A PROTEUS IN POLITICS:-"The sweet and bitter fool In motley here!"-KING LEAR. he pleased as he spoke!" "Many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills! Faith, there has been much to do on both sides, and the Nation holds it no sin to tarre them on to controversy." "We'll e'en to't like French falconers, fly at any thing we see."-HAMLET. Sir Lytton Bulwer's parliamentary eloquence exhibits all the symptoms of extraordinary exertion, and proportionally signal failure. Neat sentences, smart epigrammatic touches, and prettily-balanced antitheses are occasionally heard; but the whole is marred by a degree of affectation which is perfectly disgusting. He is for ever reminding one of the courtier whom Hamlet dismissed with: "These, sir, with what flourishes your nature pleases." His first words are uttered with an affected drawl, thus: "Mistaw Speakaw! Saw!" A buz of conversation is heard, he stops for a moment, nervously twitches his right arm, and then re-commences: "Mistaw Speakaw! Saw!" Then he proceeds with some such prepared impromptu as this: "Saw! the speech of the honourable membaw who has just sot daowwwn was feeble to rouse, but potent to lull. Saw! the honourable membaw, who spoke as he pleased, seemed careless w'ethaw We doubt not that for thus letting out the truth, we shall be hated by Sir Lytton's admirers-for the man's romances have procured the admiration of certain old women and very young virgins. We would willingly moderate our strain to please such palates, if that were possible; but the principle upon which our Charivari has set out, is simply to "tell truth and shame the devil!" and we see no reason to deviate from that principle, where there is question only of a devil of a puppy : "Non possunt nostros multæ, Faustine, lituræ Emendare jocos; una litura potest." THE LAMENT OF SANDY GALLOWAY, For his non-election as Sheriff, and for the appointment of Mr. Farncombe in his stead. GUID Loar'! Guid Loar'! et's unco sad To think mysel' electit, Get drunk at nicht, and wake i' th' moarn, The coach o' goud, the three-cocked hats, An' mair, the chonce o' gain! A thocht my pickin's wad be jeest An noo the braibes, an' treats, an' gifts, A was quite reedy tull gie boand, The deil a use in a' my rant, An' blethrin' clishmaclaver; A'm muckle feared they foond me oot, En spite o' my palaver! Guid Loar'! Guid Loar'! et's unco sad Get drunk at nicht, and wake i' th' moarn, On the 20th of July there were fifty bills amongst the orders of the day on the House of Commons paper. These will be bagged up with all possible expedition, that hon. members may be enabled to bag up their game on the 12th August. At this period of the session, the house is simply a government committee. -Lucky Cobourgs! Spain becomes pacified in the nick of time in order to form a handsome apanage for Prince Albert's brother. The Duke of Orleans grows sickly, to give his brother Nemours an excellent chance of mounting the French throne, with the late Princess Victoria of Saxe Cobourg as his Royal Consort; while the Field Marshal nearer home is constituted by Act of Parliament sole Regent, and will speedily, as he is musically inclined, compose new variations, with an obligato accompaniment for the O, boy! to the grand Aria :— “'Tis a very fine thing to be father-in-law To a very magnificent nine-tailed bashaw!" publish a new and original dictionary of the English language, of which the following are specimens :— Slipslop-a very strong expres sion." "Cessation from the use of intoxicating liquors-popery." Temperance-a brain fever." - The Duke de Nemours's legs are unfortunately so long on horseback, that, in riding out with Prince Albert the other day, his spurs scored Hyde Park all over. People imagined that a new patent system of agriculture was about to be put in operation, and that these were the drills! The wits about Court aver that this is the only description of husbandry which the Duke has yet exhibited. In Parliamentary oratory, the word "good" has become obsolete; and comparisons must be made by "bad" and "worse!" "It is probable," says the ruffian Carlos in his European Manifesto, "that an attempt to poison Christina and Isabella has been made, but without my being privy to it." There is a cowardly misgiving about the very wording of this passage which makes it as clear as noonday, that the " poisoned chalice was mixed, not only by a creature, but at the command, of the fellow who calls himself "Carlos Quinto." The author of the Durango Decree, forsooth, repudiates the imputation of cruelty, and talks of his principles ! If Muntz's balloon-breeches, which have been latterly constructed of Russian duck, happened to find their way into La Vendée, a dozen "drapeaux blancs" might be