OF ORGANIC REMAINS.]

With the old Friends, her parents, I cannot boast that I was even on speaking terms; but with the lovely and lively Rachel my acquaintance had ripened even to the calling her by her Christian name; and the reciprocation of her thou and thee, to which I was led, not as a convertite, but from learning, in my French and German Grammars, that the use of the second person singular was an especial token of intimacy and affection. In this our neighbourly intercourse, a system of mutual accommodation sprang up between us, not by bills, but by books; for which she drew upon me by pretty little notes of hand, that I duly honoured, making them payable over the back garden wall. Drawings and pieces of new music were equally negotiable. If I remember rightly, it was in return for Moore’s Melodies--the exchange at the time being against me--that I received “Fox’s Martyrs.” It was rather a ponderous tome for a lover of light reading; and if St. Swithin’s Festival had not fallen on a very wet Sunday in the country, I might never have opened its leaves,--if indeed they did not open of themselves,--thus letting fall certain MSS. intrusted to their custody, and which I now proceed to make public. In a new edition of the “Curiosities of Literature” they would deserve a distinguished place.

MINUTES OF THE TOTTENHAM FRIENDS’ CONVERSAZIONE;

ESTABLISHED with a view to sober, Intellectual, and Literary unbendings. Now first held, namely, on the fourteenth day of the eleventh month, one thousand eight hundred thirty and four. Brother Mumford, the Father of the present humble Pen, in the chair.

A most powerful and worthy setting forth, both in regard of numbers and our proceedings. Firstly, a word in season from Friend Oliver. Secondly, a draft of the rules. Thirdly, an opening poem; meditation thereon until the tenth hour, when our sitting was completed. Many congratulations between the brethren on the order, quiet, and decency thereof; myself as its humble founder, very joyously elevated--even unto the shedding of tears.

17. Some awkwardness on this night, arising out of the presentation of nine several Negroes’ Complaints to be read forth. Precedence yielded unto Sister Skeldrum’s complaint, in respect of her being so ancient, namely three-score and ten. After which, Sister Panyer’s was gone through, detaining us nearhand until our hour of dissolution. Friend Black in the chair.

21. The Negro Complaints resumed, whereof three more were gotten over, Sister Fagg kindly taking turn about with me in the deliverance thereof. Friend Thorne in the chair.

24. A spare meeting. The Negro Complaints brought to an end, save one; Sister Rumble consenting, on much persuasion, to reserve the Sorrows of Sambo for the Abolition Anniversary. Friend Woolley in the chair.

28. Friend Greathead read forth an original paper on the Manners of the Beavers. Much meditation thereon. Friend Stillfox in the chair.

[Illustration: “BEAR ABOUT THE MOCKERY OF WOE.”]

1-12. Friend Seagrave in the chair. Sister Meeking read forth her Essay on Silence, but in so humble a tone, that little thereof was taken inward at our ears. No debate thereon. Dorcas Fysche, a visitor, craved to know whether Friends, not being members, were permitted to speak on the subject, and was replied to in the affirmative. Whereupon she held her peace.

5. Sister Knight read forth a self-composed addressing of herself unto Sleep. To which no objection was made by any present. Friend Knapp in the chair.

8. On this night I plucked up courage, and essayed to read forth mine own Stanzas on Universal Love; but my voice failing me in the midst, it was completely finished for me by Friend Thicknesse, who did perversely continue to pronounce _Jews_ instead of _Dews_, whereof came absurdity. Above all in the line which singeth,--“Descend ye Dews on this my head.” And again,--“Ye painted Flies that suck the Dews.”

12. No other member being prepared with originality, Sister Rumble read forth her Sorrows of Sambo. Much silent comment thereon. Brother Kersey in the chair, who shamefully suffered himself to be surprised with sleep.

15. No lecturing, and, by course, no debate; only meditation. A call made to order against Friend Dilly, who was in the chair, for untimeliness in asking the price of Anglo-Mexicans at a quarter before ten.

