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[Aug.

"Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings,

Letter from a Contributor in the Sulks.
gained an asylum. About five-and-
twenty years since, my friend, Mr
Richard Wilson, the landscape painter,
saw Fisher at Rome, and spoke to him.
He was then, I think, one of the
conoscenti, and a picture-dealer."

"And let those that play your clowns, speak no more than is set down for them."

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"In the play of the Recruiting Officer, Wilkes was the Captain Plume, and Pinkethman one of the recruits. The Captain, when he enlisted him, asked his name. Instead of answering as he ought, Pinkey replied, 'Why don't you know my name, Bob? I thought every fool had known that!' Wilkes, in a rage, whispered to him the name of the recruit, Thomas Appeltree. The other retorted aloud, Thomas Appeltree! Thomas Devil! My name is Will Pinkethman;' and immediately addressing an inhabitant of the upper regions, he said, 'Harkee, friend, don't you know my name?'Yes, Master Pinky,' said a respondent, we know it very well.' playhouse was now in an uproar; the The audience at first enjoyed the petulant folly of Pinkethman, and the distress of Wilkes; but, in the progress of the joke, it grew tiresome, and Pinkey met his deserts-a very severe reprimand in a hiss; and this mark of displeasure he changed into applause, by crying out, with a countenance as melancholy as he could make it, in a loud nasal twang, Odso, I fear I am wrong!'" Let Liston and others read this, and blush for their gratuitous buffoonery. A low jester on the stage ought never to be suffered to use the slightest insolence to the audience. His drollery must be bounded by the row of lights above the heads of the fiddlers; and the moment he presumes farther, every person in the theatre has a right to pelt him with bad pence, or worse oranges. A hiss is insufficient -nothing like a lash on the brazen brow of the buffoon. Low farce is, at the best, somewhere about the meanest of all allowable human recreation; and the animal performing it does, for the time being, make himself too contemptible to retain any right to look a gentleman in the face, much less to colloquy with a lady in a side-box. There can be no illiberality in saying so-and therefore once more we repeat, "Well done, Tom Davies!"

You heavenly guards."

"At the appearance of the ghost, Hamlet immediately rises from his seat affrighted; at the same time he contrives to kick down his chair, which, by making a sudden noise, it was imagined, would CONTRIBUTE TO THE

INCIDENT.
is a poor stage-trick, and should be
But this, in my opinion,
avoided."

PERTURBATION AND TERROR OF THE

we. Let us see what sort of notes you Well done, Tom Davies, again say bad, by any means, as might have write on Julius Cæsar. Not so very been anticipated. Tom argues the celebrated question, "Was Brutus justifiable," &c., and we think he puts it in a new light. "The Romans," says he, "weighed their fishes at table, and took a pleasure in beholding them expire. The death of a mullus, with the moments, says Dr Arbuthnot from variety and change of colours in its last entertaining spectacles in the world. Pliny, was reckoned one of the most AND NOW I HOPE WE SHALL HEAR

NO MORE OF THE WISEST AND BEST MEN AMONGST THE ROMANS APPROCESAR." This settles the question for VING THE ASSASSINATION OF JULIUS ever-so let the Speculative Society discuss it no more.-Oh! North! I The book is said to be extremely encan read no more of this Tom Davies. tertaining, and no doubt your correspondent T. D. could shew it to be so. But I hate the stage, and all that belongs to it; and am of opinion that ginally intended for representation. I none of Shakespeare's plays were orihave no heart to prove this just now; but, take my word for it, it was the account for our admirable friend Lamb's case; and in this way can we at once being affected so much more in the closet than the theatre by Willy's tragedies.

Here is "British Field Sports, by
Neely, and Jones, &c. 1818." "There
William Henry Scott. Sherwood,
must," says this humane and excellent
writer, "be no indiscriminate periodi-
cal whipping of the hounds in the lump."
the gentlemen of your Magazine. What
I seriously recommend this advice to
do they mean by everlastingly laying
on these poor hounds, Hazlitt, the
Hunts, and all that pack? It is of no

use. Nothing will do but hanging. By the way, Scott, my good fellow, will you have the goodness, in another edition of your excellent volume, to tell me, whether a fox-hound or a race-horse is swiftest for a race of four miles? I observe that, at page 498, you inform us, that Flying Childers, perhaps the fleetest horse that ever ran, did the Beacon course of four miles, one furlong, one hundred and thirty-eight yards, in seven minutes and thirty seconds; and, at page 407, you state positively, that a fox-hound bitch of Ĉolonel Thornton's ran four miles in seven minutes and half a second, which, good sir, is faster than Childers. Curse me if I can swallow that at my time of life. You also inform us, that Childers ran three miles, six furlongs, and ninety-three yards, in six minutes and forty seconds, adding, "nearly after the rate of one mile in the minute." Now, worthy sir, Joseph Hume himself could not have exposed himself more than you do here; for, look again, and you will at once observe, that such running is more nearly at the rate of a mile in two minutes.

