faces look out of the window at the weather, with the stern glance
they are accustomed to bestow on the jury, and stare at the sun in the
face, as though to say--"None of your prevarication with _me_; answer
me, on your oath, is it to rain or not?"
101/2.--The return of the doctors. They have been out on a morning beat,
and are going home merry or mournful, as the case may be. Generally
the former, as the sad ones take to the third class. These are jocose,
droll dogs; the restraint of physic over, they unbend, and chat
pleasantly, unless there happen to be a sickly gentleman present, when
the instinct of the craft is too strong for them; and they talk of
their wonderful cures of Mr. Popkins's knee, or Mr. Murphy's elbow, in
a manner very edifying.
11.--The men of wit and pleasure. These are, I confess, difficult of
detection; but the external signs are very flash waistcoats, and
guard-chains, black canes, black whiskers, and strong Dublin accents.
A stray governess or two will be found in this train. They travel in
pairs, and speak a singular tongue, which a native of Paris might
suppose to be Irish.
A NUT FOR THE DOCTORS.
[Illustration]
Should you ask, Who is the greatest tyrant of modern days? Mr.
O'Connell will tell you--Nicholas, or Espartero. An Irish Whig member
will reply, Dan himself. An _attache_ at an embassy would say, Lord
Palmerston,--"'Tis Cupid ever makes us slaves!" A French _depute_ of
the Thiers party will swear it is Louis Philippe. Count D'Orsay will
say, his tailor. But I will tell you it is none of these: the most
pitiless autocrat of the nineteenth century is--the President of the
College of Physicians.
Of all the unlimited powers possessed by irresponsible man, I know of
nothing at all equal to his, who, _mero motu_, of his own free will
and caprice, can at any moment call a meeting of the dread body at
whose head he stands, assemble the highest dignitaries of the
land--archbishops and bishops, chancellors, chief barons, and chief
remembrancers--to listen to the minute anatomy of a periwinkle's
mustachios, or some singular provision in the physiology of a crab's
breeches-pocket: all of whom, _luto non obstante_, must leave their
peaceful homes and warm hearths to "assist" at a meeting in which,
nine cases out of ten, they take as much interest as a Laplander does
in the health of the Grand Lama; or Mehemet Ali in the proceedings of
Father Mathew.
By nine o'clock the curtain rises, displaying a goodly mob of medical
celebrities: the old ones characterised by the astute look and
searching glance, long and shrewd practice in the world's little
failings ever confers; the young ones, anxious, wide awake, and
fidgetty, not quite satisfied with what services they may be called on
to render in candle-snuffing and crucible work; while between both is
your transition M.D.--your medical tadpole, with some practice and
more pretension, his game being to separate from the great unfeed, and
rub his shoulders among the "dons" of the art, from whose rich board
certain crumbs are ever falling, in the shape of country jaunts, small
operations, and smaller consultings. Through these promiscuously walk
the "_gros bonnets_" of the church and the bar, with now and then--if
the scene be Ireland--a humane Viceroy, and a sleepy commander of the
forces. Round the room are glass cases filled with what at first blush
you might be tempted to believe were the _ci-devant_ professors of the
college, embalmed, or in spirits; but on nearer inspection you detect
to be a legion of apes, monkeys, and ourangoutangs, standing or
sitting in grotesque attitudes. Among them, pleasingly diversified,
you discover murderers' heads, parricides' busts in plaster,
bicephalous babies, and shapeless monsters with two rows of teeth.
Here you are regaled with refreshments "with what appetite you may,"
and chat away the time, until the tinkle of a small bell announces the
approach of the lecture.
For the most part, this is a good, drowsy, sleep-disposing affair of
an hour long, written to show, that from some peculiarity lately
discovered in the cerebral vessels, man's natural attitude was to
stand on his head; or that, from chemical analysis just invented, it
was clear, if we live to the age of four hundred years and upwards,
part of our duodenum will be coated with a delicate aponeurosis of
sheet iron.
