Chapter 2

We are the contemporaries of a street-building generation, but the grand maxim of the nineteenth century, in their management of masonry, as in almost every thing else, as far as we can discover, appears to lie in that troublesome line of Macbeth's soliloquy, ending with, "'twere well it were done quickly." It is notorious that many of the leases of new dwelling-houses contain a clause against dancing, lest the premises should suffer from a mazurka, tremble at a gallopade, or fall prostrate under the inflictions of "the parson's farewell," or "the wind that shakes the barley." The system of building, or rather "running up" a house first, and afterwards providing it with a false exterior, meant to deceive the eye with the semblance of curved stone, is in itself an absolute abomination. Besides, Greek architecture, so magnificent when on a large scale, becomes perfectly ridiculous when applied to a private street-mansion, or a haberdasher's warehouse. St. Paul's Church, Covent-Garden, is an instance of the unhappy effect produced by a combination of a similar kind; great in all its parts, with its original littleness, it very nearly approximates to the character of a barn. Inigo Jones doubtless desired to erect an edifice of stately Roman aspect, but he was cramped in his design, and, therefore, only aspired to make a first-rate barn; so far unquestionably the great architect has succeeded. Then looking to those details of London architecture, which appear more peculiarly connected with the dignity of the nation, what can we say of it, but that the King of Great Britain is worse lodged than the chief magistrate of Claris or Zug, while the debates of the most powerful assembly in the world are carried on in a building, (or, a return to Westminster Hall,) which will bear no comparison with the Stadthouse at Amsterdam! The city, however, as a whole, presents a combination of magnitude and grandeur, which we should in vain look for elsewhere, although with all its immensity it has not yet realized the quaint prediction of James the First,--that London would shortly be England, and England would be London.

_Morning_.

The metropolis presents certain features of peculiar interest just at that unpopular dreamy hour when stars "begin to pale their ineffectual fires," and the drowsy twilight of the doubtful day brightens apace into the fulness of morning, "blushing like an Eastern bride." Then it is that the extremes of society first meet under circumstances well calculated to indicate the moral width between their several conditions. The gilded chariot bowls along from square to square with its delicate patrimonial possessor, bearing him homeward in celerity and silence, worn with lassitude, and heated with wine quaffed at his third rout, after having deserted the oft-seen ballet, or withdrawn in pettish disgust at the utterance of a false harmony in the opera. A cabriolet hurries past him still more rapidly, bearing a fashionable physician, on the fret at having been summoned prematurely from the comforts of a second sleep in a voluptuous chamber, on an experimental visit to

"Raise the weak head, and stay the parting sigh, Or with new life relume the swimming eye."

At the corners of streets of traffic, and more especially

"Where fam'd St. Giles's ancient limits spread,"

the matutinal huckster may be seen administering to costermongers, hackney-coachmen, and "fair women without discretion," a fluid "all hot, all hot," ycleped by the initiated elder wine, which, we should think, might give the partakers a tolerable notion of the fermenting beverage extracted by Tartars from mare's milk not particularly fresh. Hard by we find a decent matron super-intending her tea-table at the lamp-post, and tendering to a remarkably select company little, blue, delft cups of bohea, filled from time to time from a prodigious kettle, that simmers unceasingly on its charcoal tripod, though the refractory cad often protests that the fuel fails before the boiling stage is consummated by an ebullition. Hither approaches perhaps an interesting youth from Magherastaphena, who, ere night-fall, is destined to figure in some police-office as a "juvenile delinquent." The shivering sweep, who has just travelled through half a dozen stacks of chimneys, also quickens every motion of his weary little limbs, when he comes within sight of the destined breakfast, and beholds the reversionary heel of a loaf and roll of butter awaiting his arrival. Another unfailing visiter is the market-gardener, on his way to deposit before the Covent Garden piazza such a pyramid of cabbages as might well have been manured in the soil with Master Jack's justly celebrated bean-stalk. Surely Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. The female portion of such assemblages, for the most part, consists of poor Salopian strawberry-carriers, many of whom have walked already at least four miles, with a troublesome burden, and for a miserable pittance--egg-women, with sundry still-born chickens, goslings, and turkey-pouts--and passing milk-maidens, peripatetic under the yoke of their double pail. Their professional cry is singular and sufficiently unintelligible, although perhaps not so much so as that of the Dublin milk-venders in the days of Swift; it used to run thus,--

"Mugs, jugs, and porringers, Up in the garret and down in the cellar."