"Cock-fighting," says our author, is pronounced in a breath horrible! Weighed, however, in the balance of reason and fact, it is attended with the least cruelty of all our diversions, not even my favourite horse-racing excepted. I shall be very expeditious in my proof. The game-cock is kept in a state of happiness and comfort until the day of battle; he cannot then be forced; but, in fighting, is actuated by his natural instincts-is in fact gratified ; and if he falls by his adversary's weapon, he is the sooner out of the sense of pain. Let not the reader, however, mistake me for an advocate of cock-fighting, for which, in truth, I have no kind of relish; and probably should feel almost as wearied, and out of place, at the cockpit royal, as at sitting to hear a longwinded puritanical sermon-an entertainment to which stale bread and sour small beer are luxuries."

This is well put, North; and perfectly justifies you and me in our favourite sport. A cocker on a large scale, like my Lord Derby, for example, fights, we shall say, (trial battles and all,) five hundred birds per annum. Óne and all of these birds enjoys the utmost happiness that bird

can enjoy, during a life of one, two, or three years, as may happen; and the death of one and all of them, time taken at an average, occupies about three minutes of cut and come again. But besides these five hundred birds which fight, several hundred more have been called into existence, which do not fight at all, but enjoy the luxury of a natural death, in their chickenhood, from the hands of Dolly the scullion. Moreover, somewhere about a thousand hen-chickens have been clacked, which, but for cock-fighting, had never chipped the shell, and which are either humanely made into pies during the tenderness of their untrodden virginity, or kept for breeding; and in neither predicament are they ever heard to utter a complaint. A prodigious sum total of feathered happiness is thus produced; and a constant cock-a-doodle-doo kept up from farm-house to farm-house all over England, than which nothing can be more agreeable to the feelings of a man and a Christian. Q. E. D.

"Patience," says Mr Scott, "is the angler's chief virtue." Here, sir, you are wrong. No doubt, if you take your station at the stern of a punt in a pond, and voluntarily stake your credit on an attempt to delude a brace of perch, out of the scanty brotherhood that are par-boiled in stagnant mud during the dog-days, patience will be found highly useful, indeed indispensable. But what has patience to do on the green or rocky banks of a beautiful stream, with all its pools and shallows, and its light and shade, and its calms and breezes, and its silence, its murmurs, its dashing, and its thunder? Why, the angler so placed, is happy as a bridegroom on his wedding-day; and you may as well tell me, that of an ardent youth of twenty, on that latter occasion, the chief virtue is patience. Stuff! The less patience the better. An angler should be impatient, eager, bold, active, vigorous, and full of fire-in every respect the reverse of Mr H. of the Liber Amoris, who, for his drivelling, was despised, even by the daughter of a tailor; knew not how to bait his hook, or fasten his rod; nor, after he had missed the mouth of a loose-fish by his awkward and impotent skillessness, had the sense, by a sudden jerk, to catch her by the tail-fin. A Cockney, sitting in the stocks, must have patience; but not so

an angler and a gentleman on Tweedside, or by the silver Dee.

What, in the name of ponderosity and Troy weight, have we got here? two volumes in 4to-each an apparent load for a miller, and too much for the back of a Sexagenarian like the present contributor, once a man not unknown in the gymnastic hemisphere" Life of Hayley!" Here, indeed, is a triumph of temper. No tombstone can be flatter than such a monument. A patent coffin is a joke to a corp-safe like this. Open, Sisame! Now that the gates are unfolded, let some younger man turn again the weary load upon its hinges. For twelve years did our good friend Colburn support the tough annuitant, at the rate of £460 per annum; and lo! the upshot! Kindhearted Hayley! jilted in youth, living apart from the wife of his bosom in manhood, and forsaking his third flame in his dotage, what a HERMIT wert thou! Is this one of the poets of England? The friend of Cowper? The model of a recluse? Vain, heartless, wavering, selfish, dull, doting driveller, what art thou now! What a lesson is here! Versifying on the death of his friends! Sermonizing on the funeral of the wife whom he forsook in her insanity! And, last of all, forsaking the bed of youth and beauty, in the capricious impotence of dotage, that could gloat no more! Epitaphs, epigrams, lyrics, charades, epistles, satires, tragedies, and epics, all alike feebly begotten, imperfectly conceived, and abortively delivered! Peevishness, sulkiness, the wretchedness of perpetual failure; egotism feeding on garbage, and yet doomed to insatiate craving, and sick with the flatulence of constitutional imbecility, and the thin diet of solitary and mis-directed studies, that produced only constipation,

