of the fair creations of his mind--Jeanie Deans and Rebecca--Yankeefied
into women of Long Island, or damsels from Connecticut? Is Childe
Harold to be a Kentucky-man? and are the vivid pictures of life
Bulwer's novels abound in, to be converted into the prison-discipline
school of manners, that prevail in New York and Boston, where, as
Hamilton remarks, "the men are about as like gentlemen, as are our new
police?" What should we say of the person who having stolen a
Rembrandt or a Vandyke from its owner, would seek to legalise his
theft by daubing over the picture with his own colours--obliterating
every trace of the great master, and exulting that every stroke of his
brush defaced some touch of genius, and that beneath the savage
vandalism of his act, every lineament of the artist was obliterated? I
ask you, would not mere robbery be a virtue beside such a deed as
this? Who could compare the sinful promptings to which want and
starvation give birth to, to the ruffian profligacy of such
barbarity? And now, when I tell you, that not content with this, not
satisfied to desecrate the work, the wretch goes a step farther and
stabs its author--what shall I say of him now, who, when he had
defaced the picture, marred every effect, distorted all drawing, and
rendered the whole a chaotic mass of indistinguishable nonsense, goes
forth to the world, and announces, "This is a Rembrandt, this is a
Vandyke: ay, look at it and wonder: but with all its faults, and all
its demerits, it is cried up above our native artists; it has got the
seal of the old world's approval upon it, and in vain we of younger
origin shall dare to dissent from its judgments." Now, once more, I
say, can you show the equal of this moral turpitude? and such I pledge
myself is the conduct of your transatlantic pirates with respect to
British literature. Mr. Dickens, no mean authority, asserts that in
the same sheet in which they boast the sale of many thousand copies of
an English reprint, they coarsely attack the author of that very book,
and heap scurrility and slander on his head.
Yes, such is the fact; not satisfied with robbery, they murder
reputation also. And then we find them expatiating in most moving
terms over the superiority of their own neglected genius!
A NUT FOR THE SEASON--JULLIEN'S QUADRILLES.
[Illustration]
A very curious paper might be made by any one who, after an absence of
some years from Ireland, should chronicle his new impressions of the
country, and compare them with his old ones. The changes time works
everywhere, even in a brief space, are remarkable, but particularly so
in a land where everything is in a state of transition--where the
violence with which all subjects are treated, the excited tone people
are wont to assume on every topic, are continually producing their
effects on society--dismembering old alliances--begetting new
combinations. Such is the case with us here; and every year evidences
by the strange anomalies it presents in politics, parties, public
feeling, and private habits, how little chance there is for a prophet
to make a character by his predictions regarding Ireland. He would,
indeed, be a skilful chemist who would attempt the analysis of our
complex nature; but far greater and more gifted must he be, who, from
any consideration of the elements, would venture to pronounce on the
probable results of their action and re-action, and declare what we
shall be some twenty years hence.
Oh, for a good Irish "Rip van Winkle," who would at least let us look
on the two pictures--what we were, and what we are. He should be a
Clare man--none others have the same shrewd insight into character,
the same intuitive knowledge of life; none others detect, like them,
the flaws and fractures in human nature. There may be more
mathematical genius in Cork, and more classic lore in Kerry; there may
be, I know there is, a more astute and patient pains-taking spirit of
calculation in the northern counties; but for the man who is only to
have one rapid glance at the game, and say how it fares--to throw a
quick _coup-d'oeil_ on the board, and declare the winner, Clare for
ever!
Were I a lawgiver, I would admit any attorney to practise who should
produce sufficient evidence of his having served half the usual time
of apprenticeship in Ennis. The Pontine marshes are not so prolific of
fever, as the air of that country of ready-witted intelligence and
smartness; and now, ere I return from my digression, let me solemnly
declare, that, for the opinion here expressed, I have not received any
money or moneys, nor do I expect to receive such, or any place,
pension, or other reward, from Tom Steele or any one else concerned.
Well, we have not got this same western "Rip van Winkle," nor do I
think we are likely to do so, for this simple reason, that if he were
a Clare man, he'd never have been caught "napping;" so, now, let us
look about us and see if, on the very surface of events, we shall not
find something to our purpose. But where to begin, that's the
question: no clue is left to the absentee of a few years by which to
guide his path. He may look in vain even for the old landmarks which
he remembered in boyhood; for somehow he finds them all in
masquerade. The goodly King William he had left in all the effulgence
of his Orange livery, is now a cross between a river-god and one of
Dan's footmen. Let him turn to the Mansion-house to revive his memory
of the glorious hip, hip, hurra's he has shouted in the exuberance of
his loyalty, and straightway he comes plump against Lord Mayor
O'Connell, proceeding in state to Marlborough-street chapel. He asks
who are these plump gentlemen with light blue silk collars, and
well-rounded calves, whose haughty bearing seems to awe the beholders,
and he is told that he knew them of old, as wearing dusky black coats
and leather shorts; pleasant fellows in those days, and well versed in
punch and polemics. The hackney-coaches have been cut down into
covered cars, and the "bulky" watchmen reduced to new police. Let him
turn which way he will--let it be his pleasure to hear the popular
preacher, the eloquent lawyer, or the scientific lecturer, and if his
memory be only as accurate as his hearing, he will confess "time's
changes;" and when he learns who are deemed the fashionable
entertainers of the day--at whose boards sit lords and baronets most
frequently, he will exclaim with the poet--
"Pritchard's genteel, and Garrick's six feet high."
