THE MORNING CHRONICLE AND LOUIS XVIII. This sprightly and charitable paper (Dec. 13th) announces a shocking calamity to the French nation. "Louis the XVIIIth," it asserts, “has fallen very much in our estimation." What a reverse upon royalty, and the vanity of human elevation! We cannot forbear some compassion for this worthy old king. Alas! to what is his greatness and his imagined goodness reduced! Little could he have been prepared for such a visitation as a sinking in the estimation of the Morning Chronicle! But, prithee, tell us, kind editors, when was his Christian Majesty not out of your esteem? When has the House of Bourbon been as great a pet with you as the Corsican and his Dynasty? At what time, or under what occurrence, from his first entrance on the stage to the shutting up of his magic lanthorn at St. Helena? Things which never were in our good graces, gentlemen, surely can never fall out of them. But for the abuse of the context, we might have understood them to assert some change of feeling, as to the restored monarchy of Francethat the good old king had at length tumbled by chance into such a bed of roses as the estimation of the Morning Chronicle; but they take care by what follows to make their meaning equivocal, as is their language, intelligible and mischiev. ous enough. But in the very same column we have a prophecy upon the fate of a whole nation; against the accomplishment of which, however, before our next number, we will venture to bet him a pot of Sardinias or Anchovies. "A cloud charged with electrical matter hangs over Piedmont, from the explosion of which the mo narchical principle has no small danger to apprehend." What, in their sober senses, can they mean? Pity our cabinet has no birth for such prophets in state matters. COBBETT & OXFORD, (Dec. 8th.) -A beetle might as soon shake the Pyramids, or a spider undermine the Coliseum, as this foul-mouthed demagogue move a stone of old Oxford. Yet hear what he says.-He has been rambling about the country for peas to fill his pop-gun with; but more of that another time. On the 18th of Nov. it appears he was at Oxford-and the sight of a place, so glorious to our nation in the feeling of the whole civilized world, produced the following very courteous remarks in what he calls his journal. "Upon beholding the masses of buildings at Oxford, I could not help reflecting on the drones they contain, and the wasps they send forth. However, malignant as some are, the prevalent characteristic is folly; emptiness of head; want of talent; and one half of the fellows who are what they call educated here, are unfit to be clerks in a grocer's or mercer's shop. As I looked up at what they call University Hall, I could not help reflecting that what I had written ever since I left Kensington, on the 29th of October, would produce more effect, and do more good in the world, than all that had, for a hundred years been written by all the members of this university, who devour, perhaps, not less than a million pounds a year, arising from property completely at the disposal of the "Great Council of the Nation." It is hardly worth our while to pause on such trash, by correcting a topographical error. They could not have told him even at a grocer's or a mercer's shop of any such place as University Hall. Had they point ed out a radical pot-house, or a spouting-room of sedition, his memory had been faithful enough but good king Alfred's foundation was not worth his recollection-any misnomer would answer his purpose, when any thing great or honourable to the nation is to be spoken of. But this is a trifle.-It is his threat as to a jacobin convention, that we will halt on for a moment.-Here is the cloven foot of reform in all its amplitude!-Cannot you keep it in a little more cleverly, Mr. Cobbett? It must be a very Great national Council with such men in it as Messrs. Cobbett and Hunt. Alas! then for our public institutions! ei. ther for religion, charity, or education. The will of the donor or founder is not a sprat's bone in the ravenous maw of democracy-not a muffin for its breakfast-but we hope the ragamuffin's will go first. Nothing was wanting to render this foul ribaldry complete, but exactly what follows within three or four succeeding pages. Oxford, in this absurd abuse, soon presented to his malicious recollection its great ornament, Samuel Johnson.One, of whom our good old father, King George the 3rd, said something not less true and forcible than witty. The joke is almost too generally known to be repeated-but it will afford the best comment we can make on Mr. Cobbett's charitable expressions of the author of the Rambler, and of a short letter to Lord Chesterfield, which will be ad. mired, when all the weekly radical trash of the last twenty years and more, could only be spoken of as disgraceful to the hearts and pens of Englishmen. When the mischievous writings of Voltaire were mentioned to his Majesty," I wish," he said, "that Johnson would mount his drayhorse, and ride over some of these fellows."-(See Jones's Life of Bishop Horne.) Nor has Britain been less reluctant thau her Sovereign to display her veneration for one so hononourable to her classical and moral literature. The statue which, at the cathedral of her metropolis, she has consecrated to his memory, would have taught any man of common feeling, so much respect for his country, as to have suppressed the following foul and rancorous lan. guage:-"Old Dread-Death and Dread-devil Johnson—that teacher of moping and melancholy-a timeserving, mean, dastardly old pensioner-whose writings are driven into oblivion by light, reason, and the French Revolution." Johnson, like his name sake Ben, was made of very stern stuff, physi. cally as well as intellectually. Living, he would not patiently have endured such invective. Cobbett boasts of his bodily bulk in a page or two preceding that he is just the weight of a four-bushel sack of wheat. This dastardly old Pensioner once levelled a saucy bookseller at his feet for an insult; trivial, indeed, to this coarse ribaldry. Perhaps, had he been living, he had by this time made this sack of wheat a Jack of straw, in more ways than one. But the lion, Mr. Cobbett, is dead;-the rest of the fable you know as well as we do. And the old song says,— “The Ass had long ears, But a pair of sharp shears, Made poor Titus Oats look forlorn; And hope t'would not end in a halter:— At best 'tis but chaff, Said brave old Sir John Barleycorn ; For I am a trae knight of Malt-a." J. M. GUTCH, FELIX FARLEY'S JOURNAL OFFICE, BRISTOL, To whom Communications (post-paid), may be addressed ; SOLD ALSO BY ALL BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. * A a OR ATTACK and REPLY. Juvenis, with his Political Aphorisms, had better read Blackstone and Burn's Justice, than Jeremy Bentham and the Code Napoleon-for there we are pretty sure he has been dabbling. We have not a smack of fancy for such speculations. Juvenis may affect much veneration for our King, Lords, and Commons,-but we think there is lurking at bottom a sickly fondness for something very different from that honest stuff John Bull is really made of. He is too old and portly for the pranks of a metaphysico-political Harlequin. We heartily thank Philotitulus, for the Motto he has suggested for our Extracts from the London Newspapers-Vescitur aura. Virg. Æn. 3. 