THE WISHING-CAP. No. I. A PROPOSAL TO THE INHABITANTS OF THE METROPOLIS. "It is a call to keep the spirits alive." Ben Jonson. WHAT I have to propose to the the fathers nor the sons of boxers. If consideration of the inhabitants of the Metropolis is the institution of certain grounds and enclosures for the purpose of restoring the manly games of their ancestors. By manly games, I mean those that are properly called so, such as golf,* tennis, cricket, prison-base, &c.; not cock-fighting, nor even boxing; which latter is an invention of the idle to show their valour by proxy. The best thing to be said for boxing is, that it cultivates a sense of justice in the streets, and reminds the little boys of the necessity of keeping themselves active and vigourous. Boxing, however, is rather the result than the cause of a turn for fair play, which has long manifested itself in the British community. Its advocates have yet to show that its tendency to assist a spirit of this sort is not over-balanced by the excitement it furnishes to safe and cowardly spectators. A regular boxing holiday which draws after it, like a dusty comet, all the blackguards and bullies in the neighbourhood, is a meteor of very doubtful import; a very questionable encouragement to public spirit. The drinking and other bad habits, which generally illustrate the lives of boxers and their abettors, are no testimonies to the goodness of this mode of education. The spectators do not advance their health : and the boxers themselves are trained into an unnatural pitch of vigour, which does not last, and which only tempts them to shorten their lives by alternate excesses of regimen and debauchery. Even the race is not carried on like that of our horses. Boxers are not There is a golf-club, which meets at Blackheath, and is composed, I believe, of Scotchmen. It we could all of us attain to the honest fists of Parson Adams and Tom Jones, it would be much better. But how are we to set about it? Not by unnatural modes of life. We must rouse up other elements of health than these. When we have recovered something of the Parson's true love of manliness and simplicity, we shall be able to fight our own battles without the help of boxers and brandy-bottles. It is what the boxers at present do not do themselves; nor what their spectators, for the most part, would venture to do at all. Cock-fighting is so despicable an amusement, and so plainly open to all the objections against boxing, without having anything to say for itself, that I need not add a word on the subject. Cruelty and cowardice notoriously go together. In cock-fighting they are both at their height. If anybody_remains to be convinced, let him look at Hogarth's picture of it, and the faces concerned. Would the gambler in that picture, the most absorbed in the hope of winning, ever forget his own bones, as he does those of the brave animals before him? I allow that cock-fighting has been in use among nations of great valour, our own for one; but it was the barbarous and not the brave part of the national spirit that maintained it, and one that had not yet been led to think on the subject. Better knowledge puts an end to all excuses of that sort. When Roger Ascham (who saw nothing in romances but open manslaughter and bold baudry") grew old and feeble, he changed his love for archery into a passion for this sneaking amusement. I never heard but of one im 66 is a very masculine game, not lightly to be entered aginative person who was a cock-fight upon by those whose muscles have been sedentary, lest, as the poet says -Vinegar proclaim their loud disgrace. er; and such an odd imagination is his, and so strange are the ends which these cock-fighters come to, that he Exercises of this nature are the only advantage is now a professor in a Scotch uni which Scotland has over us, and the disgrace ought to be done away. versity. This, it must be confes sed, is a saving grace beyond old Roger Ascham. There is still a cock-pit somewhere in Westminster. There is also, what many of our readers will be surprised to hear of, a bear-garden, eminently blackguard. But to return to our subject,-1 say little about the ancients, though they abounded in gymnastic example. Examples drawn from the Greeks and Romans, unless impressed upon us in a very early and particular manner, have little effect. They are consider ed rather as things done in books, than by men. I will only make two or three observations: 1st. That neither the Greeks nor Romans were fond of exercise by proxy, the former being a nation of wrestlers and dancers, and the second the gladiators of the world: 2d. That the Greeks were much the handsomer and more intellectual people, and, with the exception of Sparta, were as content with the exercises that kept them healthy and lively in a state of peace, as they were ready to