The barber's chair; and, The hedgehog letters

by Douglas William Jerrold

Chapter XIX.

NOSEBAG comes in; at intervals, other customers.

Nosebag. Servant, Mrs Nutts. Where’s the master?

Mrs Nutts. If you mean Mr Nutts, he’s jest run with the pie to the bakehouse. I don’t know how it is, but the older he grows, the more partic’lar he gets with his dinners. I am sorry to say it of my own husband, but I don’t think an angel could make a crust to suit him now—for I try, I’m sure.

Nosebag. Well, nor I don’t know how it is; but as we lose, as I heard a player say the other night—as we lose “the finer feelings of the ’art,” we seem to think more and more of wittles. Twenty years ago, when I was first married, I could have dined three days in the week on periwinkles; but I own it—I couldn’t be happy on periwinkles now.

Mrs Nutts. Oh, in course not. I’m sure I don’t know who’d be a poor woman, put upon as we are! Not a bit of power in our own hands—not so much as pie-crust left us.

Tickle. (With newspaper.) Well, really, Mrs Nutts—axing your pardon—I do sometimes think you have a little the whip-hand of us.

Mrs Nutts. I don’t see how—I wish we had. We should know how to use it—we should.

Tickle. Why, see here now. Haven’t you heard all about the Spanish dancer Donna Lola Montes and the old King of Bavaria?

Mrs Nutts. I don’t want to hear anything about such creturs. What is it?

Tickle. Why, she’s doin’ wonders. Taking the whole kingdom and whippin’ it round like a top.

Nosebag. A most charmin’ woman. She was here at the opera—don’t I remember the bills? When the other lady dancers wouldn’t dance with her—and screamed when they come nigh her—and when she went away, insisted upon having the house whitewashed, and vinegar and brown paper burnt in every corner. And then she went to Poland, where she stabbed the Emperor’s own policeman; for she wears a dagger for a busk in her stays—don’t you call ’em busks, Mrs Nutts?—in——

Mrs Nutts. There, go along; how should I know? Stabbed him with a dagger, eh? Poor soul! and I daresay served him right. Well?

Tickle. Now she’s got to Bavaria; and she makes no more of the King’s crown than a thimble. And they do say that the old gen’l’man—that is, the King—though he’s got a snow-white beard a foot long, is gone so raving mad about her that the unfortunate old man doesn’t know the Queen, his own lawful wife.

Mrs Nutts. Nothing more likely.

Tickle. And more than that, Mrs Nutts; she’s kicked over the Cabinet like a tea-table, and smashed the Ministry as if they was so many cups and sarcers. Besides which, the paper here says, she walks about Munich with a bulldog to pertect her innocence.

Mrs Nutts. Innocence! I’m not cruel—no, I should hope not; but, as I’m a living woman, if I was the Queen, I’d gullyteen her!

NUTTS comes in.

Nutts. Hallo! Mrs Nutts! Talking about bloodshed in that horrible manner?

Mrs Nutts. Oh, of course; you’ll take her part. It’s such creturs that are most cared for; but I only wish I was Queen, that’s all. I’m not cruel, as I said afore; but as sure as I’d a palace gate, her head should be a-top of it; yes, if she’d a thousand bayonets for busks, that it should. And you ought to be ashamed of yourself, Nutts—you, the father of a family—to stand there taking the cretur’s part. Dormalolez, indeed!

Nutts. Oh, that’s what it is, eh? Now, Mr Nosebag, will you take the chair? I’ve read all about that.

Mrs Nutts. Of course you have; I saw you laughing and enjoying yourself, and I knew by the way of you there could be no good in it. Go on, Mr Tickle; of course the cretur has turned the poor Queen out of her palace, and is at this moment walking about the town with her crown upon her head—a minx—jest like ’em.

Tickle. Not at all. For here’s a letter from Munich of the 22d ult. that says (reads): “The exasperation of the populace of our city against Mlle. Lola Montes has become so great that the authorities, in order to prevent disturbances, have required the young lady to quit the town.”

Mrs Nutts. “Young lady!” Such creturs! Well—if pisoning can ever be lawful—but go on.

Tickle. (Reads.) “This she did last night, going to the village of Sturemberg, situated at about five leagues from Munich. Her carriage was escorted by a strong detachment of dragoons from the garrison.”

Nutts. At the village of Sturemberg? Ha! like a letter at the post-office, I s’pose—“to be left till called for.”

Mrs Nutts. Well, Nutts, I wonder how you can joke at such a matter. As a husband and father of a family, it ought to make your blood run cold. It does me.

Peabody. Well, I’ve heard of Venus drawn by doves——

Mrs Nutts. I have it in a valentine; and then, like a foolish girl, believed in it.

Peabody. But I don’t fancy Venus with her bulldog. However, they say the King’s mad—don’t they?

Slowgoe. No doubt on it. For isn’t he the same King that’s writ poems and started a newspaper? If I was on a jury, that would be enough for me. I’d send him to a lunatic asylum for life.

Mrs Nutts. Very right, Mr Slowgoe; any man who can serve his Queen as he’s done, I’d put him in a straight jacket for the rest of his days, with only one arm out on Sundays.

Limpy. Never mind them foreigners; let’s think of the wirtues of our own homes. You’ve a vote for Vestminster, haven’t you, Mr Nutts?

Nutts. I have, sir. A vote—though I say it—as pure as drifted snow.

Mrs Nutts. And quite as uncomfortable. Often when the children want things, Nutts will have the money for the taxes to preserve what he calls his independent vote. And for years and years—no matter how I’ve been pinched—he has preserved it. And what’s the good on it? Independence! I don’t blame anybody for being independent when they can afford it; then it’s right and respectable. Otherwise it’s a piece of extravagance beyond poor people.

Nutts. Now, my dear, if you’ll let alone my politics, I’ll promise not to interfere with your turnip-tops; and I’m sure, if turnip-tops can speak, I heard ’em just now crying out for you to come and pick ’em in the kitchen. A cleverer woman at greens never lived; but for all that, my dear, you are not quite up in the House of Commons. (Mrs Nutts looks an unspoken repartee, and whisks out.) Yes, gentlemen, as I said, I have a vote.

Peabody. Well, is it promised?

Nutts. Why, I’m taken a little aback. I rayther like the address of Mr Cochrane; but, as I once heerd a feller say at the play—“His highness is discovered.”

Slowgoe. Well, I’m not surprised—not at all. When a man promises liberty by the bushel—universal suffrage and all that—I know what to expect. I haven’t read the partic’lars; but it’s true, isn’t it, that he went about the country as a wandering minstrel?

Peabody. Why, I understand that, blushing like a gentleman, he has owned as much.

Slowgoe. As I say, I haven’t heard the partic’lars; but he went about, didn’t he, with a hurdy-gurdy and white mice?

Nutts. Oh dear, no; went with guitar, and twangled the wires. But I don’t care so much about that—no, and I could have forgiven the mice, for mice out of Parliament aren’t so bad as rats in; but the unfortunate young youth—I mean Don Juan de Vega Cochrane—writ a book that, though it was all about soft-hearted ladies, wasn’t quite a book of beauty. Now, the worst of black used in all this blackening world is the black that’s put upon the name of a kind, unsuspecting woman. It’s a hard job for a man to get his hands clean after using it—it will stick worse than the real “Tyrian dye.”

Slowgoe. And so this patriot—this hurdy-gurdy politician—this minstrel boy of Westminster—won’t stand, eh, for Parl’ment?

Nosebag. P’r’aps he may sing, then. Shouldn’t wonder if he was to canvass the voters’ wives with his guitar, with pink ribbons about ’is neck, dust like Mr James Wallack, for the Brigand, with a new sort of song—“Gentle Electors;” or, “The Minstrel Boy to the Poll is gone.” If he was only to try that dodge, and the women had votes, I’m blest if, in my opinion, he wouldn’t chant plumpers out of all of ’em. I’m certain on it, a man with one of them twangling guitars is a more dangerous cretur about a house than with a double-loaded blunderbuss.

Nutts. And so I’ve been reading Mr Charles Lushington’s speech, and my mind’s made up; if he sticks to what he says, I shall prime him with my vote for Parl’ment.

Slowgoe. I’m very happy—very proud to see—that his Royal Highness Prince Albert consents to be the Chancellor for Cambridge. Here it is from the Post. The deputation went to the palace on Tuesday. (Reads.) “His Royal Highness expressed himself in the warmest terms for the distinguished honour conferred upon him by the University of Cambridge, and the sincere gratification he felt in accepting it. His Royal Highness conversed with the deputation on the subject of English university discipline, and evinced considerable knowledge of the Oxford and Cambridge systems.” What do you think of that, eh?

Nutts. Why, nothing; princes always do “evince considerable knowledge” on the very shortest notice upon anything.

Peabody. Quite true, Mr Nutts. If they’d made the Prince the King of M. Leverrier’s new planet just discovered, his Royal Highness would have evinced “considerable knowledge” of all its plains and mountains, besides a very intimate acquaintance with some of the principal inhabitants.

THE HEDGEHOG LETTERS.

Containing the opinions and adventures of Juniper Hedgehog, cabman, London; and written to his relatives and acquaintance in various parts of the world.

Letter I.—To Peter Hedgehog, at Sydney.

Dear Peter,—at last I’m settled at my heart’s content. For fifteen years and more, I’ve been fighting, and punching, and screwing, and doing—the Lord forgive me!—all sorts of mean tricks to be respectable; and now I’m happy, for I’ve given the thing up. I’ve got rid of every bit of the gentleman, and drive a cab. Ha! you don’t know—you can’t think—what a blessing it is to get rid of all cares about what’s genteel. It’s like taking off fine tight boots, and stretching yourself in comfortable old slippers. How respectability did pinch, and gall, and rub the skin off me, to be sure; but I’ve done with it. I’ve given up the trumpery, for the good, stout, weather-proof character of cabman.

Respectability is all very well for folks who can have it for ready money; but to be obliged to run in debt for it—oh, it’s enough to break the heart of an angel. Well, I’ve gone a good round, and it’s nothing but right that I should be comfortable at last. Wasn’t all the sweetness of my little boyhood lost in an attorney’s office? At a time of life when I ought to have been bird’s-nesting, shoeing cats with walnut-shells, spinning cock-chafers on pins, and enjoying myself like any other child of my age—there I was half the day wearing out a wooden desk with my young breast-bone, and the other half running about, like a young cannibal, to serve writs: sneaking and shuffling, and lying worse than any playbill, and feeling as happy as a devil’s imp on a holiday whenever I “served” my man. Yes, Peter, that I’ve any more heart than an oyster left me, is a special favour of Providence; for what a varmint I was! If it hadn’t been for the playhouse, I should have been ruined. Yes, Peter, but for the Coburg Theatre, I have no doubt that at this time I should have been a sharp attorney, not able to smell as much as a lucifer-match without the horrors. ’Tis a great place for morals, the playhouse, Peter. As I say, it quite drew me back into the paths of virtue. Old Simcox, my master, to keep me active, used to give me a shilling for every writ I served. He used to say there was nothing like rubbing a young dog’s nose in the blood, to make him sharp after the game.

Well, with these shillings I used to go to the Coburg gallery. That gallery was my salvation. When I used to see the villain, who’d been so lucky all through the piece, chopped down like chopped wood at the last, my conscience used to stir worse than the stomach-ache. And so by degrees I liked the playhouse more, and the writs less. And one day when Simcox told me to go and serve a writ upon the very actor who used to do me so much good—for he was always the cock of the walk as far as virtue went—I gave him such a speech about “tremble, villain, for there is an eye,” that the old fellow gasped again. When he had recovered himself enough to fling a ruler at my head, I put on my cap and turned my back upon the law. After this, I sold playbills at the Coburg doors, and that ’s how I picked up the deal I know about the stage.

And so I went scrambling on till twenty, and how I lived I don’t know. Indeed, when I look back, I often think money’s of no use at all; folks do quite as well, or better, without it. Money’s a habit—nothing more. At twenty—how it happened I can’t tell—I found myself a tradesman. Yes; I sold baked ’tatoes, and—on nipping winter days—used to feel myself a sort of benefactor to what is called our species. I had read a little at book-stalls and so on; and many a time have I, with a sort of pride, asked myself if many of the Roman emperors ever sold ’tatoes, salt, and a bit of butter for a penny? I should think not. Well, at three-and-twenty down came that bit of money on me! Whether it was really a relation who left it or not, or whether it was all a mistake, I never asked—I took the money. And that bit of money made me swell not a little. Yes; I swelled like a toad—full of poison with it. Then I went to make no end of a fortune. I thought luck had fallen deep in love with me, and I couldn’t go too far. There was a gentleman who always came with an order to the Coburg. A few years ago I should have said he was a Jew; but now I know manners, and so call him a gentleman of the Hebrew persuasion. Well; if he couldn’t talk melted butter! We were both to make our fortunes, but I was to find the money for the couple. We went upon ’Change; and, as he said, both of us were ruined. Ruin, however, could have been nothing strange to him, for he never seemed the worse for it. From that time, Peter, I was flung upon the hard stones of London. I had too much pride to go to the ’tatoes again, and so took to billiards. Ha! Peter, it’s dirty bread; it’s bread with the headache and the heartache in it. That wouldn’t do long; though how I did shuffle, and hedge, and make the most of the innocent, and all to try and keep myself respectable.

I tell you, for fifteen years I fought it out like a man. I didn’t care what came of it, what folks said of me—I would be respectable. A superfine coat and a prime dinner I would have; but ha, Peter! it’s all been taken out of me. I’ve given it up, I tell you, and I’m a happy cabman. Bless your soul! you can’t think what a happy life it is. Always seeing something new, and always riding with somebody. For you must know my cab isn’t one of the new concerns that divide the drive and his fare. That wouldn’t suit me nohow. No; I like to ride upon what I call an equality, and talk and learn life as I go; you can’t believe the sort of people that I sometimes drive about, and the things I get out of ’em. But I intend to write it all down, and to save the bother of posting, and all that, to print my letters at once. Then if my dear relations and acquaintance that are scattered in all the corners of the world don’t know anything about me, ’twill be their fault, not mine.

I couldn’t have thought that a cabman’s life could have so improved the mind. But when we meet at the Spotted Lion—that’s our watering-house—there’s something to be heard, I can tell you. I never troubled my head with politics before I drove a cab: no, I was little better than an animal; but I should think that now I know something of the Bill of Rights, and all that, and all from the newspapers. When the nosebag’s on the old mare, don’t I read the debates in Parliament!

I was going to write you a bit upon the Sugar Question, but old Lumpy—he’s our waterman—has called me for a job. So at present no more from your cousin and wellwisher,

Juniper Hedgehog.

Letter II.—To Mrs Hedgehog of New York.

My dear old Grandmother,—Thank all your stars and two garters that you’re out of England! We’re all going to be made Catholics. It’s a settled thing. You ought henceforth never to cook a supper of sprats without looking at the gridiron, thinking of Smithfield, and being special grateful for your deliverance. Nobody can tell what’s come to half the bishops, and three parts of the clergy. Such a noise about surplices and gowns! The old story again. The old fight—as far as I can tell—about white and black: one party vowing that the real thing’s white, whilst the other will have it that the true white’s black. Yes, grandmother, it’s the old battle of black and white that, as far as my learning goes, has for hundreds of years filled this nice sort of world of ours with all kinds of trouble. Nobody can tell what’s set these ministers of peace—as they call themselves—all of a sudden in such a pucker; but I think I’ve hit upon the cause, and here it is.