Well, well, it's bad philosophy, and bad temper, too, to quarrel with
what is; nowhere is the wisdom of Providence more seen than in the
universal law, by which everything has its place somewhere; the
gnarled and bent sapling that would be rejected by the builder, is
exactly the piece adapted for the knee timber of a frigate; the
jagged, ill-formed rock that would ill suit the polished portico, is
invaluable in a rustic arch; and, perhaps, on the same principle,
dull lawyers make excellent judges, and the people who cannot speak
within the limits of Lindley Murray, are admirable public writers and
excellent critics; and as Doctor Pangloss was a good man "because he
knew what wickedness was," so nothing contributes to the detection of
faults in others, like the daily practice of their commission by
ourselves; and never can any man predict failure to another with such
eloquence and impressiveness, as when he himself has experienced what
it is to "be damned."
Here I am in another digression, and sorry am I not to follow it out
further; but for the present I must not--so now, to try back: I will
suppose my absentee friend to have passed his "day in town," amazed
and surprised at the various changes about him; I will not bewilder
him with any glance at our politics, nor puzzle him with that game of
cross corners by which every one seems to have changed his place; nor
attempt any explanation of the mysterious doctrine by which the party
which affects the strongest attachment to the sovereign should exult
in any defeat to her armies; nor how the supporters of the government
contribute to its stability, by rabid attacks on its members, and
absurd comparisons of their own fitness for affairs, with the heads of
our best and wisest. These things he must have remembered long ago,
and with respect to them, we are pretty much as we were; but I will
introduce him to an evening party--a society where the _elite_ of
Dublin are assembled; where, amid the glare of wax lights, and the
more brilliant blaze of beauty, our fairest women and most gifted and
exalted men are met together for enjoyment. At first blush there will
appear to him to have been no alteration nor change here. Even the
very faces he will remember are the same he saw a dozen years ago:
some pursy gentlemen with bald foreheads or grey whiskers who danced
before, are now grown whisters; a few of the ladies, who then figured
in the quadrille, have assumed the turban, and occupy an ottoman; the
gay, laughing, light-hearted youth he formerly hobnobbed with at
supper, is become a rising barrister, and has got up a look of learned
pre-occupation, much more imposing to his sister than to Sir Edward
Sugden; the wild, reckless collegeman, whose name was a talisman in
the "Shades," is now a soft-voiced young physician, vibrating in his
imitation of the two great leaders in his art, and alternately
assuming the "Epic or the Lake" school of physic. All this may amuse,
but cannot amaze him: such is the natural current of events, and he
ought to be prepared for it. The evening wears on, however; the frigid
politeness and ceremonious distance which we have for some years back
been borrowing from our neighbours, and which seem to suit our warmer
natures pretty much as a suit of plate armour would a _danseuse_ in a
ballet--this begins to wear off, and melt away before the genial heat
of Irish temperament; "the mirth and fun grow fast and furious;" and a
new dance is called for. What, then, is the amazement, shall I say the
horror, of our friend to hear the band strike up a tune which he only
remembered as associated with everything base, low, and disgraceful;
which, in the days of his "libertine youth," he only heard at riotous
carousals and roistering festivals; whose every bar is associated with
words--ay, there's the rub--which, in his maturer years, he blushes to
have listened to! he stares about him in wonderment; for a moment he
forgets that the young lady who dances with such evident enjoyment of
the air, is ignorant of its history; he watches her sparkling eye and
animated gesture, without remembering that _she_ knows nothing of the
associations at which her partner is, perhaps, smirking; he sees her
_vis-a-vis_ exchanging looks with his friend, that denote _their_
estimation of the music; and in very truth, so puzzled is he, he
begins to distrust his senses. The air ceases, and is succeeded by
another no less known, no less steeped in the same class of
associations, and so to the conclusion. These remembrances of past
wickedness go on "crescendo," till the _finale_ caps the whole with a
melody, to which even the restraints of society are scarcely able to
prevent a humming accompaniment of concurring voices, and--these are
the Irish Quadrilles! What can account for this? What special pleading
will find an argument in its favour? When Wesley objected to all the
good music being given to the devil, he only excused his adoption of
certain airs which, in their popular form, had never been connected
with religious words and feelings; and in his selection of them, was
rigidly mindful to take such only as in their character became easily
convertible to his purpose: he never enlisted those to which, by an
unhappy destiny, vulgarising and indelicate associations have been so
connected as to become inseparably identified; and although the object
is widely different, I cannot see how, for the purposes of social
enjoyment, we should have diverged from his example. If we wished a
set of Irish quadrilles, how many good and suitable airs had we not
ready at our hands? Is not our national music proverbially rich, and
in the very character of music that would suit us? Are there not airs
in hundreds, whose very names are linked with pleasing and poetic
memories, admirably adapted to the purpose? Why commit the choice, as
in this case, to a foreigner who knew nothing of them, nor of us? And
why permit him to introduce into our drawing-rooms, through the means
of a quadrille band, a class of reminiscences which suggest levity in
young men, and shame in old ones? No, no; if the Irish quadrilles are
to be fashionable, let it be in those classic precincts where their
merits are best appreciated, and let Monsieur Jullien's popularity be
great in Barrack-street!
