Part 23

"These noble animals, however, seemed scarcely to need the rest which their master's"--job--"kindness now allotted them, for though they had drawn a somewhat heavy carriage a distance of nearly seventeen miles, yet they appeared as full of life as ever; arching their stately necks, and dashing in all directions the white foam from their mouths, as if they were displeased that they were to go no farther."--P. 16.

"Just as the carriage was about to drive away" (more volition), "Mr. Alderman Magnay, accompanied by his lady and daughter, arrived in a post-chaise. After an interchange of salutations, the lady mayoress, observing that they must be somewhat crowded in the chaise, invited Miss Magnay to take the fourth seat, which had yet been vacant in the carriage; as the day was beginning to be warm, this courteous offer of her ladyship was readily accepted."

Here is a perfect justification of Firkins's regrets at his fall--the unhappy trio, jammed in the _po chay_, had been the year before in precisely the same elevated position which their illustrious friends then occupied; and if the courteous lady mayoress the year before that, had been screwed up with her husband and daughter in a _po chay_ also, then Mrs. Magnay would have been the courteous lady mayoress, to have relieved the Wenableses. I must, however, think that the reverend gentleman's reason for Miss Magnay's ready acceptance of the courteous offer does her an injustice. By his account, she readily got out of the family jam, not because she duly appreciated the grace and favour of the lady mayoress, but because "the day was beginning to be warm."

The journey to Oxford was all safely completed, and after seventy-six pages of matter, equally illustrative of Firkins's feelings, we come, at p. 77, to this description of the rapture and delight of the people of Oxfordshire, under the exciting circumstances of the lord mayor's return down the river towards London:--

"The crowds of people--men, women, and children--who had accompanied the barge from Oxford, were continually succeeded by fresh reinforcements from every town and village that is skirted by the river. Distant shouts and acclamations perpetually re-echoed from field to field, as the various rustic parties, with their fresh and blooming faces, were seen hurrying forth from their cottages and gardens, climbing trees, struggling through copses, and traversing thickets to make their shortest way to the water side. Handfuls of halfpence were scattered to the children as they kept pace with the city barge, and Mr. Alderman Atkins, who assisted the lord mayor in the distribution, seemed to enter with more than common pleasure into the enjoyment of the little children. It was gratifying to see the absence of selfish feeling manifested by some of the elder boys, who, forgetful of themselves, collected for the younger girls."--Pp. 77, 78.

The last bit for which I have room, is of the more convincing and powerfully descriptive cast, than anything I have yet advanced in favour of my poor friend Gurney's estimation of Firkins's dismay at his fall. The scene is near Caversham, where crowds of "spectators, some on foot, some on horseback, and some in equipages of every kind," were collected to see the barges pass.

"Among the equestrians," says the author, "two are deserving that their looks and equipments should be alluded to in more than general terms. The animals they bestrode were a couple of broken-down ponies, gaunt and rusty, who had possibly once seen better days. The men themselves were not unsuitable figures to such a pair of steeds. They rode with short stirrups, that brought their knees almost under cover of the shaggy manes that overspread the ewe necks of the poor creatures; and carried their short thick sticks perpendicular in their hands."

This sounds like an account in one of the innumerable books of travels in the interior of Africa, rather than a description of a couple of natives of Berkshire, within five-and-thirty miles of Hyde Park Corner; however, "so mightily pleased was the lord mayor with their uncouth and ludicrous appearance, that he hailed one of them, and asked him to be the bearer of a message to Reading, touching his lordship's carriage. The fellow seemed to feel as he never felt before. An honour was about to be conferred upon him alone, to be the _avant courier_ of--'the Lord Mayor of London,' above and beyond all the other riders, drivers, and walkers, of whatever quality and degree, who had thronged in view of the civic party; and no sooner had his lordship flung him a piece of money, and told him to 'make haste to the Bear Inn at Reading, and order the lord mayor's carriage to meet the barge at Caversham Bridge,' than the fellow instantly belaboured the starveling ribs of the poor animal that carried him with kicks and cudgel, who in a moment dashed briskly forward, snuffling and snorting, across the fields. In the eagerness of his flight, the doughty messenger had much ado to keep his seat; he sometimes slipped on one side of the saddle, and sometimes on the other, while the skirts of his unbuttoned coat fluttered far out behind him."--Pp. 81, 82.