Now, with propositions of this kind I never find fault. I am satisfied
to play my part as a biped in this breathing world, and to go out of
it too, without any rivalry with Methuselah. But I'll tell you with
what I am by no means satisfied,--nor shall I ever feel satisfied--nor
do I entertain any sentiment within a thousand miles of gratitude to
the man who tells me, that food--beef and mutton, veal, lamb, &c.--are
nothing but gas and glue. The wretch who found out the animalculae in
clean water was bad enough. There are simple-minded people who
actually take this as a beverage: what must be their feelings now, if
they reflect on the myriads of small things like lobsters; with claws
and tails, all fighting and swallowing each other, that are disporting
in their stomachs? But only think of him who converts your cutlet into
charcoal, and your steak into starch! It may stick to your ribs after
that, to be sure; but will it not stick harder to your conscience?
With what pleasure do you help yourself to your haunch, when the
conviction is staring you in the face, that what seems venison is but
adipose matter and azote? That you are only making a great Nassau
balloon of yourself when you are dreaming of hard condition, and
preparing yourself for the fossil state when blowing the froth off
your porter.
Of latter years the great object of science would appear to be an
earnest desire to disenchant us from all the agreeable and pleasant
dreams we have formed of life, and to make man insignificant without
making him humble. Thus, one class of philosophers labour hard to
prove that manhood is but monkeyhood--that a slight adaptation of the
tail to the customs of civilized life has enabled us to be seated;
while the invention of looking-glasses, bear's grease, cold cream, and
macassar, have cultivated our looks into the present fashion.
Another, having felt over our skulls, gravely asserts, "There is a
_vis a tergo_ of wickedness implanted in us, that must find vent in
murder and bloodshed." While the magnetic folk would make us believe
that we are merely a kind of ambulating electric-machine, to be
charged at will by the first M. Lafontaine we meet with, and mayhap
explode from over-pressure.
While such liberties are taken with us without, the case is worse
within. Our circulation is a hydraulic problem; our stomach is a
mill--a brewing vat--a tanner's yard--a crucible, or a retort. You
yourself, in all the resplendent glory of your braided frock, and your
decoration of the Guelph, are nothing but an aggregate of mechanical
and chemical inventions, as often going wrong as right; and your wife,
in the pride of her Parisian bonnet, and robe _a la Victorine_, is
only gelatine and adipose substance, phosphate of lime, and a little
arsenic.
Now, let me ask, what remains to us of life, if we are to be robbed of
every fascination and charm of existence in this fashion? And
again--has medical science so exhausted all the details of practical
benefit to mankind, that it is justified in these far-west
explorations into the realms of soaring fancy, or the gloomy depths of
chemical analysis? Hydrophobia, consumption, and tetanus are not so
curable that we can afford to waste our sympathies on chimpanzees:
nor is this world so pleasant that we must deny ourselves the
advantage of all its illusions, and throw away the garment in which
Nature has clothed her nakedness. No, no. There was sound philosophy
in Peter, in the "Tale of a Tub," who assured his guests that whatever
their frail senses might think to the contrary, the hard crusts were
excellent and tender mutton; but I see neither rhyme nor reason in
convincing us, that amid all the triumphs of turtle and white bait,
Ardennes ham and _pate de Strasbourg_, our food is merely coke and
glue, roach, lime, starch, and magnesia.
[Illustration]
A NUT FOR THE ARCHITECTS.
"God made the country," said the poet: but in my heart I believe he
might have added--"The devil made architects." Few cities--I scarcely
know of one--can boast of such environs as Dublin. The scenery,
diversified in its character, possesses attraction for almost every
taste: the woody glade--the romantic river--the wild and barren
mountain--the cultivated valley--the waving upland--the bold and
rocky coast, broken with promontory and island--are all to be found,
even within a few miles of the capital; while, in addition, the nature
of our climate confers a verdure and a freshness unequalled, imparting
a depth and colour to the landscape equal to the beauty of its
outline.
Whether you travel inland or coastwise, the country presents a
succession of sites for building, there being no style of house for
which a suitable spot cannot readily be found; and yet, with all this,
the perverse taste of man has contrived, by incongruous and
ill-conceived architecture, to mar almost every point of view, and
destroy every picturesque feature of the landscape.
The liberty of the subject is a bright and glorious prerogative; and
nowhere should its exercise be more freely conceded than in those
arrangements an individual makes for his own domestic comfort, and the
happiness of his home.
