And so no more from your old friend,

JUNIPER HEDGEHOG.

LETTER XIII.--_To Mrs Hedgehog of New York._

DEAR GRANDMOTHER,--You ought to be in England just now, we’re in such

a pleasant pucker. The Church is in danger again! I have myself known

her twenty times in peril, but now she really is at the very edge of

destruction.

You know there’s a place called Maynooth College, where they bring up

Roman Catholic priests for the use of Ireland. Well, there’s a lot

of folks who will have it that this college is not a bit better than

certain tanks I’ve read of in India, where they breed young crocodiles

to be worshipped by people who know no better. Sir Robert Peel intends

to give £26,000 a year to this place--it used to have an annual grant

of £9000--that the scholars may be increased in number, and that they

may be better taught and more comfortably boarded and lodged. Well,

the members of the Church of England--although here and there they

have grumbled at the matter, and have called the Pope names that pass

in small-change at Billingsgate--have been mute as fish compared to

the Dissenters. It is they who have fought the fight; it is they who

have raised the price of parchment by darkening the House of Commons

with clouds of petitions. It is they who have risen to a man, and have

patted the British Lion, and twisted his tail, and goaded him--as you’d

set a bulldog on a cat--to tear Popery to pieces.

But, dear grandmother, don’t be afraid. Before you get my next letter,

with all this noise and bouncing, we shall have settled down as quiet

as stale sodawater. And then for the Church being in danger--bless you!

the very folks who are now holding up their hands, thinking it will

drop to pieces (from its very richness, I suppose, like some of your

plum-puddings)--why, they’ll sleep quietly in their beds, and take

their glass of wine and chicken with their usual appetite, until the

Church shall be once more in trouble, once more to give ’em a pleasant,

healthful shaking,--and then once more to let ’em easily down again.

I’ve known some girls who’ve thought they best showed how tender they

were by always going into fits: well, I do think that, just like ’em,

some people believe they best show their religion when they scream and

foam at the mouth about it.

It’s a settled belief with a good many pious people, who are as careful

of their religion as of their best service of china--only using it

on holiday occasions, for fear it should be chipped or flawed in

working-day wear--it’s a belief with them that a Papist is a sort of

human toad, an abomination in the form of man. Dr Croly has surely

a notion of this sort. A few days ago he appeared on Covent Garden

stage (I think his first appearance there since his comedy of “Pride

shall have a Fall”), and called upon the Lord, with thunder and

lightning and the sword, to kill His enemies--meaning Roman Catholics!

And then the Doctor showed how Providence had punished all naughty

kings who had cast an eye of favour on the Pope. Capping this, the

Doctor more than hinted that George the Fourth, the first gentleman

in Europe--for he had a greater number of coats than all the rest of

the kings put together--was somewhat suddenly called from his loving

people because he had passed the bill that ’mancipated the Catholics.

Well, when we think how many Catholics there are in the world--when

we remember the millions of ’em scattered about the earth--it does

appear to me a little bold in a worm of a man (whether the said worm

wears clergyman’s black or not) praying to the Lord to destroy, crush,

burn, whole nations of men and women because he wasn’t born to think

as they do. But so it is with some folks very proud indeed of their

Christianity. Hear them talk and pray, and you would think that Satan

himself, the father of wickedness, had been the creator of ninety-nine

men out of a hundred, and it was the pure, elect, and lucky hundredth

that religiously begged for the destruction of the ninety-nine. But

all the noise is about the largeness of the sum--the £26,000. The

£9000 was every year quietly voted--for I call the cackling of two

or three Parliament geese as nothing--and still the Church stands

unshaken on her foundation. By this it would seem that with some folks

it is the money that wrong costs, and not the wrong itself, that is

objectionable. Thinking after this fashion, drunkenness is not to be

thought a vice if it be drunkenness gratis; it, however, increases in

enormity with the increase of its price: thus gin-drunkenness is merely

wrong, but burgundy-drunkenness is infamous to the last degree. Haven’t

I read somewhere of an old Greek philosopher--if some of these chaps

had lived in these times, they’d now and then have found themselves at

the police-office--who felt mightily disposed for what was immoral,

and only held back at the purchase-money! I think he said he wouldn’t

“buy repentance at so dear a price.” Now, if he could have had the sin

at a cheap pennyworth, the sin itself had been light, indeed. It’s the

weight of money that makes the weight of crime.

But I suppose Dr Croly, Mr M’Neile, and such folks--who seem to read

their Bibles by the blue light of brimstone--believe that the extra

money given to the Roman Catholic priests of Ireland will only be so

much powder and shot with which they may bring down Protestants. Well,

if money is to make converts, what has the Irish Protestant Church been

about, that has always had a full money-bag at her girdle, and more

than that--plenty of leisure to reclaim the fallen? She has always had

a golden crook whereby to bring stray lambs into the fold, and yet has

added nothing to her flock.

Now, according to my opinion, the folks who abuse Maynooth ought rather

to feel glad that money is to be given to her priests, seeing what

an abundance of money, and good things purchased by money, have done

for the Irish Protestant Church. It has become slow as it has become

fat. Stuff even a pulpit-cushion with bank-notes, and it is strange

to see how religion will sleep upon it. And therefore people ought to

rejoice that the Catholic is to be made a little comfortable in worldly

matters! Excellent, worthy Churchmen, who can command the sports of the

field and all the pleasures of the table, are not the busy, troublesome

folks to go about converting their benighted neighbours! And though the

Maynooth pupils may not--like their beneficed rivals--keep fox-hounds,

and enjoy the dearest turtle, pineapples, and all that, they will not,

I think, be in after-life more dangerous to the Protestant Church,

because when at college they slept not more than two in a bed.

But there’s a sort of people in the world that can’t bear making any

progress. I wonder they even walk, unless they walk backwards! I

wonder they don’t refuse to go out when there’s a full moon, and all

out of love and respect for that “ancient institution,” the old one.

But there always were such people, grandmother--always will be. When

lucifers first came in, how many old women, stanch old souls--many of

’em worthy to be members of Parliament--stood by their matches and

tinder-boxes, and cried out “No surrender!” And how many of these old

women, disguised in male attire, every day go about at public meetings

professing to be ready to die for any tinder-box question that may come

up! Yes, ready, quite ready to die for it; all the readier, perhaps,

because dying for anything of the sort’s quite gone out of fashion.

Even Sir James Graham says the time is gone by for ill-using Ireland.

“The time is gone by!” And yet how many men before Sir James, have

stood up and declared _their_ time--the time “gone by”--was the best

time possible for Ireland, that what was doing for her could not

be improved; and having thundered this, have sat down, secure in a

majority that has voted for the evil to continue! What a long time it

is before men in power will learn to call things by their proper names!

What a time it takes to teach ministers to call evil, evil--and lies,

lies!

Sir Robert Peel has behaved in the handsomest manner in the matter.

He says it is by no means his wish to rob the Whigs of the gratitude

of Ireland for the Maynooth measure. Certainly not: they, no doubt,

could have carried it had he joined them; this, however, he would not

do: he has, however, no objection that they should join _him_. And so

they may have the gratitude, and he the patronage and power. They have

helped him to open the oyster; he swallows the fish, and they are quite

welcome to the shells.

It is quite a delight to read Sir Robert’s Parliament speeches. Did you

ever talk to a man who seemed never to hear what you said, but only

thought what he should say to pass for an answer? who seemed as though

none of your words entered his ears, but all slid down his cheeks? I’ve

met with such people, and Sir Robert Peel--when I read his Maynooth

speeches--does remind me of ’em. What a way he has of talking _down the

side_ of a speech, and never answering it direct! I hardly wonder that

the playhouses don’t flourish, when there’s such capital actors of all

sorts in the Houses of Parliament. I had just been reading an account

of two or three more Maynooth meetings, where some of the speakers

talked about the true and the false religion, as though themselves

had a sole and certain knowledge of what was true--what false: I had

just been reading all this, when my eye fell upon a paragraph headed

“Lord Rosse’s Telescope.” Lord Rosse, you must know, is one of those

noblemen who do not pull off knockers, knock down cabmen, and always

take a front seat at the Old Bailey on a trial for murder. No: he has

been making an enormous telescope; and the paragraph I write of says:

“Marvellous rumours are afloat respecting the astronomical discoveries

made by Lord Rosse’s monster telescope. It is said that Regulus,

instead of being a sphere, is ascertained to be a disc; and stranger

still, that the nebula in the belt of Orion is a universal system--a

sun with planets moving round it, as the earth and her fellow-orbs move

round our glorious luminary.”

Now, at one time, a man might have been burnt alive for taking it upon

himself to say that Regulus was not a sphere but a disc; and that Orion

(I know nothing about him, save and except that a marvellously fine

poem, price one farthing, was lately published with his name) did not

wear in his belt any nebula, but a universal system! La, grandmother!

when I read of these things, I feel a mixture of pain and pity for

men that, instead of having their hearts and spirits tuned by the

harmony that God is always playing to them (and they won’t hear it, the

leathern-eared sinners!) think of nothing but swearing that one thing’s

a disc, and the other a nebula--when they only look through small

glasses, wanting the great telescope to show ’em the real truth!--And

so no more from your affectionate grandson,

JUNIPER HEDGEHOG.