All this evidence from the pen of a worthy divine, will, I am sure, convince the most sceptical reader of the fidelity with which my late friend repeated the regrets and lamentations of our friends in Budge Row, after their involuntary abdication. Every page of the account of that memorable journey and voyage teems with gem-like illustrations of a similar character; and I regret that my duty, as editor of the Gurney Papers, does not permit me to draw more largely on its stores.

MODERN IMPROVEMENTS.

TO JOHN BULL.

SIR,--I am not one of those who snarl at modern improvements, but I admit my incapacity to find out the improvements, at which other people snarl--I consider gas and steam to be two of the most odious and abominable nuisances ever tolerated in a Christian country: I only ask the best-natured critic--the most impartial judge in Christendom--whether anything can smell more abominably than the vapour which thousands of pounds are hourly spent to produce? If ruining oil-men, and beggaring wax-chandlers, is sport, well and good--in Heaven's name stew down the wholesome coals and make smoke, and set fire to it: but don't call that an improvement.

I love the sight of a lamp-lighter--a "jolly Dick" in a greasy jacket flaring his link along the pavement, rubbing against one's sleeve, or besprinkling one's shirt with oil--I seldom see one of them now; the race is superseded by a parcel of dandies, with dark lanthorns in their hands, prowling about like so many Guy Fawkes's: up they go, and without taking off the green lamp-tops and putting them on their heads, as the jolly Dicks did, they open a door, turn a cock, introduce their lanthorn--piff, paff, poff,--out comes the light, and down goes the ladder--this is innovation, not improvement.

Then steam--what's the improvement of steam? There was an interest in a short sea voyage when I was young--contrary winds--tides against one--nature had fair play--but now Mr. This-thing or Mr. T'other-thing makes a great copper pot, and fills it with water--more coals; poking and stoking, and shovelling and raking--Nature is thrown overboard; and the pacquet-boat, uninfluenced either by her smiles or frowns, ploughs up the waves, and marches along, like a couple of wandering water-mills. There is no interest in this, sir--any fool can make a copper pot--any fool can fill a copper pot with water--any fool can make a fire, and poke it, and make water boil--there's no pleasure in this life when events are thus provided for, and that, which had all the interest of doubt and difficulty, is reduced to a certainty.

The same in land carriage--formerly, a stage coach journey was an affair--a thing to be thought about--a man took leave of his relations, left his home, in the expectation of never seeing his wife again; then there was an interest, a pleasure in the speculation, and a hope, and a fear, and a doubt, and something to keep the faculties awake. Now, sir, if you want to go sixty or seventy miles, you have hardly settled yourself comfortably in your corner, before you are at your journey's end. Why, sir, before these jigamaree things were invented, I have lived two-and-twenty days on board a Leith smack, for three pounds three shillings, and enjoyed a pleasant five days' excursion on the road to Plymouth; whereas at present I am whirled from Edinburgh to London in forty hours, and taken from Piccadilly to Dock--Devonport I mean--in about half that time. Now this, to my mind, is no improvement.

Then, sir, look at London--look what the improvers have done--pulled up the pavements, the pride of the land, and turned the streets into roads. This Muckadamizing is no improvement. Puddles for purbecks is a bad exchange--the granite grinding is no wonder--the rattle and clatter of London is at an end. One might as well be at Slough or Southall, or any of the environs, as be in the heart of the town. They have taken away Swallow-street--scene of my youthful pleasures; and, to crown all, they are pulling St. James's Park to pieces, planting trees, and twisting the water. Why did not they leave the canal straight, as the Serpentine is? Are we to come back to the days of Duck Island, with a Whig governor for it? Why are the horses and cows disturbed to make way for the people? I love to see horses and cows happy. I like to see the barracks and hospitals. I don't want to look at great big rows of high houses, filled with people who can afford to live in them, while I cannot. This is no improvement.