19. Sister Fetterlock being a visitor in expectancy, every one confined themselves unto Newgate. Several of the brethren declared their convictions. Friend Roper in the chair.

22. No lecturing. Sister Rumble distributed Sambo’s Sorrows amongst us, one unto each; the which she had caused to be imprinted at her own risk and cost. Friend Boulter was the chair.

26. No lecturing. It pleased our worthy Brother Upham, at his House of Welcome, to spread before us the creature comforts most abundantly, with a great out-pouring of the foreign luxury, which is called Champagne; the which was greatly discussed; and Brother Upham thereafter rebuked for the same, for that it was not of the kind which is still.

29. Friend Stock read forth a narrative of his own Life and Personal Adventures, the which held us for half an hour. Some debate touching the imprinting of the same, at the cost of the Society, in the shape of a Tract; which was agreed to, but put off at the instance of Friend Stock himself, in order to give him time to live into the shape of a pamphlet. Friend Smallbones went through the chair.

2-1-35. No assembly, by reason of the outrageous wind and hail, excepting Sister Rumble, with a new original poem, called “The Moral Gipsy.” The which she did read forth from the chair to my humble self and family, and our serving-man, Simon Dunny.

[Illustration: HOPE DEFERRED.]

5. Friend Broadbent read forth, in part, an Essay on Innocent Jocularity; the which, in sundry passages, provoked dissentients, as tending to a defence of levity. A stiff debate thereon, in which all the brethren were agreeable to censure. Great merriment at Friend Sexton in his rebuking, saying, “Christian gravy,” instead of gravity, by a slip of the tongue.

9. The remains of Innocent Jocularity brought on again in a decidedly grave way, and nothing savouring of offensive. Followed with silence.

12. There were not sufficient friends to make a sitting, and no chair.

[Illustration: “IT CAN’T BE HELPED.”]

16. At Sister Rumble’s by course of rotation. No other member present, save mine own self, as by duty bound. A deplorable falling away from the cause. Whereof more hereafter.

* * * * *

The Record here breaks off. The society probably did not proceed farther, but died on the spot, of a complication of Innocent Jocularity and Sister Rumble, and was buried tacitly, with the fair Ruth Mumford for its chief mourner. The other papers are in verse, and a reading of them will certainly persuade the reviewers that they were premature in applying the designation of “Quaker Poetry” to foregone lays and lyrics. The first is a genuine brown study after nature; the second a hint how Peace ought _not_ to be proclaimed.

SONNET.

BY R. M.

HOW sweet thus clad, in Autumn’s mellow Tone, With serious Eye, the russet Scene to view! No Verdure decks the Forest, save alone The sad green Holly, and the olive Yew. The Skies, no longer of a garish Blue, Subdued to Dove-like Tints, and soft as Wool, Reflected show their slaty Shades anew In the drab Waters of the clayey Pool. Meanwhile yon Cottage Maiden wends to School, In Garb of Chocolate so neatly drest, And Bonnet puce, fit object for the Tool, And chasten’d Pigments, of our Brother West; Yea, all is silent, sober, calm, and cool, Save gaudy Robin with his crimson Breast.

LINES

ON THE CELEBRATION OF PEACE.

BY DORCAS DOVE.

AND is it thus ye welcome Peace, From Mouths of forty-pounding Bores? Oh cease, exploding Cannons, cease! Lest Peace, affrighted, shun our shores!

Not so the quiet Queen should come; But like a Nurse to still our Fears, With Shoes of List, demurely dumb, And Wool or Cotton in her Ears!

She asks for no triumphal Arch; No Steeples for their ropy Tongues; Down, Drumsticks, down, She needs no March, Or blasted Trumps from brazen Lungs.

She wants no Noise of mobbing Throats To tell that She is drawing nigh; Why this Parade of scarlet Coats, When War has closed his bloodshot Eye?

Returning to Domestic Loves, When War has ceased with all its Ills, Captains should come like sucking Doves, With Olive Branches in their Bills.