_P.S._--I blush for myself, that I had almost forgotten to tell you

that Dr Wolff has come back safe and sound from the innermost part

of India, where he went to try to save the lives of two Englishmen,

Stoddart and Conolly. It was like going into a tiger’s den to take

the flesh from the wild beast. And yet the stout-hearted man went!

Such an act makes us forget the meanness and folly of a whole

generation! Captain Grover--a heart of gold that--has published a

book on the matter called “The Bokhara Victims.” As no doubt the New

York publishers--in their anxiety to diffuse knowledge--have already

published it for some five cents, do not fail to read it. As for Dr

Wolff, I wonder what Englishmen will do for him? If he’d come back

from India after cutting twenty thousand throats, why, he might have

had a round of dinners, diamond-hilted swords, wine-coolers as big as

buckets, and so on; as it is, I fear nothing _can_ be done for him.

However, we shall see.

LETTER XIV.--_To Mrs Hedgehog of New York._

DEAR GRANDMOTHER,--England’s still above water: the sea doesn’t yet

roll over Dover cliffs; nevertheless, the Maynooth Grant that I wrote

to you about, is gone through the House of Commons, and in a very few

weeks the Papists, as you love to call them, will have the money. Sir

Culling Eardley Smith, Mr Plumptre, and others of their kidney, may

possibly for a month or two appear in the streets in sackcloth and

ashes, and with beards like Jew rabbis--first to show their respect

for the departed constitution; but after a decent time of mourning,

they will, no doubt, be open to consolation, and take their dinners

with their usual appetite. I shouldn’t wonder if in six months the

Rev. Mr M’Neile (of sulphurous principles) consents to eat and drink

like anybody else; and shall be by no means surprised if Dr Croly is

found to have regained, at least, all the flesh that anxiety and grief

for the Church in danger have so deplorably deprived him of. It’s

wonderful to think how certain saints and patriots get lean and fat as

sudden as rabbits! Wonderful to think, when the whole world, according

to their declaration, has gone to bits, how well and contentedly

they still continue to live upon the pieces! But, dear grandmother,

what a blessing is Exeter Hall! What a safety-valve it is for the

patriotism, and indignation, and scorn, and hatred--and all other

sorts of public virtues--that but for it, or some such place, would

fairly burst so many excellent folks, if they couldn’t go and relieve

their swelling souls in a bit of talk! As it is, they speechify and

are saved! Only suppose there had been no place whereat worthy people

could have abused the Maynooth Grant--no place wherein to air their

own particular Christianity to the condemnation of the religion of

everybody else--what would have been the consequence? Why, they must

have exploded--burst like the frog in the fable. Day after day Mr

Wakley and his brother coroners would have been sitting on the body

of some respectable saint and patriot--day after day we should have

read the verdict, “Died by retention of abuse!” Happily, while we have

Exeter Hall, we are spared these national calamities.

As I know, grandmother, your natural tenderness for all that concerns

the bishops, I must--at the risk of bringing on your cholic--inform you

that they are again in danger. Even the _Morning Post_ is beginning to

neglect ’em! Some newspaper--I don’t know which--has proposed, as the

only true remedy for the distress of the country, that there should

be a greater number of bishops. Now this, at the first blush, seems a

capital notion. But only mark what follows. The writer would multiply

episcopal blessings, by “distributing the revenues of the present

sees, as they fall vacant, among a greater number of bishops.” And

the _Morning Post_ doesn’t at once put down this infamous proposal.

Only imagine the Bishop of London slit into half-a-dozen bishops--one

Henry of Exeter made twenty Henrys--just as you make bundles of small

wood from one large piece! After giving utterance to this wickedness,

the writer goes on to think “it impossible that the spiritual Lords

should continue to be members of the Legislature after ceasing to be

rich men.” And this the _Post_ calls “no singular opinion. For such

is the habitual association of power and station in this country with

wealth, that perhaps nine out of every ten persons that one might meet

walking along the Strand, would say with this writer that unless a

prelate had his thousands a year, and his carriage, and his servants,

and his grandeur of accessories, he could not properly take a part in

counselling the Government, or assisting to make laws in the Upper

House of Parliament!” And if the people think so, I’ve heard it said

that the bishops have themselves to thank for such belief, seeing that

the world often hears more of their carriages and servants than of the

humility and tenderness that were shown by the apostles. The _Post_,

however, to my amazement, is for stripping Lambeth and Fulham of much

of their finery. Yes: the _Post_ absolutely says: “We protest against

the opinion that, without the wealth, the worth of the bishops in the

House of Lords would be nought. Nay, we can conceive the possibility of

the influence of learning, and eloquence, and venerable earnestness,

being _even greater when disassociated_ from wealth and worldly

interests!” Only imagine, grandmother, the Bishop of London walking

down to the House of Lords leaning on a horn-tipped staff, and not

rolled along in his cushioned carriage, with servant in purple livery

to let down the steps for him! Isn’t the picture terrible? Isn’t it

what they call revolutionary? And yet the _Morning Post_--as coldly

as this present month of May--can see the possibility of a Bishop of

Exeter being cut into ten or twenty bishoplings, and never swoon, or

even as much as call out for the hartshorn! Who is the revolutionist

now?

The month has been a dull month: politics, and all that, have been as

stupid as the weather. The trees and bushes have come out, to be sure;

but only, as it would seem, from a matter of habit--because it’s May by

the almanac. However, the Duke of Newcastle has very kindly tried to

give us a fillip, as I’ve heard somebody say in some play or the other,

“Orson is endowed with reason!” We’ve had two letters from Clumber!

You must know that in the British Museum there are two or three

mummies of Egyptian kings, they say, who lived I don’t know how many

thousand years ago. Now just suppose, grandmother, that one of these

mummies--with his brains out, be it remembered--should have suddenly

got up, and written a letter or two to Mehemet Ali and his Egyptians,

thinking ’em the self-same Egyptians that used to worship crocodiles

and ibises, and make gods of the leeks and onions that grew in their

gardens,--suppose the British Museum mummy had done this--well, the

thing would have done no more than the political mummy of Clumber;

would have made just the same mistake as his well-meaning Grace the

Duke of Newcastle. “Forget all you’ve been learning for the last

thirty years, at least; give up the wickedness of steam, forego the

iniquity of railroads, be content with sailing-smacks and stagecoaches,

repeal the Reform Bill, repeal Catholic Emancipation--in a word, wipe

everything from your minds, gathered there since the good old times

when George the Third was King!--come out again in the pig-tails and

shoe-buckles of that blissful reign--and I, Duke of Newcastle, am ready

to march with you! I am prepared, at every risk, to be hero of the

back-step!”

As yet, I have heard of nobody who has joined the Duke’s standard; but

if recruits should come in, I’ll let you know.

It is not unlikely, grandmother, that you may have a few Highland

families sent over to America, as they are now being carefully “weeded

out” from their native places by certain landlords, who think it

better and more Christian-like to turn their lands into sheep-walks

than to suffer them to be tenanted by mere men, women, and children.

“Weeding” is a nice word, isn’t it? it so capitally describes the

worth of the thing rooted out. The poor man is, of course, the “weed;”

the rich is the “lily,” that “neither toils nor spins.” And just now,

it seems, certain places in the Highlands are overgrown with this

rank, foul weed--this encumbrance to the soil--this one human thing,

worse than thistle or nettle. What a beautiful world this would be,

wouldn’t it?--if this weed of poverty was cut up, burnt, destroyed,

got rid of any way! It’s a dreadful nuisance; and yet it _will_ spring

up, like groundsel or any other worthless thing! And strange to say,

the sun will shine upon it, and the dews of heaven descend upon it,

all the same as if it was one of the aforesaid lilies, full of light

and breathing sweetness. Odd, isn’t it, that the sky should shine so

impartially on both?--Your affectionate grandson,

JUNIPER HEDGEHOG.

[Illustration]

LETTER XV.--_To Miss Kitty Hedgehog, Milliner, Philadelphia._

DEAR KITTY,--If I haven’t written before this, it is because I’ve had

nothing worth ink and paper to send you. I know that you’ve a mind

above politics, and--may you be pardoned for the lightness!--can sleep

like a cat in the sun, no matter how much the Church may be in danger.