They are in general a hale, comely, well-favoured race, notwithstanding the assertion of the author of Trivia to the contrary.[5]

[5] "On doors the sallow milk maid chalks her gains. Oh! how unlike the milk-maid of the plains!"

The most revolting spectacle to any one of sensibility which usually presents itself about this hour, is the painful progress of the jaded, foundered, and terrified droves of cattle that one necessarily must see not unfrequently struggling on to the appointed slaughter-house, perhaps after three days during which they have been running

"Their course of suffering in the public way."

On such occasions we have often wished ourselves "far from the sight of city, spire, or sound of minster clock." One feels most for the sheep and lambs, when the softened fancy recurs to the streams and hedgerows, and pleasant pastures, from whence the woolly exiles have been ejected; and yet the emotion of pity isnot wholly unaccompanied by admiration at the sagacity of the canine disciplinarians that bay them remorselessly forward, and sternly refuse the stragglers permission to make a reconnoissance on the road. They are highly respectable members of society these same sheep-dogs, and we wish we could say as much for "the curs of low degree," that just at the same hour begin to prowl up and down St. Giles's, and to and fro in it, seeking what they may devour, with the fear of the Alderman of Cripplegate Within before their eyes. The feline kind, however, have reason to think themselves in more danger at the first round of the watering cart, for we have often rescued an unsuspicious tortoise-shell from the felonious designs of a skin-dealer, who was about to lay violent hands on unoffending puss, while she was watching the process of making bread through the crevices of a Scotch grating.[6]

[6] They say that no town in Europe is without a Scotchman for an inhabitant. This trade in London is generally professed by North Britons, and it is always a cause of alarm to a stranger if he notices the enormous column of black smoke which is emitted from their premises at the dawn, of the morning.

Another animal _sui generis_, occasionally visible about the same cock-crowing season, is the parliamentary reporter, shuffling to roost, and a more slovenly-looking operative from sunrise to sunset is rarely to be seen. There has probably been a double debate, and between three and five o'clock he has written "a column _bould_." No one can well mistake him. The features are often Irish, the gait jaunty or resolutely brisk, but neither "buxom, blithe, nor debonnair," complexion wan, expression pensive, and the entire propriety of the toilette disarranged and _degagée_. The stuff that he has perpetrated is happily no longer present to his memory, and neither placeman's sophistry nor patriot's rant will be likely in any way to interfere with his repose. Intense fatigue, whether intellectual or manual, however, is not the best security for sound slumber at any hour, more particularly in the morning.

Even at this hour the swart Savoyard (_filius nullius_) issues forth on his diurnal pilgrimage, "remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow," to excruciate on his superannuated hurdy-gurdy that sublime melody, "the hundred and seventh psalm," or the plaintive sweetness of "Isabel," perhaps speculating on a breakfast for himself and Pug, somewhere between Knightsbridge and Old Brentford. Poor fellow! Could he procure a few bones of mutton, how hard would it be for his hungry comprehension to understand the displeasure which similar objects occasioned to Attila on the plains of Champagne!

Then the too frequent preparations for a Newgate execution--but enough of such details; it is the muse of Mr. Crabbe that alone could do them justice. We would say to the great city, in the benedictory spirit of the patriot of Venice,--_esto perpetua!_ Notwithstanding thy manifold "honest knaveries," peace be within thy walls, and plenty pervade thy palaces, that thou mayest ever approve thyself, oh queen of capitals,

"Like Samson's riddle in the sacred song, A springing sweet still flowing from the strong!"

_Blackwood's Magazine_.

* * * * *

THE SKETCH-BOOK.