All this noise in the Church has begun in the playhouse. I’m sure of it. Foolish people say and write that we English folks don’t care about plays. There never was such a mistake. In our hearts, all of us, and especially many of the bishops and clergy, dote upon the playhouse; but then, you see, it isn’t thought quite the thing for the clergy to go there. The Bishop of Exeter—I’m cocksure of it—has a consuming love for a pantomime; but then he wouldn’t like to be seen in the boxes of Drury Lane, giving his countenance to the clown, that takes his tithe of all sorts of things that come under his nose. The Bishop of London too—he, I’ve heard it said, got made a bishop of by some intimate acquaintance of his that wrote plays in Greek. Well, he can’t go and enjoy his laugh at the Haymarket, or have his feelings warmed, till they boil over at his eyes, at the Victoria (that was once the Coburg); so you see, as the bishops can’t decently stir from the Church to the playhouse, they’ve set their heads together to bring the playhouse to the Church. And this accounts for all their fuss in the Church about what the playhouse people call the “dresses and decorations.” They seem to think that religion isn’t enough of itself, unless it’s “splendidly got up.” Whereupon they want to go back to the old properties of crosses and candlesticks, and so forth, to fill the pews. Well, when the bishops—the grey, sober men, the fathers of the Church—have this hankering after a bit of show, it isn’t to be expected that the young fellows will refuse the finery. Certainly not. Whereupon they’re bringing in all sorts of fashions, it seems. They don’t think it enough to belong to the Army of Martyrs, unless they’ve very handsome regimentals.

In some of the churches they’ve revived what they call the offertory. It’s this. At a certain part of the service, they send round a bag or a pocket at the end of a stick to all the people, to put money in. I have seen the same sort of thing used in the streets to reach to the first-floors, when the tumblers go about. Well, this money is gathered for a-many things; but John Bull doesn’t like it. They say the crocodile has his tender part somewhere about his belly—John’s vital part is his breeches-pocket. Nevertheless, there’s no doubt that the Bishop of Exeter—for he’s very strong upon the offertory—has introduced it to make religion, what is so very much liked in England, select and respectable. You see the people who can’t afford to drop their Sunday shillings and sixpences, won’t have the face to go to worship at all—or they may turn Dissenters, and so the Established Church, like the Opera-house, will be made a place for what the Standard (I can tell you that is a religious paper, though you may never hear of it) calls the “better classes.” Poor people may turn Anabaptists, or anything of that sort that’s very cheap. Purple and fine linen a’n’t for everybody; no, isn’t there good stout sound cloth, and striped cotton?

The Bishop of London has been in very hot water with the folks at Tottenham about the Sunday silver, which they won’t pay at all. Well, he says they needn’t pay it for a twelvemonth. So it seems that a truth isn’t a truth all at once, it takes a year to grow. According to the Bishop, it would seem that truth was born like a tadpole, that wanted time afore it came to be a perfect frog.

Well, then, there’s another notion about. It’s said that the wants of the people are so many that it’s quite out of the power of the labouring clergy to attend to ’em. It would be worse than drayman’s work. And so it has been recommended that there should be a sort of Church militia raised in addition to the regulars. It was only last night that I drove down to Fulham a very chatty sort of man—I think the under-butler of the Bishop of London. Well, he talked a good deal about this militia; they’re to be called Deacons, I think, and are to be considered a sort of a parson; like young ravens not yet come to their full black.

Well, it was quite plain that he hoped to be one of ’em, for he said the places would be open to anybody, really pious, of the humblest parts. He was very talkative, and said these deacons would have all the comforts of the monks, without any of their vows; going to people’s houses; worming themselves into their families, and learning all their business carnal—yes, I think carnal was his word—and spiritual. When I asked him if, like the monks, they were to wear gowns and hoods (as I’d seen ’em at the Coburg), he winked very knowingly, and said, with the blessing of Providence, that might come. At all events, they might begin with letters and numbers worked in gold or silver in their collars; and, something after the new police, have a pink or purple strap about their cuffs when upon spiritual duty.

Folks are in a mighty stir about the matter; but I think Exeter and London might bring all the people of their own minds, if they only knew how to go about the business. I’ve just been reading Miss Martineau about mesmerism, and she says this: “It is almost an established opinion among some of the wisest students of mesmerism, that the mind of the somnambule [you must ask somebody about these words] mirrors that of the mesmerist.” And then she goes on to say, “It certainly is true to a considerable extent, as is pretty clearly proved when an ignorant child—ignorant, especially, of the Bible—discourses of the Scriptures and divinity when mesmerised by a clergyman.”

Now the bishops have nothing to do but to mesmerise the people—I’m sure I’ve known parsons who’ve done wonders with sleepy congregations—have only to get ’em “to mirror their minds,” and they may do as they please with crosses, and surplices, and saints, and offertory, and all that. In a word, the Bishops of Exeter and London have only to send all their flocks well to sleep, to shear ’em after what fashion they like. As yet, my dear grandmother, I haven’t given nothing to the offertory, and I won’t agree to the move about the surplice. But flesh is weak. I can’t tell how long I may hold out. Fashion’s a strong thing, and always strongest when it sets towards the Church. The day may come when I may take my grey mare—as I’m told they take all the animals in Italy—to be blessed and sprinkled on the feast of St Anthony, and the Bishop of London may do the job for her. But I’ll hold out as long as I can. In the mean time, let me have your prayers, and believe me your affectionate grandson,

Juniper Hedgehog.

P.S.—I did intend to write to cousin Bridget, but Lumpy’s called me away for a long job.

Letter III.—To Mrs Hedgehog of New York.

My dear Grandmother,—We’re all safe for a time; the Pope hasn’t quite got hold of us yet. You recollect when I was a boy, how I would fling stones, and call names, and go among other boys pelting ’em right and left, and swearing I didn’t mean to hurt ’em, but played off my pranks only for their good? And then, when I used to get into a terrible fight, you remember how you used to come in at the last minute, and carry me off home just as I was nearly giving in? And then, how afterwards I used to brag that if grandmother hadn’t taken me away, I’d have licked twenty boys; one down, another come on! Well, well; the more I see of life, the more I’m sure men only play over their boys’ tricks; only they do it with graver faces and worse words.

What you did for me, the Archbishop of Canterbury has done for the Bishop of Exeter. Almost at the last minute he has wrapped his apron about the Bishop and carried him out of the squabble. And now the Bishop writes a letter as long as a church bell-rope, in which he says he only gives up fighting to show that he’s obedient—more than hinting, that if he’d been allowed to go on, he’d have beaten all comers, with one hand tied behind him. At all events, he’s very glad there’s been a rumpus, as it proves there’s pluck on both sides.

Yes; he says, “Whatever may have been the temporary results, I do not and cannot regret that I deemed it necessary publicly to assert those principles of Church authority, which it is alike the duty of all of us to recognise and to inculcate. The very vehemence with which the assertion of them has been resisted proves, if proof were necessary, the necessity of their being asserted, and of our never suffering them to fall into oblivion.” If this isn’t talking in the dark, I don’t know what a rushlight is. You might as well say that the “vehemence” with which a man resists a kicking, “proves the necessity” of kicking him. Because folks wouldn’t at any price have surplices forced down their throats, and offertory-bags poked into their pews, why, that’s the very reason you should try to push both surplice and bag upon ’em. As I say, it shows there’s blood on both sides; and it’s a comfort to know that both parties are ready for a tussle. Well, I’ve heard this sort of preaching from a Tipperary cabman, and never wondered; but it does sound droll from a bishop. I’ve read something somewhere about the thunder of the Church, and have now no doubt that it must be very serviceable; it must so clear the air after a certain time. Here, for months, has Exeter been thundering in the newspapers—crack, crack, crack! it’s gone almost every morning, till people wondered if the steeple of their own parish church was safe; and now, at last, he sits himself down, and smiling as if his face was smeared with honey, folds his hands and softly says, “Thank heaven! we’ve had a lovely storm.” Talking about thunder, I once read a poem—one of those strange, odd things that give your brain a twist—called “Festus.” There was a passage in it that certainly did bother me; but now I can perfectly understand it. Somebody says to another—

“Why, how now!

You look as though you fed on buttered thunder.”

Now, the Bishop of Exeter—I say it with all respect, grandmother, for you know you always taught me to love the bishops—is this very man. You’ve only to read his letters, really so noisy, and yet, as he declares, meaning to be so soft—to be sure that what he lives and thrives upon is buttered thunder. The Bishop, of course, isn’t alone in his happiness at the row. One of his best friends, the Morning Post, believes it will do a deal of good. True piety, like physic, wants shaking to have its proper effect. The Post talked a little while ago about “the means which have made the Church arise from its slumbers like a giant refreshed;” that is, getting up in a white surplice, to be refreshed with ready money from the pews. I don’t know how it is, but I don’t think the Church ought to be compared to a giant. All the giants I know are people of very queer character. The best of ’em gluttonous, swaggering, overbearing chaps, with nothing too hot or too heavy for ’em to carry off: now, these are not at all the sort of creatures that we are likely to think of when we’re reading the Bishop of Exeter’s letters. No; they rather remind us of a shepherd playing on his pipe—I’ve only read of these things—to his sheep and lambkins. The Morning Post further says:—

“We are not among those who feel alarm at the present state of the Church. The fermentation will throw off the scum, and what is good will remain.”

Now, grandmother, you know enough of boiling to know that “the scum” always floats on the top. Now, is anything on the top to be thrown off? Don’t flurry yourself; the Post doesn’t mean that. What it means is, that a whole lot of the vulgar members of the Established Church will be so fermented by the surplice, the offertory, and other Popish ingredients—grains of Paradise, as they tell us—that they’ll be thrown clean out of it. You know how Bill Wiggins once poisoned the pond, so that the fish was floated dead ashore. In the same way the Church may get rid of its small fry, and “what is good will remain.” Then the Church will be something like. Now, it’s old and weather-stained, with time blotches and cracks about it. But how fine it will look with crucifixes and pictures of the Virgin inside—a clean white surplice always in the upper pulpit—and the whole building beautifully and thickly faced with Roman cement!

But at this present writing, it isn’t all over in the city of Exeter. The Bishop, having had his fling, one of his journeymen, the Rev. Mr Courtenay, minister of St Sidwell’s, comes in for a little more than his share of the performance. Don’t think I’m profane, dear grandmother—no, quite the reverse. But you have in your time been to Astley’s, and seen the riding in the ring. Well, the principal rider comes, and does all manner of wonders whilst cantering and galloping, and going all kind of paces. When he’s done, he makes his bow and goes off. And then after him comes the clown. Well, he’s determined to outdo all that’s been done before him, and for this purpose goes on with all sorts of manœuvres. Now the Bishop of Exeter has made his bow, and the Rev. Mr Courtenay is, at the time I write, before the public. He will preach in a surplice; and that he may do so with safety—for all the folks in Exeter are in a pretty pucker about it—he goes to and from church, as I may say, in the bosom of the police. Oh dear! isn’t it sad work, grandmother? this noise about black and white gowns, when Churchmen ought to think of nothing but black and white souls? Black and white! as if there was a pattern-book of colours for heaven! However, how it will end nobody knows; but if the matter goes on as it promises, it is thought the Rev. Mr Courtenay will call to his aid the yeomanry, and be escorted to St Sidwell’s by a body-guard armed with ball-cartridge. It is said he has bespoken two howitzers to keep off the mob from the church doors.

I’ve hardly time to save the packet; so remain, your affectionate grandson,

Juniper Hedgehog.

P.S.—They do say that Mr Courtenay wants to be made a martyr of. But the days for burning are all gone by. Besides, other folks declare that the parson of St Sidwell’s would have been too green to burn at any time.

Letter IV.—To Michael Hedgehog, at Hong-Kong.

Dear Michael,—When you quitted England, in the Hong-Kong division of police, I promised to write you all the news I could; at least, such news as I knew you’d like. The crimes and evils of population were, I know, always a favourite matter with you. I’m sorry to say the evil’s getting worse every day; and no wonder. You’ll hardly believe it, Michael, seeing what a surplus of pauper flesh and blood respectable people have upon their hands, that there’s a set of ignoramuses who absolutely offer a premium for babies; for all the world, as they give away gold and silver medals for prize pigs. I take the bit of news I send you from the Times.

You must know that a few weeks ago a “Mrs Clements of 21 Hunt Street, Mile-end, Newtown,” had at once “three children, two girls and a boy,” all, too, impudent enough to live. Well, the Times published an account of the misdemeanour, and—would you believe it?—some “generous individuals,” as they are stupidly called, sent, among ’em, £38 for the mother and little ones.

Now, what is this, as you’d say, but fostering a superabundance of population? It’s no other than offering bribes to bring people into the country, already as full as a cask of herrings; and when every trade is eating part of its members up, for all the world as melancholy monkeys eat their own tails! Isn’t it shocking to encourage the lower classes to add to themselves? There’s nothing that money won’t do; and I’ve no doubt whatever that, for some years to come, all children at Mile-end will be born by threes and fours. A shrewd fellow like you must have remarked how people imitate one another. You never yet heard of an odd act of suicide, or any kind of horror with originality in it, that it didn’t for a little time become the fashion, as if it was a new bonnet or a new boot. And so, among the lower orders, it will be in the matter of babies. Now, if Mrs Clements had been sent to prison for the offence, then the evil might have been nipped in the bud; but to reward her for her three babies, who could show no honest means of providing for themselves, why, it’s flying in the face of all political economy. Three babies at once at Mile-end is monstrous. Even twins should be confined to the higher ranks.

You’ll be glad to hear that we’ve been giving a round of dinners to your Chinese hero, Sir Henry Pottinger. At Manchester he was hailed as the very hero of cotton prints. They dined him very handsomely, and you may be sure there was a good deal of after-dinner speaking. A Rev. Canon Wray answered the toast for the Clergy. I once read of a melancholy man, who thought all his body was turned into a glass bottle, and so wouldn’t move for fear of going to pieces. Now, I’m certain of it, that there’s a sort of clergyman who, after some such humour, thinks himself a forty-two pounder; for he is never heard at a public meeting that he doesn’t fire away shot and gunpowder. The Rev. Canon said (or rather fired) his thanks, that Sir H. Pottinger “had opened a way for the march of the gospel.” Now, Michael, I never heard of any artillery in the New Testament. And he further said:—

“British arms seem scarcely ever to know a defeat. In the east, west, north, and south, our soldiers and sailors are, in the end, ever victorious. I cannot but think that, as great Britain holds the tenets of the gospel in greater purity than any other nation, so she is intended by the Divine will to carry inestimable blessings to all distant benighted climes.”

Well, Michael, I’ve heard of a settler in mistake sowing gunpowder for onions; but the Rev. Canon Wray, with his best knowledge about him, thinks there’s nothing like sowing gunpowder for the “scriptural mustard-seed.” I suppose he’s right, because he’s a canon; and therefore not to be disputed with by your ignorant, but affectionate brother,

Juniper Hedgehog.

Letter V.—To Mrs Barbara Wilcox, at Philadelphia.

Dear Sister,—It gave me much pleasure to learn from your letter that yourself, husband, and baby got safe and sound to your present home. You ask me to send you my portrait. It isn’t in my power to do so at present; but if I should be unfortunate enough to kill anybody, or set a dockyard a-fire, or bamboozle the Bank—or, in short, do anything splashy to get a front place in the dock at the Old Bailey—you may then have my portrait at next to nothing. Then, I can tell you, it will be drawn in capital style—at full length, three quarters, half length, and I know not what.

I’ve read somewhere, that in what people call the good old times—as times always get worse, what a pretty state the world will be in a thousand years hence!—when there were dead men’s heads on the top of Temple Bar, grinning down, what people call an example, on the folks below, that there used to be fellows with spyglasses; and, at a penny a peep, they showed to the curious all the horror of the aforesaid heads, not to be discovered by the naked eye. Well, the heads are gone, and the spyglass traders too; but for all that, there’s the same sort of show going on, and a good scramble to turn the penny by it, only after a different fashion. Murderers are now shown in newspapers. They are no longer gibbeted in irons; no, that was found to be shocking, and of no use: they are now nicely cut in wood, and so insinuated into the bosoms of families. The more dreadful the murder, the greater value the portrait; which, for a time, is made a sort of personal acquaintance to thousands of respectable folks who pay the newspaper owner—the spyglass-man of our time—so much to stare at it as long as they like. I am certain that the shortest cut to popularity of some sort is to cut somebody’s throat. A dull, stupid fellow, that pays his way and does harm to nobody, why, he may die off like a fly in November and be no more thought of. But only let him do some devil’s deed—do a bit of murder as coolly as he’d pare a turnip—and what he says, whether he takes coffee, or brandy-and-water “cold without;” when he sleeps, and when he wakes; and when he smiles, and when he grinds his teeth,—all of this is put down as if all the world went upon his movements, and couldn’t go on without knowing ’em. To a man who wants to make a noise, he doesn’t care how, all this is very tempting. I hope I mayn’t come to be cut in wood, but still one would like to make a rumpus some way before one died.