eructation, indigestion, blue devils, death, contempt, and oblivion! A man without back or loins, wrestling for immortality! The lame and the halt in soul striving to climb the hill of fame! The slave aping the free! The mean smuggling himself into the ranks of the mighty! Lips black with soot, but untouched with the coal from heaven! The slaver of fatuity for the dew of inspiration! Down and puddock-hair, instead of the strong pinion! The gabble of the goose for the song of the swan! The hobble of the Suffolk punch, bred in and in, for the gallop of the " desert-born!" The stolen lion's hide dangling over the naked neck of the cuddy, instead of the os magna sonaturum, the long leathern jaws, filled with half-chewed docks and burrs, intermingled with stingless nettles!

I observe, by the way, that there has been a serious misunderstanding between Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, and Pierce Egan. I am sorry for it. They are spirited, honest, kind-hearted publishers, as any in the kingdom, and Boxiana is the prince of good fellows. I wish they could make their quarrel up. Authors and publishers should always be good friends. Pierce seems to have been paid handsomely, and no man deserves it better. As to his fourth volume of Boxiana, we never heard of it, and request him to send us a copy forthwith! As this is a national concern, we intend to give a fair statement to the public.

My dear North, I began this letter rather queerish, and was half-inclined to pick a quarrel with you; but I begin to feel the old regard for you and Maga, and depend upon something serious and erudite by Thursday's post. Yours respectfully, &c.

THE TORY.

No. II.

ENGLAND has at length fully reverted to her old state of peace. War is at an end, and even the spirit of war is laid; that ancient fiery blast which had scorched and heaved her for an entire generation, is blown over; the fluctuations that followed the pause of hostilities, and made it more uneasy than ever, has gone down; manufactures and agriculture have put on a face of

activity, cheerfulness, and profit; the restoration of cash payments has gone through its round, and entered into the healthful and quiet system of the national prosperity, which it is to disturb no more. The reductions of the national expenditure, painful and anxious operations at the best, have now completed their course of difficulty, and they are henceforth to be felt on

1823.

ly in lightening the public burthens. At this hour, England stands in a more vigorous and loftier position, with veins filled with a richer plenitude of health and spirits, and her eye commanding a larger horizon, than in the most prosperous days of our forefathers. The scars of the war have passed away, not a wrinkle is left to tell where his helmet galled, and she has now only to follow the career of her own generous powers of head and heart, and be mistress of all the prosperity that Providence appoints for wisdom, industry, and virtue.

To say that this elevation is the direct result of any measures of our weak human sagacity, would be idle and presumptuous. The ancients, a people wise in their generation, sacrificed to Fortune; we have a purer belief, and it leads us to a still higher source; we acknowledge the bounty of Providence, and, in the acknowledgment, feel, that far from our efforts or our cause, we are giving the noblest character and panegyric within the reach of language.

In the midst of this harmonious and universal utterance of national congratulation, I disdain to bend my ear to the petty querulousness of party. Its voice, loud and ominous during the night of the country, is less and less audible as the day ascends, and is naturally extinguished in the thousand sounds of public content and industry. Those obscœnæ volucres are only for darkness and the sick-chamber; but we have thrown off the sickness and the superstition together, and may now turn to the cheering and sunny contemplations, habitual to the best times, and the manliest spirit of Englishmen. The King's speech at the opening of the Session embraced three principal objects. The question of continental policy, the public burthens, and the state of Ireland. On these three points his policy was distinctly pledged.-To preserve peace, to diminish taxation, and to propose some remedy for the disturbance of the Irish. The first step was directed to the taxation. Mr Vansittart had left the Treasury, and the new Chancellor of the Exechequer had assumed his office with a high character for intelligence and exertion. His career was begun with peculiar triumph, for he was enabled to announce the abolition of two millions and a half of English taxes, to promise the total reVOL. XIV.

peal of the salt duties within a brief period, to extinguish lotteries after the present year, and to sweep away the whole of the assessed taxes of Ireland

at once.

The Spanish question engrossed a large share of public interest for the time. A feeble and tampering spirit in our councils would have inevitably plunged us into a war with France, and subsequently with all Europe. Opposition, cheered by the prospect of national calamity, called furiously for war, but its clamour found no echo in the country; the minister's statement of his policy formed an intelligent view of British interests and public feelings, and was sanctioned by great majorities within the house, and by an unexampled approbation among the people. Opposition was baffled; and if the defeat of a body, so often repulsed, and sunk into such contempt, could be a matter of triumph, its defeat was ridiculous and humiliating in the most memorable degree.