[Illustration: A GENERAL PEACE.]

No need there is of vulgar Shout, Bells, Cannons, Trumpets, Fife, and Drum, And Soldiers marching all about, To let Us know that Peace is come.

Oh mild should be the Signs and meek, Sweet Peace’s Advent to proclaim! Silence her noiseless Foot should speak, And Echo should repeat the same.

Lo! where the Soldier walks, alas! With Scars received on Foreign Grounds; Shall we consume in Coloured Glass The Oil that should be pour’d in Wounds?

The bleeding Gaps of War to close, Will whizzing Rocket-Flight avail? Will Squibs enliven Orphans’ Woes? Or Crackers cheer the Widow’s Tale?

SKETCHES ON THE ROAD.

THE MORNING CALL.

I CANNOT conceive any prospect more agreeable to a weary traveller than the approach to _Bedfordshire_. Each valley reminds him of Sleepy Hollow, the fleecy clouds seem like blankets, the lakes and ponds are clean sheets; the setting sun looks like a warming-pan. He dreams of dreams to come. His travelling-cap transforms to a night-cap, the coach lining feels softlier squabbed; the guard’s horn plays “Lullaby.” Every flower by the road-side is a poppy. Each jolt of the coach is but a drowsy stumble up stairs. The lady opposite is the chamber-maid; the gentleman beside her is Boots. He slides into imaginary slippers; he winks and nods flirtingly at Sleep, so soon to be his own. Although the wheels may be rattling into vigilant Wakefield, it appears to him to be sleepy Ware, with its great Bed, a whole County of Down, spread “all before him where to choose his place of rest.”

It was in a similar mood, after a long dusty droughty dog-day’s journey, that I entered the Dolphin, at Bedhampton. I nodded in at the door, winked at the lights, blinked at the company in the coffee-room, yawned for a glass of negus, swallowed it with my eyes shut, as though it had been “a pint of nappy,” surrendered my boots, clutched a candlestick, and blundered, slipshod, up the stairs to number nine.

Blessed be the man, says Sancho Panza, who first invented sleep: and blessed be heaven that he did not take out a patent, and keep his discovery to himself. My clothes dropped off me: I saw through a drowsy haze the likeness of a four-poster: “Great Nature’s second course” was spread before me; and I fell to without a long grace!

Here’s a body--there’s a bed! There’s a pillow--here’s a head! There’s a curtain--here’s a light! There’s a puff--and so Good Night!

It would have been gross improvidence to waste more words on the occasion; for I was to be roused up again at four o’clock the next morning to proceed by the early coach. I determined, therefore, to do as much sleep within the interval as I could; and in a minute, short measure, I was with that mandarin, Morpheus, in his Land of Nod.

How intensely we sleep when we are fatigued! Some as sound as tops, others as fast as churches. For my own part I must have slept as fast as a Cathedral,--as fast as Young Rapid wished his father to slumber: nay as fast as the French veteran who dreams over again the whole Russian campaign while dozing in his sentry-box. I must have slept as fast as a fast post-coach in my four-poster--or rather I must have slept “like winkin,” for I seemed hardly to have closed my eyes, when a voice cried “Sleep no more!”

It was that of Boots, calling and knocking at the door, whilst through the keyhole a ray of candlelight darted into my chamber.

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me, your honour, I humbly ax pardon--but somehow I’ve oversleeped myself, and the coach be gone by!”

“The devil it is!--then I have lost my place!”

“No, not exactly, your honour. She stops a bit at the Dragon, t’other end o’ the town; and if your honour wouldn’t object to a bit of a run--”

“That’s enough--come in. Put down the light--and take up that bag--my coat over your arm--and waistcoat with it--and that cravat.”

Boots acted according to orders. I jumped out of bed--pocketed my nightcap--screwed on my stockings--plunged into my trowsers--rammed my feet into wrong right and left boots--tumbled down the back stairs--burst through a door, and found myself in the fresh air of the stable-yard, holding a lantern, which, in sheer haste, or spleen, I pitched into the horsepond. Then began the race, during which I completed my toilet, running and firing a verbal volley at Boots, as often as I could spare breath for one.