That one man likes a room in which three people form a crowd, and that
another prefers an apartment spacious as Exeter Hall, is a matter of
individual taste, with which the world has nothing whatever to do.
Your neighbour in the valley may like a cottage not larger than a
sugar-hogshead, with rats for company and beetles for bed-fellows;
your friend on the hill-side may build himself an imaginary castle,
with armour for furniture, and antique weapons for ornaments;--with
all this you have no concern--no more than with his banker's book, or
the thoughts of his bosom: but should the one or the other, either by
a thing like a piggery, or an incongruous mass like a jail, destroy
all the beauty and mar all the effect of the scenery for miles round,
far beyond the precincts of his own small tenure--should he outrage
all the principles of taste, and violate every sentiment of landscape
beauty, by some poor and contemptible, or some pretentious and vulgar
edifice--then, do I say, you are really aggrieved; and against such a
man you have a just and equitable complaint, as one interfering with
the natural pleasures and just enjoyments to which, as a free citizen
of a free state, you have an indubitable, undeniable right.
That waving, undulating meadow, hemmed in with its dark woods, and
mirrored in the fair stream that flows peacefully beneath it, was
never, surely, intended to be disfigured with a square house like a
salt-box, and a verandah like a register-grate: the far-stretching
line of yellow coast that you see yonder, where the calm sea is
sleeping, land-locked by those jutting headlands, was never meant to
be pock-marked with those vile bathing lodges, with green baize
draperies drying before them.
Was that bold and granite-sided mountain made thus to be hewed out
into parterres for polyanthuses, and stable-lanes for Cockneys'
carmen?--or is the margin of our glorious bay, the deep frame-work of
the bright picture, to be carved into little terraces, with some
half-dozen slated cabins, or a row of stiff-looking, Leeson-street-like
houses, with brass knockers and a balcony? Forbid it, heaven! We have
a board of wide and inconvenient streets, who watch over all the
irregularities of municipal architecture, and a man is no more
permitted to violate the laws of good taste, than he is suffered to
transgress those of good morals. Why not have a similar body to
protect the fairer part of the created globe? Is Pill-lane more sacred
than Bray-head? Has Copper-alley stronger claims than the
Glen-of-the-Downs? Is the Cross-poddle more classic ground than
Poolaphuca?
A NUT FOR A NEW COLONY.
If you happen to pass by Dodd's auction-room, on any Wednesday,
towards the hour of three in the afternoon, the chances are about
seven to one that you hear a sharp, smart voice articulating, somewhat
in this fashion:--"A very handsome tea-service, ladies. What shall I
say for this remarkably neat pattern? One tea-pot, one sugar-bowl, one
slop-basin, and twelve cups and saucers.--Show them round, Tim," &c.
Now it is with no intention of directing the public eye to the "willow
pattern," that I have alluded to this circumstance. It is simply,
because that thereby hangs an association, and I have never heard the
eloquent expatiator on china, without thinking of the Belgian navy,
which consists of--"One gun-boat, one pinnace, one pilot, one
commodore, and twelve little sailors." Unquestionably, there never was
a cheaper piece of national extravagance than this, nor do I believe
that any public functionary enjoys a more tranquil and undisturbed
existence than the worthy "_ministre de la marine_," whose duty it is
to preside over the fleet I have mentioned. Once, and once only do I
remember that his quiet life was shaken by the rude assault of
political events: it was when the imposing force under his sway
undertook a voyage of discovery some miles down the Scheldt, which
they did alike to the surprise and admiration of the whole land.
After a day's peaceful drifting with the river's current, they reached
the fort of Lillo, where, _more majorum_, as night was falling, they
prudently dropped anchor, having a due sense of the danger that might
accrue "from running down a continent in the dark." There was,
besides, a feeling of high-souled pride in anchoring within sight,
under the guns, as it were, of the Dutch fort--the insolent Dutch,
whom they, with some aid from France--as the Irishman said of his
marriage, for love, and a trifle of money--had driven from their
country; and, although the fog rendered everything invisible, and the
guns were spiked, still the act of courage was not disparaged; and
they fell to, and sang the Brabancon, and drank Flemish beer till
bed-time.