A paltry attempt at popularity was subsequently made by a motion relative to the arrest of Mr Bowring, a person charged with being the accredited agent of disaffection in France. His notorious intercourse with the suspected in Paris, his communications with Spain, and the appearance of some incendiary French songs in an English paper, at the moment of an attempted insurrection in France, had fixed the eye of the police upon him. His arrest was natural, but his papers were apparently of no importance, and he was finally set at liberty without a charge, after a childish and harsh detention of a fortnight in a French prison. Lord Archibald Hamilton was the Alecto on this occasion, and put the trumpet to his luckless lips for vengeance and war. But his motion had the usual fate of his oratory,-it was thrown into easy burlesque, and Mr Bowring was left, unavenged, to his usual pursuits, and the public inanagement of the subscription for the Spanish insurgents.

The Spanish war was the sole surviving hope of party, and the topic was cherished and amplified with a fondness worthy of the desperate state of Opposition. All had hitherto cheated them; events, rich with the promise of public misfortune, had vanished from their grasp. A malignant fortune had deprived them of the Queen at the moment when they secined to

2 A

have secured complete and permanent possession of that fine source of tumult. The agricultural distresses cheered them for a time, but it was to keep the word of promise only to their ear; they no sooner swelled into the triumphant speculation of deserted provinces, barns in a general circuit of inflammation, and smock-frocked legislators re-modelling the constitution with the firebrand and the scythe, than prices rose, the sun shone, and the rustic became incapable of a genreral change of ministry. A fate pursued them; it was enough for them to set their feet on the most fetid ground of popular mischief, the soil became rotten at once, sank away, and left them to look out for another spot for the great radical lever, that was to shake all established things at a heave.

The sound of insurrection in Spain came over them while they were in the lowest despondency, and they snuffed the gale with the nostril so long uncheered with revolution. I have in a former letter detailed the contemptuous and total disappointment of Opposition; and the loss of character branded on the legal coxcomb who had volunteered to lead the forlorn hope; and the wretched artifice to conceal defeat by voting against their own question, and the bitter dissensions that subsequently revealed and punished the intrigue.

Minor debates filled up the period. Hume talked, of course, his usual allowance; but his topics lost their freshness, his blunders are mere repetitions fatal to laughter, and he has settled into the insignificance which is the - natural place of a vulgar and unfurnished mind.

The Catholic question, brought forward in April, added to the exposure of the present weakness and habitual insincerity of Whiggism. The debate on the petition was left to the single prowess of Mr Plunkett. Opposition gave up the topic without the decency of an excuse, walked out of the House, and left the advocate to the consolation of having made his annual speech, and at length learning the value of his party. One of two conclusions must be drawn from this extraordinary desertion, either that the Catholic question has been from the beginning a mere pretence in the mouth of Whiggism, or that, believing it essential to the welfare of the empire, they have

notwithstanding abandoned it, from finding that they could not compel it to answer the purposes of their own paltry appetite for office. Either conclusion leaves them steeped in baseness, duplicity, and folly. It must now be asked by all men who have hitherto looked on this party with a favourable eye,-on what subject are they in earnest, what great political doctrine do they sincerely hold, to what line of conduct would they feel themselves pledged, in case of their being put in possession of the government? The true answer is, their whole spirit is insincere. If there ever was a question to which men were bound, those men were bound to the Catholic question; their speeches, their reviews, their votes, were full of it for the last thirty years; it went side by side with even the panegyric of disaffection in England, and the triumphs of her enemies abroad. It was a part of the living and sentient frame, the blood and brain of opposition. At once it was perceived that nothing more was to be made of it, and from that moment it was disowned and dismembered from among the organs of faction. This consummation, while it covers the party with contempt, is fortunate for the Roman Catholics. Their claims will be a mouth-piece for paltry personal objects no more; they will be decided on by a more honourable judgment than that of faction. In the hands of administration they will have their due weight, and the Roman Catholic may rely on obtaining every privilege that is not inconsistent with the general safety of the constitution.

A direct step towards giving him political power has been made this Session in giving him the elective franchise. This measure, pregnant with weighty consequences, was resisted upon principle by some of the wisest and most liberal minds of Parliament. The Bishop of St David's, a man venerable by every title of literature, liberality, and piety, opposed it strenuously, declared it to be contrary to all sound policy, hostile to the maxims of our ancestors, and menacing to the constitution. What its result may be in England, must be discovered only by experience; but in Ireland the elective franchise was a formidable gift both to the givers and the receivers. By allowing the Catholic peasantry to become

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