* * * * *

SCOTTISH SPORTING.

_From the letters of two sportsmen; with recollections of the Ettrick Shepherd._

(_For the Mirror_.)

After visiting Thoms, the sculptor, "Burns's cottage," "Halloway Kirk," Monument, &c., in Ayrshire, we toddled on over to Dumfries, and had a _crack_ with poor "Rabbie Burns's" widow, not forgetting McDiarmid the author; thence to Moffat, and up that dismal glen, the pass of Moffat, to the grey mare's tail, a waterfall, so called from its resembling the silvery tail of a grey mare; and truly, if the simile were extended into infinitude, which from its sublimity it would admit of, we might compare its waving, silky stream swinging over the broad face of its lofty grey rock, to the tail of the pale horse of Revelation, over the chaos of time. It was a sombre, solemn sort of a day, and the dense clouds hung curtaining down the mountain sides, like our living pall as it were--I scarcely know how--but we felt dismally until we took a dram and got into a perspiration, with tugging up the sinuosities of the cliff's, to the summit of the waterfall. Loch Skein, where we were galvanized, electrified, magnetized, and petrified, all at once, by the quackery, clackery, flappery, quatter, splatter, clatter, scatter, and dash-de-blash, and squash, of a flock of wild ducks, on its reedy, flaggy surface; O, what a _scutter_ was there! Our hearts, too full, leapt into our mouths, but our guns were turned into tons of lead, and ere we could heave them up to our shoulders of clay, the thousand had fled into the eternal grey mist of the mountain, like the dispersion of a confused dream. There we stood like two sumphs, (as Hogg calls those who are ganging a bit aglee in their wits) gaping and staring at each other with a look which said, why did not _you_ shoot? Our dogs too stood as stiff as two pumps, with tails standing out like the handles! _Apropos_--talking of Hogg, the poet, we called to see him in his half-acre island in Eltrive Lake, and truly we met with that burning hot reception which we had anticipated from _Blackwood's Magazine_ description of him. We had no _notes of introduction_ except the notes which our guns pricked upon the echoes of Ettric Forest, and which James Hogg heard and answered with a view-hallo, for us to "come awa doon the brae an' tak' a dram o'speerits," and so we did, and in true Highland style; he met us at the door and gave us a drain from the bottle, first gulping a glass himself of that double-strong like & fire-eater, without a twink of the eye or a wince of the mouth; and then with a grip o' the daddle, which made the fingers crack, he pulled us into his bonnie wee bit shooting box of a house, with a "Come awa ben ye'll be the better o' a bite o' venison pasty;" so in we went, and were introduced to his bonnie wife and sousy barnes, which latter, Jammie Hogg nursed as though he lov'd 'em frae the uttermost ends o' his sowl.

Campbell has it against Byron, that "the poetic temperament is incompatible with matrimonial felicity." Fudge, fudge, Mr. Campbell, did you ever visit James Hogg?

Well, we sat down to take a snack with James and an extraordinary monkey of his, which he has dressed in the garb of a Highland soldier, and which too, sat down at table, and played his knife and fork like a true epicure. "An extrornry crater is that wee Heelan-man o' mine, gentlemen, he can conduc himsel' as weel's ony Christan man at table, and aft when I'm pennin' a bit rhyme 'thegither, the crater'll lowp up 'ith chair anent me and tak' up a pen, in exac emeetation o' me, and keck into my 'een in his cunnin way, as if he was speering me what to write aboot; he surely maun ha' a feck o' thocht in his heed if are could gar him spak it; but ye ken his horsemanship beats a'. I had a spire-haired collie, a breed atween a Heelan lurcher, a grew, and a wolf, dog, a meety, muckle collie he is for sure--weel, gentlemen, do ye ken, he a' rides on him when we hoont the tod (fox), an' to see him girt a screep o' red flannin on for a saddle, that the neer-do-weel toor fra a beggar-wife's tattered duds ane day; an' then to see him lowp on like a mountebank, and sit skreighin an' chatrin, an' cronkin like a paddock on a clud o'yearth. O, its a lachin teeklesome sicht for sure--an' then hee'l thud, thud, thud his wee bit neive 'ith shouther 'oth collie, an' steek his toes in his side, just for a' the world like a Newmarket jockey, an' then hee'l turn him roon behint-afore an' play treeks, till collie gerns at him; an' then beway o' makin friens again, hee'l streek an' pat him, an' peek the ferlie oot o' his hurdles; an' then when we're a' ready for gannin awa, to be sure what a dirdum an' stramash do they twa keek up; an' then aff they flee like the deevil in a gale o' wind, an' are oot o' sicht before ye can say owr the border an' far awa. But I ha' just been speerin the forester aboot the tod (fox), an' he gars me gang owr the muir to Ettric Forest, an' leuk in a cleuch in a rock there is there, an' I shall find the half-peckit banes o' a joop o' mine that stray'd yestreen. So, gentlemen, if yer fond o' oor kin o' sportin, ye shall hae such a sicht o' rinnin an' ridin as ye ne'er saw heretofore we your twa een."