Then for manners and customs: in my time we dined early and sat late, and the jolliest part of our lives was that which we passed with our legs under the mahogany. Now, we see no mahogany--we dine at supper-time and the cloth stops and the wine never moves; away go our women--no healths--no toasts--no gentleman to cover a lady--no good wishes--nothing convivial--one anonymous half glass, sipped silently, and the coffee is ready. Out we go, turned adrift at eleven, with nothing on earth to do for the rest of the evening, unless one goes to a Club, where, if a man asks for anything stronger than soda water, he is looked at as a monster. Hock and Seltzer water, perhaps, if it's hot weather--wimbly wambly stuff, enough to make a cat sick, and after that, home. Why, in my time, sir, I should have laughed at a fellow who flinched before his fourth bottle, or who submitted to the degrading circumstance of finding his way to bed of his own proper discretion. But those days are past--one thing I _do_ thank the stars for--we are getting back to the tobacco--not indeed the beautiful lily pipe, tipped rosily with sealing wax, and pure as the driven snow, but a happy succedaneum--a cigar. I do love a cigar, sir; it reminds me of the olden time, and I like the smell of my clothes in the morning, which I congratulate myself none of our modern improvements, as they are called, can ever eradicate.

Perhaps you have been lately in the Regent's Park--I will tell you what is doing there--a Mr. Somebody--I forget his name, but it is somehow connected in my mind upon Von Feinagle's principle with a Christmas pie--Horner, by Jove, that's it--he has sunk twenty thousand pounds, and raised a splendid building--a temple--a pantheon--a feature in the town--and what do you think for?--to exhibit a panorama of London from the top of St. Paul's, just within a couple of miles of St. Paul's itself--but then we are to be saved all the trouble--to be screwed up to the eminence without labour: to my mind, the whole point of a fine prospect is the trouble of getting to it--far-fetched and dear-bought are the great attractions, and all the interest is destroyed if things are made too easy of attainment. I don't like this plan.

The same struggle against nature seems to be going on everywhere--see the theatres--even at that band-box the Adelphi--there was a difficulty in getting in, and a difficulty in getting a seat when one did get in; now it is all made easy and comfortable, and for what? To see a schooner so like what any one can see any day in the river, that it is no sight at all; like Lawrence's pictures--I hate that President--his things are like life, the likenesses are identity, and so like nature that there is no merit in the painting--I like a little doubt--I love to show my quickness by guessing a portrait--the interest is destroyed if there is no question about the thing--the same with shooting--I used to hit my bird and miss my bird, and walk and walk over the furrows, and climb over the hedges and ditches, and bang away with a gun of my poor father's, which, when it did go off, was not over-certain in its performance--I liked the pursuit--now, with your Mantons and percussions, your Nocks without flints, and all that sort of thing--wet or dry, off they go--slap bang, down tumbles the bird for each barrel, and the thing is over--I never shoot now--a thing reduced to a certainty loses all interest.

Before Palmer's time I used to keep up a constant correspondence with a numerous circle of friends and acquaintance; there was no certainty about the delivery of one's letters--mail carts were robbed--post-boys were murdered--bags found in a pond all soaked to rags; then, there was an interest in it; now, a letter never miscarries; all like clockwork. I hate that Freeling--his activity and vigilance have destroyed the interest. I haven't written to a friend for the last fifteen years, nor should I write to you now, only that I send my letter by a servant lad, who is a member of an Intellectual Institution, and so stupid, that I think it is at least ten to one that you ever receive it.--Perhaps you will just acknowledge it, if it comes to hand--the expectation will, at least, serve to keep up the interest.