When, however, there’s anything stirring among silks and satins, why,

then your woman’s spirit is up, and all the milliner is roused within

you. Knowing this, Kitty, I shall treat you with a few lines about

a Powdered Ball we’ve lately had at Court; when everybody, out of

compliment, I suppose, to what is called the wisdom of their ancestors,

went dressed like their great grandfathers and grandmothers. A huge

comfort this to great people in the shades! Dear Queen Charlotte was

once again at Court, very flatteringly represented by a fine piece

of point-lace worn by the blessed Victoria herself. And dukes, and

lords, and generals--all of ’em sleeping in family lead--were once more

walking minuets and dancing “Sir Roger de Coverly.” Everybody, for a

time, lived more than a hundred years ago; and, as I’m told, felt very

happy at going backward even for one night. To go back is with many

high folks the greatest proof of wisdom; and therefore, among such

people, the Powdered Ball was considered a glorious stride in the right

direction. Only imagine the rapture of a Duke of Newcastle, living,

even in fancy, for a few hours, at any time from 1715 to 1745; a time

when there was no Reform Bill, no steam-engines, no railways, no cheap

books! Think of the delight of many old gentlemen believing themselves

their own grandfathers; quite away from these revolutionary days, and

living again in “good old times”! I’ve heard--though I don’t answer

for it--that two or three of ’em were so carried away by the thought,

that, to keep up the happiness as long as they could, they went to bed

in their clothes, high-heeled shoes and all. At this very moment, they

_do_ say Lord ---- is still in his embroidered coat and smalls, with

a wig like a white cloud upon him. He declares 1715 is such a “good

old time” that nothing shall make him go on again to 1845. He has

ordered flambeaux for his servants, and now and then talks about going

to Ranelagh. Moreover, by people quite worthy of belief, it is feared

his delusion, as they call it, is spreading, as they call it, amongst

certain high folks; many of ’em thinking themselves a hundred years

back, and wanting to make Acts of Parliament in the spirit of that

good old time. See, Kitty, how a Powdered Ball may turn the highest

heads--even the nobs of the country!

The ladies were, of course, all jewelled, and very fine. Oh, what

a fortune some of ’em would have been to a poor man--with their

stomachers! But, Kitty, there is one odd thing at these masks

and balls: how is it that young ladies--with names as white as

snow--sometimes take the character, fly-spotted and damaged as they

are, of sinful love-birds? You, Kitty, being a woman, can explain

this; but to me, one of the ignorant rough sex, it does seem odd that

a pure young lady should dress herself as Nelly Gwynne, or any other

person of the sort, when the aforesaid pure lady would squeak--and, no

doubt, very proper--at the living creature as if it was a toad. Can

you explain this, Kitty? Do they take such characters, just as they

put black patches on their cheeks, to bring out their own white all

the stronger? Or is it that there’s a sort of idle daring in it, just

as children play with fire, though they never mean to burn themselves?

I can’t make it out; but how should I expect it--I, a poor, weak,

ignorant man--how should I unriddle a creature that’s puzzled Solomon?

Of course there was an account of the dresses. Well, when I opened the

_Morning Post_, and saw whole columns built o’ nothing but velvets and

satins, and all that, if I didn’t grin--like a clown through a collar

for a new hat--at the vanity of life.

“Look here,” says I to Bill Fisher, that was sitting in the Spotted

Lion--“look at the conceit of these folks,” says I, “who think that all

the world’s to stand still a-reading about their ‘gimp Brandenburghs

and buttons’--their ‘buttons and frogs’--their ‘blue facings and

turnback’--and such mountebankery.” “It is quite beneath us as men,”

says Bill; “not at all like lords of the creation. Now, I can forgive

the women--poor little souls!--for having all their flounces and

puffings put in the paper. It’s nat’ral for them.” “Why nat’ral?” says

I. “Why,” says Bill, “because they know it makes one another savage.

Bless you, that’s what they do it for--and nothin’ else.” And then

you should have heard how he laughed as he spelt out the paper. “Look

here, now,” says he, “here was a lady with a dress looped with bouquets

of pink roses; skirt of rich green satin, trimmed with flounces of

point-lace and bouquets of roses; white satin shoes with high heels,

green rosettes, with diamonds in the centre. Hair powdered, and

ornamented with roses and diamonds. Now, isn’t it dreadful, Juniper,

that people are to be stopped over their honest pint of porter with

stuff like this? What’s ‘satin shoes with high heels’ to all the

’versal world? But then, as I say, the women do it to make one another

savage. I’ve often thought, since they like so to print in the papers

what clothes they wear, that at the same time they might let the world

know what books they read, what pictures they look at--in fact, what

sort of dresses they put on their minds. But, to be sure, this would

make nobody savage.” This is what Bill Fisher says; but mark, Kitty,

I’m not quite of his way of thinking; though, after all, it does seem

odd that a young lady should think it worth while to put all her

clothes in print for the world to spell over.

But the Ball will have done a great deal of good in making us look a

hundred years back. How I should like to see the thing tried upon a

grand scale! Suppose that everybody in London, just for four-and-twenty

hours, out of compliment to the great example set by the Court, should

live as if it was 1745. Wouldn’t it be droll? Droll to have the gas

out, and set up oil-twinklers! Droll to make the new police put on drab

coats, and call the hours like that “venerable institution,” the watch!

Droll to have all the rail-trains stopt, and only book passengers

for York by the waggon! Droll to stop the steamboats on the river,

the omnibuses in the streets; making folks move about in nothing but

wherries, hackney-coaches, and sedan-chairs! Droll, too, would it be,

to start for Gravesend in the tilt-boat on a two days’ voyage! Well,

I hope that all this will be brought about; for if all the folks in

London were made to live only four-and-twenty hours of a hundred years

ago, I do think that for the rest of their lives they’d shut their

mouths about those precious good old times, that some people do now so

like to cackle about.

There’s no doubt that the Powdered Ball has been a very fine affair;

but the Ball of next season will be the grand thing. A nobleman’s

footman, as I last night drove, told me that at the Ball of next

year all true folks will wear supposed dresses from the time of 1915

to 1954--that is, about a hundred years ahead. There’s a good many

opinions as to what they’d be. Some folks declare they’ll be as plain

as drab, and some that we shall have all gone back again to the fashion

of the painted Britons, as you see ’em in the “History of England.”

By that time, it’s thought, soldiers’ uniforms will have gone quite

out--the electric gun and such nick-nacks having killed War, body and

bones. Howsomever, ’twill be odd to see how people’s fancy will dress

themselves for a hundred years on; there’ll be more cleverness in that,

if well done, than in wearing the precise coat and petticoat of your

grandfather and grandmother.--Your loving brother,

JUNIPER HEDGEHOG.

LETTER XVI.--_To Mrs Hedgehog, New York._

DEAR GRANDMOTHER,--The Maynooth Grant is granted, and the British Lion

has once more gone to sleep. When either Sir Culling Smith, Mr M’Neile,

or Dr Croly shall pinch his tail and make him roar again, you shall

have due notice of the danger. I think, however, that the Lion is safe

to sleep until next May, when, of course, he’ll again be stirred up

for the folks at Exeter Hall. In the meantime he must be tired, very

drowsy, after the speeches that have been made at him; so let him sleep

on.

Yes, Maynooth College has got the new grant; nevertheless, to the

astonishment of the Duke of Newcastle and company, the sun rises

every morning as if nothing had happened; and, so hard does the love

of shillings make men’s hearts, London tradesmen still smile behind

their counters, never thinking that their tills are threatened with an

earthquake. Newcastle and other peers--just out of consolation to their

shades--have written what’s called a “Protest” against the grant; and

a hundred years hence, when England is blown to atoms by the measure,

very comfortable it will be to their ghosts, as they walk among the

ruins, to see men reading the aforesaid “Protest,” and hear them

crying, “A prophet!” “a prophet!”

And now, grandmother, comes the Roman Catholic Bishops. They won’t

have Peel’s plan of education unless all the masters are to be of

their own faith. For they say “the Roman Catholic pupils could not

attend the lectures on history, logic, metaphysics, moral philosophy,

geology, or anatomy, without exposing their faith or morals to imminent

danger--_unless a Roman Catholic professor_ shall be appointed for each

of those chairs.” You see, the lecturer on history, if a Protestant,

might be making Queen Mary--Bloody Mary, as I was taught to call her

at day-school--a very cruel wretch, indeed; whereas the Queen Mary of

the Catholic might be a very nice woman, who never could abide fagots,

and never knew where Smithfield was. And then for logic (you must, as

I’ve said before, look dictionary for hard words); logic, it seems, is

a matter of religion. What’s logic to a Protestant isn’t to a Catholic,

or a Mahometan, or a Chinese! In the same way, I suppose, that a

straight line in London would be what they call a curve in Dublin, and

perhaps a whole circle at Canton. And then for “geology” and “anatomy,”

why, we all know that there’s nothing certain in anatomy; that it’s

all a matter of faith. Thus, if a Catholic anatomist lectured, we’ll

say, upon the body of a Protestant pluralist, he might, out of

blindness, declare that the said body never had a single atom of heart;

that such pluralists always lived without the article. While on the

other side, the real Protestant lecturer, discussing on the self-same

_corcup_, might declare that it was all heart, like a summer cabbage!

“Professors’ chairs!” when I read these things, I somehow do think of

the baby-chair that I used to be set up in to take my meals, with a

stick run through the arms to keep me from tumbling out, the talk is so

childish!