A NUT FOR "ALL IRELAND."
From Carrickfergus to Cape Clear, the whole island is on the "_qui
vive_" as to whether her gracious majesty the queen will vouchsafe to
visit us in the ensuing summer. The hospitable and magnificent
reception which awaited her in Scotland has given a more than ordinary
impulse to every plan by which we might evince our loyalty, and
exhibit ourselves to our sovereign in a point of view not less
favourable than our worthy neighbours across the sea.
At first blush, nothing would seem more easy to accomplish than this.
A very cursory glance at Mr. O'Connell's speeches will convince any
one that a land more favourably endowed by nature, or blessed with a
finer peasantry, never existed: with features of picturesque beauty
dividing the attention of the traveller, with the fertility of the
soil; and, in fact, presenting such a panorama of loveliness, peace,
plenty, and tranquillity, that a very natural doubt might occur to Sir
Robert Peel's mind in recommending this excursion to her majesty,
lest the charms of such an Arcadia should supersede the more homely
attractions of England, and "our ladye the queene" preferring the
lodge in the Phoenix to the ancient towers of Windsor, fix her
residence amongst us, and thus at once repeal the Union.
It were difficult to say if some vision of this kind did not float
across the exalted imagination of the illustrious Daniel, amid that
shower of fortune's favours such a visit would inevitably bring
down--baronetcies, knighthood, deputy-lieutenancies would rain upon
the land, and a general epidemic of feasting and festivity raise every
heart in the island, and nearly break Father Mathew's.
If the Scotch be warm in their attachment, our affections stand at a
white heat; if they be enthusiastic, we can go clean mad; and for that
one bepraised individual who boasted he would never wash the hand
which had the honour to touch that of the queen, we could produce a
round ten thousand whose loyalty, looking both ways, would enable
them, under such circumstances, to claim superiority, as they had
never washed theirs since the hour of their birth.
Notwithstanding all these elements of hospitality, a more mature
consideration of the question would show how very difficult it would
be to compete successfully with the visit to Scotland. Clanship, the
remains of feudalism, and historical associations, whose dark colours
have been brought out into glowing brightness under the magic pencil
of Scott--national costume and national customs--the wild sports of
the wilder regions--all conspired to give a peculiar interest to this
royal progress; and from the lordly Baron of Breadalbane to the kilted
Highlander upon the hills, there was something of ancient splendour
and by-gone homeliness mixed up together that may well have evoked the
exclamation of our queen, who, standing on the terrace at Drummond,
and gazing on the scene below her, uttered--"HOW GRAND!"
Now, unfortunately in many, if not in all these advantages, we have no
participation. Clanship is unknown amongst us,--only one Irishman has
a tail, and even that is as ragged an appendage as need be. Our
national costume is nakedness; and of our national customs, we may
answer as the sailor did, who, being asked what he had to say in his
defence against a charge of stealing a quadrant, sagely replied--"Your
worship, it's a damn'd ugly business, and the less that's said about
it the better."
Two doubts press upon us--who is to receive her Majesty; and how are
they to do it? They who have large houses generally happen to have
small fortunes, and among the few who have adequate means, there is
scarcely one who could accommodate one half of the royal suite. In
Scotland, everything worthy of being seen lies in a ring-fence. The
Highlands comprise all that is remarkable in the country; and thus the
tour of them presents a quick succession of picturesque beauty without
the interval of even half a day's journey devoid of interest. Now, how
many weary miles must her Majesty travel in Ireland from one
remarkable spot to another--what scenes of misery and want must she
wade through from the south to the west. Would any charms of
scenery--would any warmth of hospitality--repay her for the anguish
such misery must inflict upon her, as her eye would range over the
wild tract of country where want and disease seem to have fixed their
dwelling, and where the only edifice that rises above the mud-cabin
of the way-side presents the red brick front of a union poor-house?