Yours truly, STEPHEN BROWN.

Baker Street, Oct. 17, 1828.

TO JOHN BULL.

SIR,--I perceived the other day in your columns a letter from a gentleman of the name of Brown, who, in the most cynical, sneering manner, thought fit, unjustly as I think, to run down all our modern improvements--I know you are impartial, and love to give upright adversaries fair play in your paper; I differ with Mr. Brown, and perhaps you will give me the opportunity of showing how and why.

In the first place, the ridicule, which not only he, but, I am sorry to say, yourself and many others, think fit to cast upon the advancement of learning, and which you have nick-named the march of intellect, is entirely misplaced--you look at things politically, because politicians of a peculiar class have adopted the institution of societies, seminaries, and universities--this is wrong--considering the matter thus, and associating men and manners, you teach us to believe the march of intellect the "rogues' march," to which all the well-disposed middling classes are to go to destruction; but you should consider the matter differently; you should recollect that almost all the political supporters of these Mechanics' Institutes and London Universities have imbibed their political principles merely because they have had little or no education themselves, and that as for instilling pride or arrogance into the minds of the lower and middling classes of the people, by sending them to the London University, the very converse must be the fact, because there is nothing that I see to be derived from the institution at all likely to induce pride or self-satisfaction in any of its members.

In the _Times_ of Tuesday, I perceive an advertisement from Mr. Dufief, stating that nearly 300 members of a class in the London Mechanics' Institute are learning French rapidly and critically. This, I conceive, so far from being an absurdity, to be one of the most beneficial events ever announced: consider what an improvement it will be for the common run of people who frequent public places of amusement, to find the lower order well grounded in French--in that language they will, for elegance sake, carry on their future conversations, and the ears of our wives and daughters be no longer disgusted with the coarseness to which they are now subject--for you are of course aware, that as the progress of learning exhibits itself amongst the _canaille_, the aristocracy will abandon the ground they assume, and our belles and beaux, in less than a dozen years, will whisper their soft nonsense in Hebrew, Sanscrit, Cingalese, or Malabar.

But Mr. Brown seems not only to find fault with mental improvement, but also with mechanical and scientific discoveries--he sneers at steam and growls at gas. I contend that the utility of constructing a coach which shall go by hot water nearly as fast as two horses can draw it, at a trifling additional expense, promises to be wonderfully useful. We go too fast, sir, with horses--besides, horses eat oats, and farmers live by selling oats; if, therefore, by inconveniencing ourselves and occasionally risking our lives, we can, however imperfectly, accomplish by steam what is now done by horses, we get rid of the whole race of oat-sowers, oat-sellers, oat-eaters, and oat-stealers, vulgarly called ostlers.

Gas too--what a splendid invention--we gain a magnificent light, and ruin the oil-merchants, the whale-fisheries, and the wax-chandlers--it is as economical as it is brilliant;--to be sure we use more coals, but the coal-merchants are all worthy men, and never take advantage of a frost to advance the price of their commodity; coals are evidently, however, not so essentially necessary to the poor as wax candles; therefore, even supposing the price of coals to be raised, and their value enhanced, we light our streets more splendidly, and our houses more economically.

Mr. Brown seems to dislike the over-brilliancy of the gas in the public ways, as tending to destroy the legitimate distinction between day and night. I admit this innovation--but let me beg to say, that until gas was brought to the perfection it now is, for external illumination, we never could see the unhappy women who are driven to walk the streets at night, so plainly following their avocations, or ever were indulged with the pleasing prospect of our watchmen slumbering in their wooden sanctums, at the corners of the streets.

Mr. Brown appears to dislike Mr. Mac Adam's improvements; these I defend upon several principles; one which I conceive to be extremely important, is, the constant employment they afford to the sweepers of crossings, without whose active exertions no man could ever pass from one side of the street to the other; and another which I firmly believe to be conducive to the improvement of the mind--I mean the activity with which the eye, and the ear, and the understanding must be constantly kept, in order that the individual walking may escape being run over; superadded to which, there is the admirable manure which the sweepings provide for the land.