You ask me about your pet, the Bishop of Exeter. Well, the clergy of

his diocese have just suffered what’s called his “charge;” a charge,

grandmother, in which the Bishop generally contrives to put in a

lot of small-shot to pepper about him right and left. As usual, he

talked a good deal about himself; making Exeter out such a soft gentle

person--such a lump of Christian butter--that in this hot weather it’s

wonderful he hasn’t melted long ago. Ha, grandmother! what a lawyer

was spoiled in that bishop! what a brain he has for cobwebs! How he

drags you along through sentence after sentence--every one a dark

passage--until your head swims, and you can’t see your finger close

to your nose! He talked about this Puseyite stuff--this play-acting

of the Church--for I don’t know how long; but whether he very much

likes it or very much hates it, it’s more than any cabman’s brains can

make out. I never read one of Exeter’s charges, that I don’t think of

a sharp lawyer quite spoiled; but this last is a greater tangle than

all. He talked a great deal about “the apostolical succession,” the

truth of which he would defend. How I should like to hear him trace

himself--Henry of Exeter--_upwards_! He then came to the new Bill that

was to take the right of divorce out of the hands of the Church. He

said, “Let the _Liberalism_ of the age be content with what it had

already achieved. It was enough for one generation that men and women

might be coupled together in a Registrar’s Office, with as total an

absence of all religious sanction as if one huckster were coupled up in

partnership with another.” Here the Bishop’s right enough, no doubt.

For if the Bishops’ Court loses cases of divorce, what lots of fees

go from them to the mere lawyers! A wedding-ring and a licence are

things almost dog-cheap; but, O grandmother! what a lot of money it

takes to break that ring!--what a heap of cash to tear up the licence!

and that’s the reason that divorce, like green peas at Christmas, can

only be afforded by the rich. Next, the Bishop had a fling at what

he called “the unhappy beings who went to mechanics’ institutes and

lecture-rooms.” He said they wanted “the discipline of the heart, and

the chastening influence of true religion.” I’m an ignorant cabman,

grandmother; but if so many “millions,” as the Bishop said, want

this, I must ask, What do we pay the Church for? If so many of us

are no better, as Exeter said, than “any of the wildest savages who

devoured one another in New Zealand,” for what, in the name of pounds,

shillings, and pence, do we pay church-rates? Why don’t the bishops

and the high preachers of the Church come more among us? Why, thinking

of “the apostolical succession,” don’t they copy more than they do the

fishermen and tentmakers who are their forefathers? I can’t help asking

this, though, as I said, I know I’m an ignorant cabman.

The Bishop, however, after scolding a good deal, tried to end mildly

and like a Christian. I’ve read at some bookstall of an Indian leaf.

One side of it acts as a blister; then take it off, turn it, and the

other side serves for the salve. The Bishop of Exeter, to my mind,

always tries to make his charge a leaf of this sort; though I must

say it, one side is generally stronger than the other--better for

blistering than healing.--So no more from your affectionate grandson,

JUNIPER HEDGEHOG.

LETTER XVII.--_To Michael Hedgehog, Hong-Kong._

DEAR BROTHER,--You’ll be glad to hear that at last Ministers have

remembered there’s such a man in the world as Sir Henry Pottinger. The

Queen has sent her compliments to Parliament, commanding a pension for

him. We’ve given him £1500 a year for life; to my mind a shabby sum.

La! Michael, only think how those six clerks of Chancery Lane, with

their thousands a year--the chaps who had nothing to do but to play

tricks with what they call equity--only think of them retired with a

pension, every one of ’em living like a pot-bellied mouse in a ripe

Stilton! How they must turn up their noses at poor Sir Henry! He has

opened, I may say, a new world, for rivers of gold to flow out of it

into the banks of Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow--I can’t tell where.

And he gets £1500 a year! I think we gave something more than that to

Lord Keane for blowing up a pair of gates. But then folks turn a better

penny upon war than peace. Blood and fire, and misery of all kinds,

are more profitable than treaties of trade, no matter how glorious.

The sword--the bloodier the better, too--weighs down the goose-quill;

however, Sir Henry has a reward of some sort, and I’m heartily glad of

it. May he live a hundred years--and his heart be as green as laurel

when his head’s as white as cotton!!

But I’m coming to another part of the business. Sir J. C. Hobhouse,

who, after all, has not lost his speech, as was for a long time

supposed, lifted up his voice for Sir Henry. What do you think he

said? “If he” (Sir Henry, mind) “were refused the reward now asked,

the result would be this: he was only a lieutenant-colonel, although

he had the brevet of major-general, and he would be obliged to leave

England; _he could not live here_.” At this the House cheered, and I’m

afraid, Mike, Hobhouse spoke the truth. As I’m an honest cabman who

never takes less than his fare, if I didn’t blush like a poppy when I

read this. Why, what a shabby, mean, outside set of folks we must be!

Supposing Sir Henry had not got this pension--supposing that, wanting

to stay in England, he had lived in a smallish house, had not given

grand parties, but, content with the thoughts of the great things

he had done, he had jogged on plainly and humbly, would folks have

looked down upon him? Would the hicky do-nothings, born to their tens

of thousands a year, have forgotten all about the Chinese peace and

ransom, and tremendous trade opened by Sir Henry, unless they saw him

in a crack carriage, and knew that he lived in a first-rate mansion?

Wouldn’t it have been enough for them to know that a great and good

head--one of the heads that rule the world, though the world won’t

acknowledge it, at least until the aforesaid head may be rolled about

by boys in the churchyard--that such a head had all its laurels about

it, even though sometimes it went under a cotton umbrella? Wouldn’t

they have acknowledged this? No, Michael; no, no, no! The great man, in

the eyes of our English world, would have been lost in the smallness of

his income.

Pull down Apsley House, deprive the Duke of Wellington of his fortune,

let him for three months be seen as a general living at a club upon

nothing but his half-pay, and it’s my belief that in three months after

that some folks would more than doubt whether he ever won Waterloo.

I once read of a Roman who was called from his turnips to save his

country. What a small fellow he’d have seemed among us! We never could

have understood a hero upon turnips alone. No; with us Cincinnatus must

have had a fine leg of Southdown to his vegetables, butter and capers,

and above all things, a silver fork. I’m called for a fare, so yours in

haste,

JUNIPER HEDGEHOG.

_P.S._--I don’t know whether you’ll care much about the news at

Hong-Kong, but we shall have a tidy hay season.

LETTER XVIII.--_To Richard Monckton Milnes, Esq., M.P._

SIR,--As I once had the honour to drive you down to Parliament, and

as I found you such an affable gentleman, with no pride at all in you

(I say nothing about the sixpence you gave me over your fare), I make

no bones at all in writing these few lines to you, about your motion

for private hanging. I see by the newspapers that you want to make

a law to hang inside of the gaol, in a snug and quiet way; and not

to have the show in the open street. Pardon a cabman’s boldness, but

really, Mr Milnes, you can’t have thought of the shocking consequence

of your measure, if so be it had been carried out. What! make a law

for private hanging! With one bit of parchment destroy what I’ll be

bold enough to call one of the chief amusements of the people! Sir

James Graham knows better than this; for he generally contrives to have

an execution on Easter and Whit-Monday, just by the way of an early

whet to the appetites of the holiday-makers. First the Old Bailey and

then Greenwich; Mr Calcraft, the hangman--and then the fire-eater and

the clown. Your bill, sir--do forgive my boldness--was very rash, and

not at all just. They’ve taken away bear-baiting and duck-hunting

and dog-fighting from what they call the lower orders, and now you’d

deprive ’em of their last and dearest privilege--you’d, with one dash

of the pen, rob ’em of their own public gallows! And you call yourself

a friend of them people, Mr Milnes--a stickler for their ancient sports

and pastimes? I don’t wonder that for once something like shame came

over Parliament--that not forty conscientious members stopped to listen

to you--and that, in a word, you were “counted out.”

I have said your bill was unjust, shamefully unjust, unless you can

prove to me that there was a clause in it to what they call indemnify

the housekeepers in the Old Bailey for their loss of vested interests,

seeing that they make no end of money by letting their windows at a

popular hanging. Why, a Hocker’s worth any money to ’em; for it’s odd

how hanging brings down the pride of some of the upper classes, many of

the nobs enjoying it quite as much as the lower orders, only that they

give one or two guineas--according to the beauty of the murder--for

comfortable sitting room. If the men they call the six clerks were

indemnified, surely you would not rob the tradesmen of the Old Bailey.

But it really is shocking to see how a mere member of Parliament will

set himself up against a clergyman of Newgate! Didn’t the Rev. Mr

Davis preach that the whole use and beauty of hanging was to be found

in making it public? According to him, if it was possible to hang a

man where all England might see him strangled, why, all England would

certainly be the better for it. I’ve no doubt that the cause of so much

crime is in the smallness of the Old Bailey, that will only accommodate

such a few! Why shouldn’t the gallows be erected on Salisbury Plain,

with cheap railway excursions from all parts on hanging days?

Pardon me, sir, but there never was such a mistake as to think to

do away with the wickedness of hanging by making it private. In the

first place, if to see a hanging is no warning to the beholder, do

you think that to hear or read of a hanging would do all the good of

an example? Does what men see, or what they hear, stir ’em the most?