Happy and patriotic souls! little did you know, that amid your dreams
of national greatness, some half-dozen imps of Dutch middies were
painting out the magnificent tricolor streaks that adorned your good
craft, and making the whole one mass of dirty black.
Such was the case, however; and when day broke, those brilliant
emblems of Belgian independence had vanished, and in their place a
murky line of pitch now stood.
Homeward they bent their course, sadder and wiser men; and, to their
credit be it spoken, having told their sorrows to their sage minister,
they have lived a life of happy retirement, and never strayed beyond
the peaceful limits of the Antwerp basin.
Far be from me the unworthy object of drawing before the public gaze
the blissful and unpretending service, that shuns the noontide glitter
of the world's applause, and better loves the quiet solitude of their
own unobtrusive waters; and had they thus remained, nothing would have
tempted me to draw them from their obscurity. But alas! national
ambition has visited even the seclusion of this service. Not content
with coasting voyages, some twelve miles down their muddy river--not
satisfied with lording it over fishing smacks and herring wherries,
this great people have resolved on becoming a maritime power in blue
water, and running a race of rivalry with England, France, and Russia;
and to it they have set in right earnest.
They began by purchasing a steam-vessel, which happens to turn out on
such a scale of size, as to be inadmissible into any harbour they
possess. By dint of labour, time, cost, and great outlay, they
succeeded, after four months, in getting her into dock. But alas! if
it took that time to admit her, it takes six months to let her out
again; and, when out, what are they to do with her?
When Admiral Dalrymple turned farmer, he mentions in one of his
letters, the sufferings his unhappy ignorance of all agricultural
pursuits involved him in, and feelingly tells us: "I have given ten
pounds for a dunghill, and would now willingly give any man twenty, to
tell me what to do with it." This was exactly the case with the
Belgians. They had bought a steam-ship, they put coals in her, and a
crew; and then, for the life and soul of them, they did not know what
to do with them.
They desired an export trade--a _debouche_ for their Namur cutlery and
Verviers' frieze. But where could they go? They had no colonies.
Holland had, to be sure: but then, they had quarrelled with Holland,
and there was no use repining. "What can't be cured," &c. Besides, if
they had lost a colony, they had gained a cardinal; and if they had no
merchantmen, they had at least high-mass; and if they were excluded
from Batavia, why they had free access to the "Abbe Boon."
There were, however, some impracticable people engaged in traffic,
who would not listen to these great advantages, and who were obstinate
enough to suppose that the country was as prosperous when it had a
market for its productions, as it was when it had none. And although
the priests, who have multiplied some hundredfold since the
revolution, were willing "to consume" to any extent, yet, unhappily,
they were not as profitable customers as their _ci-devant_ friends
beyond sea.
Nothing then remained but to have a colony, and after much
consideration, long thought, and anxious deliberation, it was
announced to the chamber that the Belgians had a colony, and that the
colony was called "Guatemala."
When Sancho Panza appealed to Don Quixote, to realise his promised
dream of greatness, you may remember, he always asked for an island:
"Make me governor of an island!" There was something defined,
accurate, and tangible, as it were, in the sea-girt possession, that
suggested to the honest squire's mind the idea of perfect, independent
rule. And in the same way, the Belgians desired to have an island.
Some few, less imaginative, suspected, however, that an island must
always have its limit to importation quicker attained than a
continent, and they preferred some vast, unexplored tract, like India,
or Central America, where the consumption of corduroy and cast-iron
might have an unexhausted traffic for centuries.
Now, it is a difficult condition to find out that spot on a map which
should realise both expectations. Happily, however, M. Van de Weyer
had to deal with a kind and confiding people, whose knowledge of
geography is about equal to a blind man's appreciation of scarlet or
sky-blue. Not only, therefore, did he represent to one party, the
newly-acquired possession as an island, and to the other as a vast
continent, but he actually shifted its _locale_ about the globe, from
the tropics to the north-pole, with such admirable dexterity, that not
only is all cavil silenced about its commercial advantages, but its
very climate has an advocate in every taste, and an admirer in every
household. Steam-engines, therefore, are fabricated; cannon are cast;
railroads are in preparation; broadcloth is weaving; flax is growing;
lace is in progress, all through the kingdom, for the new colony of
Guatemala,--whose only inhabitants are little grateful for the
profound solicitude they are exciting, inasmuch as, being but rats and
sea-gulls, their modes of living and thinking give them a happy
indifference about steam-travelling, and the use of fine linen.