fight bravely when patriotism required it: 3d. That the wits and philosophers of Greece, some of whom were its greatest captains (as Epaminondas and Xenophon) were remarkable for a tranquil health and longevity, confessedly owing to that study of body as well as mind, which they made a part of the business of their lives. Plato speaks with astonishment of the newly-invented terms of vapours and other mysteries, which some physicians had brought up in his time. In the age of Homer, our niceties of temperament appear to have been so unknown, that he represents Diomed and Ulysses, after the heat of action, as standing in a draught of wind to cool themselves. These were soldiers; but Plato was a man of letters and a metaphysician; professions, which are held to be particularly injurious to the stomach; and are so, in our present sedentary modes of life. The history of England will suffice for Englishmen. It is remarkable, that the period the most eminent among us both for manly exercises and a long state of peace, was during the reign of the Tudors and James the First. The court was then given to tilts and tournaments, the gentry to the sports of the field, the citizens to archery, the peasantry to the games which are now confined to children and all classes to bowls, tennis, and dancing. At the same time, as good things have a propensity to go together, music was cultivated by both sexes, to a degree which this musical age would be surprised at; and ladies gradually acquired the art of being at once housewifely and booklearned; points in which they afterwards fell off on the arrival of French coquetry. Elizabeth, besides her books and her "heavenly virginals," kept herself in heart and good countenance with "dancing." The Reformation set men a thinking, and the Revolution followed; very useful to complete us as minds as well as bodies, and to put an end to all star-chambers and bloody bigotries; but mind itself still remains to be completed, and to finish its duty by a return to the proper cultivation of body; and then we should unite the advantages of the two periods. The Puritans, in their saturnine reflection, thought it necessary to oppose the sports and pastimes of the age, as worldly vanities, which was a great blow to the corporeal part of us. Luxury had already prepared the way for it by the introduction of coaches, as well as by her other usual tendencies. Charles the Second followed with his peruke and French fashions; and though he was fond of exercise and began by resuming some of the old sports, debauchery soon counteracted their good effects. The show of a severer court under James, the second revolution which followed his attempts to introduce popery, and the AntiGallican spirit which arose in opposition both to the former tastes and to the power of Louis the 14th, all tended to introduce a better system of manners; but trade had now began to occupy our day-light, and lead us into sad hours; the logical and critical faculties were exercised almost exclusively, and peace with France ensuing, and every body being bent on the improvement of his " sense," the effect was consummated by an universal ab sorption in the lesser morals,-in the acquirement of estates and gentilities, -in the study of being agreeable in rooms, and witty in coffee-houses. We were to be English in our virtues, but French in our tastes and a compromise between these two strangers took place, which existed up to the period of the French revolution, and still colours the manners and criticism in vogue. The characters of the successive princes contributed to the universal defection from exercise. William the Third, a hero in the field, was a queazy consumptive invalid in his own chamber. Anne was fat and burly, like her grandfather Clarendon. Lord Lanesborough, the old gentleman mentioned by Pope as "dancing in the gout," waited upon her on the death of her husband, to advise her Majesty to rouse up her spirits by his Lordship's favourite exercise. The announcement of his business must have been very ludicrous, unless he was a man of address; but he had a reason in his boasting of legs. If precedent was required, he might have quoted, besides Elizabeth, the example of Charles the Second's wife, Catharine of Braganza, who by means of an unconquerable spirit of dancing bore up against an evi! which would have been thought greater by most women than that of a husband's death; to wit, his neglect and infidelity. The House of Brunswick succeeded, all stayers at home and card-players, with the exception of the late King, whose temperance and exercise deserved a better end than his parents had provided for him. We still have the advantage of our neighbours in point of bodily vigour; partly from our mode of subsistence, partly because we retain enough moral vigour from our ancestors, and value ourselves