There’s commonly an Old Bailey fashion, the same as a St James’s fashion. Just now—as you want to know all the domestic news—poison’s carrying everything before it. ’Twould seem as if people suddenly thought their relations rats, and treated ’em accordingly. I never yet tried my hand upon a book, but I do think that I could throw off a nice little story with lots of arsenic in it—a sort of genteel guide to Newgate. I’ve been reading about a lady, one Tofana, who made a great stir some years ago. She could give arsenic in such a manner that she set people for death as you’d set an alarum. She got a good many pupils, young married ladies, about her, who all of ’em put their husbands aside like an old-fashioned gown. Now, I do think that a novel called “The Ladies’ Poisoning Club,” or “Widowhood at Will,” would just now make a bit of a stir. I don’t mean to say that I could write a book, that is, what folks call write; but I’ve a knack: I know I could imitate writing, just as an ape imitates a man. The subject grows upon me. I certainly think I shall make a beginning. However, of this you shall hear more by the next packet. I do think I could make a hit in what I call arsenicated literature. There’s arsenicated candles, why shouldn’t there be arsenicated books?—In haste, your affectionate brother,

Juniper Hedgehog.

P.S.—If I do the book, I shall follow it up with a sort of moral continuation, to be called “The Stomach-Pump.”

Letter VI.—To Mr Jonas Wilcox, Philadelphia.

Dear Brother-in-law,—As my last letter was to sister, it is but fair that you should have the next dose of ink. Well, Parliament’s opened; and Sir Robert’s made a clean breast of it—that is, if a Prime Minister can do such a thing. There never was such harmony in the House of Commons! After Sir Robert had spoken out, you might have thought all the House was holding nothing but a love-feast. I was in the gallery—I won’t tell you how I got in—and never saw such a sight in all my life. All the papers, I can’t tell why, have oddly suppressed an account of the matter; therefore, what you get from me will be exclusive—from your “own” correspondent. Treasure it accordingly.

When Sir Robert said he should keep on the income-tax for three years longer, almost the whole House fell into fits of delight at his goodness. You might have seen Whig embracing Tory, Radical throwing his arms about the neck of Conservative, and Young England with tears of gratitude rolling like butter-milk down upon his white waistcoat. When Sir Robert had quite finished his speech, there was a shower of nosegays flung upon him from the Treasury benches, just in the same way as now and then you pelt the actors at the playhouses! Sir Robert picked ’em all up, and pressed ’em to his heart, and from the corners of his mouth smiled the thousand thanks. Then sitting down, he very handsomely gave a flower apiece to what he calls his colleagues. He insisted—amidst the cheers of the House—on putting a forget-me-not in the button-hole of Mr Gladstone (who sobbed audibly at the touch of friendship); and then he handed a lily—as an emblem of the Home Secretary’s reputation—to Sir James Graham. At this, I needn’t tell you, there were “roars of laughter.” To be sure, at this season of the year these flowers were artificial; but for which reason, it was said by somebody, they were more in keeping with Sir Robert’s measures. Two or three members—for form’s sake—abused the income-tax, but nevertheless said they would vote for it. Lord John Russell called it a shameful, infamous, ignominious, tyrannical, prying impost: he would, however, support it. This is as if a man should denounce another as a coward, a ruffian, and a thief, and then—fold him to his bosom! But they do odd things in Parliament. Sir Robert says we are to have the income-tax for only three years longer. Nonsense! He intends that we should grow with it upon us. He’ll no more take it off than a Chinese mother will take off the little shoe that, for the beauty of the full-grown woman, she puts upon the foot of her baby girl. The child may twist, and wriggle, and squall; and the mother may now and then say pretty things—make pretty promises to it to keep it quiet—but the shoe’s there for the sufferer’s life. Now John Bull—thinks Sir Robert Peel—will move all the better with his foot in the income-tax: all the better too, because it most galls and crushes a lower member. However, we are to have the duty off glass; which, says Sir Robert, is much better than if the duty were taken off light. It is not for such as me to dispute with a minister, but I can’t see how, if I’m to get my house glazed duty free, it’s quite as good as if there was no window-tax. To be sure, if a man, as a householder, were to new glaze himself from top to bottom once a quarter, it might be another thing; he might save upon the glass what he now pays for the sun that, in London, tries to come through it. He may certainly afford to have more windows, but will, I say, the saving on the glass pay for the light? Besides, not light alone, but air is paid for. There is at the present time a secret agitation going on among the cats of England. The grievance is this: A man can’t make a hole in his house for the cat to pass in and out to mouse or visit, without the said hole being surcharged as a window. This is a wrong done upon the cats of the country; but whether done out of sympathy with the rats or not, let Sir James Graham answer. However, one comfort will come of cheap glass: folks who choose to visit museums and such public places, may break what they like of the material at a decreased cost, for the pleasure. Before it was bad enough, nothing, according to the law, being worth more than five pounds; so any malicious or morbid scoundrel (or both) might smash any rare piece of antiquity, and handing to the magistrate any sum over five pounds, bid him take the change out of that. I think a club might be formed for certain young chaps about town, to be called “The Independent Smashers.” They might subscribe to a common fund to pay fines; and each in turn draw for the pleasure of a bit of destruction. With the duty taken off the article, it would be remarkably cheap sport. However, there is no doubt of it, that Peel has got great glory by taking off this tax. A good deal of his reputation as a minister will be looked upon as glass; such side of his reputation in the eyes of an admiring country to be always “kept upwards.”

We are to have sugar, too, at about three-halfpence a pound cheaper; which Mrs Hedgehog tells me will allow us to save at least sixpence a week: however, what we shall have to pay to protect the West Indians, she, poor soul, never dreams of, and I should be a brute to tell her. Therefore—poor thing!—she may now and then toast Sir Robert in her Twankay, without thinking of the £140,000 we lose in the other way. Then again, what we shall save in cotton is wonderful!

The auctioneers, too, are all right. They are to knock down at so much for life, instead of taking out a yearly licence. It is thought that this enlarged piece of statesmanship came about out of compliment to George Robins, who, in one of his familiar letters to the Premier, said he’d rather have it so.

However, everybody says Sir Robert Peel’s in for life. He’s married Downing Street, and nothing but death can them part. One thing’s certain, he’s got a thumping surplus. And when any man in England gets that, folks are not very particular how he’s come by it.

So no more at present from your affectionate brother-in-law,

Juniper Hedgehog.

Letter VII.—To John Squalid, Weaver, Stockton.

Dear John,—I’m afraid you don’t go the right way to make both ends meet. Your letter is full of complaints of poverty, and all that sort of disagreeable thing. I very much fear that you’ve got into expensive habits, or your sixteen shillings a week would be sure to go further. Why don’t you be economical? why don’t you copy the prudence shown you by high people? Look here, now. Just read this from Sir Robert Peel’s speech. He is speaking of the marriage (and economy) of Queen Victoria:—

“It has pleased God to bless that union with the birth of four children, and this, of course, caused a considerable additional demand upon the civil list. In the course of the last year three sovereigns have visited this country; amongst them were the sovereigns of two of the most powerful countries in the habitable globe—the Emperor of Russia and the King of the French.”

I hope you blush now. Four children: and when—if you will only consider upon it—you come to think how much it costs for babies—how much in tops-and-bottoms alone—how much in short coating, worsted shoes, and all that,—can you, as a loyal subject, forbear to cast up your eyes and close your hands in wonderment at Sir Robert’s picture of royal economy? There have been four children and three kings come to Windsor Castle, and yet John Bull has never been asked for an extra shilling. If you owe anything anywhere, you are, after this, lost to all sense of self-respect. I give you up. Consider the expense borne by royalty for royal visitors! The extra night-candles—the extra clean sheets and pillow-cases,—and yet not a farthing more, as yet, demanded! To be sure, it wouldn’t have been very gracious towards the three sovereigns, if the bill for their entertainment had been immediately sent down to Parliament: they might, as gentlemen, have felt inclined to send over their cheques for the amount: but—no matter for that.

I clearly see what lies before you—it’s the union, and nothing less. And you don’t know what that—under the benevolence of Sir James Graham—is to be yet. He has just brought in a bill for another experiment upon the poor. Indeed Graham, in his bills for the treatment of the poor, may be likened to one Dr Majendie, a French surgeon, in his treatment of rabbits. He would take a live rabbit and cut its nerves here and there to make some great discovery—to learn what point of agony the rabbit could bear—and still keep a sort of life within it, eat and drink. Graham is the Poor-Law Majendie! He’s brought in something like a Settlement Bill; a bill which is to take the poor—to cut their nerves and heart-strings from their parishes—and settle them, when they need, what he in his droll manner calls relief, into unions, melting three-and-twenty parishes into one union! Old feelings—old affections for old places are to be nothing—ties of kindred nothing, nothing. Sir James will sever all these, and will then triumphantly show the world how well the human rabbit can exist with them cut through and through.

When in the fulness of years and reputation it may please Providence to remove Sir James from this vale of tears—and certainly it’s no fault of his measures if the vale is very dry—there ought to be a monument raised to his memory, made of paupers’ bones.

However, history will be sure to do this for him. As the poor are to cease to have what is called any associations of place—why should they have any associations of particular names? Why should they not be lettered and numbered like the police? Such a plan would go far to take the conceit out of them, by reminding them most forcibly of the difference between themselves and the luckier people who bear Christian and surnames. More, that there should be no mistake, no shuffling in the matter, the pauper babe, instead of being christened, might be indelibly tattooed both with letter and number. If at any time of its future life it should by some strange accident realise sufficient money to make it respectable, it might then be allowed to be baptized; in the same way that now a man, on coming to immense wealth, is allowed by the Gazette to slough the vulgarity of Wiggins into the aristocracy of Mosmancourt of Godolphin. I hope Sir James will think of this.

But the poor man was always a culprit. You heard I was once a lawyer’s clerk, and so, John, respect my Latin. The poor were adscripti glebæ—that is, bound to the soil, a bit of the earth, a lump of the clay, with no more power to remove themselves than a bramble-bush; if they did, see what came to ’em. I’ve only just picked up the matter, but here it is—let it be a warning to you. In the time of Richard the Second—what a very pauper he’d been if born one!—if any poor man left his home without a justice’s leave, and was taken in the crime, why, he was put in the stocks for his rascality. Henry the Eighth—a real tiger of the royal menagerie—made a law that whipped any beggar begging from his native place. Another of his laws—some of ’em were written in the best blood of the country—only whipped the beggar for his first offence, but cut off his right ear for the second, and blackened him from head to heel a felon for the third. Well, Edward the Sixth, or his ministers, branded the vagabond on the shoulder, and gave him as a slave to anybody who’d be troubled with him, to be beaten, chained, and otherwise remonstrated with for being poor. He might also, for further ill-manners of running away, be branded in the cheek, and made a slave for life. Another running away, and—here really came a bit of summary humanity—he might be hanged! Queen Elizabeth punished the beggar by ordering his ear to be “burned through the gristle with a hot iron, of a compass of an inch about”—that is, not much thicker.

Now, John, I hope you lay these things to your heart: I hope you will at once acknowledge the wickedness that has very properly been put upon poverty for hundreds of years, and don’t disgrace yourself and your relations by becoming a pauper. I have a great regard for you—a very great regard; nevertheless, if you come to want, I give you up for ever, and renounce you. I hope, therefore, you will take this warning in good part, and believe me, your affectionate cousin,

Juniper Hedgehog.

Letter VIII.—To —— ——, Naples.

Thank heaven and the printer that there are such things as —— ——! You, my dear friend, will know to whom they apply, and may therefore receive this letter without its bringing down upon you the Government of Naples. However, don’t venture to write me any answer, for I’m in Sir James Graham’s books; I’m down—a marked man. Unhappily for me, a Polish refugee lives in our garret, and the eye of Russia is upon me. Nevertheless, there has been, I find, some good-luck in this. I’ve now discovered that the two gentlemen with beards, who used to hire me when the Emperor Nicholas was here, to drive them from one end of the town to the other, did so to come at the plot which was hatching in our attic. However, they got nothing out of me but, as old Lumpy says, wicey-warsy. Still I’m not comfortable. As a cabman, I’ve been boxed up with Spaniards, Italians, Sardinians, Austrians—men of all countries and colours. Well, I don’t know at this moment that every letter to Juniper Hedgehog—that is, every copy—isn’t in the office of Sir James Graham. A nice thing this to go to bed and sleep upon! When I think of the sort of letters—full of delicate and tender matters—that has come to me, I own it does make me burn and fluster to think that I may not have a single secret to myself: no, Sir James—the Post-Office burglar—has broken into my affairs, and at this moment he knows all my poverty, all my little strugglings with little debts—in fact, all my inner man. I seem to myself to walk about the world turned inside out! And this evil, be it remembered, may be the fate of thousands, although, poor wretches, they may not know it. Who shall tell how many men’s souls are at the Home Office, under the Graham lock and key? Still, says Sir James, the whole security, not only of this country, but, in truth, of the whole world, depends upon wax and wafers.

There is no doubt that last summer a few Italians were denounced to the Government of Naples, and duly shot, in consequence of seals broken at Downing Street. This is comfortable to reflect upon. Though if Sir James was a squeamish man—which he is not, for no man ever braved the pillory with all its unsavoury accidents with a stronger stomach—then would he never again behold the Queen’s head upon the red post-stamp without thinking of human blood!

Sir James, however, has two natures, or rather two parts. Like the picture of Death and the Lady, Sir James is only corrupt on one side. Thus spoke Tom Duncombe to the foolscap burglar—the sealing-wax Jack Sheppard: “He has had the meanness, ay, and the baseness, to conceal his act and has not had the courage to avow it.”

Upon this, the Speaker, in one of his conciliatory moods, observed that “such observations were very personal. Would the honourable gentleman withdraw them?” Whereupon Mr Duncombe answered: “Sir, I applied those observations to the right honourable gentleman in his ministerial capacity: to those observations and to those topics I adhere; so they must and shall remain.”

And they do remain. And Sir James remains “as a minister,” a “mean,” “base,” cowardly agent! How strange is the distinction between the minister and the man!—they’re quite two different things, like the calipee and calipash of a turtle.

Sir James Graham rose to answer, with a confidence that would have honoured the Old Bailey. He said, “Mr Duncombe was a person quite indifferent to him.” This reminds me of the chap who, after he’d been flogged half a mile and more at the cart’s tail, with all the world looking on, said to the man that had flayed him, “Sir, you’re beneath my notice.” I could write more, but Lumpy’s called me for a fare. The fun, however, is not yet over; and you may hear more of Sir James in my next. Meantime, if you write, don’t either use wax or wafers; it’s only wasting property. Send your letters open, and believe me, your faithful friend,

Juniper Hedgehog.

Letter IX.—To Mrs Hedgehog of New York.

Dear Grandmother,—It was very kind of you, though away from Old England, to have prayers put up for the Bishops of Exeter and London, and Mr Courtenay and Mr Ward, with all the unfortunate young clergymen who’ve been frightening their good Mother Church, for all the world like young ducklings that, hatched by a hen, would take water. The bishops, you will be glad to learn, are much better; and now, Sunday after Sunday, the young parsons are taking off their white surplices and putting on their old gowns, just like idle, flashy, young dogs, who’ve been making a noise at a masquerade, but are once more prepared to go back to their serious counters. Mr Courtenay and two or three of his kidney did think of putting on chain-armour under their surplices, like the Templars that you once saw in the play of Ivanhoe; but whether the Bishop of Exeter has interfered or not, I can’t say: the thing’s given up.

Mr Ward, who has been turned out of Oxford for his ideal of a Christian Church—which means a Church with censers and candlesticks, and pictures of the Virgin, and martyrs’ bones, and other properties—is going to be married, if the business isn’t done already. I shouldn’t have written upon the matter, only Mr W. has printed a letter in all the papers, giving his notions of the holy state. They certainly are very sweet and complimentary to the lady chosen by Mr Ward, for he says—

“First, I hold it most firmly as a truth even of natural religion that celibacy is a higher condition of life than marriage.”