But let us suppose that a man is to be hanged inside of Newgate. Why,

the penny-liners that get their sops in the pan out of the condemned

cell, why, they would write all sorts of pretty things, all kinds of

interesting stories about the last minutes of the criminal, and so

the curiosity of the town would be more agog than ever. The picture

newspapers that publish the murderers’ portraits--those family papers

for the instruction and amusement of the younger branches--would give

half-a-dozen pictures where they now give one. The secrecy of the thing

would give a flavour to the whole matter.

And now, suppose that a rich man was to be privately hanged: a banker,

we’ll say, or, saving your presence, even a member of Parliament. Well,

we know how unbelieving is man. There’s thousands of people who would

never sleep quietly in their beds, for the thought that the said banker

or member was never hanged at all, but was smuggled out alive in a

coffin, and shipped abroad. Every year or so, there’d be a letter in

the newspapers from somebody who had seen the banker somewhere in the

Backwoods, where he had married one of the Chactaws, and got a family

of ten children. No, Mr Milnes, private hanging won’t do; the people

aren’t to be cheated out of their pleasure after that fashion. Besides,

Mr Milnes, all hanging’s a bungle. The gallows is condemned, marked to

come down; timber by timber it’s loosening, and it’s no use trying to

keep it together with small corking-pins. No, Mr Milnes, it will better

become you, be more like your kind good-natured self, to give a pull

to the planks, to bring the whole machine to the ground, to make it a

thing of the past, like the bonfires that burnt witches,--and for the

hangman thrown out of work, why, small retiring allowances have been

given to worse public servants.--Hoping, sir, that you’ll excuse my

boldness, I remain, your obedient servant,

JUNIPER HEDGEHOG.

_P.S._--You know my number, sir, and I’m always in Palace Yard.

LETTER XIX.--_To Isaac Moss, Slop-seller, Portsmouth._

DEAR ISAAC,--Sir Robert Peel has stood your friend; and if you’ve

only the money, and the freedom, and the luck, you may be Lord

Mayor of London as soon as you like. You can’t, as a Jew, sit in

Parliament as yet; but time goes round, Isaac, and I shouldn’t wonder

if some day that was to come. Only think if a Jew--an hon. member

for Whitechapel--was some day to find himself alongside of a Colonel

Sibthorpe; for every Parliament has its Sibthorpe, just as every spring

has its green geese.

Sir Robert Inglis, of course, stood up for Mother Church, who, in

faith, must have a tremendous constitution, seeing how the dear

creature has been ill-treated by all sorts of infidel politicians. I

really do believe that Sibthorpe wouldn’t now trust Sir Robert with

the church-plate; no, not even with the taking of the twopences at the

door of St Paul’s, for fear he should cheat in his accounts.

Mr Plumptre would have nothing to do with the bill, because, he said,

“every Christian man, who was sensible of his religious obligation,

should consider what would be _for the honour_ of the Most High.” Ah,

Isaac, there it is! What a lot of wickedness has been done in this

pretty world of ours--and all with a conscience--for what Christians

thought would be “for the honour of the Most High”! For such honour

men have roasted one another, as they wouldn’t roast live beasts, at a

stake; for such honour they have done all sorts of wrong, shutting up

their fellow-creatures in dungeons, and tearing and torturing them all

manner of ways, as if they thought, when they did most wrong to mortal

creatures, they did most honour to the good God that made them.

Well, Isaac, I’m only a cabman, but when I sometimes read the debates,

I do now and then thank my stars that I’m out of Parliament. And then

the conceit of them that’s in it. When they’ve done anything that’s

good, what do they do? Why, they only walk about like the bird in

the fable, in feathers of better people. They never do nothing of

themselves. No good seed is ever grown in Parliament: not a bit of it;

the thing’s grown outside of the place, and then transplanted. Talk of

the wisdom of Parliament, Isaac! why, they get their wisdom from people

who’ve never set their eyes upon Mr Speaker. What did Parliament ever

_begin_, I should like to know? That is, understand me, what that’s

good? No, good laws--wise laws--are begun outside; thought of, invented

by quiet folks, who never think to put M.P. to their names; and whose

great trouble it is to get the good acknowledged. And when at last,

after wasting I don’t know how much of heaven’s good time--after the

rumpus of many, many years--Parliament consents to take the good thing,

I’m hanged if the goose doesn’t hatch the swan’s egg, as if it was a

thing laid by itself, and not put into its nest by other people.

“The honour of the Most High!” Surely, Isaac, the best way to show such

honour is to love your fellow-creatures as the greatest work--so far

as we know--of the Most High; and not, poor small things as we are, to

walk about the earth, and when we poke up our noses highest in the face

of heaven, think we have then the best right to tread the hardest on

the necks of everybody that don’t agree with us. To hear a few folks

talk in Parliament, you’d think that they’d assured to themselves all

Paradise as a freehold, and standing upon their rights, would set

up in it man-traps and spring-guns against all intruders. However,

never mind, Isaac. There was a time when a King of England would

have drawn a tooth a day out of your jaws, if you didn’t undraw your

purse-strings; and now--so do this wicked world roll on--you may wear a

Lord Mayor’s chain, and, as a magistrate, commit vagrants to gaol like

any Christian.--Your friend,

JUNIPER HEDGEHOG.

LETTER XX.--_To Mrs Hedgehog, New York._

DEAR GRANDMOTHER,--September’s so near we can almost put our hand upon

it, and yet I’m in London. It’s a dreadful confession of poverty, but

I can’t help it. If I’m not ashamed to be seen on my stand, I’m not a

licensed cabman. The only comfort there is, everybody that stays in

town must be as poor as myself, and that, according to some folk’s

notions, is a blessing to think of. A purse that was dropped on the

pavement of Regent Street lay there a week, and was at last picked up

by a policeman. London never looked so poor and dull; for all the world

like a fine lady in an undress gown, with all her paint wiped off. The

opera is shut up, and the manager has had a silver bed-candlestick

given him by lords and dukes, because he has been so full of public

spirit as to make his own fortune. By the way, grandmother, I don’t

know how it is with the player-folks in New York; but here with us,

if a man or woman want a bit of plate they’ve only to take a theatre.

A playhouse is a short cut to a silversmith’s. There isn’t a London

manager who isn’t plated after this fashion, which shows there is no

place for true gratitude like the green-room; but I ask your pardon

for talking of such matters, knowing what a low place you think the

theatre. Parliament, like a goose that has been set upon too many eggs,

has risen with half of ’em come to nothing. But this, grandmother, is

the old trick. When the Parliament first opens, and Ministers come

down with new law after law, why, what busy, bustling folks they seem!

What a look of business it gives to the whole thing! But half of ’em

is only for show; just so many dummies to take in what shopkeepers

call “an enlightened public.” You know the bottles of red and blue

that they have in apothecaries’ shops? Well, half the folks think ’em

physic, when they’re nothing in the world but coloured water. Sir

James Graham’s Medical Bill was just one of these things: nothing

real in it; but something made up for show; just to give a colouring

to business. Talking of Parliament, a dreadful accident happened at

the prorogation. You know it’s the privilege of the Duke of Argyll to

bear the royal crown before the Queen. Certain folks came into the

world with certain privileges of the kind. One has a right to stir

the royal tea-cup on the day of the coronation, another to put on

the Queen’s pattens whenever she shall walk in the city, another to

present the monarch with a pint of periwinkles when he shall visit

Billingsgate; and so forth: all customs of the good old times, when

people thought kings and queens were angels in disguise, who had kindly

left heaven just to give poor mortals here a lift--in fact, to make

the world endurable. Well, the Duke of Argyll, walking backwards with

the crown--going straightforwards not being at all the thing in the

Court--fell, poor old gentleman, down some steps, and falling, dropt

the crown! Pheugh! There was a shower of pearls and diamonds; for all

the precious stones came rattling on the floor, just as if the Queen,

like the little girl in the fairy story, had been talking jewels. There

were thoughts, I’m told, of calling in the police to keep off the mob

of peers; but altogether they behaved themselves very well, and not a

precious stone was found missing. The accident, however, caused a great

fuss; and I’m told, in order to prevent its happening again, Madame

Tussaud has offered to make a Duke of Argyll in wax, that, fitted up

with proper wheels and springs, may be made to go backwards with no

fear of a tumble. Should the thing succeed--and I don’t see why it

shouldn’t--it would be a great saving in the way of salaries to the

country, if a good many other Court officers were manufactured after

the like fashion.