on maintaining our superiority. Bnt no gallant person who was at Waterloo will deny, that how ever we astonished Napoleon by holding out as we did, and forcing him to lose the fruits of his conduct, we ourselves could have spared a few of the charges which the French persisted in making, and did not altogether find them as inferior as we expected. The Revolution had put a spirit into their arms, which the "beaux chevaliers" of the Grand Monarque, with all their gallantry, would have envied. Napoleon gave that title to one of our regiments as they were forming for battle, and lamented that he should be obliged to cut it to pieces. The consciousness that suggested the lamentation, might have taught him to spare it. He argued too royally. He took us for the servants of a monarchy like that of old France; and forgot that the same liberty which was new in that country, and none the better for his deserting it, was, notwithstanding its corruptions, a long habit with us. But the French people have upon the whole made a great advance in physical energy. The race is improved. A manlier system of education has been introduced; feudality is at an end; the French peasant now values himself, not as the slave of a great nation; and we may remark, that the most inconsiderate extoller among us of "the good old times” in France (which we used to laugh at so much formerly) has long ceased to say anything about "ragged elbows" and "wooden shoes." Now the French are not disposed to relax any of their endeavours to render themselves a match for Englishmen. Let us smile if we will at their endeavours; but let us smile with reason; and do, in the mean time, all we can to keep a head of them. There is a cricket-ground at Paddington, and a squalid five's court in St. Martin's-lane. This is the present amount of our establishments in behalf of health and vigour. The cricket-ground is good, but a mere nothing to our wants. The five's-court is like an out house in a dream, or Daniel's den without the lions. We ought at least to have a score of cricket-grounds about the suburbs. There should also be grounds for tennis; five's-courts, a decent number; and running, wrestling, and all other honest exercises ought to be encouraged, wherever they can. we have muddle-headed card-rooms, and places aptly called Hells, where people learn to be callous or misera Instead of these, ble, and pick one another's pockets: to which they have lately added the accomplishment of cutting one anothers throats. Think of the difference of frequenting these places, or even the most virtuous tavern extant, without a proper security against gout and indigestion, and of coming home fresh and breathing from the racket-ground, with a hand as firm as iron, clear temples and body, and an appetite which can afford to enjoy itself.* Some patriotic persons, Mr. Pennant among them (who was of civic origin, and a good specimen of the British gentleman) have attempted to restore the practice of archery. It is a good attempt; and all exercises, of whatever kind, are better than none; and if archery is not made a toy of by its revivers (as one is apt to imagine in these times) it is stout work. What I have just said, was only upon that presumption. Pardon me, soul of Robin Hood; and ye tall and sturdy bows, not to be looked down upon, which of old The strong-arm'd English spirits conquer'd France. among our amusements: but both are pursued in a very modern way, the latter often perniciously. The rich have the advantage of riding for an appetite. It is a pity they do not do it oftener, instead of taking to their carriages. Dancing is kept up too late at night, and in suffocating rooms. Dancing on a green is to some purpose. At evening it might oftener be resorted to with great advantage, by almost all persons in doors, without preparation, and the moment they rise from their work. But no exer cise can dispense with the necessity of ours, * Laws must be made against gambling; but it is much easier to prevent it in such games, than at any other. The player soon gets an interest in the game itself, and the cheerfulness of his blood stands him instead of the paltry excitements of the dice-box. To play for a trifle might be allowed. It gives the mind's eye another mark to aim at; but this is easily regulated. A good player will chiefly play for hon our. The con place to any great extent. I have omitted hunting: I confess I do not willingly speak of it, unless it be hunting the fox, and then only in case of necessity. It prevails to no such extent as to affect my argument: nor can I think that any mode of doing ourselves good is to be recommended, if it be unjust to others, and can be supplied by a choice of so many amusements, at once manly and innocent. One thing I must mention; namely that this is no party matter. Our muscles are not Whigs and