Now, if celibacy is the highest condition of life, how is it that Adam and Eve came together while they were yet in Paradise? Their union, according to Mr Ward, ought to have taken place after they both fell. Matrimony should have followed as a punishment for the apple. And then, when it was commanded, “Increase and multiply,” was it supposed that those who obeyed the command would not be in so “high a condition” as those who neglected it? But men read their Bibles through strange spectacles!

However, grandmother, as you like to hear all the chat about the Church, you must know that last week I took up a fare near the oyster-shop in Covent Garden—a very respectable sort of person—in fact, I’m sure one of the Established Church. When he had left the cab, I found that the Ecclesiastical Gazette (No. 18) had dropt from his pocket. I’ve gone through it, and found parts of it—I mean the Church advertisements—very odd indeed. You can’t think how strange they read after the New Testament. If you wouldn’t think the pulpit-cushion was a counter, after reading ’em. Look here, now:—

“A curate wanted in a large market-town forty miles from London, near a railroad, population five thousand, where the incumbent resides and takes his full share of the duty. He must be in Priest’s Orders, have a voice sufficiently loud for a very large church, and whilst holding moderately High Church views, be chiefly anxious to seek and save the lost by preaching Christ and Him crucified. Stipend one hundred pounds a year. The advertiser does not pledge himself to answer every letter.”

All of ’em bargain for a loud “voice:” you’d think, grandmother, the advertisements were for chorus-singers and not clergymen. And, grandmother, can you tell me what “a moderate High Church view” is? Is it moderate virtue—moderate honesty—moderate truth? Pray, tell me. Another advertiser wants “a pious and active curate,” who will double his duty with “the tuition of the incumbent’s sons.” That incumbent has a good eye for a good pennyworth, depend upon it. At Bishops Lydeard a curate is tempted with “a neat little cottage,” and “almost certainly the chaplaincy of an adjoining union,” with “other considerations” (what can they be, grandmother?) which will make the salary “equivalent to £100 per annum.” And for this he must be orthodox and married. Another curate is wanted in a “small parish in Berks,” where “the duty is very light.” What would the apostles have said to such an offer? A beneficed clergyman advertising from Camberwell, wishes for duty “in some agricultural and picturesque part of the north of England.” A picturesque part! You see, it isn’t every one who would like to preach in the wilderness. Another curate required in Nottinghamshire: salary, £100 per annum. He must have the highest references for “gentlemanly manners,” as “the vicar is resident.” I suppose if the vicar was away, a second or third rate style would do well enough for the parishioners.

However, you’ll be glad to learn that several of the advertisers profess to be “void of Tractarianism and other novelties.” Just in the same way as they write up somewhere in Piccadilly, “The original brown bear.”

Another clergyman “is desirous of meeting with an early appointment in town;” and, grandmother, you may judge of the lengths this gentleman will go to preach Christianity and save human souls, when he adds, “No objection to the Surrey side.” Isn’t this good of him? Because, you know, grandmother, the opera, and the clubhouses, and the divans, and so forth, are none of ’em on the Surrey side. To be sure, there’s the Victoria and Astley’s—but they’re low.

Now, grandmother, don’t all these advertisements smell a little too much of trade—don’t they, for your notions of the right thing, jingle a little too much with gold and silver? As I’m an honest cabman, though I knew I was reading all about the Church and her pious sons, yet somehow the advertisements did put me in mind of “Rowland’s Macassar,” “Mechi’s Magic Strops,” and “Good stout Cobs to be disposed of.”

I am, dear grandmother, your affectionate grandson,

Juniper Hedgehog.

P.S.—I open my letter to tell you that the Bishop of Exeter has broken out again. A Mr Blunt of Helston will wear the surplice; and the Bishop, like a bottle-holder at a fight, backs him in his doings. Do have more prayers put up for the Bishop.

Letter X.—To Samuel Hedgehog, Galantee Showman, Ratcliffe Highway.

Dear Sam,—I’m just come home from Hampstead, and so, while the matter’s fresh in my mind, I sit down to write you a few lines. You have heard of the awful murder, of course. Well, I don’t know: murder’s a shocking thing, to be sure; nobody can say it isn’t; and yet, after what I’ve seen to-day—Sunday, mind—it does almost seem to me as if people took a sort of pleasure in it. Bless you! if you’d only seen the hundreds and hundreds of folks figged out in their very best to enjoy a sight of the place where a man had been butchered, you’d have thought Haverstock Field—stained and cursed as it is with blood—a second Vauxhall at the least. I’m sure I’ve seen people going to Greenwich Fair with not half the pleasure in their faces. However, I’ll tell you all about it.

I was called off the stand about eight this morning by a gentleman and lady, dressed, as I thought, for church. They’re a little early, thought I, but that’s their business. “Take us to Hampstead,” said the gentleman; “and mind, as near to the murder as possible.” “Do, my good man,” said the lady. Bless you! to have looked at her you’d have thought she’d have fainted at the sound of murder. “Do, my good man,” said she; “and make haste, for I wouldn’t be too late for anything. Take care of these,” said she to the gentleman, giving him a basket, “and mind you don’t break it.” Well, it’s my business to drive a cab; so I said nothing, but started for Hampstead. Bless you! before I’d got half up Tottenham Court Road, it was no easy driving, I can tell you. The road swarmed! Up and down the New Road, through Camden Town, and right to Haverstock Hill—I never saw anything like it, except perhaps on the day they run for the Derby. Everybody seemed turned out to enjoy themselves—determined to have a holiday and no mistake.

Well, I drove as near as I could to the place, and then I got a boy to hold the horse, and got down and went along with my fare. If it didn’t make me quite savage and sick, Sam, to see hundreds of fellows—well-dressed gentry, mind you—gaping and lounging about, and now poking the grass with their sticks, as if it was something precious because blood had been shed upon it, and now breaking bits of the trees about the place, I suppose to make toothpicks and cribbage-pegs of. And then there were fathers—precious fools!—bringing their children with them, boys and girls, as though they’d brought ’em to a stall of gingerbread nuts, where they might fill their bellies and be happy! But the worst of all, Sam, was to see the women. Lots of ’em nice, young, fair creatures, tender as if they were made of best wax—there they were running along and looking at the bushes and the grass, and talking of the blood and the death-struggle, just as if they were looking at and talking of the monkeys at the ’Logical Gardens. Well, the handsomest of ’em after a time looked to me no better than young witches—and that’s the truth. Every minute I expected some of ’em to do a polka, they did after a time seem to enjoy themselves.

Well, all of a sudden I missed my fare. Looking about, I saw my gentleman go up to the brick wall. Then he took a heavy hammer out of his pocket, and knocking away, split a brick, and then knocked it out of the wall. “This is something like,” said he to me, twinkling his eye; “something to remember the murder by.” And then he carefully wrapt the pieces of brick in a silk handkerchief, and put ’em in his breast-pocket, as if they’d been lumps of diamonds. I said nothing—but I could have kicked him. However, he hadn’t done yet, for going to a part of the field, he said to his wife—for so she proved to be—“This is the place, Arabella; the very place: where’s the pots?” Then the lady took three garden-pots from a basket, and then her husband, dropping upon his knees, turned up the earth with a large clasp-knife, and when he’d filled the pots, he dug up two or three daisy roots, and set ’em; his wife smiling and looking as happy all the while as if she’d got a new gown, or a new bonnet, or both. “Come,” said the gentleman, squinting at the daisy roots, and twisting one of the pots in his hand, “this is what I call worth coming for. As I say, this is something to recollect a murder by. Humph!” and then he paused a bit, and looked very wishfully at the stile—“Humph! I should like a walking-stick out of that; but the police are so particular, I suppose they wouldn’t suffer it. Come along, Arabella;” and securing the broken brick and the daisy roots in the pots, my gentleman went back to the cab. “Now drive as fast as you can to the church,” he said; “I wouldn’t but be there for any money.” Well, I never did drive through such a crowd, but at last I managed it; and at last—but no; I haven’t patience enough to write any more upon this part of it. There was nothing wanted in and about the churchyard to make it a fair, except a few stalls and suchlike. It made me sick, Sam, to look upon this murder’s holiday. I wish you’d have seen the Yorkshire Grey public-house! No sooner did they open the doors than there was as much scrambling as at any playhouse on boxing-night. Well, the landlord didn’t make a little by his gin that day! Murder proved a good customer to him! And then to see the hundreds and hundreds struggling and pushing to get to the bar—to hear ’em laughing and shouting—and seeing ’em tossing off their liquor,—upon my life, Sam, there was a mob of well-dressed, well-to-do Englishmen, that, considering what had brought them there, wasn’t half so decent as a crowd of Zealand savages.

Cricketing’s an English sport—so is single-stick—so are bowls—and so are nine-pins—and after what I’ve seen to-day, so, I’m sure of it, is murder. For my part, it does seem a little hard to hang the murderer himself, when it appears that he gives by his wickedness so much enjoyment to his fellow-subjects.

Well, Sam, I’m now come to the marrow of my letter, and it’s this. I do think, if you will only take pains, and have all the murders of the year nicely got up, you may make a capital penn’orth of the lot with your show at Christmas. Well, lords and ladies make a scrimmage for it at police-courts; and respectable, pious people take in newspapers for the very best likenesses of prisoners and cut-throats. I’m sure you’d get custom—if the thing was well done—ay, “of the nobility, gentry, and public in general.”

Now do, Sam, take my advice. Depend upon it, the pop’lar taste sets in for blood; and so, instead on winter’s nights a-going about with your old-fashioned cry of “Gallantee Show!” sing out “Mur-der!” and your fortune’s made. And so no more from your cousin and wellwisher,

Juniper Hedgehog.

Letter XI.—To Chickweed, Widow, Penzance.

Dear Mrs Chickweed,—It has given me a vast deal of concern that you should have been frightened by the ignorant reports in the newspapers. Don’t believe a word they say on the matter. It isn’t true that the churchyard where you laid Solomon Chickweed before you went back to your native place, is to be shut up—the tombstone to be taken down—and all future burials forbidden. It’s very true that St Clement’s Churchyard is in the middle of the Strand; but that’s no reason why folks shouldn’t be buried there, twenty deep, if the sexton can only as much as sprinkle ’em with a little grave-dust. Parliament knows better than to interfere in the matter. To be sure, there’s a great hubbub about public health; but what’s public health in comparison with church fees? Some meddlesome people have been writing a report about the burying at St Clement’s, and the report says, “Thus a diluted poison is given in exchange from the dead to the living in one of the most frequented thoroughfares in the metropolis.” So, you see, your late husband—poor fellow! he’d have been sorry to think it—may at this moment be helping to kill some of his oldest and best neighbours.

But what of that? Look at what is called the moral good these churchyards do in the middle of London. What wicked people we cockneys should be without ’em! Isn’t it plain that they keep a check upon us? that they make us think of life and death? that they often give us, so to speak, a pull up when we are about to stumble? Look at the state of all the tradespeople in the neighbourhood of such churchyards as St Giles’ and St Clement’s and St Bride’s, and a hundred others, within a few yards of shop counters. Why, they’re all pattern folks. They have all so constantly death in their eyes, that it makes ’em honest to their own disadvantage. Think, too, what it is for folks from the tops of omnibuses now and then to see funerals going on in the highways of London. Do you suppose that it doesn’t do them a world of good? To be sure; and that’s the reason the rectors and so forth of the churches in London have set their faces against the new-fangled cemeteries, where people are buried in quiet, with nobody but the mourners to see the ceremony. Don’t, Mrs Chickweed, think it’s for the fees: certainly not; it’s all for the sake of the souls of the giddy, sinful people of London. It’s true enough that what is called the “effluvia” from these churchyards may poison the bodies of the living, but what of that when it helps to keep the soul so sweet? I’m called away, and so for the present can add no more. If, however, at any time they think of disturbing Solomon, depend upon it, for old acquaintance’ sake, you will hear from me. Till then, I am your wellwisher,

Juniper Hedgehog.

Letter XII.—To Isaac Moss, Slop-seller, Portsmouth.

Dear Isaac,—I don’t know whether Portsmouth has any aldermen, but if it has, I hope you’ll get into a gown outright. The thing’s as good as done. What poor George the Third, Lord Eldon, and such folk think of it, there’s no saying, but in a twinkling a Jew may be an alderman! Even the Bishop of London swallows the measure, although shuddering at it, as if it was a black draught. However, Isaac, what I write to you about is this. Mr Ashurst, in the common council of London, spoke about the Jews; and after him the Duke of Cambridge in the House of Lords. Both of ’em gave their reasons for what is called Hebrew emancipation; and droll it is to consider ’em one with the other. Here they are:—

Mr Ashurst.

Duke of Cambridge.

“No man was consulted as to who should be his parents; what constitution, organisation, or temperament he should receive; what should be his climate, his colour, or country; what should be his language; what literature should influence him; what education he should receive; nor as to what general external circumstances should surround him. They saw and knew as a fact that religion was geographical. If a man was born in Turkey, he was a Mahometan; in Africa, a pagan; in India, he was one of the multitudinous castes of sects which prevailed there; and in a Christian country a Christian. Why, then, for a matter which was independent to himself, should man lose in civil rights? That religion which was true would ultimately prevail, but not by persecution.”

“I have had occasion for some time to know the good which persons professing the Jewish religion have done; and particularly with reference to the different charities to which I belong; and I can certainly say that it is to them that we owe a great deal, and that they contribute a very large portion to the funds of the charities over which I have the honour of presiding. Two of the individuals whose names were mentioned in the speech of my noble and learned friend, on a former occasion, are personally known to myself. One was formerly the High Sheriff of the county of Kent—Mr Solomons; and I can bear witness to the good he has done. Also there Sir Moses Montefiore, ... learning what was the object of the meeting I was about to attend, he gave me a very handsome sum, which he desired me to present. I will not mention what the sum was, for it would be a violation of good taste to do so.”

Observe this, Isaac: Mr Ashurst argues upon what are called broad, wide, and benevolent principles. He would give liberty to the Jew because the man was born a Jew; because he couldn’t choose his father and mother, his creed or colour. It is his fortune to be a Jew, as it may be the fortune of the Bishop of London to be a Christian. Therefore the common councilman would give him equal freedom with the rest. Now, the royal Duke would emancipate the Jew because “he contributes a large portion” to the funds of Christian charities. With the Duke, the Jew buys the favour with hard cash! Sir Moses ought to be an alderman, because he gave the Duke “a very handsome sum” for a charitable meeting!

The Jew touches the common councilman through his reason, his sense of justice; but the Hebrew moves the royal Duke purely through his breeches-pocket. “We owe a great deal to the Jews,” says Cambridge; “and therefore they ought to be freed.” Now suppose, Isaac, that the Jews had been poor; that they had never subscribed handsome sums; could the Duke, according to his own logic, have lifted up his voice in their behalf? I fear not.

Thus, then, it is, Isaac, Mr Ashurst and men of his school give liberty as a right—the Duke of Cambridge and such reasoners sell it.

There’s a good deal, Isaac, to think of in what Mr Ashurst says; that no man chose his colour or his country. Only suppose now, if Sir Robert Peel had been born one of the—what d’ye call ’em?—the spinning dervishes, whose whole religion is said to be in doing nothing but going round, and round, and round! Why, one can’t help thinking that Sir Robert would have gone round with any of ’em.

Just suppose, too, Sir James Graham born a Chinaman. Instead of dining off Christian beef and mutton, don’t you think he’d have eaten rats glazed with rice? and now, all the world knows, a rat’s a thing he can’t abide to think of. Only think, Isaac, how many white-skinned public folks, if they’d been only born in Africa, would have been born as black—yes, quite as black—as if they could now be turned inside out. Is it any merit of Lord Brougham’s that he wasn’t born to play with knives and balls like Ramo Samee? On the other hand, is poor Ramo to be despised because he hasn’t the salary of a shelved chancellor? I should think not.

There’s capital wisdom in what Mr Ashurst says—the best of wisdom. And let us hope that even lords and bishops will by-and-by come to understand it.