“And you call this waking me up--for the coach. My waistcoat!--Why I could wake myself--too late--without being called. Now my cravat--and be hanged to you!--Confound that stone!--and give me my coat. A nice road--for a run!--I suppose you keep it--on purpose. How many gentlemen--may you do a week?--I’ll tell you what. If I--run--a foot--further--”

I paused for wind; while Boots had stopped of his own accord. We had turned a corner into a small square; and on the opposite side, certainly stood an inn with the sign of the Dragon, but without any sign of a coach at the door. Boots stood beside me aghast, and surveying the house from the top to the bottom; not a wreath of smoke came from a chimney; the curtains were closed over every window, and the door was closed and shuttered. I could hardly contain my indignation when I looked at the infernal somnolent visage of the fellow, hardly yet broad awake--he kept rubbing his black-lead eyes with his hands, as if he would have rubbed them out.

“Yes, you may well look--you have overslept yourself with a vengeance. The coach must have passed an hour ago--and they have all gone to bed again!”

“No, there be no coach, sure enough,” soliloquised Boots, slowly raising his eyes from the road, where he had been searching for the track of recent wheels, and fixing them with a deprecating expression on my face. “No, there’s no coach--I ax a thousand pardons, your honour--but you see, Sir, what with waiting on her, and talking on her, and expecting on her, and giving notice on her, every night of my life, your honour--why I sometimes dreams on her--and that’s the case as is now!”

[Illustration: “YOU’VE WAKED ME TOO SOON, I MUST SLUMBER AGAIN.”]

[Illustration: A STUFFED BIRD.]

THE LAMENT OF TOBY, THE LEARNED PIG.

“A little learning is a dangerous thing.”--POPE.

O HEAVY day! oh day of woe! To misery a poster, Why was I ever farrow’d--why Not spitted for a roaster?

In this world, pigs, as well as men, Must dance to fortune’s fiddlings, But must I give the classics up, For barley-meal and middlings?

Of what avail that I could spell And read, just like my betters, If I must come to this at last, To litters, not to letters?

O, why are pigs made scholars of? It baffles my discerning, What griskins, fry, and chitterlings Can have to do with learning.

Alas! my learning once drew cash, But public fame’s unstable, So I must turn a pig again, And fatten for the table.

To leave my literary line My eyes get red and leaky; But Giblett doesn’t want me _blue_, But red and white, and streaky

Old Mullins used to cultivate My learning like a gard’ner; But Giblett only thinks of lard, And not of Doctor Lardner!

He does not care about my brain The value of two coppers, All that he thinks about my head Is, how I’m off for choppers.

Of all my literary kin A farewell must be taken, Goodbye to the poetic Hogg! The philosophic Bacon!

Day after day my lessons fade, My intellect gets muddy; A trough I have, and not a desk, A sty--and not a study!

Another little month, and then My progress ends like Bunyan’s; The seven sages that I loved Will be chopp’d up with onions!

Then over head and ears in brine They’ll souse me, like a salmon, My mathematics turned to brawn, My logic into gammon.

My Hebrew will all retrograde, Now I’m put up to fatten; My Greek, it will all go to grease; The Dogs will have my Latin!

Farewell to Oxford!--and to Bliss! To Milman, Crowe, and Glossop,-- I now must be content with chats, Instead of learned gossip!

Farewell to “Town!” farewell to “Gown!” I’ve quite outgrown the latter,-- Instead of Trencher-cap my head Will soon be in a platter!

O why did I at Brazen-Nose Rout up the roots of knowledge? A butcher that can’t read will kill A pig that’s been to college!

For sorrow I could stick myself, But conscience is a clasher; A thing that would be rash in man, In me would be a rasher!

