"The variable climate of our native land," as Rowland the Minstrel of
Macassar has elegantly expressed it, like a Roman epicure, deprives our
nightingales of their tongues, and the melodious denizens of our
drawing-rooms of their "sweet voices."
Vainly has Crevelli raised a bulwark of lozenges against the Demon of
Catarrh! Soreness will invade the throat, and noses run in every family,
seeming to be infected with a sentimental furor for blooming--we presume
from being so newly blown. We have seen noses chiseled, as it were, from
an alabaster block, grow in one short day scarlet as our own, as though
they blushed for the continual trouble they were giving their proprietors;
whilst the peculiar intonation produced by the conversion of the nasals
into liquids, and then of the liquids ultimately into mutes, leads to the
inference that there must be a stoppage about the bridge, and should be
placarded, like that of Westminster, "No thoroughfare."
It has been generally supposed that St. Cecilia with a cold in her head
would be incompetent to "Nix my Dolly;" and this erroneous and popular
prejudice is continually made the excuse for vocal inability during the
winter months. Now the effect which we have before described upon the
articulation of the catarrhed would be, in our opinion, so far from
displeasing, that we feel it would amply compensate for any imperfections
of tune. For instance, what can be finer than the alteration it would
produce in the well-known ballad of "Oh no, we never mention her!"--a
ballad which has almost become wearisome from its sweetness and
repetition. With a catarrh the words would run thus:--
"O lo, we lever beltiol her,
Her labe is lever heard."
Struck with this modification of sound, PUNCH, anxious to cater _even_ for
the catarrhs of his subscribers, begs to furnish them with a "_calzolet_,"
which he trusts will be of more service to harmonic meetings than pectoral
lozenges and paregoric, as we have anticipated the cold by converting
every _m_ into _b_, and every _n_ into _l_.