And so no more from your old friend,

Juniper Hedgehog.

Letter XIII.—To Mrs Hedgehog of New York.

Dear Grandmother,—You ought to be in England just now, we’re in such a pleasant pucker. The Church is in danger again! I have myself known her twenty times in peril, but now she really is at the very edge of destruction.

You know there’s a place called Maynooth College, where they bring up Roman Catholic priests for the use of Ireland. Well, there’s a lot of folks who will have it that this college is not a bit better than certain tanks I’ve read of in India, where they breed young crocodiles to be worshipped by people who know no better. Sir Robert Peel intends to give £26,000 a year to this place—it used to have an annual grant of £9000—that the scholars may be increased in number, and that they may be better taught and more comfortably boarded and lodged. Well, the members of the Church of England—although here and there they have grumbled at the matter, and have called the Pope names that pass in small-change at Billingsgate—have been mute as fish compared to the Dissenters. It is they who have fought the fight; it is they who have raised the price of parchment by darkening the House of Commons with clouds of petitions. It is they who have risen to a man, and have patted the British Lion, and twisted his tail, and goaded him—as you’d set a bulldog on a cat—to tear Popery to pieces.

But, dear grandmother, don’t be afraid. Before you get my next letter, with all this noise and bouncing, we shall have settled down as quiet as stale sodawater. And then for the Church being in danger—bless you! the very folks who are now holding up their hands, thinking it will drop to pieces (from its very richness, I suppose, like some of your plum-puddings)—why, they’ll sleep quietly in their beds, and take their glass of wine and chicken with their usual appetite, until the Church shall be once more in trouble, once more to give ’em a pleasant, healthful shaking,—and then once more to let ’em easily down again. I’ve known some girls who’ve thought they best showed how tender they were by always going into fits: well, I do think that, just like ’em, some people believe they best show their religion when they scream and foam at the mouth about it.

It’s a settled belief with a good many pious people, who are as careful of their religion as of their best service of china—only using it on holiday occasions, for fear it should be chipped or flawed in working-day wear—it’s a belief with them that a Papist is a sort of human toad, an abomination in the form of man. Dr Croly has surely a notion of this sort. A few days ago he appeared on Covent Garden stage (I think his first appearance there since his comedy of “Pride shall have a Fall”), and called upon the Lord, with thunder and lightning and the sword, to kill His enemies—meaning Roman Catholics! And then the Doctor showed how Providence had punished all naughty kings who had cast an eye of favour on the Pope. Capping this, the Doctor more than hinted that George the Fourth, the first gentleman in Europe—for he had a greater number of coats than all the rest of the kings put together—was somewhat suddenly called from his loving people because he had passed the bill that ’mancipated the Catholics. Well, when we think how many Catholics there are in the world—when we remember the millions of ’em scattered about the earth—it does appear to me a little bold in a worm of a man (whether the said worm wears clergyman’s black or not) praying to the Lord to destroy, crush, burn, whole nations of men and women because he wasn’t born to think as they do. But so it is with some folks very proud indeed of their Christianity. Hear them talk and pray, and you would think that Satan himself, the father of wickedness, had been the creator of ninety-nine men out of a hundred, and it was the pure, elect, and lucky hundredth that religiously begged for the destruction of the ninety-nine. But all the noise is about the largeness of the sum—the £26,000. The £9000 was every year quietly voted—for I call the cackling of two or three Parliament geese as nothing—and still the Church stands unshaken on her foundation. By this it would seem that with some folks it is the money that wrong costs, and not the wrong itself, that is objectionable. Thinking after this fashion, drunkenness is not to be thought a vice if it be drunkenness gratis; it, however, increases in enormity with the increase of its price: thus gin-drunkenness is merely wrong, but burgundy-drunkenness is infamous to the last degree. Haven’t I read somewhere of an old Greek philosopher—if some of these chaps had lived in these times, they’d now and then have found themselves at the police-office—who felt mightily disposed for what was immoral, and only held back at the purchase-money! I think he said he wouldn’t “buy repentance at so dear a price.” Now, if he could have had the sin at a cheap pennyworth, the sin itself had been light, indeed. It’s the weight of money that makes the weight of crime.

But I suppose Dr Croly, Mr M’Neile, and such folks—who seem to read their Bibles by the blue light of brimstone—believe that the extra money given to the Roman Catholic priests of Ireland will only be so much powder and shot with which they may bring down Protestants. Well, if money is to make converts, what has the Irish Protestant Church been about, that has always had a full money-bag at her girdle, and more than that—plenty of leisure to reclaim the fallen? She has always had a golden crook whereby to bring stray lambs into the fold, and yet has added nothing to her flock.

Now, according to my opinion, the folks who abuse Maynooth ought rather to feel glad that money is to be given to her priests, seeing what an abundance of money, and good things purchased by money, have done for the Irish Protestant Church. It has become slow as it has become fat. Stuff even a pulpit-cushion with bank-notes, and it is strange to see how religion will sleep upon it. And therefore people ought to rejoice that the Catholic is to be made a little comfortable in worldly matters! Excellent, worthy Churchmen, who can command the sports of the field and all the pleasures of the table, are not the busy, troublesome folks to go about converting their benighted neighbours! And though the Maynooth pupils may not—like their beneficed rivals—keep fox-hounds, and enjoy the dearest turtle, pineapples, and all that, they will not, I think, be in after-life more dangerous to the Protestant Church, because when at college they slept not more than two in a bed.

But there’s a sort of people in the world that can’t bear making any progress. I wonder they even walk, unless they walk backwards! I wonder they don’t refuse to go out when there’s a full moon, and all out of love and respect for that “ancient institution,” the old one. But there always were such people, grandmother—always will be. When lucifers first came in, how many old women, stanch old souls—many of ’em worthy to be members of Parliament—stood by their matches and tinder-boxes, and cried out “No surrender!” And how many of these old women, disguised in male attire, every day go about at public meetings professing to be ready to die for any tinder-box question that may come up! Yes, ready, quite ready to die for it; all the readier, perhaps, because dying for anything of the sort’s quite gone out of fashion.

Even Sir James Graham says the time is gone by for ill-using Ireland. “The time is gone by!” And yet how many men before Sir James, have stood up and declared their time—the time “gone by”—was the best time possible for Ireland, that what was doing for her could not be improved; and having thundered this, have sat down, secure in a majority that has voted for the evil to continue! What a long time it is before men in power will learn to call things by their proper names! What a time it takes to teach ministers to call evil, evil—and lies, lies!

Sir Robert Peel has behaved in the handsomest manner in the matter. He says it is by no means his wish to rob the Whigs of the gratitude of Ireland for the Maynooth measure. Certainly not: they, no doubt, could have carried it had he joined them; this, however, he would not do: he has, however, no objection that they should join him. And so they may have the gratitude, and he the patronage and power. They have helped him to open the oyster; he swallows the fish, and they are quite welcome to the shells.

It is quite a delight to read Sir Robert’s Parliament speeches. Did you ever talk to a man who seemed never to hear what you said, but only thought what he should say to pass for an answer? who seemed as though none of your words entered his ears, but all slid down his cheeks? I’ve met with such people, and Sir Robert Peel—when I read his Maynooth speeches—does remind me of ’em. What a way he has of talking down the side of a speech, and never answering it direct! I hardly wonder that the playhouses don’t flourish, when there’s such capital actors of all sorts in the Houses of Parliament. I had just been reading an account of two or three more Maynooth meetings, where some of the speakers talked about the true and the false religion, as though themselves had a sole and certain knowledge of what was true—what false: I had just been reading all this, when my eye fell upon a paragraph headed “Lord Rosse’s Telescope.” Lord Rosse, you must know, is one of those noblemen who do not pull off knockers, knock down cabmen, and always take a front seat at the Old Bailey on a trial for murder. No: he has been making an enormous telescope; and the paragraph I write of says: “Marvellous rumours are afloat respecting the astronomical discoveries made by Lord Rosse’s monster telescope. It is said that Regulus, instead of being a sphere, is ascertained to be a disc; and stranger still, that the nebula in the belt of Orion is a universal system—a sun with planets moving round it, as the earth and her fellow-orbs move round our glorious luminary.”

Now, at one time, a man might have been burnt alive for taking it upon himself to say that Regulus was not a sphere but a disc; and that Orion (I know nothing about him, save and except that a marvellously fine poem, price one farthing, was lately published with his name) did not wear in his belt any nebula, but a universal system! La, grandmother! when I read of these things, I feel a mixture of pain and pity for men that, instead of having their hearts and spirits tuned by the harmony that God is always playing to them (and they won’t hear it, the leathern-eared sinners!) think of nothing but swearing that one thing’s a disc, and the other a nebula—when they only look through small glasses, wanting the great telescope to show ’em the real truth!—And so no more from your affectionate grandson,

Juniper Hedgehog.

P.S.—I blush for myself, that I had almost forgotten to tell you that Dr Wolff has come back safe and sound from the innermost part of India, where he went to try to save the lives of two Englishmen, Stoddart and Conolly. It was like going into a tiger’s den to take the flesh from the wild beast. And yet the stout-hearted man went! Such an act makes us forget the meanness and folly of a whole generation! Captain Grover—a heart of gold that—has published a book on the matter called “The Bokhara Victims.” As no doubt the New York publishers—in their anxiety to diffuse knowledge—have already published it for some five cents, do not fail to read it. As for Dr Wolff, I wonder what Englishmen will do for him? If he’d come back from India after cutting twenty thousand throats, why, he might have had a round of dinners, diamond-hilted swords, wine-coolers as big as buckets, and so on; as it is, I fear nothing can be done for him. However, we shall see.

Letter XIV.—To Mrs Hedgehog of New York.

Dear Grandmother,—England’s still above water: the sea doesn’t yet roll over Dover cliffs; nevertheless, the Maynooth Grant that I wrote to you about, is gone through the House of Commons, and in a very few weeks the Papists, as you love to call them, will have the money. Sir Culling Eardley Smith, Mr Plumptre, and others of their kidney, may possibly for a month or two appear in the streets in sackcloth and ashes, and with beards like Jew rabbis—first to show their respect for the departed constitution; but after a decent time of mourning, they will, no doubt, be open to consolation, and take their dinners with their usual appetite. I shouldn’t wonder if in six months the Rev. Mr M’Neile (of sulphurous principles) consents to eat and drink like anybody else; and shall be by no means surprised if Dr Croly is found to have regained, at least, all the flesh that anxiety and grief for the Church in danger have so deplorably deprived him of. It’s wonderful to think how certain saints and patriots get lean and fat as sudden as rabbits! Wonderful to think, when the whole world, according to their declaration, has gone to bits, how well and contentedly they still continue to live upon the pieces! But, dear grandmother, what a blessing is Exeter Hall! What a safety-valve it is for the patriotism, and indignation, and scorn, and hatred—and all other sorts of public virtues—that but for it, or some such place, would fairly burst so many excellent folks, if they couldn’t go and relieve their swelling souls in a bit of talk! As it is, they speechify and are saved! Only suppose there had been no place whereat worthy people could have abused the Maynooth Grant—no place wherein to air their own particular Christianity to the condemnation of the religion of everybody else—what would have been the consequence? Why, they must have exploded—burst like the frog in the fable. Day after day Mr Wakley and his brother coroners would have been sitting on the body of some respectable saint and patriot—day after day we should have read the verdict, “Died by retention of abuse!” Happily, while we have Exeter Hall, we are spared these national calamities.

As I know, grandmother, your natural tenderness for all that concerns the bishops, I must—at the risk of bringing on your cholic—inform you that they are again in danger. Even the Morning Post is beginning to neglect ’em! Some newspaper—I don’t know which—has proposed, as the only true remedy for the distress of the country, that there should be a greater number of bishops. Now this, at the first blush, seems a capital notion. But only mark what follows. The writer would multiply episcopal blessings, by “distributing the revenues of the present sees, as they fall vacant, among a greater number of bishops.” And the Morning Post doesn’t at once put down this infamous proposal. Only imagine the Bishop of London slit into half-a-dozen bishops—one Henry of Exeter made twenty Henrys—just as you make bundles of small wood from one large piece! After giving utterance to this wickedness, the writer goes on to think “it impossible that the spiritual Lords should continue to be members of the Legislature after ceasing to be rich men.” And this the Post calls “no singular opinion. For such is the habitual association of power and station in this country with wealth, that perhaps nine out of every ten persons that one might meet walking along the Strand, would say with this writer that unless a prelate had his thousands a year, and his carriage, and his servants, and his grandeur of accessories, he could not properly take a part in counselling the Government, or assisting to make laws in the Upper House of Parliament!” And if the people think so, I’ve heard it said that the bishops have themselves to thank for such belief, seeing that the world often hears more of their carriages and servants than of the humility and tenderness that were shown by the apostles. The Post, however, to my amazement, is for stripping Lambeth and Fulham of much of their finery. Yes: the Post absolutely says: “We protest against the opinion that, without the wealth, the worth of the bishops in the House of Lords would be nought. Nay, we can conceive the possibility of the influence of learning, and eloquence, and venerable earnestness, being even greater when disassociated from wealth and worldly interests!” Only imagine, grandmother, the Bishop of London walking down to the House of Lords leaning on a horn-tipped staff, and not rolled along in his cushioned carriage, with servant in purple livery to let down the steps for him! Isn’t the picture terrible? Isn’t it what they call revolutionary? And yet the Morning Post—as coldly as this present month of May—can see the possibility of a Bishop of Exeter being cut into ten or twenty bishoplings, and never swoon, or even as much as call out for the hartshorn! Who is the revolutionist now?

The month has been a dull month: politics, and all that, have been as stupid as the weather. The trees and bushes have come out, to be sure; but only, as it would seem, from a matter of habit—because it’s May by the almanac. However, the Duke of Newcastle has very kindly tried to give us a fillip, as I’ve heard somebody say in some play or the other, “Orson is endowed with reason!” We’ve had two letters from Clumber! You must know that in the British Museum there are two or three mummies of Egyptian kings, they say, who lived I don’t know how many thousand years ago. Now just suppose, grandmother, that one of these mummies—with his brains out, be it remembered—should have suddenly got up, and written a letter or two to Mehemet Ali and his Egyptians, thinking ’em the self-same Egyptians that used to worship crocodiles and ibises, and make gods of the leeks and onions that grew in their gardens,—suppose the British Museum mummy had done this—well, the thing would have done no more than the political mummy of Clumber; would have made just the same mistake as his well-meaning Grace the Duke of Newcastle. “Forget all you’ve been learning for the last thirty years, at least; give up the wickedness of steam, forego the iniquity of railroads, be content with sailing-smacks and stagecoaches, repeal the Reform Bill, repeal Catholic Emancipation—in a word, wipe everything from your minds, gathered there since the good old times when George the Third was King!—come out again in the pig-tails and shoe-buckles of that blissful reign—and I, Duke of Newcastle, am ready to march with you! I am prepared, at every risk, to be hero of the back-step!”

As yet, I have heard of nobody who has joined the Duke’s standard; but if recruits should come in, I’ll let you know.

It is not unlikely, grandmother, that you may have a few Highland families sent over to America, as they are now being carefully “weeded out” from their native places by certain landlords, who think it better and more Christian-like to turn their lands into sheep-walks than to suffer them to be tenanted by mere men, women, and children. “Weeding” is a nice word, isn’t it? it so capitally describes the worth of the thing rooted out. The poor man is, of course, the “weed;” the rich is the “lily,” that “neither toils nor spins.” And just now, it seems, certain places in the Highlands are overgrown with this rank, foul weed—this encumbrance to the soil—this one human thing, worse than thistle or nettle. What a beautiful world this would be, wouldn’t it?—if this weed of poverty was cut up, burnt, destroyed, got rid of any way! It’s a dreadful nuisance; and yet it will spring up, like groundsel or any other worthless thing! And strange to say, the sun will shine upon it, and the dews of heaven descend upon it, all the same as if it was one of the aforesaid lilies, full of light and breathing sweetness. Odd, isn’t it, that the sky should shine so impartially on both?—Your affectionate grandson,

Juniper Hedgehog.

Letter XV.—To Miss Kitty Hedgehog, Milliner, Philadelphia.