readily cabbaged out of them, and plenty left to serve all the uses of a "coverme-decent." At a public breakfast which once took place in Birmingham, a basket of eggs fell by accident into Muntz's breeches-pocket, and was never discovered until, hatched by the heat, a flock of chicks flew away with his unmentionables while he was haranguing the mob in the Bull-Ring, just as the orator, after giving utterance to an enormous "whopper," exclaimed: "Behold the naked truth!" The Duke de Nemours has undoubtedly leg-itimate pretensions to the throne of the Barricades, in the event of the Duke of Orleans's death. The name which he should then bear is the "Duke of Too-long." LITERARY INTELLIGENCE.We are happy to inform our readers that our hon. and gallant friend, Col. Sibthorp, is about to publish his autobiography, under the title of "Amatory and Polly-Tickle Experiences of an Old Buck." The motto which he has chosen is from Tibullus, and very felicitous : in an unsound state of mind." Again, how then guilty? Was the non-loading the evidence of an unsound mind? If no evidence of loading, why the deuce go into the question of insanity? This verdict disgraces us in the eyes of Europe. It was a special verdict, too, and intended to show how d-d clever they were. If these juror-donkies had been resident in Canterbury when Thom passed himself off on the Kentish boors for the Messiah, they would assuredly have been the first to fall down and worship him. Verily these are the days, not of the March, but the April of intellect ! The Metropolitan Wood-Paving Company have petitioned Louis Philippe's second son not to extend his equestrian excursions to Oxford Street, as his spurs would infallibly root up the blocks. Whenever the Duke rides out incog., he carries his little wife in his waistcoat pocket. The blackguards who have been playing their freaks at Hampton and Hounslow should be kicked off by every gentleman, whom they shall hereafter insult by addressing. Is it because they have an aristocratic name and lineage that they are to be permitted to trample on all the rules of propriety? The outrage on the policeman was as nothing compared with the later outrage on a defenceless female, lying in bed, whom they were so near killing by flinging the knocker from her door through the bed-room window. These miscreant lordlings should be sent to a penal settlement, where paving-stones would be the only knockers on which they would be permitted to vent their "noble rage. The vagabonds sported a four-in-hand. We would have them whipped four-in-hand. The only "swelldrag" of which we would permit them the use is a "swell-drag" to the pillory. "The grand revival of chivalry at Eglintoun" has terminated as ridiculously as becomes such tomfoolery, in the sale by auction of all the paraphernalia which was displayed upon the "memorable occasion." Well might Burke exclaim, that the "age of chivalry is gone, and that of stock-jobbing and moneymaking has succeeded." Only think of belted earls and doughty knights bringing their harness to the hammer! Poor devils! They must be very "hard up" indeed. We recommend the raising of a subscription for these distressed" Poles"-so we call them, for it was with headless poles, instead of lances, that they tilted. We beg to reiterate Lord Eglintoun's ejaculation at the grand banquet : May this memorable passage of arms (through the auctioneer's hands) live in history!" 66 - FROM THE MARQUIS OF NORMANBY TO MRS. They tell me you've a Joint-Stock Bank Murder is now your only fashionable crime. None but atrocious villains can awaken that rarest of things a sensation in the worn and denaturalized bosoms of the high and mighty of the land. Peers and Members of the House of Commons have contended as lustily for a final grasp of Courvoisier's blood-stained hand that hand which ruthlessly ripped the throat of helpless and sleeping age, as men more humanized were wont in days of yore to vie for the sweet pressure of the hand of beauty. Newgate has eclipsed the Opera; and the slips and omnibusbox have been gladly exchanged for the press-room and the gallows. Courvoisier's levee on the day preceding his execution beat out Her Majesty's all to nothing; and on every carriage was emblazoned a coronet or some little less stately escutcheon. Then, on the fatal morning, none else but titled names could obtain access to the prison, and sundry females of rank went disguised in male attire to touch the prisoner, whom, with the greatest difficulty, they were restrained from kissing! Murders will now be rife throughout the land, and murders, too, of the most shocking barbarity, for the viler the assassin, the more exalted the hero! Of the religious books, French and English, with which Courvoisier