339. We shall certainly adopt it in our next, and continue it as long as we feel compelled to stick our labels on their multifarious poison. We don't know how we could render it more pithily into plain English than byFed with wind. Lengthening it into a rhiming couplet would only weaken it; otherwise we would attempt it somewhat in this way: Our giant City is a dwarf in wind, Long drench'd with vapour and long fed with wind. Alfred's" Essay on Puppyism" must be Cur-tail'd. D. L. O.'s “ Anecdote of Parkins," is O. L. D. "The Song by Cobbett" may do for the next Agricultural dinner, or ordinary, as he terms it, at which he will be present; but it is too vulgar for the Guardian-Ex. gr. "Here I am poor Bill, I've been across the Atlantic, My pockets for to fill; But these people I've made sore sick; I wish I may be broil'd." S. P. will notice our insertion of Mr. Southey's admirable Letter to Lord Byron. We presume Lord Keeper Guildford's equestrian feat on the Rhinoceros is alluded to in North's Life of that great Lawyer; but we would cordially thank S. P. for what he hints at possessing, here and there, in his Common-place Books; other recorded littlenesses in the most elevated characters, and in minds of the sternest stuff. Alas! these trifles light as air weigh too heavily, at times, with all of us! Horace, if we could squeeze the first foot into a Dactyl, and the context were not in the way, is as likely to have said Parva magnos capiunt animos, as parva leves. We know an instance of a very sensible and reflecting man, who took deeply in dudgeon an idle question from a young simpleton in company, if it was not his Pug Dog whose nose, such as it was, Jack Peters's Ferret almost devoured in a certain scuffle: two animals as much out of our friend's line as the Rhinoceros out of the Lord Keeper's. We knew also another, of a very quiet and contemplative turn of mind, who was driven almost mad by three or four different tradesmen, at one and the same season, from some casual conjunction of misinformation, addressing him in their bills by the prænomen of Stephen instead of Thomas. We don't know, why this exciting cause was so disproportionate to its effect; but think it probable, that some early feeling had painfully associated with the former prefix something ridiculous, ill-omen'd, or obsolete. We suspect that if his Lordship and the Rhinoceros were fathomed a little deeper, we should bring up something more from the bottom of it. Depend upon it, some amphibious monstrosity-something of an heterogeneous shape, had annoyed him in early life, which this idle story re-produced to his feelings. Some of our kind readers will, probably, assist us upon the subject. Honoria's Sonnet shall, perhaps, appear when we are in a more love-sick mood; it is a little too sad and sombre; but if she should more deliberately think of Papa's Fish-Pond, she had better have it first dragged of its hungry tenants-of the Fin family; for they are most likely as fond of a delicate bit of a young Poetess, as Sparman, in his History of the Cape, asserts the Lions in that quarter to be of Hottentots-preferring them vastly to treble-trowser'd, hardfeatur'd, and tough-muscled Dutchmen. Quid verum atque decens curo et rogo, et omnis in hoc sum. HORAT. EPIST. L. 1. Ep. 1. ADDRESS. IT may be thought too early in our career to say any thing of the success, which has attended our labours: we cannot help however observing, that the circulation which our Work has obtained, if not commensurate with our wishes, is such as to give us every encouragement to proceed; at any rate we have discovered the cause, why its success has not kept pace with our expectations-and that cause is now removed; so much so, that in the present Number we flatter ourselves that those friends, who have kindly patronised our undertaking, and have approved of its plan and design, will find that we have now developed those resources, which, if we had not contemplated the command of, we would never have embarked in it. The Proprietor of the COUNTRY CONSTITUTIONAL GUARDIAN will frankly acknowledge also, that there were some peculiar circumstances attending the projection of the Work, which urged him perhaps rather prematurely forward in its publication. Its design having met with the approbation of several valued friends, he was anxious to occupy the ground which appeared vacant-for in this age of novelty, adventure, and speculation, it is no easy matter to secure to the original projector the merit of his invention. A MAGAZINE, professing itself to be chiefly political, and at the same time partaking of that miscellaneous literature, which may be necessary to render it interesting to the general reader, appeared to be a DESIDERATUM-particularly one, which undertook to place the opinions of the Country in decidedly contra-distinction from those of the Metropolis. To the arrangement and contents of the present Number we earnestly therefore solicit the attention of the Public, as exhibiting that specimen of talent, variety of matter, and sound Constitutional Sentiments, which shall always characterise this Publication. In justice to himself the Proprietor must also confess, that the Country Constitutional Guardian has not hitherto, either in the correctness of its matter, or in its typographical composition, been under his complete controul. In both these respects he trusts, that the present Number will present an evident Improvement. It was asserted in the Prospectus, that its Publication from the Metro * A a |