Dear Kitty,—If I haven’t written before this, it is because I’ve had nothing worth ink and paper to send you. I know that you’ve a mind above politics, and—may you be pardoned for the lightness!—can sleep like a cat in the sun, no matter how much the Church may be in danger. When, however, there’s anything stirring among silks and satins, why, then your woman’s spirit is up, and all the milliner is roused within you. Knowing this, Kitty, I shall treat you with a few lines about a Powdered Ball we’ve lately had at Court; when everybody, out of compliment, I suppose, to what is called the wisdom of their ancestors, went dressed like their great grandfathers and grandmothers. A huge comfort this to great people in the shades! Dear Queen Charlotte was once again at Court, very flatteringly represented by a fine piece of point-lace worn by the blessed Victoria herself. And dukes, and lords, and generals—all of ’em sleeping in family lead—were once more walking minuets and dancing “Sir Roger de Coverly.” Everybody, for a time, lived more than a hundred years ago; and, as I’m told, felt very happy at going backward even for one night. To go back is with many high folks the greatest proof of wisdom; and therefore, among such people, the Powdered Ball was considered a glorious stride in the right direction. Only imagine the rapture of a Duke of Newcastle, living, even in fancy, for a few hours, at any time from 1715 to 1745; a time when there was no Reform Bill, no steam-engines, no railways, no cheap books! Think of the delight of many old gentlemen believing themselves their own grandfathers; quite away from these revolutionary days, and living again in “good old times”! I’ve heard—though I don’t answer for it—that two or three of ’em were so carried away by the thought, that, to keep up the happiness as long as they could, they went to bed in their clothes, high-heeled shoes and all. At this very moment, they do say Lord —— is still in his embroidered coat and smalls, with a wig like a white cloud upon him. He declares 1715 is such a “good old time” that nothing shall make him go on again to 1845. He has ordered flambeaux for his servants, and now and then talks about going to Ranelagh. Moreover, by people quite worthy of belief, it is feared his delusion, as they call it, is spreading, as they call it, amongst certain high folks; many of ’em thinking themselves a hundred years back, and wanting to make Acts of Parliament in the spirit of that good old time. See, Kitty, how a Powdered Ball may turn the highest heads—even the nobs of the country!

The ladies were, of course, all jewelled, and very fine. Oh, what a fortune some of ’em would have been to a poor man—with their stomachers! But, Kitty, there is one odd thing at these masks and balls: how is it that young ladies—with names as white as snow—sometimes take the character, fly-spotted and damaged as they are, of sinful love-birds? You, Kitty, being a woman, can explain this; but to me, one of the ignorant rough sex, it does seem odd that a pure young lady should dress herself as Nelly Gwynne, or any other person of the sort, when the aforesaid pure lady would squeak—and, no doubt, very proper—at the living creature as if it was a toad. Can you explain this, Kitty? Do they take such characters, just as they put black patches on their cheeks, to bring out their own white all the stronger? Or is it that there’s a sort of idle daring in it, just as children play with fire, though they never mean to burn themselves? I can’t make it out; but how should I expect it—I, a poor, weak, ignorant man—how should I unriddle a creature that’s puzzled Solomon? Of course there was an account of the dresses. Well, when I opened the Morning Post, and saw whole columns built o’ nothing but velvets and satins, and all that, if I didn’t grin—like a clown through a collar for a new hat—at the vanity of life.

“Look here,” says I to Bill Fisher, that was sitting in the Spotted Lion—“look at the conceit of these folks,” says I, “who think that all the world’s to stand still a-reading about their ‘gimp Brandenburghs and buttons’—their ‘buttons and frogs’—their ‘blue facings and turnback’—and such mountebankery.” “It is quite beneath us as men,” says Bill; “not at all like lords of the creation. Now, I can forgive the women—poor little souls!—for having all their flounces and puffings put in the paper. It’s nat’ral for them.” “Why nat’ral?” says I. “Why,” says Bill, “because they know it makes one another savage. Bless you, that’s what they do it for—and nothin’ else.” And then you should have heard how he laughed as he spelt out the paper. “Look here, now,” says he, “here was a lady with a dress looped with bouquets of pink roses; skirt of rich green satin, trimmed with flounces of point-lace and bouquets of roses; white satin shoes with high heels, green rosettes, with diamonds in the centre. Hair powdered, and ornamented with roses and diamonds. Now, isn’t it dreadful, Juniper, that people are to be stopped over their honest pint of porter with stuff like this? What’s ‘satin shoes with high heels’ to all the ’versal world? But then, as I say, the women do it to make one another savage. I’ve often thought, since they like so to print in the papers what clothes they wear, that at the same time they might let the world know what books they read, what pictures they look at—in fact, what sort of dresses they put on their minds. But, to be sure, this would make nobody savage.” This is what Bill Fisher says; but mark, Kitty, I’m not quite of his way of thinking; though, after all, it does seem odd that a young lady should think it worth while to put all her clothes in print for the world to spell over.

But the Ball will have done a great deal of good in making us look a hundred years back. How I should like to see the thing tried upon a grand scale! Suppose that everybody in London, just for four-and-twenty hours, out of compliment to the great example set by the Court, should live as if it was 1745. Wouldn’t it be droll? Droll to have the gas out, and set up oil-twinklers! Droll to make the new police put on drab coats, and call the hours like that “venerable institution,” the watch! Droll to have all the rail-trains stopt, and only book passengers for York by the waggon! Droll to stop the steamboats on the river, the omnibuses in the streets; making folks move about in nothing but wherries, hackney-coaches, and sedan-chairs! Droll, too, would it be, to start for Gravesend in the tilt-boat on a two days’ voyage! Well, I hope that all this will be brought about; for if all the folks in London were made to live only four-and-twenty hours of a hundred years ago, I do think that for the rest of their lives they’d shut their mouths about those precious good old times, that some people do now so like to cackle about.

There’s no doubt that the Powdered Ball has been a very fine affair; but the Ball of next season will be the grand thing. A nobleman’s footman, as I last night drove, told me that at the Ball of next year all true folks will wear supposed dresses from the time of 1915 to 1954—that is, about a hundred years ahead. There’s a good many opinions as to what they’d be. Some folks declare they’ll be as plain as drab, and some that we shall have all gone back again to the fashion of the painted Britons, as you see ’em in the “History of England.” By that time, it’s thought, soldiers’ uniforms will have gone quite out—the electric gun and such nick-nacks having killed War, body and bones. Howsomever, ’twill be odd to see how people’s fancy will dress themselves for a hundred years on; there’ll be more cleverness in that, if well done, than in wearing the precise coat and petticoat of your grandfather and grandmother.—Your loving brother,

Juniper Hedgehog.

Letter XVI.—To Mrs Hedgehog, New York.

Dear Grandmother,—The Maynooth Grant is granted, and the British Lion has once more gone to sleep. When either Sir Culling Smith, Mr M’Neile, or Dr Croly shall pinch his tail and make him roar again, you shall have due notice of the danger. I think, however, that the Lion is safe to sleep until next May, when, of course, he’ll again be stirred up for the folks at Exeter Hall. In the meantime he must be tired, very drowsy, after the speeches that have been made at him; so let him sleep on.

Yes, Maynooth College has got the new grant; nevertheless, to the astonishment of the Duke of Newcastle and company, the sun rises every morning as if nothing had happened; and, so hard does the love of shillings make men’s hearts, London tradesmen still smile behind their counters, never thinking that their tills are threatened with an earthquake. Newcastle and other peers—just out of consolation to their shades—have written what’s called a “Protest” against the grant; and a hundred years hence, when England is blown to atoms by the measure, very comfortable it will be to their ghosts, as they walk among the ruins, to see men reading the aforesaid “Protest,” and hear them crying, “A prophet!” “a prophet!”

And now, grandmother, comes the Roman Catholic Bishops. They won’t have Peel’s plan of education unless all the masters are to be of their own faith. For they say “the Roman Catholic pupils could not attend the lectures on history, logic, metaphysics, moral philosophy, geology, or anatomy, without exposing their faith or morals to imminent danger—unless a Roman Catholic professor shall be appointed for each of those chairs.” You see, the lecturer on history, if a Protestant, might be making Queen Mary—Bloody Mary, as I was taught to call her at day-school—a very cruel wretch, indeed; whereas the Queen Mary of the Catholic might be a very nice woman, who never could abide fagots, and never knew where Smithfield was. And then for logic (you must, as I’ve said before, look dictionary for hard words); logic, it seems, is a matter of religion. What’s logic to a Protestant isn’t to a Catholic, or a Mahometan, or a Chinese! In the same way, I suppose, that a straight line in London would be what they call a curve in Dublin, and perhaps a whole circle at Canton. And then for “geology” and “anatomy,” why, we all know that there’s nothing certain in anatomy; that it’s all a matter of faith. Thus, if a Catholic anatomist lectured, we’ll say, upon the body of a Protestant pluralist, he might, out of blindness, declare that the said body never had a single atom of heart; that such pluralists always lived without the article. While on the other side, the real Protestant lecturer, discussing on the self-same corcup, might declare that it was all heart, like a summer cabbage! “Professors’ chairs!” when I read these things, I somehow do think of the baby-chair that I used to be set up in to take my meals, with a stick run through the arms to keep me from tumbling out, the talk is so childish!

You ask me about your pet, the Bishop of Exeter. Well, the clergy of his diocese have just suffered what’s called his “charge;” a charge, grandmother, in which the Bishop generally contrives to put in a lot of small-shot to pepper about him right and left. As usual, he talked a good deal about himself; making Exeter out such a soft gentle person—such a lump of Christian butter—that in this hot weather it’s wonderful he hasn’t melted long ago. Ha, grandmother! what a lawyer was spoiled in that bishop! what a brain he has for cobwebs! How he drags you along through sentence after sentence—every one a dark passage—until your head swims, and you can’t see your finger close to your nose! He talked about this Puseyite stuff—this play-acting of the Church—for I don’t know how long; but whether he very much likes it or very much hates it, it’s more than any cabman’s brains can make out. I never read one of Exeter’s charges, that I don’t think of a sharp lawyer quite spoiled; but this last is a greater tangle than all. He talked a great deal about “the apostolical succession,” the truth of which he would defend. How I should like to hear him trace himself—Henry of Exeter—upwards! He then came to the new Bill that was to take the right of divorce out of the hands of the Church. He said, “Let the Liberalism of the age be content with what it had already achieved. It was enough for one generation that men and women might be coupled together in a Registrar’s Office, with as total an absence of all religious sanction as if one huckster were coupled up in partnership with another.” Here the Bishop’s right enough, no doubt. For if the Bishops’ Court loses cases of divorce, what lots of fees go from them to the mere lawyers! A wedding-ring and a licence are things almost dog-cheap; but, O grandmother! what a lot of money it takes to break that ring!—what a heap of cash to tear up the licence! and that’s the reason that divorce, like green peas at Christmas, can only be afforded by the rich. Next, the Bishop had a fling at what he called “the unhappy beings who went to mechanics’ institutes and lecture-rooms.” He said they wanted “the discipline of the heart, and the chastening influence of true religion.” I’m an ignorant cabman, grandmother; but if so many “millions,” as the Bishop said, want this, I must ask, What do we pay the Church for? If so many of us are no better, as Exeter said, than “any of the wildest savages who devoured one another in New Zealand,” for what, in the name of pounds, shillings, and pence, do we pay church-rates? Why don’t the bishops and the high preachers of the Church come more among us? Why, thinking of “the apostolical succession,” don’t they copy more than they do the fishermen and tentmakers who are their forefathers? I can’t help asking this, though, as I said, I know I’m an ignorant cabman.

The Bishop, however, after scolding a good deal, tried to end mildly and like a Christian. I’ve read at some bookstall of an Indian leaf. One side of it acts as a blister; then take it off, turn it, and the other side serves for the salve. The Bishop of Exeter, to my mind, always tries to make his charge a leaf of this sort; though I must say it, one side is generally stronger than the other—better for blistering than healing.—So no more from your affectionate grandson,

Juniper Hedgehog.

Letter XVII.—To Michael Hedgehog, Hong-Kong.

Dear Brother,—You’ll be glad to hear that at last Ministers have remembered there’s such a man in the world as Sir Henry Pottinger. The Queen has sent her compliments to Parliament, commanding a pension for him. We’ve given him £1500 a year for life; to my mind a shabby sum. La! Michael, only think how those six clerks of Chancery Lane, with their thousands a year—the chaps who had nothing to do but to play tricks with what they call equity—only think of them retired with a pension, every one of ’em living like a pot-bellied mouse in a ripe Stilton! How they must turn up their noses at poor Sir Henry! He has opened, I may say, a new world, for rivers of gold to flow out of it into the banks of Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow—I can’t tell where. And he gets £1500 a year! I think we gave something more than that to Lord Keane for blowing up a pair of gates. But then folks turn a better penny upon war than peace. Blood and fire, and misery of all kinds, are more profitable than treaties of trade, no matter how glorious. The sword—the bloodier the better, too—weighs down the goose-quill; however, Sir Henry has a reward of some sort, and I’m heartily glad of it. May he live a hundred years—and his heart be as green as laurel when his head’s as white as cotton!!

But I’m coming to another part of the business. Sir J. C. Hobhouse, who, after all, has not lost his speech, as was for a long time supposed, lifted up his voice for Sir Henry. What do you think he said? “If he” (Sir Henry, mind) “were refused the reward now asked, the result would be this: he was only a lieutenant-colonel, although he had the brevet of major-general, and he would be obliged to leave England; he could not live here.” At this the House cheered, and I’m afraid, Mike, Hobhouse spoke the truth. As I’m an honest cabman who never takes less than his fare, if I didn’t blush like a poppy when I read this. Why, what a shabby, mean, outside set of folks we must be! Supposing Sir Henry had not got this pension—supposing that, wanting to stay in England, he had lived in a smallish house, had not given grand parties, but, content with the thoughts of the great things he had done, he had jogged on plainly and humbly, would folks have looked down upon him? Would the hicky do-nothings, born to their tens of thousands a year, have forgotten all about the Chinese peace and ransom, and tremendous trade opened by Sir Henry, unless they saw him in a crack carriage, and knew that he lived in a first-rate mansion? Wouldn’t it have been enough for them to know that a great and good head—one of the heads that rule the world, though the world won’t acknowledge it, at least until the aforesaid head may be rolled about by boys in the churchyard—that such a head had all its laurels about it, even though sometimes it went under a cotton umbrella? Wouldn’t they have acknowledged this? No, Michael; no, no, no! The great man, in the eyes of our English world, would have been lost in the smallness of his income.

Pull down Apsley House, deprive the Duke of Wellington of his fortune, let him for three months be seen as a general living at a club upon nothing but his half-pay, and it’s my belief that in three months after that some folks would more than doubt whether he ever won Waterloo. I once read of a Roman who was called from his turnips to save his country. What a small fellow he’d have seemed among us! We never could have understood a hero upon turnips alone. No; with us Cincinnatus must have had a fine leg of Southdown to his vegetables, butter and capers, and above all things, a silver fork. I’m called for a fare, so yours in haste,

Juniper Hedgehog.

P.S.—I don’t know whether you’ll care much about the news at Hong-Kong, but we shall have a tidy hay season.

Letter XVIII.—To Richard Monckton Milnes, Esq., M.P.

Sir,—As I once had the honour to drive you down to Parliament, and as I found you such an affable gentleman, with no pride at all in you (I say nothing about the sixpence you gave me over your fare), I make no bones at all in writing these few lines to you, about your motion for private hanging. I see by the newspapers that you want to make a law to hang inside of the gaol, in a snug and quiet way; and not to have the show in the open street. Pardon a cabman’s boldness, but really, Mr Milnes, you can’t have thought of the shocking consequence of your measure, if so be it had been carried out. What! make a law for private hanging! With one bit of parchment destroy what I’ll be bold enough to call one of the chief amusements of the people! Sir James Graham knows better than this; for he generally contrives to have an execution on Easter and Whit-Monday, just by the way of an early whet to the appetites of the holiday-makers. First the Old Bailey and then Greenwich; Mr Calcraft, the hangman—and then the fire-eater and the clown. Your bill, sir—do forgive my boldness—was very rash, and not at all just. They’ve taken away bear-baiting and duck-hunting and dog-fighting from what they call the lower orders, and now you’d deprive ’em of their last and dearest privilege—you’d, with one dash of the pen, rob ’em of their own public gallows! And you call yourself a friend of them people, Mr Milnes—a stickler for their ancient sports and pastimes? I don’t wonder that for once something like shame came over Parliament—that not forty conscientious members stopped to listen to you—and that, in a word, you were “counted out.”