I’d almost forgotten to say that the King of the Dutch has been on a

visit to us--and, as I’ve heard, a very decent sort of king he is. Of

course he played while here at a little bit of soldiering; guards and

grenadiers were turned out in Hyde Park, that he might review their

helmets and bearskin caps. Isn’t it odd, grandmother, that the first

show kings and princes, when they come to us, want to stare at is a

show of soldiers? just to see how nicely men are armed and mounted

to kill men! They don’t mean any harm by it, of course; but still--I

can’t help thinking it--it does appear to me, if Beelzebub was to go

into a strange country--if, indeed, there is any country he’s not

yet visited--the sight he’d first like to see would be the sight of

men taught the best way of cutting men’s throats. And then (if he

came here to London) he’d go down to Woolwich Marshes, to see what

they call rocket-practice, and wouldn’t he rub his hands, and switch

about his tail, to see how rockets and shells split, break, tear away

everything before ’em, showing what pretty work they’d make of a solid

square of living flesh, standing for so many pence a day to be made a

target of? You’d think it would be some wicked spirit that would enjoy

this fun; but no, grandmother, it isn’t so; quite the contrary; it’s

kings and princes. And yet I should like to have some king come over

here who wouldn’t care to go a-soldiering in Hyde Park; who wouldn’t

think of rocket-practice; but who, on the contrary, would go about to

our schools and our hospitals, and our asylums, and all places where

man does what he can to help man; to assist and comfort him like a

fellow-creature, and not to tear him limb from limb like a devil.

Our Queen has gone to Germany to see where Prince Albert was born.

Well, there’s something pretty and wife-like in the thought of this,

and I like this. There was a dreadful fear among some of the nobs in

Parliament, that while the Queen was away the kingdom would drop to

pieces. But it isn’t so: the tax-gatherer calls just the same as ever.

The Queen took ship, and landed at Antwerp--at the Quai Vandyke; now,

Vandyke, you must know, was a famous painter; and abroad, they’ve

a fashion of naming streets and places after folks that’s called

geniuses. We haven’t come to that yet. Only think of our having a

Hogarth Square, or a Shakspere instead of a Waterloo Bridge! And then

for statues in the streets, we don’t give them to authors and painters,

but only to kings and dukes that don’t pay their debts.

Still, I do feel for her Gracious Majesty. Dear soul! Isn’t it dreadful

that a gentlewoman can’t step abroad--can’t take boat, but what there’s

a hundred guns blazing, firing away at her,--as if the noise of cannon

and the smell of gunpowder was like the songs of nightingales and the

scent of roses! How royalty keeps its hearing, I can’t tell. When the

dear lady got upon the Rhine, there were the guns blazing away as

though heaven and earth were come together. It’s odd enough that people

will think a great noise is a great respect; and that the heartiest

welcome can only be given by gunpowder. It seems that the folks were

putting up a statue to a musician named Beethoven, and the Queen of

England and the Prince were just in time to pay their respects to the

bronze. Mr Beethoven while alive was nobody; but it’s odd how a man’s

worth is raked up from his coffin! And so it’s a great comfort to great

men who, when in this world, are thought very small indeed, to think

how big they’ll be upon earth after they’ve gone to heaven; a comfort

for ’em, when they may happen to want a coat, to think of the suit of

bronze or marble that kings and queens will afterwards give ’em. If,

now, there’s any English composer, any man with a mind in him, forced,

for want of better employment--forced to give young ladies lessons on

the piano when he should be doing sonatas and sinfonias, and that sort

of thing,--why, I say, it must be a comfort to him to know that folks

can honour genius when it’s put up by way of statue in the market-place.

One of the prettiest stories I’ve heard of the jaunt is this, that

the Queen and Albert went in a quiet way to visit the Prince’s old

schoolmaster--if this isn’t enough to make all schoolmasters in England

hold their heads up half a yard higher! Besides, it mayn’t show a bad

example to high folks who keep tutors and governesses.

Altogether the Queen must be pleased with her trip, and I should think

not the less pleased where the folks made the least noise; although,

from what I read in one of the papers, everybody doesn’t think so; for

the writer complains that there was “no shouting or noise, only that

_eternal bowing_ which so strikes a traveller, and which would make one

believe that beings across the Channel were formed with some natural

affinity between their right hands and their hats.” Really, to my mind

there’s something more pleasing, more rational-like, in one human

creature quietly bowing to another, than in shouting and hallooing at

him like a wild Indian. But, then, people do so like noise!

You’ll be sorry to hear, grandmother, that your pets, the bishops,

are again in trouble. I’m sure of it, bishops were never intended to

have anything to do with money: they always tumble into such mistakes

whenever they touch it. How is it to be expected that they should

know the mystery of pounds, shillings, and pence,--they who can’t

abide earthly vanities--they who are always above this world, though

they never go up, as I hear, with Mr Green in his balloon? Well, it

seems that the bishops have had a mint of money put into their hands

that they may build new churches for their fellow-sinners, whom they

call spiritually destitute. Well, would you think it?--in a moment of

strange forgetfulness, they’ve laid out so much money upon palaces

for themselves, that they can’t build the proper number of churches

for the poor? The bishops have taken care of the bishops--and for the

spiritually destitute, why, they may worship in highways and byways, in

fields and on commons. Of course the bishops never meant this. No; it

has all come about from their knowing nothing of the value of money.

Still, what’s called the lower orders won’t believe this. And isn’t

it a shocking thing to consider that the poor man may look at Bishop

So-and-so with a grudge in his eye, saying to himself, “Yes, you’ve

built yourself a fine house--you’ve got your fine cedars, and all that

King Solomon talks about, in your own palace; but where’s my sittings

in the church?--where, bishop, is my bench in the middle aisle?”

This is so dreadful to think of, that I can’t write any further upon

it--and so no more from your affectionate grandson,

JUNIPER HEDGEHOG.

LETTER XXI.--_To Sir J. B. Tyrell, Bart., M.P. for North Essex._

SIR,--As I consider every gentleman that I have had the pleasure,

or the honour, or the ill-luck as it may be, of driving, a sort of

acquaintance--for where money passes, it in a manner binds men--I make

no difficulty in sending you these few lines.

You have been dining with the Conservative Maldon True Blue Club. True

Blue, I suppose, means heaven’s blue--that is, blue as true as heaven.

All the speeches were printed in the _Essex Standard_, and afterwards,

where I saw ’em, in the _Morning Post_. Your speech, Sir James, or Sir

John (for, upon my life, I forget which it is, so I’ll call you Sir

James upon chance)--your speech drenched me, as a Christian cabman,

quite over. You rose to drink the health of the Duke of Wellington.

Well, I don’t object to that. But, I’m sure of it,--never once thinking

of your Testament, you went on in this manner--and mind, it was only

just _after_ dinner--

“It had been said of the noble Duke, that he was _not only_ the

conqueror of Bonaparte--_but the greatest man_ SINCE THE TIME

OF THE SAVIOUR!”

You thought _if_ that language was “too strong to apply to him as a

man, his claims upon the country could not be overrated.” Now, Sir

James, IF the language was too strong (for you said “_if_”), why did

you use it? Why make any comparison between the Saviour of the world

and the colonel of a Grenadier Guards? The Duke, no doubt, has claims

upon the country; though some of these claims, by-the-by, are regularly

settled by the country every pay-day, and come in regularly with his

rents of Strathfieldsaye. Nevertheless, whatever claims he may have

outstanding against us, I don’t think he can enforce any of ’em in the

spirit of Him who said, “Love your enemies; bless them that curse you;

do good to them that hate you; and pray for them which despitefully

use you, and persecute you.” The Duke of Wellington never talks in

this way in the House of Lords; but do we expect that he should? His

business of life, Sir James, has been to fight; and though I think the

trade a very bad one, nevertheless he made the best of the wickedness.

But, Sir James, you, it seems, would bind up the Sermon on the Mount

with the “Wellington Despatches;” and seem to think the battle of

Waterloo a finer acted thing than that small incident rehearsed at the

words, “Take up thy bed and walk.”

Sometime ago, the son of a Christian judge, passing through a London

street, saw, as he thought, a blasphemous representation of the Deity

exposed in a window. In a trice he smashed the glass and tore up the

offensive picture. Right glad am I, for the sake of the convivial True

Blues, that young Mr Bruce was not at the Maldon dinner; otherwise,

where the chairman found a companion picture for Jesus in the Grenadier

tenant of Apsley House, Mr Bruce might have forgotten Sir James Tyrell

in what he might have thought the blasphemer.

“Our Saviour” _and_ the Duke of Wellington! And among the company,

“which was upwards of seventy in number,” were members of Parliament,

captains, esquires, and--my ink turns almost red with shame as I write

it--_and_ clergymen! There were pious Christians, teachers of Christian

flocks, “their eyes red with wine, and their teeth white with milk,”

who sat quietly upon their seats, and heard the British Grenadier

paralleled with Jesus Christ! Answer, Reverends Leigh, Williams, Bruce,

and Henshawe--was it not so? O Conservative clergymen! O True Blue

disciples of beeswing port! O knife-and-fork apostles! when, mute as

fish, you consented to the speech of Tyrell, and so forgot your Master,

did you not, in your souls, hear “the cock crow”?

Well, Sir James, I do recollect what my old grandmother taught me of

the New Testament; and although I’m but a cabman, I hope I do feel, if

I’d ever had the presumption to compare anybody to the blessed Saviour,

I couldn’t have gone to the barracks for him.