One thing I ask when I am dead, And past the Stygian ditches-- And that is, let my schoolmaster Have one of my two flitches:

’Twas he who taught my letters so I ne’er mistook or miss’d ’em, Simply by _ringing_ at the nose, According to _Bell’s_ system.

[Illustration: THE LEARNED PIG GROWN OUT OF KNOWLEDGE.]

TO A BAD RIDER.

I.

WHY, Mr. Rider, why Your nag so ill indorse, man? To make observers cry, You’re mounted, but no horseman?

II.

With elbows out so far, This thought you can’t debar me-- Though no Dragoon-- Hussar-- You’re surely of the army!

III.

I hope to turn M.P. You have not any notion, So awkward you would be At “seconding a motion!”

[Illustration: OUT AT ELBOWS.]

MY SON AND HEIR.

I.

MY mother bids me bind my heir, But not the trade where I should bind; To place a boy--the how and where-- It is the plague of parent-kind!

II.

She does not hint the slightest plan, Nor what indentures to endorse; Whether to bind him to a man,-- Or, like Mazeppa, to a horse.

[Illustration: SON AND HAIR.]

III.

What line to choose of likely rise, To something in the Stocks at last,-- “Fast bind, fast find,” the proverb cries, I find I cannot bind so fast!

IV.

A Statesman James can never be; A Tailor?--there I only learn His chief concern is cloth, and he Is always cutting his concern.

V.

A Seedsman?--I’d not have him so; A Grocer’s plum might disappoint; A Butcher?--no, not that--although I hear “the times are out of joint!”

VI.

Too many of all trades there be, Like Pedlars, each has such a pack, A merchant selling coals?--we see The buyer send to cellar back.

VII.

A Hardware dealer?--that might please, But if his trade’s foundation leans On spikes and nails, he won’t have ease When he retires upon his means.

VIII.

A Soldier?--there he has not nerves A Sailor seldom lays up pelf: A Baker?--no, a baker serves His customer before himself.

IX.

Dresser of hair?--that’s not the sort; A joiner jars with his desire-- A Churchman?--James is very short, And cannot to a church aspire.

X.

A Lawyer?--that’s a hardish term! A Publisher might give him ease, If he could into Longman’s firm Just plunge at once “in medias Rees.”

XI.

A shop for pot, and pan, and cup, Such brittle Stock I can’t advise; A Builder running houses up, Their gains are stories--may be lies!

XII.

A Coppersmith I can’t endure-- Nor petty Usher A, B, C-ing; A Publican no father sure, Would be the author of his being!

XIII.

A Paper-maker?--come he must To rags before he sells a sheet-- A Miller?--all his toil is just To make a meal--he does not eat.

XIV.

A Currier?--that by favour goes-- A Chandler gives me great misgiving-- An Undertaker?--one of those That do not hope to get their living!

XV.

Three Golden Balls?--I like them not; An Auctioneer I never did-- The victim of a slavish lot, Obliged to do as he is bid!

XVI.

A Broker watching fall and rise Of Stock?--I’d rather deal in stone,-- A Printer?--there his toils comprise Another’s work beside his own.

XVII.

A Cooper?--neither I nor Jem Have any taste or turn for that,-- A fish retailer?--but with him, One part of trade is always flat.

[Illustration: THE FAMILY LIBRARY.]

XVIII.

A Painter?--long he would not live,-- An Artist’s a precarious craft-- In trade Apothecaries give, But very seldom take, a draught.

XIX.

A Glazier?--what if he should smash! A Crispin he shall not be made-- A Grazier may be losing cash, Although he drives “a roaring trade.”

XX.

Well, something must be done! to look On all my little works around-- James is too big a boy, like book, To leave upon the shelf unbound.

XXI.

But what to do?--my temples ache From evening’s dew till morning’s pearl, What course to take my boy to make-- Oh could I make my boy--a girl!

[Illustration: SON AND SHADE.]

LITERARY REMINISCENCES.

No. IV.

“And are ye sure the news is true? And are ye sure he’s weel?”--OLD SCOTCH SONG.

