University of Virginia Library

—‘The conquest of France!’ exclaimed Fox, in his address, ‘The conquest of France! O calumniated crusaders, how rational and moderate were your objects! O much-injured Louis XIV. upon what slight grounds have you been accused of restless and immoderate ambition! O tame and feeble Cervantes, with what a timid pencil and faint colours have you painted the portrait of a disordered imagination!’

The prophecy of Fox! O calumniated Joanna Southcote, how rational and moderate were your predictions! O much injured Napoleon Buonaparte, upon what slight grounds have you been accused of false and daring prognostication! O tame and feeble Machiavel, with what a timid pencil and faint colours have you painted the portrait of a perverted politician!

—His Lordship, it seems, is resolved on bringing forward his case every year. Does he then hope to convince the world of his innocence by adding to his notoriety? Weak men sometimes (Sir Fr*nc*s always) will believe even the most detected culprit innocent; but the fact is, my Lord, not one in ten thousand doubts the justice of your sentence. Pray, then, do not tease us about it. You have no chance, I tell you, till the old major gets us a reform; and he has found that a thirty years' business already.

—I suppose my friend alludes to that detestable conspiracy, which was organized, some time since, against the personal character of the Regent. It is now completely detected, and so are all those villains, who, under the specious name of advisers, were the prime movers of it. They know this well; they know too, that they must henceforth expect no favor; and hence their diatribes against royalty, hence their disgusting struggles between treason and cowardice, hence that melancholy spectacle, which, night, after night they still exhibit, of defiance in fetters and emaciated desperation.

—An elderly young gentleman of twenty years' practice in the ton. Since he will not reform our dress, I wish our patriots would do something for it. Considering we live at such epic times, our costume is sadly deficient in the picturesque. Future ages will read with astonishment, that the wisest schemes were planned, and the most gigantic feats executed, by people in smart coats with a dangling shred of skirt, bandages round their necks, and—I tremble to write the word—breeches! For goodness' sake, how is a poet, five centuries hence, to manage about the battle of Waterloo? Instead of hacked hauberks and habergeons, perforated mail, and arrows stuck in shields, he must sing of holes made in pantaloons, jackets shot away, and little buttons that stop a bullet. Or will antiquity itself, by association of ideas, give a venerable effect to the word knapsack, or add sublimity to the word canteen? In my opinion, epic poets are undone. It will be still worse with painters. Flaps and tags, buckles and pumps, may, hereafter, as obsolete terms, acquire some degree of dignity; but I fear, no sleight of pencil can ever make a cocked hat harmonize with horror. In poetry, we conceive a grand idea of Satan, when we read,

But reduce the image to canvas—paint horror fairly perched upon his crest, and the fact is, you must either make her so small as to look like any thing but horror, or so large as to dwindle the devil into a mere dwarf. In short, our present costume is a disgrace to heroism, and I am astonished the opposition do not take the matter up. They who made so grand a stand on military mustachios, tassels, and heavy helmets, might surely go one step farther, and rectify the errors of the civil wardrobe. In truth, it would set ministers at their wits' ends, were a motion made, some night or other, for leave to bring in a bill for the regulation of the dress of his Majesty's liege subjects, in a manner suitable to the dignity of the country, and to the high station which it holds amongst the other powers of Europe.

—I had intended a long note upon the female costume of the present day; but unfortunately, the little milliner who promised me her assistance has just eloped with a sentimental pugilist. I can, therefore, only venture to regret, that the face, which formerly used to crown the whole edifice, is now (between short petticoats and tall bonnets) stuck just in the centre of the dress, like a clock on a steeple; and that the waist is so plaited and puckered (I trust I speak technically,) that we can only point it out, as we might other culprits—to the best of our belief.

N.B. The pretty little Grecian bend forward of the spine (adopted, I presume, from the Venus) is quite classical and broken-backed.

— His Lordship, it is well known, was lately convicted of selling birch-brooms. It is not quite so well known, that the culprit walked three miles to make a pun (which indeed deserved the birch) upon his own conviction. His guilt being decided by a clause, he called it a sweeping clause! As I have inserted this Jeu d'esprit, I know his Lordship will forgive me all I may say of him afterwards.

—Hellfire Dick, a noted coachman of Oxford, and the most agreeable whip (as he himself undertakes to inform us), `that ever drove under the trees, or over the houses.”

—I wish these worthy fellows, who live upon their dickies, to know (what I dare say will astonish them), that there is much patriotism, as well as virtue, in their occupation. I verily believe we owed our quadrupedal superiority in Spain and France to that useful class of gentlemen, who cultivate a friendship with their horses; and no doubt, Christian humility could not be more pleasingly displayed than in their condescending to the connection. Indeed, horses, at all periods, have formed no inconsiderable link in the social chain. A whole property sometimes depends upon a single horse. A horse has his doctor—a far more scientific personage than the mere physician, because, as the patient in hoofs cannot conveniently turn pale or sport a pulse, the symptoms are more difficult of discovery. Caligula, we know, gave his horse an ivory manger. Heroes have their statues stuck upon horses. Achilles (like our own gentlemen) talked greatly to his horse; and it is an ascertained fact, that a lady often decides which man she will marry, merely by the number of his horses.