I think the Duke of Wellington has said that “no man who’s nice about

religion should be a soldier!” Perhaps you never heard of this, and

thought that to hunt the French out of Spain was almost quite as great

as to cast out devils.

“The greatest man since the time of our Saviour!” And there have

been no other men, Sir James, sent into the world to pick their

fellow-creatures, as I may say, out of the mud? There have been no

Shakspere? No Newton? No Howard? No! Ball-cartridge has been the true

manna of life; and the words “Feed my sheep” are nothing to “Make

ready, present, fire!”

But, Sir James, I’ve done. I know you didn’t mean what you said.

No: the truth is, you’re a regular Conservative, and so--like other

darkened folks--you must make an idol out of something. Rather than

have none at all, you’d set up the Duke of Wellington’s bootjack.

Still, among the True Blues, you overshot the mark, and must be by this

time perfectly ashamed of yourself. Nevertheless, your wickedness ought

not to go unpunished: and because, in a port-wine moment, you compared

the Iron Duke to the Lamb of the world, I’d make you undergo a month’s

penance. You should be covered all over with pipeclay, and eat parched

peas off a drum-head.

JUNIPER HEDGEHOG.

LETTER XXII.--_To Mrs Hedgehog, New York._

DEAR GRANDMOTHER,--As I don’t think you have any liking for

railways--being, like Colonel Sibthorpe, one of those folks loving the

good old times when travelling was as sober a thing as a waggon and

four horses could make it--I really don’t see how I’m to write you

anything of a letter. There’s nobody in town, and nothing in the papers

but plans of railways, that in a little time will cover all England

like a large spider’s net; and, as in the net, there will be a good

many flies caught and gobbled up by those who spin it. Nevertheless,

though I know you don’t agree with me any more than Colonel Sibthorpe

does, it is a fine sight to open the newspapers and see the railway

schemes. What mountains of money they bring to the mind! And then for

the wonders they’re big with--why, properly considered, aren’t they a

thousand times more wonderful than anything in the “Arabian Nights’

Entertainments”? There we have a flying carriage to be brought to every

man’s door! All England made to shake hands with itself in a few hours!

And when London can in an hour or so go to the Land’s End for a gulp of

sea air, and the Land’s End in the same time come to see the shows of

London, shan’t all of us the better understand one another? shan’t we

all be brought together, and made, as we ought to be, one family of?

It’s coming fast, grandmother. Now pigs can travel, I don’t know how

far, at a halfpenny a head, we don’t hear the talk that used to be of

“the swinish multitude.” And isn’t it a fine thing--I know you don’t

think so, but isn’t it--to know that all that’s been done, and all

that’s to do, will be done because Englishmen have left off cutting

other men’s throats? That peace has done it all! If they oughtn’t to

set up a dove with an olive branch at every railway terminus, I’m an

impostor and no true cabman! Yes, grandmother, peace has done it all!

Only think of the iron that had been melted into cannon, and round-shot

and chain-shot, and all other sorts of shot, that the devils on a

holiday play at bowls with!--if the war had gone on--all the very same

iron that’s now peaceably laid upon sleepers! Think of the iron that

had been fired into the sea, and banged through quiet people’s houses,

and sent smashing squares and squares of men--God’s likenesses in red,

blue, and green coats, hired to be killed at so many pence a day,--only

think what would have been this wicked, I will say it, this blasphemous

waste of metal--that, as it is, has been made into steam-engines! Very

fine, indeed, they say, is the roar of artillery; but what is it to the

roar of steam? I never see an engine, with red-hot coals and its clouds

of steam and smoke, that it doesn’t seem to me like a tremendous dragon

that has been tamed by man to carry all the blessings of civilisation

to his fellow-creatures. I’ve read about knights going through the

skies on fiery monsters--but what are they to the engineers, at two

pound five a week? What is any squire among ’em all to the humblest

stoker? And then I’ve read about martial trumpets, why, they haven’t,

to my ears, half the silver in their sound as the railway whistle!

Well, I should like the ghost of Bonaparte to get up some morning,

and take the _Times_ in his thin hands. If he wouldn’t turn yellower

than ever he was at St Helena! There he’d see plans for railways in

France--_belly France_, as I believe they call it--to be carried out

by Frenchmen and Englishmen. Yes; he wouldn’t see ’em mixing bayonets,

trying to poke ’em in one another’s bowels, that a few tons of blood

might, as they call it, water his laurels (how any man can wear laurels

at all, I can’t tell, they must smell so of the slaughter-house!)--he

wouldn’t see ’em charging one another on the battle-field, but quietly

ranged cheek by jowl, in the list of directors! Not exchanging bullets,

but clubbing together their hard cash.

Consider it, grandmother, isn’t it droll! Here, in these very lists,

you see English captains and colonels in company with French viscounts

and barons, and I don’t know what, planning to lay iron down in

France--to civilise and add to the prosperity of Frenchmen! The very

captains and colonels who--but for the peace--would be blowing French

ships out of water, knocking down French houses, and all the while

swearing it, and believing it, too, that Frenchmen were only sent into

this world to be killed by Englishmen, just as boys think frogs were

spawned only to be pelted at! Ah, only give her time, and Peace--timid

dove as she is--will coo down to the trumpet.

Now, grandmother, only to think of Lord Nelson as a railway director

on the Boulogne line to Paris! Well, I know you’ll say it, the world’s

going to be turned upside down. Perhaps it is; and after all, it

mightn’t be the worse now and then for a little wholesome shaking. They

do say there’s to be a rail from Waterloo to Brussels, and the Duke of

Wellington, the Iron Duke, with, I’ve no doubt, iron enough in him for

the whole line, is to be chairman of the directors.

The Prince Joinville is now and then looking about our coasts to find

out, it is said, which is the softest part of us, in the case of a

war, to put his foot upon us. Poor fellow! he’s got the disease of

glory; only, as it sometimes happens with the smallpox, it has struck

inward--it can’t come out upon him. When we’ve railways laid down, as

I say, like a spider’s web all over the country, won’t it be a little

hard to catch us asleep? For, you see, just like the spider’s web, the

electric telegraph (inquire what sort of a thing it is, for I haven’t

time to tell you)--the electric telegraph will touch a line of the

web, when down will come a tremendous spider in a red coat with all

sorts of murder about him! Mind, grandmother, let us hope it never will

happen; but when folks who’d molest us, know it _can_ come about, won’t

they let us alone? Depend upon it, we’re binding war over to keep the

peace, and the bonds are made of railway iron!

You’d hardly think it--you who used to talk to me about the beauty

of glory (I know you meant nothing but the red coats and the fine

epaulets; for that so often is woman’s notion of glory, though, bless

’em! they’re among the first to make lint, and cry over the sons

of glory, with gashes spoiling all their fine feathers)--and you’d

hardly think it, but they’re going to put up a statue to the man who

first made boiling water to run upon a rail. It’s quite true: I read

it only a day or two ago. They’re going to fix up a statue to George

Stephenson at Newcastle. How you will cast up your dear old eyes when

you hear of this! you, who’ve only thought that statues should be put

up to Queen Anne, and George the Third, and his nice son, George the

Fourth, and such people! I should only like a good many of the statues

here in London, to be made to take a cheap train down to Newcastle, to

see it. If, dirty as they are--and dirty as they were--they wouldn’t

blush as red as a new copper halfpenny! Why, those statues--especially

when they’ve queens and kings in ’em--are the most unfeelingest of

metal! What a lot of mangled bodies, and misery, and housebreaking, and

wickedness of all sorts, carried on and made quite lawful by a uniform,

may we see--if we choose to see at all--about the statue of what is

called a conqueror! What a firing of houses, what shame--that, because

you’re a woman, I won’t more particularly write about--we might look

upon under the statue, that is only so high, because it has so much

wickedness to stand upon! If the statue could feel at all, wouldn’t it

put up its hands, and hide its face, although it was made of the best

of bronze? But Mr Stephenson will look kindly and sweetly about him; he

will know that he has carried comfort, and knowledge, and happiness to

the doors of millions!--that, that he has brought men together, that

they might know and love one another. This is something like having a

statue! I’m sure of it--when George the Fourth is made to hear the news

(for kings are so very long before the truth comes to ’em), he’d like

to gallop off to the first melter’s and go at once into the nothing

that men think him.

And besides all this, the railways have got a king! When you hear of a

king in England, I know your old thoughts go down to Westminster Abbey,

and you think of nothing but bishops and peers, and all that sort of

thing, kissing the king’s cheeks, and the holy oil put upon the royal

head, that the crown, I suppose, may sit the more comfortably upon it;

but this is another sort of king, Mr King Hudson the First. I have read

somewhere at a bookstall, that Napoleon was crowned with the Iron Crown

of Italy. Well, King Hudson has been crowned with the Iron Crown of

England!--a crown melted out of pig-iron, and made in a railway furnace.

I’ve somewhere seen the picture of the River Nile, that with the

lifting of his finger made the river flow over barren land, and leave

there all sorts of blessings. Well, King Hudson is of this sort; he

has made the molten iron flow over all sorts of places, and so bring

forth good fruits wherever it went.--So no more, from your affectionate

grandson,

JUNIPER HEDGEHOG.