THE great Doctor Johnson--himself a sufferer--has pathetically described, in an essay on the miseries of an infirm constitution, the melancholy case of an Invalid, with a willing mind in a weak body. “The time of such a man,” he says, “is spent in forming schemes which a change of wind prevents him from executing; his powers fume away in projects and in hope, and the day of action never arrives. He lies down delighted with the thoughts of to-morrow; but in the night the skies are overcast; the temper of the air is changed; he wakes in languor, impatience, and distraction; and has no longer any wish but for ease, nor any attention but for misery.” In short the Rambler describes the whole race of Valetudinarians as a sort of great Bitumen Company, paving a certain nameless place, as some of the Asphalticals have paved Oxford Street, with not very durable good intentions. In a word, your Invalid promises like a Hogamy, and performs like a Pigamy.

To a hale hearty man, a perfect picture of health in an oaken frame, such abortions seem sufficiently unaccountable. A great hulking fellow, revelling as De Quincey used emphatically to say, “in rude BOVINE health,”--a voracious human animal, camel-stomached and iron-built, who could all but devour and digest himself like a Kilkenny cat,--can neither sympathise with nor understand those frequent failures and down-breakings which happen to beings not so fortunately gifted with indelicate constitutions. Such a half-horse half-alligator monster cannot judge, like a _Puny_ Judge, of a case of feebleness. The broad-chested cannot allow for the narrow-breasted; the robust for the no-bust. Nevertheless, even the stalwart may sometimes fall egregiously short of their own designs--as witness a case in point.

Amongst my fellow passengers, on a late sea-voyage, there was one who attracted my especial attention. A glance at his face, another at his figure, a third at his costume, and a fourth at his paraphernalia, sufficed to detect his country: by his light hair, nubbly features, heavy frame, odd-coloured dressing-gown, and the national meerschaum and gaudy tobacco-bag, he was undeniably a German. But, besides the everlasting pipe, he was provided with a sketching apparatus, an ample note book, a gun, and a telescope; the whole being placed ready for immediate use. He had predetermined, no doubt, to record his German sentiments on first making acquaintance with the German Ocean; to sketch the picturesque craft he might encounter on its surface; to shoot his first sea-gull; and to catch a first glimpse of the shores of Albion, beyond the reach of the naked eye. But alas! all these intentions fell--if one may correctly say so with only sky and water--to the ground. He ate nothing--drank nothing--smoked nothing--drew nothing--wrote nothing--shot nothing--spied nothing--nay, he merely stared, but replied nothing to my friendly inquiry (I am ill at the German tongue and its pronunciation) “Wie befinden _sea sick_?”

Now, my own case, gentle reader, has been precisely akin to that of our unfortunate Cousin German. Like him I have promised much, projected still more, and done little. Like him, too, I have been a sick man, though not at sea, but on shore--and in excuse of all that has been left undone, or delayed, with other Performers, when they do not perform, I must proffer the old theatrical plea of indisposition. As the Rambler describes, I have erected schemes which have been blown down by an _ill_ wind; I have formed plans, and been weather-beaten, like another Murphy, by a change in the weather. For instance, the Comic Annual for 1839 ought properly to have been published some forty days earlier; but was obliged, as it were, to perform quarantine, for want of a clean Bill of Health. Thus, too, the patron of the present Work who has taken the trouble to peruse certain chapters under the title of Literary Reminiscences, will doubtless have compared the tone of them with an Apology in Number Six, wherein, declining any attempt at an Auto-biography, a promise was made of giving such anecdotes as a bad memory and a bad hearing might have retained of my literary friends and acquaintance. Hitherto, however, the fragments in question have only presented desultory glimpses of a goose quill still in its green-gosling-hood, instead of any recollections of “celebrated pens.” The truth is that my malady forced me to temporise:--wherefore the kind reader will be pleased to consider the aforesaid chapters but as so many “false starts,” and that Memory has only now got away, to make play as well as she can.