No matter;--the country is prospering--shares are rising--speculations
are rife--loans are effected every day in the week, and M. Van de
Weyer sleeps in the peaceful composure of a man who knows in his
heart, that even if they get their unwieldy craft to sea, there is not
a man in the kingdom who could, by any ingenuity, discover the
whereabout of the far-famed Guatemala.
[Illustration]
A "SWEET" NUT FOR THE YANKEES.
Lord Chesterfield once remarked that a thoroughly vulgar man could not
speak the most common-place word, nor perform the most ordinary act,
without imparting to the one and the other a portion of his own inborn
vulgarity. And exactly so is it with the Yankees; not a question can
arise, no matter how great its importance, nor how trivial its
bearings, upon which, the moment they express an opinion, they do not
completely invest with their own native coarseness, insolence, and
vulgarity. The boundary question was made a matter of violent
invective and ruffian abuse; the right of search was treated with the
same powers of ribaldry towards England; and now we have these amiable
and enlightened citizens defending the wholesale piracy of British
authors, not on the plausible but unjust pretext of the benefit to be
derived from an extended acquaintance with English literature; but,
only conceive! because, if "English authors were invested with any
control over the republication of their own books, it would be no
longer possible for American editors to alter and adapt them as they
do now to the American taste." However incredible this may seem, the
passage formed part of a document actually submitted to congress, and
favourably received by that body. This is not the place for me to
dwell on the unprincipled usurpation by which men who have contributed
nothing to the production of a work, assume the power of reaping its
benefits, and profiting by its success. The wholesale robbery of
English authors has been of late well and ably exposed. The gifted
and accomplished author of "Darnley" and "The Gipsy" has devoted his
time and his talents to the subject; and although the world at large
have few sympathies with the wrongs of those who live to please them,
yet the day is not distant when the rights of a large and influential
body, who stamp the age with the image of their own minds, can be no
longer neglected, and the security of literary property must become at
least as great as of mining scrip, or the shares in a railroad.
My present business is with the Yankee declaration, that English
authors to be readable in America must be passed through the ordeal of
re-writing. I scarcely think that the annals of impertinence and
ignorance could equal this. What! is it seriously meant that Scott and
Byron, Wordsworth, Southey, Rogers, Bulwer, James, Dickens, and a host
of others, must be converted into the garbage of St. Giles, or the
foetid slang of Wapping, before they can pass muster before an American
public? Must the book reek of "gin twist," "cock tail," and fifty
other abominations, ere it reach an American drawing-room? Must the
"bowie-knife and the whittling-stick" mark its pages; and the coarse
jest of some tobacco-chewing, wild-cat-whipping penny-a-liner
disfigure and sully the passages impressed with the glowing brilliancy
of Scott, or the impetuous torrent of Byron's genius? Is this a true
picture of America? Is her reading public indeed degraded to this
pass? I certainly have few sympathies with brother Jonathan. I like
not his spirit of boastful insolence, his rude speech, or his
uncultivated habits; but I confess I am unwilling to credit this. I
hesitate to believe in such an amount of intellectual depravity as can
turn from the cultivated writings of Scott and Bulwer to revel in the
coarseness and vulgarity of a Yankee editor, vamping up his stolen
wares with oaths from the far west, or vapid jests from life in the
Prairies. Again, what shall I say of those who follow this traffic? Is
it not enough to steal that which is not theirs, to possess themselves
of what they have no right or claim to? Must they mangle the corpse
when they have extinguished life? Must they, while they cheat the
author of his gain, rob him also of his fair fame? "He who steals my
purse steals trash," but how shall I characterise that extent of
baseness that dares to step in between an author and his
reputation--inserting between him and posterity their own illiterate
degeneracy and insufferable stupidity?