was liberally supplied, not one was left in his cell, Lord Tom This, and the Hon. Dick That, and the Dowager Lady Tother, disguised in inexpressibles, having solicited them from the convict, with his autograph inscribed therein, as a most delightful favour. In this foul creation of murderous heroism, the reverend Ordinary of Newgate and the two Sheriffs, oh shame of shames! set the example. But this was not all. They absolutely pressed forward with eagerness to shake Courvoisier by the hand, as he was proceeding to the drop, and their example was followed by the whole aristocratic mob. We should have shrunk with loathing and abhorrence, as from a tenfold leprosy, from such abominable contact. These tigers, with their insatiable appetite for blood, will speedily obtain from Laporte a revival of the gladiatorial games, where real murders will excite them so much more pleasurably than the weak strains of Grisi, or the twirling of Taglioni's legs. Who marvels now that there should be Oxfords? While Ainsworth writes up robbers and murderers; while Dickens, in his Oliver Twist, makes thieving scientific and engaging, and in all his works describes the greatest villains with the greatest gusto; while the magnates of the land, too, crowd forward to throw incense on the shrine of one of the most atrocious murderers on record; monied men of London, look to your throats! One of the facts upon which the jury "De Lunatico" founded their verdict of insanity the other day, in the case of Admiral Donnelly, was, that the admiral denied that this was "summer weather!" Now we hold that the admiral was right, and are of precisely the same opinion. Here is another proof of qur madness, cut and dry for jackassjuries. The morning was so confoundedly cold, that we were obliged to put on a strait (flannel) waist-coat! The motto chosen for the Monster-Times, by its conductors, Farrago libelli," was certainly de 66 scriptive, though not very complimentary. We would suggest the following as much more appropriate : "Double-double," Was ever seen so huge a bubble? "THE DOUBLE-DOUBLE." "Oh, why should Time His glass sublime," &c.-Moore's Melodies. Why should the Times Fill up with crimes, And murders so unsightly, Police reports, And dull law-courts, And Ads. not over sprightly? Oh, give it us, And, smiling thus, The sheet in two we'll sever, In each so nice, And fill both ends for ever! Benjamin D'Israeli has been striving hard, since the appearance of the political sketch with which we tickled him in our last number, to make an impression on the House, and falsify our prediction, that his efforts with that view will never be successful. Since the commencement of the month, Ben has made almost a nightly speech; but yawning has been, nevertheless, an endemic in the House. He produced one laugh by asserting that " Dr. Bowring had been carried to Egypt-a distance of 4,000 miles, in a queen's ship, and had charged mileage at the rate of two shillings a mile for that entire distance!" But Dr. Bowring gave the lie to this statement in a letter to the Times, and poor Benjamin has been obliged to hide his head ever since. Alas, for the glories of "Runnymede!" Mr. Fielden has been writing to the Times, complaining of the inaccuracy of its report of some observations which he made with respect to the management of the poor in Scotland. Let Fielden first acquire some acquaintance with the English language, and learn to express himself intelligibly, before he complains of being misreported. The marvel is that one word of what he utters should be understood; and the probability that, if he write many more such letters, he will be consigned to the Balaam box with "After a few words from Mr. Fielden." Of the member for Oldham's peculiar style of speaking here is a specimen. Alluding to a conversation which he had heard among some rustics about the Owenite system, he described it as "o bit o toke amang sim yewud chaps aboot thim Ooenites!" We should like to know how any reporter could coom up" to the mark in reporting this Yorkshire Doric. We recommend to Mr. Murdo Young the following passage from Virgil's First Georgic, as a very fitting epigraph for the Sun newspaper. "SOLEM quis dicere falsum Audeat? Ille etiam cæcos instare tumultus Sæpe monet, fraudem que et operta tumes. cere bella!" "What distinction," quoth Muntz in the debate upon opening the British Museum on Sundays, "is there between looking at the skin of an animal and the animal itself?" We answer, as in the case of his breeches, "the widest ;" and recommend the sending of Muntz himself to the Zoological Gardens, and of his hairy skin to the British Museum. We shall never look on this "whiskered Pandour" again without the idea of a very extraordinary animal. |