—‘Good old times,’ is an expression, I presume, as old as a century after the deluge. Men look back upon the past as upon a mountain, which appears the more blue and smooth, the more distant it becomes. But I have no hesitation to say, that this country now stands higher in point of morals and true piety than it ever stood before. This improvement arises, as I conceive, from our gradual progress in knowledge, from the corrective influence of a pure religion and a free constitution, from our political seclusion during a whole age, and from the tremendous spectacle of other nations; by whose crimes, as we did not participate in them, we must naturally have benefitted. A signal example of depravity makes a certain impression upon every spectator; and if it does not act as an encouragement, it must operate as a warning.

—The rebuilding of an arch (indeed, I believe, two arches) of London Bridge cost but twenty-nine pounds at a time when a M. S. Bible (for printing had not then been invented) amounted to much the same sum.

—If, as the cabal assert, the prince sacrifices public good to personal prodigality, it is astonishing that he should never have chosen for his ministers those men who formerly worked heaven and earth to procure him liberal supplies from parliament. What ingratitude!—As for royal expence, the Duke de Berri alone has a larger income than any four of our own princes; and the British throne and court cost less than those of the first-rate powers in Europe, and not more than several of the second-rate. Still, talk of expenditure to the cabal, and 'tis nothing but, the Prince, the Prince, the Prince. The Prince has misapplied the public money. What money? The Droits of Admiralty? No, but the salaries of ministers. He has given them to mere loyal men, instead of Jacobins. This is the true secret, why he who was once the darling of opposition, has now become its utter aversion. I remember reading of a Russian Princess who had a crucifix which she used to worship with kisses, genuflections, and lighted tapers, ‘provided always’ she was in a good humour. But if any thing cross occurred; if a rival eclipsed her, or an admirer grew cool, no lip-service or prostration then; out went the tapers in a pet, and the crucifix got well scolded.

—An ironical gentleman of the house, with, however, considerable dullness in the didactic. When he speaks, if our mouths are not distended horizontally in laughter, they are sure to assume the perpendicularity of a yawn. He was convicted of a libel.

—What quixotism possessed his Lordship, who, it seems, is a mighty good sort of young man, to go careering against a guardsman? I am told he copies Mr. Pitt's language. I wish he would imitate Mr. Pitt's dignity. That great statesman would not, I rather suspect, have gone careering.

—Master Peter. He talks now and then. They say too he reads a great deal. If so, nobody is the wiser.

—At least, some of our young ladies do not scruple to shew knees in French drawing-rooms. No doubt they will shortly let their own countrymen have a peep. It would be but friendly. In fact, we must bear patiently with such follies, till the travelling fit is over. Every one now returns from abroad, either Beparised or Bewaterlooed. I have seen a hulking fellow, hot from a fortnight's trip, sacre Dieu it, and grin it, and shrug it, with the most serious intentions of elegance. Others, again, stun you with no account whatever of La Belle Alliance; and I know one honest gentleman, who has brought home a real Waterloo thumb, nail and all, which he preserves in a bottle of gin, for the purpose of transmitting, to the most remote posterity, a relic of Sawney Mac Gregor from Inverness, or of Darby O'Rourke from Tipperary.

—It is well known, that divers gentlemen, stricken in years, paid the most delicate attentions to the Hottentot Venus. As for that idle story of the good Mr. B---, no one now believes a syllable of it. The facts of the interview were these. Mr. B--- having called on Venus, naturally began the conversation by remarking that it was a fine day. Venus agreed with him; and no sooner did she observe that the day before had also been fine, than he agreed with her. He then took the opportunity of hoping that the next day might be as fine; and she did not omit so favorable an occasion of likewise hoping that it might. In short, there was not a drop of rain difference in their opinions; and Mr. B--- concluded a conversation, replete with weather, by converting Venus to Christianity.

— Namely—Louis, Gustavus, and Napoleon.

—A Welsh sect, who piously leap about till they drop. He who can leap the longest is considered the best jumper; and therefore the most muscular men have the greatest chance of eternal beatitude. Their arguments in favour of jumping are, that David danced before the Ark, that the babe leaped in the womb of Elizabeth, and that the lame man leaped in praise of God.

—One of poor Joanna's followers was caught in the fact of bargaining for a Young Shiloh with a Wiltshire woman who had twins. Joanna's only real miracle was the conversion of certain illuminati to a belief in her mumming mystics. I wonder what those divine mantua-makers have done with the baby linen?