We readily accepted the invite, and off we set in company with the "Ettric Shepherd" and his monkey, and certainly it was a "_teeklesome sicht_" to see him mounted on the long, lank, wire-haired, shaggy wolf-dog-grew-lurcher, while he in play was scouring round and round the wild and barren moor; away and away as swift as the wind, over brae and bourn and bog they went, like a red petticoated witch on a besom, flying in the storm.

On our way we fell in with the foresters, who were going a deer-stalking; they had a buck to kill for the duke, so we joined company, and gave that satisfactory shrug of the shoulders, with the expectation of sport, that a spider would feel while sitting in the corner of a hollow nut-shell, and seeing his victim already entangled in his web, while he was whetting his appetite with suspended hope, in dream of anticipated fattenings.

We made the best of our way to the watering-place haunt of the deer. Silence was the word, and we crept on tip-toe and tip-toe, scarce breathing, keeping ever out of the wind's course; for they have an ear of silk, and an eye of light, and a scent so exquisite that they could, if it were possible, hear the tread, see the essence, and scent the breath, of a spirit. This watering haunt was in a lonely glen, which was commanded, within pistol-shot, by a small clump of trees, which were under-grown by brushwood and brambles, and wherein we ambushed ourselves. Ay, there it was, the "gory bed," where "this day a stag must die," just one hundred yards from that said clump. Hush, hush, silence, silence, "Swallow your brith," says Jammie Hogg, hush, "Heck, cack, a," says the monkey, "the deevil tak' the monkey," says Jammie, "whist, whist, hush!"

(_To be concluded in our next_.)

* * * * *

THE SELECTOR; AND LITERARY NOTICES OF _NEW WORKS_.

* * * * *

THE GEORGIAN ERA.

(_Concluded from page 124_.)

_Sheridan_.

"In early life, Sheridan had been generally accounted handsome: he was rather above the middle size, and well proportioned. He excelled in several manly exercises: he was a proficient in horsemanship, and danced with great elegance. His eyes were black, brilliant, and always particularly expressive. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who painted his portrait, is said to have affirmed, that their pupils were larger than those of any human being he had ever met with. They retained their beauty to the last; but the lower parts of his face exhibited, in his latter years, the usual effects of intemperance. His arms were strong, although by no means large; and his hands small and delicate. On a cast of one of them, the following appropriate couplet is stated, by Moore, to have been written:--

Good at a fight, but better at a play; Godlike in giving; but the devil to pay!

"No man of his day possessed so much tact in appropriating and adorning the wit of others. He pillaged his predecessors of their ideas, with as much skill and effrontery as he did his contemporaries of their money. It was his ambition to appear indolent; but he was, in fact, particularly, though not regularly laborious. The most striking parts of his best speeches were written and rewritten, on separate slips of paper, and, in many cases, laid by for years, before they were spoken. He not only elaborately polished his good ideas, but, when they were finished, waited patiently, until an opportunity occurred of uttering them with the best effect. Moore states, that the only time he could have had for the pre-arrangement of his conceptions, must have been during the many hours of the day which he passed in bed; when, frequently, while the world gave him credit for being asleep, he was employed in laying the frame-work of his wit and eloquence for the evening.