In short, most of the objects of Mr. Brown's vituperation are objects of my respect, and I take the liberty of writing this, in order that he may, if he chooses, enter into a public disputation upon the several points at issue; for which purpose, if he will direct a letter to me under cover to you, I will appoint a time and place where the merits and demerits of the present age may be temperately, calmly, and dispassionately discussed between us.

I am, Sir, Your obedient servant, RICHARD WHITE.

PUNNING.

It would be vain, at this time of the world's age, to enter upon a serious disquisition into the "art or mystery" of punning: it would be useless to argue upon its utility, the genius and talent required for carrying it on, or the pleasure or amusement derivable from it. The fact is self-evident, that puns are an acknowledged ingredient of the English language amongst the middling classes, and are, in their societies, the very plums in the pudding of conversation.

It may be said that punning is a vice, and we are quite ready to admit the charge; but still it exists and flourishes amongst dapper clerks in public offices, hangers-on of the theatres; amongst very young persons at the universities; in military messes amongst the subalterns; in the City amongst apprentices; and, in some instances, with old wits _razee_, who are driven to extravagant quibbles to furnish their quota of entertainment to the society in which they are endured.

A punster (that is, a regular hard-going thick and thin punster) is the dullest and stupidest companion alive, if he could but be made to think so. He sits gaping for an opportunity to jingle his nonsense with whatever happens to be going on, and, catching at some detached bit of a rational conversation, perverts its sense to his favourite sound, so that, instead of anything like a continuous intellectual intercourse, which one might hope to enjoy in pleasant society, one is perpetually interrupted by his absurd distortions and unseasonable ribaldry, as ill-timed and as ill-placed as songs in an opera sung by persons in the depth of despair, or on the point of death.

Admitting, however, the viciousness, the felonious sinfulness of punning, it is to be apprehended that the liberty of the pun is like the liberty of the press, which, says the patriot, is like the air, and if we have it not we cannot breathe. Therefore, seeing that it is quite impossible to put down punning, the next best thing we can do is to regulate it, in the way they regulate peccadilloes in Paris, and teach men to commit punnery as Cæsar died and Frenchmen dissipate--with decency.

The proverb says, "wits jump," so may punsters, and two bright geniuses may hit upon the same idea at different periods quite unconsciously. To avoid any unnecessary repetition or apparent plagiarisms, therefore, by these coincidences, we venture to address this paper to young beginners in the craft, to the rising generation of witlings; and we are led to do this more particularly, from feeling that the tyro in punning, as well as in everything else, firmly believes that which he for the first time has heard or read, to be as novel and entertaining to his older friends, who have heard it or read it before he was born, as to himself, who never met with it till the day upon which he so liberally and joyously retails it to the first hearers he can fall in with.

For these reasons we propose, in order to save time and trouble, to enumerate a few puns which, for the better regulation of jesting, are positively prohibited in all decent societies where punnery is practised; and first, since the great (indeed the only) merit of a pun is its undoubted originality, its unequivocal novelty, its extemporaneous construction and instantaneous explosion, all puns by recurrence, all puns by repetition, and all puns by anticipation, are prohibited.

Secondly, all words spelt differently, having a similar sound, which are carefully collated and arranged in a catalogue prefixed, for the use of little punnikins at schools, to Entick's small dictionary, of whatever sort, kind, or nature they may be, are prohibited. Take for example:

AUGUR a soothsayer. AUGER a carpenter's tool. ALL every one. AWL a shoemaker's gimblet. HAUL (for the Cockneys) to pull. HALL a vulgar proper name. BOAR a male pig. BORE Mr. Creevy. WAX the produce of Bees. WHACKS thumps on the head or body

and so on.

In the next place, all the following travelling puns are strictly prohibited:--