—The supras assert that God merely permitted Adam to transgress. The subs hold, that his fall was foredoomed from all eternity.

—A sect who take sly advantage of some scriptural phrase, to kiss when they meet. It naturally enough consists of old maids and young widows. The seceding antikissers were established by certain morose husbands and fathers.

—An American sect who sleep upon trunks of trees, and starve themselves to the bone. Our Lord Mayor is no Dunker. Th**rpe, who would be an Alder. man, is no Dunker. Alderman G---db---re is no Dunker.

—Another sect remarkable for agility. They pique themselves particularly upon spinning round for an hour or two; which, they say, shews the great power of God.

—There is a publication called the Methodists' Magazine, which, on the whole, is neither injurious nor uninstructive; but for a thing of its pretensions, singularly tinctured with the vanitas vanitatis. There, evangelical tradesmen insert their own memoirs, as avowed patterns of piety; and indeed, better creatures, they tell you, never breathed. Others again get their faces affixed to the work, though, I trust, not from vanity; for a set of uglier christians were never beheld. Besides, the language is often carnal and prophane to a degree. Why talk of wrestling with Our Saviour? Why call spiritual meetings, love feasts? The poor creatures mean well, but they disgust persons of plain piety. And yet this work is patronized, nay superintended, by men of education and talents.

—Gogoniant, in the Welsh, signifies glory. The Welsh preachers instruct their flocks to keep bellowing it till their lungs fail them.

—In the Methodists' Magazine, a self-biographer assures us that he prayed one night till his chamber became illuminated! There was one Quirinus Kuhlman, who used to imagine that a globe of divine light always surrounded his head. Accordingly, he wrote books upon eternal keys and padlocks, and was fried to death for his pains.

—I certainly respect that class of men who, without forsaking the regular church, exert themselves as individuals, to promote christian knowledge. So far from injuring the religion of the state, they serve it essentially, by animating the ardour of our divines. They rouse zeal without exciting rancour, and cause discussion without propagating fanaticism. I am, however, far from intending to cast any slur upon the clergy. They are the most respectable and learned body of men in the kingdom; and their writings have latterly thrown so important a light upon passing events, that even legislators might study them with advantage.

Indeed, I must say of the saints, (as they are called,) that they sometimes carry their enthusiasm and their strictness to excess. Thus, I cannot, for my life, see the mischief arising from theatres. If we are not to frequent places of instruction, because we may also encounter scenes of depravity, we cannot stir outside our doors. Vice may assail us even on our way to church. Thus too, in Cœlebs, young ladies (on the principle, I think, of preventing vain thoughts) are advised not to work dresses for themselves, but only for their friends. I would improve upon the hint. Instead of spots and festoons, they should work nothing except scriptural patterns. A border of deluge would run prettily enough round a miss's frock; and a set of scornful Josephs, embroidered on a lady's tucker, might often preserve it from molestation.

—Opposition have often told us that we live in a new æra. There is no doubt of the fact; for never was a country, till now, ruined by peace and plenty! After all, England must be a most extraordinary creature. War is to undo her, Peace is to undo her, Plenty is to undo her. Is to undo her? She is undone. Is undone? She has actually been undone then twenty years. These twenty years has she been as poor as a rat. And yet, under all this poverty, she has fought the whole world, beaten the whole world, and saved the whole world; and now here she stands, alive and well! Oh, but then, her national debt—think of that, Master Brook! 'Tis monstrous, I grant you; but if she had never incurred it, she had now been in her grave. Indeed, certain people are rather angry that she did not save both herself and the whole human race for nothing. ‘There goes the rascal who cut off my arm!’ said a fellow. ‘Your arm? how shocking! What on earth possessed him?’ ‘Why, to save my life.’ ‘Well then, he has saved it.’ ‘But dont you see he has cut off my arm?’ ‘Nay but—’ ‘What signify buts? He has cut off my arm—that is enough —he has cut off my arm!’

— In the reign of Charles the Second, a pamphlet, called ‘Britannia Languens,’ was written, which proved, to a factious demonstration, that England could not possibly hold out ten years longer!

—After the peace of Amiens, his Lordship innocently sold off the contents of our naval arsenals; and to whom, think you? Why, to France! The consequence was, that when war broke out again, we found ourselves destitute of every material necessary for our navy.

—No man can pretend to foretell how long peace may continue; but this every man must know, that all those feelings and principles and objects which have agitated mankind during the last fifty years, still remain unsubdued. ‘Men gnaw their tongues for pain, and repent not of their deeds.’ There is but a murmuring calmness. A spark may yet light a flame which an ocean cannot extinguish, Meantime, our wisest method of averting the evil day, is by shewing ourselves prepared to receive it. The hand is upon the hilt throughout Europe. Those who hold only the shield, must fall by the sword.