"Like that of his great political rival, Pitt, his eloquence required the stimulus of the bottle. Port was his favourite wine; it quickened, he said, the circulation and the fancy together; adding, that he seldom spoke to his satisfaction until after he had taken a couple of bottles. Arthur O'Leary used to remark, that, like a porter, he never was steady unless he had a load on his head.

"He also needed the excitement of wine when engaged in composition. 'If an idea be reluctant,' he would sometimes say, 'a glass of port ripens it, and it bursts forth; if it come freely, a glass of port is a glorious reward for it.' He usually wrote at night, with several candles burning around him.

"The most serious appointments were, to him, matters of no importance. After promising to attend the funeral of his friend Richardson, he arrived at the church after the conclusion of the burial service; which, however, to their mutual disgrace, he prevailed on the clergyman to repeat. But, notwithstanding his liability to the charge of desecration, even in more than one instance, he professed, and it is but charitable to presume that he felt, in his better moments, a deep sense of the worth of piety. He had ever considered, he said, a deliberate disposition to make proselytes in infidelity, as an unaccountable depravity, a brutal outrage, the motive for which he had never been able to trace or conceive.

"Sheridan enjoyed a distinguished reputation for colloquial wit. From among the best of the occasional dicta, &c. attributed to him, the following are selected:--

"An elderly maiden lady, an inmate of a country house, at which Sheridan was passing a few days, expressed an inclination to take a stroll with him, but he excused himself, on account of the badness of the weather. Shortly afterwards, she met him sneaking out alone.

'So, Mr. Sheridan,' said she, 'it has cleared up.' 'Yes, madam,' was the reply; 'it certainly has cleared up enough for one, but not enough for two;' and off he went.

"He jocularly observed, on one occasion, to a creditor, who peremptorily required payment of the interest due on a long-standing debt,' My dear sir, you know it is not my _interest_ to pay the _principal_; nor is it my _principle_ to pay the _interest_.'

"One day, the prince of Wales having expatiated on the beauty of Dr. Darwin's opinion, that the reason why the bosom of a beautiful woman possesses such a fascinating effect on man is, because he derived from that source the first pleasurable sensations of his infancy. Sheridan ridiculed the idea very happily. 'Such children, then,' said he, 'as are brought up by hand, must needs be indebted for similar sensations to a very different object; and yet, I believe, no man has ever felt any intense emotions of amatory delight at beholding a pap-spoon.'

"Boaden, the author of several theatrical pieces, having given Drury lane theatre the title of a wilderness, Sheridan, when requested, shortly afterwards, to produce a tragedy, written by Boaden, replied, 'The wise and discreet author calls our house a wilderness:--now, I don't mind allowing the oracle to have his opinion; but it is really too much for him to expect, that I will suffer him to prove his words.'

"Kelly having to perform an Irish character, Johnstone took great pains to instruct him in the brogue, but with so little success, that Sheridan said, on entering the green-room, at the conclusion of the piece, 'Bravo, Kelly! I never heard you speak such good English in all my life!'

"He delighted in practical jokes, and seems to have enjoyed a sheer piece of mischief, with all the gusto of a school-boy. At this kind of sport, Tickell and Sheridan were often play-fellows: and the tricks which they inflicted on each other, were frequently attended with rather unpleasant consequences. One night, he induced Tickell to follow him down a dark passage, on the floor of which he had placed all the plates and dishes he could muster, in such a manner, that while a clear path was left open for his own escape, it would have been a miracle if Tickell did not smash two-thirds of them. The result was as Sheridan had anticipated: Tickell fell among the crockery, which so severely cut him in many places, that Lord John Townshend found him, the next day, in bed, and covered with patches. 'Sheridan has behaved atrociously towards me,' said he, 'and I am resolved to be revenged on him. But,' added he, his admiration at the trick entirely subduing his indignation, 'how amazingly well it was managed!'