Whilst I am thus closeted in the Confessional, it may be as well, as the Pelican said, to make a clean breast of it, and at once plead guilty to all those counts--and some from long-standing have become very Old Bailey counts--that haunt my conscience. The most numerous of these crimes relate to letters that would not, could not, or at least did not answer. Others refer to the receipt of books, and as an example of their heinousness it misgives me that I was favoured with a little volume by W. and M. Howitt, without ever telling them _how-it_ pleased me. A few offences, concern engagements which it was impossible to fulfil, although doubly bound by principle and interest. Seriously I have perforce been guilty of many, many, and still many sins of omission: but Hope, reviving with my strength, promises, granting me life, to redeem all such pledges. In the mean time, in extenuation, I can only plead particularly that deprecation which is offered up, in behalf of all Christian defaulters every Sunday,--“We have left undone those things which we ought to have done,--_And there is no_ HEALTH _in us_.”

It is pleasant after a match at Chess, particularly if we have won, to try back, and reconsider those important moves which have had a decisive influence on the result. It is still more interesting, in the game of Life, to recall the critical positions which have occurred during its progress, and review the false or judicious steps that have led to our subsequent good or ill fortune. There is, however, this difference, that chess is a matter of pure skill and calculation, whereas, the chequered board of human life is subject to the caprice of Chance--the event being sometimes determined by combinations which never entered into the mind of the player[4]. To such an accident it is perhaps attributable that the hand now tracing these reminiscences is holding a pen instead of an etching-point; jotting down these prose pleasures of memory, in lieu of furnishing articles “plated-on-steel,” for the pictorial periodicals.

It will be remembered that my mental constitution, however weak my physical one, was proof against that type-us fever which parches most scribblers till they are set up, done up, and may-be, cut-up, in print and boards. Perhaps I had read, and trembled at the melancholy annals of those unfortunates who, rashly undertaking to write for bread, had poisoned themselves, like Chatterton, for want of it, or choked themselves, like Otway, on obtaining it. Possibly, having learned to think humbly of myself--there is nothing like early sickness and sorrow for “taking the conceit” out of one--my vanity did not presume to think, with certain juvenile Tracticians, that I “had a call” to hold forth in print for the edification of mankind. Perchance, the very deep reverence my reading had led me to entertain for our Bards and Sages, deterred me from thrusting myself into the fellowship of Beings that seemed only a little lower than the angels. However, in spite of that very common excuse for publication, “the advice of a friend,” who seriously recommended the submitting of my MSS. to a literary authority, with a view to his imprimatur, my slight acquaintance with the press was pushed no farther. On the contrary, I had selected a branch of the Fine Arts for my serious pursuit. Prudence, the daughter of Wisdom, whispering perhaps, that the engraver, Pye, had a better chance of a beefsteak inside, than Pye the Laureate; not that the verse-spinning was quite given up. Though working in _aqua fortis_, I still played with Castaly, now writing--all monkeys are imitators, and all young authors are monkeys--now writing a Bandit, to match the Corsair, and anon, hatching a Lalla Crow, by way of companion to Lalla Rookh. Moreover, about this time, I became a member of a private select Literary Society (alluded to at page 97 of the present work) that “waited on Ladies and Gentlemen at their own houses.” Our Minerva, allegorically speaking, was a motley personage, in blue stockings, a flounced gown, Quaker cap, and kerchief, French flowers, and a man’s hat. She held a fan in one hand, and a blowpipe in the other. Her votaries were of both sexes, old and young, married and single, assenters, dissenters, High Church, Low Church, No Church; Doctors in Physics, and Apothecaries in Metaphysics; dabblers in Logic, Chemistry, Casuistry, Sophistry, Natural and unnatural History, Phrenology, Geology, Conchology, Demonology; in short, all kinds of Colledgy-Knowledgy-Ology, including “Cakeology,” and tea and coffee. Like other Societies, we had our President--a sort of Speaker who never spoke; at least within my experience he never unbosomed himself of anything but a portentous shirt frill. According to the usual order of the entertainment, there was--first, Tea and Small Talk; secondly, an original Essay, which should have been followed, thirdly, by a Discussion, or Great Talk; but nine times in ten, it chanced, or rather mumchanced, that, between those who did not know what to think, and others, who did not know how to deliver what they thought, there ensued a dead silence, so “very dead indeed,” as Apollo Belvi says, that it seemed buried into the bargain. To make this awkward pause more awkward, some misgiving voice, between a whisper and a croak, would stammer out some allusion to a Quaker’s Meeting, answered from right to left by a running titter, the speaker having innocently, or perhaps wilfully forgotten, that one or two friends in drab coats, and as many in slate-coloured gowns, were sitting, thumb-twiddling, in the circle. Not that the Friends contented themselves with playing _dumby_ at our discussions. They often spoke, and very characteristically, to the matter in hand. For instance, their favourite doctrine of non-resistance was once pushed--if Quakers ever push--a little “beyond beyond.” By way of clencher, one fair, meek, sleek Quakeress, in dove colour, gravely told a melodramatical story of a conscientious Friend, who rather than lift even his little finger against a Foe, passively, yea, lamblike, suffered himself to be butchered in bed by an assassin, and died consistently, as he thought, with Fox principles, very like a Goose. As regards my own share in the Essays and Arguments, it misgives me that they no more satisfied our decidedly serious members, than they now propitiate Mr. Rae Wilson. At least, one Society night, in escorting a female Fellow towards her home, she suddenly stopped me, taking advantage perhaps of the awful locality, and its associations, just in front of our chief criminal prison, and looking earnestly in my face, by the light of a Newgate lamp, inquired somewhat abruptly, “Mr. Hood! are you not an Infidel[5]?”