These, however, are sad topics--what are we to do with the Prince? His
Royal Highness loves sporting: we have scarcely a pheasant--we have
not one capercailzie in the island; but then we have our national
pastimes. If we cannot turn out a stag to amuse him, why we can
enlarge a tithe-proctor; and, instead of coming home proud that he has
bagged a roe, he shall exult in having brought down a rector. How poor
and insignificant would any _battue_ be in comparison with a good
midnight burning--how contemptible the pursuit of rabbits and hares,
when compared with a "tithe affray," or the last collision with the
military in Tipperary. I have said that the Scotch have a national
costume; but if _semi_-nakedness be a charm in them, what shall be
said of us, who go the "whole hog?" The details of their ancient
dress--their tartan, their kilt, their philabeg, that offered so much
interest to the royal suite--how shall they vie with the
million-coloured patches of an Irishman's garment? or what bonnet that
ever flaunted in the breeze is fit to compare with the easy jauntiness
of Paddy's _caubeen_, through which, in lieu of a feather, a lock of
his hair is floating?
"Nor clasp nor nodding plume was there;
But for feather he wore one lock of hair."
_Marmion._
Then, again, how will the watch-fires that blazed upon the mountains
pale before the glare of a burning haggard; and what cheer that ever
rose from Highland throats will vie with the wild yell of ten thousand
Black-feet on the march of a midnight marauding? No, no; it is quite
clear the Scotch have no chance with us. Her Majesty may not have all
her expectations fulfilled by a visit to Ireland; but most assuredly a
"touch of our quality" will show her many things no near country could
present, and the probability is, she will neither have time nor
leisure for a trip to New Zealand.
Everything that indicates nationality will then have its reward. Grave
dignitaries of the Church will practise the bagpipes, and
prothonotaries will refresh their jig-dancing; whatever is Irish, will
be _la vogue_; and, instead of reading that her Majesty wore a shawl
of the Gordon tartan, manufactured at Paisley, we shall find that the
Queen appeared in a novel pattern of rags, devised at Mud Island;
while his Royal Highness will compliment the mildness of our climate
by adopting our national dress. What a day for Ireland that will
be!--we shall indeed be "great, glorious, and free;" and if the
evening only concludes with the Irish Quadrilles, I have little doubt
that her Majesty will repeat her exclamation of "How grand!" as she
beholds the members of the royal suite moving gracefully to the air of
"Stonybatter."
Let us, then, begin in time. Let there be an order of council to
preserve all the parsons, agents, tithe-proctors, and landlords till
June; let there be no more shooting in Tipperary for the rest of the
season; let us "burke" Father Mathew, and endeavour to make our heads
for the approaching festivities; and what between the new poor-law and
the tariff, I think we shall be by that time in as picturesque a state
of poverty as the most critical stickler for nationality would
desire.
A NUT FOR "A NEW COMPANY."
By no one circumstance in our social condition is a foreigner more
struck than by the fact that there is not a want, an ailing, an
incapacity for which British philanthropy has not supplied its remedy
of some sort or other. A very cursory glance at the advertising
columns of the _Times_ will be all-sufficient to establish this
assertion. Mental and bodily infirmities, pecuniary difficulties,
family afflictions, natural defects, have all their separate _corps_
of comforters; and there is no suffering condition in life that has
not a benevolent paragraph specially addressed to its consolation. To
the "afflicted with gout;" to "all with corns and bunions;" to "the
friends of a nervous invalid"--who is, by the bye, invariably a
vicious madman; to "the childless;" to "those about to marry." Such
are the headings of various little crumbs of comfort by which the
active philanthropy of England sustains its reputation, and fills its
pocket. From tooth-powder to tea-trays--from spring-mattrasses to
fictitious mineral waters--from French blacking to the Widow Welch's
Pills--all have their separate votaries; and it would be difficult to
conceive any real or imaginary want unsupplied in this prolific age of
contrivance.
A gentleman might descend from the moon, like our clever friend, "The
Commissioner," and, by a little attention to these plausible
paragraphs, become as thoroughly John Bull in all his habits and
observances as though he were born within St. Pancras. "A widow lady
with two daughters would take a gentleman to board, where all the
advantages and comforts of a private family might be found, within ten
minutes' walk from Greenwich. Unexceptionable references will be given
and expected on either side." Here, without a moment's delay, he might
be domiciled in an English family; here he might retire from all the
cares and troubles of life, enjoying the tranquil pleasures of the
widow's society, with no other risk or danger, save that of falling in
love with one or both of the fair daughters, who have "a taste for
music," and "speak French."