I have said your bill was unjust, shamefully unjust, unless you can prove to me that there was a clause in it to what they call indemnify the housekeepers in the Old Bailey for their loss of vested interests, seeing that they make no end of money by letting their windows at a popular hanging. Why, a Hocker’s worth any money to ’em; for it’s odd how hanging brings down the pride of some of the upper classes, many of the nobs enjoying it quite as much as the lower orders, only that they give one or two guineas—according to the beauty of the murder—for comfortable sitting room. If the men they call the six clerks were indemnified, surely you would not rob the tradesmen of the Old Bailey.

But it really is shocking to see how a mere member of Parliament will set himself up against a clergyman of Newgate! Didn’t the Rev. Mr Davis preach that the whole use and beauty of hanging was to be found in making it public? According to him, if it was possible to hang a man where all England might see him strangled, why, all England would certainly be the better for it. I’ve no doubt that the cause of so much crime is in the smallness of the Old Bailey, that will only accommodate such a few! Why shouldn’t the gallows be erected on Salisbury Plain, with cheap railway excursions from all parts on hanging days?

Pardon me, sir, but there never was such a mistake as to think to do away with the wickedness of hanging by making it private. In the first place, if to see a hanging is no warning to the beholder, do you think that to hear or read of a hanging would do all the good of an example? Does what men see, or what they hear, stir ’em the most? But let us suppose that a man is to be hanged inside of Newgate. Why, the penny-liners that get their sops in the pan out of the condemned cell, why, they would write all sorts of pretty things, all kinds of interesting stories about the last minutes of the criminal, and so the curiosity of the town would be more agog than ever. The picture newspapers that publish the murderers’ portraits—those family papers for the instruction and amusement of the younger branches—would give half-a-dozen pictures where they now give one. The secrecy of the thing would give a flavour to the whole matter.

And now, suppose that a rich man was to be privately hanged: a banker, we’ll say, or, saving your presence, even a member of Parliament. Well, we know how unbelieving is man. There’s thousands of people who would never sleep quietly in their beds, for the thought that the said banker or member was never hanged at all, but was smuggled out alive in a coffin, and shipped abroad. Every year or so, there’d be a letter in the newspapers from somebody who had seen the banker somewhere in the Backwoods, where he had married one of the Chactaws, and got a family of ten children. No, Mr Milnes, private hanging won’t do; the people aren’t to be cheated out of their pleasure after that fashion. Besides, Mr Milnes, all hanging’s a bungle. The gallows is condemned, marked to come down; timber by timber it’s loosening, and it’s no use trying to keep it together with small corking-pins. No, Mr Milnes, it will better become you, be more like your kind good-natured self, to give a pull to the planks, to bring the whole machine to the ground, to make it a thing of the past, like the bonfires that burnt witches,—and for the hangman thrown out of work, why, small retiring allowances have been given to worse public servants.—Hoping, sir, that you’ll excuse my boldness, I remain, your obedient servant,

Juniper Hedgehog.

P.S.—You know my number, sir, and I’m always in Palace Yard.

Letter XIX.—To Isaac Moss, Slop-seller, Portsmouth.

Dear Isaac,—Sir Robert Peel has stood your friend; and if you’ve only the money, and the freedom, and the luck, you may be Lord Mayor of London as soon as you like. You can’t, as a Jew, sit in Parliament as yet; but time goes round, Isaac, and I shouldn’t wonder if some day that was to come. Only think if a Jew—an hon. member for Whitechapel—was some day to find himself alongside of a Colonel Sibthorpe; for every Parliament has its Sibthorpe, just as every spring has its green geese.

Sir Robert Inglis, of course, stood up for Mother Church, who, in faith, must have a tremendous constitution, seeing how the dear creature has been ill-treated by all sorts of infidel politicians. I really do believe that Sibthorpe wouldn’t now trust Sir Robert with the church-plate; no, not even with the taking of the twopences at the door of St Paul’s, for fear he should cheat in his accounts.

Mr Plumptre would have nothing to do with the bill, because, he said, “every Christian man, who was sensible of his religious obligation, should consider what would be for the honour of the Most High.” Ah, Isaac, there it is! What a lot of wickedness has been done in this pretty world of ours—and all with a conscience—for what Christians thought would be “for the honour of the Most High”! For such honour men have roasted one another, as they wouldn’t roast live beasts, at a stake; for such honour they have done all sorts of wrong, shutting up their fellow-creatures in dungeons, and tearing and torturing them all manner of ways, as if they thought, when they did most wrong to mortal creatures, they did most honour to the good God that made them.

Well, Isaac, I’m only a cabman, but when I sometimes read the debates, I do now and then thank my stars that I’m out of Parliament. And then the conceit of them that’s in it. When they’ve done anything that’s good, what do they do? Why, they only walk about like the bird in the fable, in feathers of better people. They never do nothing of themselves. No good seed is ever grown in Parliament: not a bit of it; the thing’s grown outside of the place, and then transplanted. Talk of the wisdom of Parliament, Isaac! why, they get their wisdom from people who’ve never set their eyes upon Mr Speaker. What did Parliament ever begin, I should like to know? That is, understand me, what that’s good? No, good laws—wise laws—are begun outside; thought of, invented by quiet folks, who never think to put M.P. to their names; and whose great trouble it is to get the good acknowledged. And when at last, after wasting I don’t know how much of heaven’s good time—after the rumpus of many, many years—Parliament consents to take the good thing, I’m hanged if the goose doesn’t hatch the swan’s egg, as if it was a thing laid by itself, and not put into its nest by other people.

“The honour of the Most High!” Surely, Isaac, the best way to show such honour is to love your fellow-creatures as the greatest work—so far as we know—of the Most High; and not, poor small things as we are, to walk about the earth, and when we poke up our noses highest in the face of heaven, think we have then the best right to tread the hardest on the necks of everybody that don’t agree with us. To hear a few folks talk in Parliament, you’d think that they’d assured to themselves all Paradise as a freehold, and standing upon their rights, would set up in it man-traps and spring-guns against all intruders. However, never mind, Isaac. There was a time when a King of England would have drawn a tooth a day out of your jaws, if you didn’t undraw your purse-strings; and now—so do this wicked world roll on—you may wear a Lord Mayor’s chain, and, as a magistrate, commit vagrants to gaol like any Christian.—Your friend,

Juniper Hedgehog.

Letter XX.—To Mrs Hedgehog, New York.

Dear Grandmother,—September’s so near we can almost put our hand upon it, and yet I’m in London. It’s a dreadful confession of poverty, but I can’t help it. If I’m not ashamed to be seen on my stand, I’m not a licensed cabman. The only comfort there is, everybody that stays in town must be as poor as myself, and that, according to some folk’s notions, is a blessing to think of. A purse that was dropped on the pavement of Regent Street lay there a week, and was at last picked up by a policeman. London never looked so poor and dull; for all the world like a fine lady in an undress gown, with all her paint wiped off. The opera is shut up, and the manager has had a silver bed-candlestick given him by lords and dukes, because he has been so full of public spirit as to make his own fortune. By the way, grandmother, I don’t know how it is with the player-folks in New York; but here with us, if a man or woman want a bit of plate they’ve only to take a theatre. A playhouse is a short cut to a silversmith’s. There isn’t a London manager who isn’t plated after this fashion, which shows there is no place for true gratitude like the green-room; but I ask your pardon for talking of such matters, knowing what a low place you think the theatre. Parliament, like a goose that has been set upon too many eggs, has risen with half of ’em come to nothing. But this, grandmother, is the old trick. When the Parliament first opens, and Ministers come down with new law after law, why, what busy, bustling folks they seem! What a look of business it gives to the whole thing! But half of ’em is only for show; just so many dummies to take in what shopkeepers call “an enlightened public.” You know the bottles of red and blue that they have in apothecaries’ shops? Well, half the folks think ’em physic, when they’re nothing in the world but coloured water. Sir James Graham’s Medical Bill was just one of these things: nothing real in it; but something made up for show; just to give a colouring to business. Talking of Parliament, a dreadful accident happened at the prorogation. You know it’s the privilege of the Duke of Argyll to bear the royal crown before the Queen. Certain folks came into the world with certain privileges of the kind. One has a right to stir the royal tea-cup on the day of the coronation, another to put on the Queen’s pattens whenever she shall walk in the city, another to present the monarch with a pint of periwinkles when he shall visit Billingsgate; and so forth: all customs of the good old times, when people thought kings and queens were angels in disguise, who had kindly left heaven just to give poor mortals here a lift—in fact, to make the world endurable. Well, the Duke of Argyll, walking backwards with the crown—going straightforwards not being at all the thing in the Court—fell, poor old gentleman, down some steps, and falling, dropt the crown! Pheugh! There was a shower of pearls and diamonds; for all the precious stones came rattling on the floor, just as if the Queen, like the little girl in the fairy story, had been talking jewels. There were thoughts, I’m told, of calling in the police to keep off the mob of peers; but altogether they behaved themselves very well, and not a precious stone was found missing. The accident, however, caused a great fuss; and I’m told, in order to prevent its happening again, Madame Tussaud has offered to make a Duke of Argyll in wax, that, fitted up with proper wheels and springs, may be made to go backwards with no fear of a tumble. Should the thing succeed—and I don’t see why it shouldn’t—it would be a great saving in the way of salaries to the country, if a good many other Court officers were manufactured after the like fashion.

I’d almost forgotten to say that the King of the Dutch has been on a visit to us—and, as I’ve heard, a very decent sort of king he is. Of course he played while here at a little bit of soldiering; guards and grenadiers were turned out in Hyde Park, that he might review their helmets and bearskin caps. Isn’t it odd, grandmother, that the first show kings and princes, when they come to us, want to stare at is a show of soldiers? just to see how nicely men are armed and mounted to kill men! They don’t mean any harm by it, of course; but still—I can’t help thinking it—it does appear to me, if Beelzebub was to go into a strange country—if, indeed, there is any country he’s not yet visited—the sight he’d first like to see would be the sight of men taught the best way of cutting men’s throats. And then (if he came here to London) he’d go down to Woolwich Marshes, to see what they call rocket-practice, and wouldn’t he rub his hands, and switch about his tail, to see how rockets and shells split, break, tear away everything before ’em, showing what pretty work they’d make of a solid square of living flesh, standing for so many pence a day to be made a target of? You’d think it would be some wicked spirit that would enjoy this fun; but no, grandmother, it isn’t so; quite the contrary; it’s kings and princes. And yet I should like to have some king come over here who wouldn’t care to go a-soldiering in Hyde Park; who wouldn’t think of rocket-practice; but who, on the contrary, would go about to our schools and our hospitals, and our asylums, and all places where man does what he can to help man; to assist and comfort him like a fellow-creature, and not to tear him limb from limb like a devil.

Our Queen has gone to Germany to see where Prince Albert was born. Well, there’s something pretty and wife-like in the thought of this, and I like this. There was a dreadful fear among some of the nobs in Parliament, that while the Queen was away the kingdom would drop to pieces. But it isn’t so: the tax-gatherer calls just the same as ever. The Queen took ship, and landed at Antwerp—at the Quai Vandyke; now, Vandyke, you must know, was a famous painter; and abroad, they’ve a fashion of naming streets and places after folks that’s called geniuses. We haven’t come to that yet. Only think of our having a Hogarth Square, or a Shakspere instead of a Waterloo Bridge! And then for statues in the streets, we don’t give them to authors and painters, but only to kings and dukes that don’t pay their debts.

Still, I do feel for her Gracious Majesty. Dear soul! Isn’t it dreadful that a gentlewoman can’t step abroad—can’t take boat, but what there’s a hundred guns blazing, firing away at her,—as if the noise of cannon and the smell of gunpowder was like the songs of nightingales and the scent of roses! How royalty keeps its hearing, I can’t tell. When the dear lady got upon the Rhine, there were the guns blazing away as though heaven and earth were come together. It’s odd enough that people will think a great noise is a great respect; and that the heartiest welcome can only be given by gunpowder. It seems that the folks were putting up a statue to a musician named Beethoven, and the Queen of England and the Prince were just in time to pay their respects to the bronze. Mr Beethoven while alive was nobody; but it’s odd how a man’s worth is raked up from his coffin! And so it’s a great comfort to great men who, when in this world, are thought very small indeed, to think how big they’ll be upon earth after they’ve gone to heaven; a comfort for ’em, when they may happen to want a coat, to think of the suit of bronze or marble that kings and queens will afterwards give ’em. If, now, there’s any English composer, any man with a mind in him, forced, for want of better employment—forced to give young ladies lessons on the piano when he should be doing sonatas and sinfonias, and that sort of thing,—why, I say, it must be a comfort to him to know that folks can honour genius when it’s put up by way of statue in the market-place.

One of the prettiest stories I’ve heard of the jaunt is this, that the Queen and Albert went in a quiet way to visit the Prince’s old schoolmaster—if this isn’t enough to make all schoolmasters in England hold their heads up half a yard higher! Besides, it mayn’t show a bad example to high folks who keep tutors and governesses.

Altogether the Queen must be pleased with her trip, and I should think not the less pleased where the folks made the least noise; although, from what I read in one of the papers, everybody doesn’t think so; for the writer complains that there was “no shouting or noise, only that eternal bowing which so strikes a traveller, and which would make one believe that beings across the Channel were formed with some natural affinity between their right hands and their hats.” Really, to my mind there’s something more pleasing, more rational-like, in one human creature quietly bowing to another, than in shouting and hallooing at him like a wild Indian. But, then, people do so like noise!

You’ll be sorry to hear, grandmother, that your pets, the bishops, are again in trouble. I’m sure of it, bishops were never intended to have anything to do with money: they always tumble into such mistakes whenever they touch it. How is it to be expected that they should know the mystery of pounds, shillings, and pence,—they who can’t abide earthly vanities—they who are always above this world, though they never go up, as I hear, with Mr Green in his balloon? Well, it seems that the bishops have had a mint of money put into their hands that they may build new churches for their fellow-sinners, whom they call spiritually destitute. Well, would you think it?—in a moment of strange forgetfulness, they’ve laid out so much money upon palaces for themselves, that they can’t build the proper number of churches for the poor? The bishops have taken care of the bishops—and for the spiritually destitute, why, they may worship in highways and byways, in fields and on commons. Of course the bishops never meant this. No; it has all come about from their knowing nothing of the value of money. Still, what’s called the lower orders won’t believe this. And isn’t it a shocking thing to consider that the poor man may look at Bishop So-and-so with a grudge in his eye, saying to himself, “Yes, you’ve built yourself a fine house—you’ve got your fine cedars, and all that King Solomon talks about, in your own palace; but where’s my sittings in the church?—where, bishop, is my bench in the middle aisle?”

This is so dreadful to think of, that I can’t write any further upon it—and so no more from your affectionate grandson,

Juniper Hedgehog.

Letter XXI.—To Sir J. B. Tyrell, Bart., M.P. for North Essex.

Sir,—As I consider every gentleman that I have had the pleasure, or the honour, or the ill-luck as it may be, of driving, a sort of acquaintance—for where money passes, it in a manner binds men—I make no difficulty in sending you these few lines.

You have been dining with the Conservative Maldon True Blue Club. True Blue, I suppose, means heaven’s blue—that is, blue as true as heaven. All the speeches were printed in the Essex Standard, and afterwards, where I saw ’em, in the Morning Post. Your speech, Sir James, or Sir John (for, upon my life, I forget which it is, so I’ll call you Sir James upon chance)—your speech drenched me, as a Christian cabman, quite over. You rose to drink the health of the Duke of Wellington. Well, I don’t object to that. But, I’m sure of it,—never once thinking of your Testament, you went on in this manner—and mind, it was only just after dinner—

“It had been said of the noble Duke, that he was not only the conqueror of Bonaparte—but the greatest man since the time of the Saviour!”