In the mean time, whilst thus playing at Literature, an event was ripening which was to introduce me to Authorship in earnest, and make the Muse, with whom I had only flirted, my companion for life. It had often occurred to me that a striking, romantical, necromantical, metaphysical, melodramatical, Germanish story, might be composed, the interest of which should turn on the mysterious influence of the fate of A over the destiny of B, the said parties having no more natural or apparent connexion with each other than Tenterden Steeple and the Goodwin Sands. An instance of this occult contingency occurred in my own case; for I did not even know by sight the unfortunate gentleman on whose untimely exit depended my entrance on the literary stage. In the beginning of the year 1821, a memorable duel, originating in a pen-and-ink quarrel, took place at Chalk Farm, and terminated in the death of Mr. John Scott, the able Editor of the London Magazine. The melancholy result excited great interest, in which I fully participated, little dreaming that his catastrophe involved any consequences of importance to myself. But on the loss of its conductor, the Periodical passed into other hands. The new Proprietors were my friends; they sent for me, and after some preliminaries, I was duly installed as a sort of sub-Editor of the London Magazine.

It would be affectation to say, that engraving was resigned with regret. There is always something mechanical about the art--moreover it is as unwholesome as wearisome to sit copper-fastened to a board, with a cantle scooped out to accommodate your stomach, if you have one, painfully ruling, ruling, and still ruling lines straight or crooked, by the long hundred to the square inch, at the doubly hazardous risk which Wordsworth so deprecates, of “growing double.” So farewell Woollett! Strange! Bartolozzi! I have said, my vanity did not rashly plunge me into authorship; but no sooner was there a legitimate opening than I jumped at it, à la Grimaldi, head foremost, and was speedily behind the scenes.

To judge by my zeal and delight in my new pursuit, the bowl had at last found its natural bias[6]. Not content with taking articles, like candidates for holy orders--with rejecting articles like the Belgians--I dreamt articles, thought articles, wrote articles, which were all inserted by the editor, of course, with the concurrence of his deputy. The more irksome parts of authorship, such as the correction of the press, were to me labours of love. I received a revise from Mr. Baldwin’s Mr. Parker, as if it had been a proof of his regard; forgave him all his slips, and really thought that printers’ devils were not