Tories, Our stomachs (God knows) are no Radical Reformers. All parties are interested in it; nor do I despair before long of hearing that some steps have been taken in consequence of this suggestion; not because it has been well argued, but because the suggestion has been made. Should any one be induced by what is here said to take steps in the matter, I exhort him to consider himself as under one of the most honourable impulses of his life. If it lay in my power to begin, I would not hesitate a moment, nor sit down to dinner, from week's end to week's end, without conquering a good digestion for it, racket in hand, every day I was in town. The gentlemen of the city can raise excellent troops of horse, and do anything else they have a mind to,which money can effect: why do they not make a transition from the field of Waterloo to exercises worthy of gallant men? A pair of stays is another thing, when it pinches the sides of a Sir Philip Sydney. Let shapes be secured, and stays be warranted by this handsomest of all modes; and let at the same time half the indigestions of the city retire at one blow of the racket.. SIGHTS OF LONDON. MÈXICAN WONDERS: OR A PEEP INTO THE PICCADILLY MUSEUM ; THE BY JACOB GOOSEQUILL MY DEAR SIR,— HE Goddess of Curiosity led Columbus by the nose a much greater way than ever she led a much greater fool, viz. myself. Neverthe less, I had enough of his inquisitive disposition to draw me, last week, from my "bed of asphodel" (in plain English, my soft bottomed ottoman) towards that part of America which has just been translated to Piccadilly. The importance into which the Mexican empire is now rising seems to have been deeply felt and duly weighed by Mr. Bullock. He has consulted his own interest in the public gratification, and I have no doubt will eventually fill his own pockets quite as full as our heads, by means of his exhibition. Amongst the many nongratuitous establishments of the same kind within the metropolis, Bullock's Museum, in my mind, certainly holds the first place; there is a spirit of philosophy embarked in it which raises it far above the standard of a common exhibition. We are introduced neither to a painted city nor a solitary landscape, to an army of soldiers or a company of wild beasts, to a giantess or a dwarf, but to the natural world itself, as it exists, or at least to a fac-simile of it, as palpable and familiar as art can make it. I know of nothing short of a bonafide dishumation of the city of Mexico, and its suburbs, from their place among the Andes, carrying with them, at the same time, their live and dead stock, together with their overhanging firmament and surrounding scenery, which could represent these objects so effectually as an exhibition constructed on the plan of Mr. Bullock's. Some time ago I had the pleasure of descending into the Catacombs of Egypt in my way to Hyde-park, and shortly after took a morning's walk to the Esquimaux, returning in time for dinner to my lodgings at St. James'. Thus, for a few pence, I was enabled ATHENEUM VOL. 2. 2d series. 24 to satisfy my curiosity, without either travelling to Grand Cairo, like the Spectator, or making a voyage to the North Seas, like Captain Parry. This power of changing our horizon without changing our latitude we owe to Mr. Bullock; and I sincerely hope he will live long enough to give us a view of every thing worth seeing on the habitable globe, until it may be said that the whole world has shifte1 piecemeal. through the two great rooms in Piccadilly. Upon entering these chambers, last week, I appeared to have left the Old World outside the door; I had taken a "Trip to Mexico" without even the ceremony of asking Neptune for a soft wave, or Eolus for a fair wind; I had, in fact, stepped from Burlington-arcade into the middle of America. Every thing was new; nothing reminded me of Old England,-save and except that I had to pay half-acrown for a couple of sixpenny_catalogues, whereby my voyage to Mexico cost me nearly double what it ought. This forcibly reminded me that I could not be very far from Westminster-abbey, and that Great Britain's local deity, Mammon, in the shape of a door-keeper, was still close at my elbow, picking my pocket. However, even Charon expects a penny for rowing us over the Styx,-and why should not Mr. Bullock receive forty times as much for taking us over more than forty times as wide a water-the Atlantic Ocean? Upon walking into the upper room, which contains the reliques of Ancient Mexico, I was mightily struck by the close resemblance many of them bore to the antiquities of Egypt. There was a Zodiac of Denderah, under the title of the Great Kalendar Stone of Mexico, and otherwise known to the Indians by the name of Montezuma's Watch. It weighs five tons, and I cannot help remarking, that if Montezuma's breeches pocket was propor |