LETTER XXIII.--_To Mrs Hedgehog, New York._

DEAR GRANDMOTHER,--Of course you must have heard of the potato blight.

There are some subjects that women don’t want newspapers to teach ’em

about, and “potatoes is one.” I can’t tell how your red Yorks and

Kidneys may be in your part of the world: with us, they’re things to

weep over. But, of course, your potatoes are all right: you’ve done

nothing to bring down rot upon ’em from heaven. But it’s very different

with us, grandmother. Our potato blight was got up by her Majesty’s

Ministers, and--would you think it?--consented to by her blessed

Majesty! It is now as plain as light that the great Maynooth has done

it all! One William Ferrie--who writes in a hair shirt, with a girdle

of tenpenny nails next his skin--has let out the terrible secret in the

_Witness_, an Edinburgh paper (Nov. 8). He groans as follows:--

“Had _we set ourselves to consider_ by what display of His

sovereignty the Lord could most thoroughly and very severely

have distressed Ireland, whilst He in some degree afflicted

also both England and Scotland, _in token of His indignation_

at the sin of their joint rulers in enacting that which,

_whilst it insulted Him_, was justified on the plea that

it would benefit Ireland, could we have conceived _a more

effectual_ one than the blasting of the potato crop!”

Now, grandmother, this, I know, is stuff after your own heart.

Popery is at the root of the root! The Lord has been insulted; and

His terrible vengeance is a blight upon potatoes! There can be no

doubt that this is the fact--a fact so after the good old times!

Nevertheless, for my part, I think it rather hard that Protestant

potatoes--potatoes that, if they could talk, would cry, “No

surrender!”--should suffer equally with potatoes of Roman Catholic

principles. I know it’s very conceited in me to give an opinion against

men like William Ferrie--men who always bawl and scribble (I’ve heard

’em in their pulpits, as well as read their stuff in print) as if they

were nothing less than livery servants to Providence, and knew all the

household secrets! And Willy Ferrie, depend on ’t, is flunky after this

fashion.

A rotten potato is a rotten potato--at least so I should have thought

it afore I’d been taught better by ranting Willy; but now, I can see

into the thing just as well as if Erasmus Wilson--the magician of the

microscope--had lent me his glass, and his eyes and brains into the

bargain. I can see into the decayed parts, for I won’t bother your dear

head with hard words (though when a man’s got ’em for the first time,

he likes to sport ’em), and can behold nothing but what you used to

call “the murdering Papishes.” I’ve a ’tato before me, as rotten as

the heart of any talking ’tato that ever spouted blarney in the face

of starvation. Well, with the microscope, I can see the Old Woman in

Scarlet, with her toe polished with holy kisses--cardinals and abbots,

and friars and priests, in white and red and gold--and canopies, and

dolls of the Virgin, and saints, and little boys swinging censers.

I can see all this by the assistance of Willie Ferrie--all of it in

one potato--as plainly as once I saw all sorts of sharks in a drop of

New River water. I shall write this blessed night to Sir Andrew Agnew

(by the way, dear grandmother, it was said that Sir Andrew was lately

caught in a Sunday train--but it isn’t true: it’s now proved to be

somebody I won’t mention to you, who sometimes, out of spite to the

Baronet, goes about in his likeness)--I’ll write to Sir Andrew, and get

him to give a Potato Lecture, after this fashion, at Exeter Hall. If

with one potato he wouldn’t make the women cry, then there’s no weeping

to be got out of an onion! Sir Andrew with one rotten potato, like

David with a smooth pebble, would kill Goliath Peel as dead as Tamworth

mutton.

And yet when it’s plain that it’s the Maynooth Grant, and not the

wet--certainly not the wet--that’s rotted the potato, we find big-wig

doctors sent to Ireland (a further insult to Providence, grandmother)

to inquire, as it is presumptuously said, into the cause of the

disease. Why, I know what you or any other good old woman would have

done; after you’d tasted the Maynooth Grant--and there’s no mistaking

the flavour--in your early kidneys, you’d at once have stopped the

rot;--and how would you have done it? Why, you’d have got the Queen to

send a message to Parliament, to order a repeal of the Maynooth Grant.

Of course you would. But no: sinful men are made foolhardy by success.

Because, when they granted Catholic ’Mancipation, the fly spared our

turnips, it was thought we could give money to Maynooth College, and

yet save our ’tatoes! Ha! Dear grandmother, when you take your kidney

baked, steamed, or mashed, think of us sinners, and say a short prayer

for us.

I’d forgotten to tell you that the potatoes in Belgium are as bad, or

even worse, than ours. Besides the wet, I can’t precisely tell the

cause of this; because there’s been no Maynooth Grant there, nearly all

the wicked people being Catholics,--but then, I suppose, that’s it. Mr

Flunky Ferrie declares that “the present judgment is connected with

Popery.” There’s no doubt of it:--

“The blight being general over three kingdoms, points out _the

rulers of the land_ as the persons whose sin has secured it;

and the blight being in the potato crop, directs attention to

their dealings with Ireland as the particular sins which have

immediately called it down.”

This is, doubtless, true enough, and no less true because the whole

people must suffer for the dozen rulers. Now, had the blight fallen

only upon Tamworth, or Strathfieldsaye, or all the ’tatoes of all the

Ministers, the disease would doubtless have been hushed up. Yes,--it

was necessary that every man should suffer in his potatoes; not only

the sinful Protestant who consented to the Grant, but the lucky

Catholics who accepted it. The judgment fell upon all tribes alike--the

tribes of the Established Church and of the Church of Babylon. The

Bishop of London’s ’tatoes are in as forlorn a way as the ’tatoes of

the Irish Lion of Judah: that’s some comfort, grandmother.

Well, and what does this blight say to the Catholics--what does every

potato cry (with the little voice that what they call tubercular

consumption has left it)--what does it cry to the “Papishes,” but,

“Change your religion, and henceforth be happy in your ’tatoes!” At

first, I thought this change of religion a ticklish matter; but when

I see how easily the nobs--the bright examples of the world--do it,

why, it’s only conceit in smaller people to hesitate: for I’ve just

read a long story about the Emperor Nicholas, who’s in Italy with his

poor dying wife. (By the way, it seems that the Emperor, like many

other folks, is such a good-tempered, jolly fellow when he’s out, that

it’s a pity he should ever go home again.) The Emperor’s daughter, the

Duchess Olga (a good playbill name, isn’t it?) was to marry an Austrian

Archduke; but her father wouldn’t let her alter her religion from the

Greek to the Catholic Church. Now, however, Nicholas has thought better

of it,--and his daughter may change her religion for a husband, just

as she’ll put on a new gown to be married in. When emperors and kings

play at hustle-cap with creeds, isn’t it downright impudence in mere

nobodies to be nice!

When I think, though, that the Maynooth Grant has brought the rot in

potatoes, I can’t help looking round about the world, and fearing what

may by-and-by become of us for our friendship with heathens. We take

tea of the Chinese--a people, evidently an insult to heaven--though

long put up with, and mustering hundreds of millions. Doesn’t Mr Ferrie

fear that some day all us men may rise in the morning with pig-tails,

and the women get up with a little foot apiece? We buy rhubarb from

the wicked Turk. A time may come when--for a visitation--the drug may

deceive all the doctors, and Old Gooseberry only know what mischief

may happen! We get tallow from Russia. How do I know that I mayn’t in

every six to a pound, without thinking of it, set up a candle to the

Greek Church! Will Flunky Ferrie think of these things?--for there are

many of his kidney who’d like to be enlightened.

But, O grandmother! perhaps the worst is to come. The Church is really

now in danger! I’ve not had a fare up Ludgate Hill lately, but I’ve

no doubt St Paul’s is cracked from top to bottom. Would you believe

it? David Salomons, the late Sheriff (who was sweetly cheated out of

his gown as Alderman, the said gown being now on the shoulders of

Church-and-State Moon, Esq.)--David Salomons, a Jew, has given £1666,

13s. 4d. to buy a scholarship of £50 a year for the city of London, and

the city--Gog and Magog quivered as with ague--has been mean enough to

take it. Oh for the good old times, when they used to spit upon Jews

in the Exchange! And now we take their money from ’em! I know you’ll

think it a blow at the Church. The scholarship is said to be “open to

members of every religious persuasion;” this is a flam-blind. The gift

is a sly attack on the Established Church. It is the evident intention

of the Minories to turn us all Jews. Never has there been such a blow

struck at the vested interests of Smithfield Pig-market. Sir Robert

Inglis--whom I took up at Exeter Hall a night or two ago--says, in two

years there’ll be a grand Rabbi in Lambeth Palace.--Your affectionate

grandson,

JUNIPER HEDGEHOG.

THE END.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The Duke has, doubtless to the astonishment of Mr Nutts when he

shall learn it, suggested a more rapid reformation.

[2] Eu.

Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations

in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other

spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

Italics are represented thus _italic_, small caps are represented thus

=smcap=.