You thought if that language was “too strong to apply to him as a man, his claims upon the country could not be overrated.” Now, Sir James, IF the language was too strong (for you said “if”), why did you use it? Why make any comparison between the Saviour of the world and the colonel of a Grenadier Guards? The Duke, no doubt, has claims upon the country; though some of these claims, by-the-by, are regularly settled by the country every pay-day, and come in regularly with his rents of Strathfieldsaye. Nevertheless, whatever claims he may have outstanding against us, I don’t think he can enforce any of ’em in the spirit of Him who said, “Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you; and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” The Duke of Wellington never talks in this way in the House of Lords; but do we expect that he should? His business of life, Sir James, has been to fight; and though I think the trade a very bad one, nevertheless he made the best of the wickedness. But, Sir James, you, it seems, would bind up the Sermon on the Mount with the “Wellington Despatches;” and seem to think the battle of Waterloo a finer acted thing than that small incident rehearsed at the words, “Take up thy bed and walk.”

Sometime ago, the son of a Christian judge, passing through a London street, saw, as he thought, a blasphemous representation of the Deity exposed in a window. In a trice he smashed the glass and tore up the offensive picture. Right glad am I, for the sake of the convivial True Blues, that young Mr Bruce was not at the Maldon dinner; otherwise, where the chairman found a companion picture for Jesus in the Grenadier tenant of Apsley House, Mr Bruce might have forgotten Sir James Tyrell in what he might have thought the blasphemer.

“Our Saviour” and the Duke of Wellington! And among the company, “which was upwards of seventy in number,” were members of Parliament, captains, esquires, and—my ink turns almost red with shame as I write it—and clergymen! There were pious Christians, teachers of Christian flocks, “their eyes red with wine, and their teeth white with milk,” who sat quietly upon their seats, and heard the British Grenadier paralleled with Jesus Christ! Answer, Reverends Leigh, Williams, Bruce, and Henshawe—was it not so? O Conservative clergymen! O True Blue disciples of beeswing port! O knife-and-fork apostles! when, mute as fish, you consented to the speech of Tyrell, and so forgot your Master, did you not, in your souls, hear “the cock crow”?

Well, Sir James, I do recollect what my old grandmother taught me of the New Testament; and although I’m but a cabman, I hope I do feel, if I’d ever had the presumption to compare anybody to the blessed Saviour, I couldn’t have gone to the barracks for him.

I think the Duke of Wellington has said that “no man who’s nice about religion should be a soldier!” Perhaps you never heard of this, and thought that to hunt the French out of Spain was almost quite as great as to cast out devils.

“The greatest man since the time of our Saviour!” And there have been no other men, Sir James, sent into the world to pick their fellow-creatures, as I may say, out of the mud? There have been no Shakspere? No Newton? No Howard? No! Ball-cartridge has been the true manna of life; and the words “Feed my sheep” are nothing to “Make ready, present, fire!”

But, Sir James, I’ve done. I know you didn’t mean what you said. No: the truth is, you’re a regular Conservative, and so—like other darkened folks—you must make an idol out of something. Rather than have none at all, you’d set up the Duke of Wellington’s bootjack. Still, among the True Blues, you overshot the mark, and must be by this time perfectly ashamed of yourself. Nevertheless, your wickedness ought not to go unpunished: and because, in a port-wine moment, you compared the Iron Duke to the Lamb of the world, I’d make you undergo a month’s penance. You should be covered all over with pipeclay, and eat parched peas off a drum-head.

Juniper Hedgehog.

Letter XXII.—To Mrs Hedgehog, New York.

Dear Grandmother,—As I don’t think you have any liking for railways—being, like Colonel Sibthorpe, one of those folks loving the good old times when travelling was as sober a thing as a waggon and four horses could make it—I really don’t see how I’m to write you anything of a letter. There’s nobody in town, and nothing in the papers but plans of railways, that in a little time will cover all England like a large spider’s net; and, as in the net, there will be a good many flies caught and gobbled up by those who spin it. Nevertheless, though I know you don’t agree with me any more than Colonel Sibthorpe does, it is a fine sight to open the newspapers and see the railway schemes. What mountains of money they bring to the mind! And then for the wonders they’re big with—why, properly considered, aren’t they a thousand times more wonderful than anything in the “Arabian Nights’ Entertainments”? There we have a flying carriage to be brought to every man’s door! All England made to shake hands with itself in a few hours! And when London can in an hour or so go to the Land’s End for a gulp of sea air, and the Land’s End in the same time come to see the shows of London, shan’t all of us the better understand one another? shan’t we all be brought together, and made, as we ought to be, one family of? It’s coming fast, grandmother. Now pigs can travel, I don’t know how far, at a halfpenny a head, we don’t hear the talk that used to be of “the swinish multitude.” And isn’t it a fine thing—I know you don’t think so, but isn’t it—to know that all that’s been done, and all that’s to do, will be done because Englishmen have left off cutting other men’s throats? That peace has done it all! If they oughtn’t to set up a dove with an olive branch at every railway terminus, I’m an impostor and no true cabman! Yes, grandmother, peace has done it all! Only think of the iron that had been melted into cannon, and round-shot and chain-shot, and all other sorts of shot, that the devils on a holiday play at bowls with!—if the war had gone on—all the very same iron that’s now peaceably laid upon sleepers! Think of the iron that had been fired into the sea, and banged through quiet people’s houses, and sent smashing squares and squares of men—God’s likenesses in red, blue, and green coats, hired to be killed at so many pence a day,—only think what would have been this wicked, I will say it, this blasphemous waste of metal—that, as it is, has been made into steam-engines! Very fine, indeed, they say, is the roar of artillery; but what is it to the roar of steam? I never see an engine, with red-hot coals and its clouds of steam and smoke, that it doesn’t seem to me like a tremendous dragon that has been tamed by man to carry all the blessings of civilisation to his fellow-creatures. I’ve read about knights going through the skies on fiery monsters—but what are they to the engineers, at two pound five a week? What is any squire among ’em all to the humblest stoker? And then I’ve read about martial trumpets, why, they haven’t, to my ears, half the silver in their sound as the railway whistle! Well, I should like the ghost of Bonaparte to get up some morning, and take the Times in his thin hands. If he wouldn’t turn yellower than ever he was at St Helena! There he’d see plans for railways in France—belly France, as I believe they call it—to be carried out by Frenchmen and Englishmen. Yes; he wouldn’t see ’em mixing bayonets, trying to poke ’em in one another’s bowels, that a few tons of blood might, as they call it, water his laurels (how any man can wear laurels at all, I can’t tell, they must smell so of the slaughter-house!)—he wouldn’t see ’em charging one another on the battle-field, but quietly ranged cheek by jowl, in the list of directors! Not exchanging bullets, but clubbing together their hard cash.

Consider it, grandmother, isn’t it droll! Here, in these very lists, you see English captains and colonels in company with French viscounts and barons, and I don’t know what, planning to lay iron down in France—to civilise and add to the prosperity of Frenchmen! The very captains and colonels who—but for the peace—would be blowing French ships out of water, knocking down French houses, and all the while swearing it, and believing it, too, that Frenchmen were only sent into this world to be killed by Englishmen, just as boys think frogs were spawned only to be pelted at! Ah, only give her time, and Peace—timid dove as she is—will coo down to the trumpet.

Now, grandmother, only to think of Lord Nelson as a railway director on the Boulogne line to Paris! Well, I know you’ll say it, the world’s going to be turned upside down. Perhaps it is; and after all, it mightn’t be the worse now and then for a little wholesome shaking. They do say there’s to be a rail from Waterloo to Brussels, and the Duke of Wellington, the Iron Duke, with, I’ve no doubt, iron enough in him for the whole line, is to be chairman of the directors.

The Prince Joinville is now and then looking about our coasts to find out, it is said, which is the softest part of us, in the case of a war, to put his foot upon us. Poor fellow! he’s got the disease of glory; only, as it sometimes happens with the smallpox, it has struck inward—it can’t come out upon him. When we’ve railways laid down, as I say, like a spider’s web all over the country, won’t it be a little hard to catch us asleep? For, you see, just like the spider’s web, the electric telegraph (inquire what sort of a thing it is, for I haven’t time to tell you)—the electric telegraph will touch a line of the web, when down will come a tremendous spider in a red coat with all sorts of murder about him! Mind, grandmother, let us hope it never will happen; but when folks who’d molest us, know it can come about, won’t they let us alone? Depend upon it, we’re binding war over to keep the peace, and the bonds are made of railway iron!

You’d hardly think it—you who used to talk to me about the beauty of glory (I know you meant nothing but the red coats and the fine epaulets; for that so often is woman’s notion of glory, though, bless ’em! they’re among the first to make lint, and cry over the sons of glory, with gashes spoiling all their fine feathers)—and you’d hardly think it, but they’re going to put up a statue to the man who first made boiling water to run upon a rail. It’s quite true: I read it only a day or two ago. They’re going to fix up a statue to George Stephenson at Newcastle. How you will cast up your dear old eyes when you hear of this! you, who’ve only thought that statues should be put up to Queen Anne, and George the Third, and his nice son, George the Fourth, and such people! I should only like a good many of the statues here in London, to be made to take a cheap train down to Newcastle, to see it. If, dirty as they are—and dirty as they were—they wouldn’t blush as red as a new copper halfpenny! Why, those statues—especially when they’ve queens and kings in ’em—are the most unfeelingest of metal! What a lot of mangled bodies, and misery, and housebreaking, and wickedness of all sorts, carried on and made quite lawful by a uniform, may we see—if we choose to see at all—about the statue of what is called a conqueror! What a firing of houses, what shame—that, because you’re a woman, I won’t more particularly write about—we might look upon under the statue, that is only so high, because it has so much wickedness to stand upon! If the statue could feel at all, wouldn’t it put up its hands, and hide its face, although it was made of the best of bronze? But Mr Stephenson will look kindly and sweetly about him; he will know that he has carried comfort, and knowledge, and happiness to the doors of millions!—that, that he has brought men together, that they might know and love one another. This is something like having a statue! I’m sure of it—when George the Fourth is made to hear the news (for kings are so very long before the truth comes to ’em), he’d like to gallop off to the first melter’s and go at once into the nothing that men think him.

And besides all this, the railways have got a king! When you hear of a king in England, I know your old thoughts go down to Westminster Abbey, and you think of nothing but bishops and peers, and all that sort of thing, kissing the king’s cheeks, and the holy oil put upon the royal head, that the crown, I suppose, may sit the more comfortably upon it; but this is another sort of king, Mr King Hudson the First. I have read somewhere at a bookstall, that Napoleon was crowned with the Iron Crown of Italy. Well, King Hudson has been crowned with the Iron Crown of England!—a crown melted out of pig-iron, and made in a railway furnace.

I’ve somewhere seen the picture of the River Nile, that with the lifting of his finger made the river flow over barren land, and leave there all sorts of blessings. Well, King Hudson is of this sort; he has made the molten iron flow over all sorts of places, and so bring forth good fruits wherever it went.—So no more, from your affectionate grandson,

Juniper Hedgehog.

Letter XXIII.—To Mrs Hedgehog, New York.

Dear Grandmother,—Of course you must have heard of the potato blight. There are some subjects that women don’t want newspapers to teach ’em about, and “potatoes is one.” I can’t tell how your red Yorks and Kidneys may be in your part of the world: with us, they’re things to weep over. But, of course, your potatoes are all right: you’ve done nothing to bring down rot upon ’em from heaven. But it’s very different with us, grandmother. Our potato blight was got up by her Majesty’s Ministers, and—would you think it?—consented to by her blessed Majesty! It is now as plain as light that the great Maynooth has done it all! One William Ferrie—who writes in a hair shirt, with a girdle of tenpenny nails next his skin—has let out the terrible secret in the Witness, an Edinburgh paper (Nov. 8). He groans as follows:—

“Had we set ourselves to consider by what display of His sovereignty the Lord could most thoroughly and very severely have distressed Ireland, whilst He in some degree afflicted also both England and Scotland, in token of His indignation at the sin of their joint rulers in enacting that which, whilst it insulted Him, was justified on the plea that it would benefit Ireland, could we have conceived a more effectual one than the blasting of the potato crop!”

Now, grandmother, this, I know, is stuff after your own heart. Popery is at the root of the root! The Lord has been insulted; and His terrible vengeance is a blight upon potatoes! There can be no doubt that this is the fact—a fact so after the good old times! Nevertheless, for my part, I think it rather hard that Protestant potatoes—potatoes that, if they could talk, would cry, “No surrender!”—should suffer equally with potatoes of Roman Catholic principles. I know it’s very conceited in me to give an opinion against men like William Ferrie—men who always bawl and scribble (I’ve heard ’em in their pulpits, as well as read their stuff in print) as if they were nothing less than livery servants to Providence, and knew all the household secrets! And Willy Ferrie, depend on ’t, is flunky after this fashion.

A rotten potato is a rotten potato—at least so I should have thought it afore I’d been taught better by ranting Willy; but now, I can see into the thing just as well as if Erasmus Wilson—the magician of the microscope—had lent me his glass, and his eyes and brains into the bargain. I can see into the decayed parts, for I won’t bother your dear head with hard words (though when a man’s got ’em for the first time, he likes to sport ’em), and can behold nothing but what you used to call “the murdering Papishes.” I’ve a ’tato before me, as rotten as the heart of any talking ’tato that ever spouted blarney in the face of starvation. Well, with the microscope, I can see the Old Woman in Scarlet, with her toe polished with holy kisses—cardinals and abbots, and friars and priests, in white and red and gold—and canopies, and dolls of the Virgin, and saints, and little boys swinging censers. I can see all this by the assistance of Willie Ferrie—all of it in one potato—as plainly as once I saw all sorts of sharks in a drop of New River water. I shall write this blessed night to Sir Andrew Agnew (by the way, dear grandmother, it was said that Sir Andrew was lately caught in a Sunday train—but it isn’t true: it’s now proved to be somebody I won’t mention to you, who sometimes, out of spite to the Baronet, goes about in his likeness)—I’ll write to Sir Andrew, and get him to give a Potato Lecture, after this fashion, at Exeter Hall. If with one potato he wouldn’t make the women cry, then there’s no weeping to be got out of an onion! Sir Andrew with one rotten potato, like David with a smooth pebble, would kill Goliath Peel as dead as Tamworth mutton.

And yet when it’s plain that it’s the Maynooth Grant, and not the wet—certainly not the wet—that’s rotted the potato, we find big-wig doctors sent to Ireland (a further insult to Providence, grandmother) to inquire, as it is presumptuously said, into the cause of the disease. Why, I know what you or any other good old woman would have done; after you’d tasted the Maynooth Grant—and there’s no mistaking the flavour—in your early kidneys, you’d at once have stopped the rot;—and how would you have done it? Why, you’d have got the Queen to send a message to Parliament, to order a repeal of the Maynooth Grant. Of course you would. But no: sinful men are made foolhardy by success. Because, when they granted Catholic ’Mancipation, the fly spared our turnips, it was thought we could give money to Maynooth College, and yet save our ’tatoes! Ha! Dear grandmother, when you take your kidney baked, steamed, or mashed, think of us sinners, and say a short prayer for us.

I’d forgotten to tell you that the potatoes in Belgium are as bad, or even worse, than ours. Besides the wet, I can’t precisely tell the cause of this; because there’s been no Maynooth Grant there, nearly all the wicked people being Catholics,—but then, I suppose, that’s it. Mr Flunky Ferrie declares that “the present judgment is connected with Popery.” There’s no doubt of it:—

“The blight being general over three kingdoms, points out the rulers of the land as the persons whose sin has secured it; and the blight being in the potato crop, directs attention to their dealings with Ireland as the particular sins which have immediately called it down.”

This is, doubtless, true enough, and no less true because the whole people must suffer for the dozen rulers. Now, had the blight fallen only upon Tamworth, or Strathfieldsaye, or all the ’tatoes of all the Ministers, the disease would doubtless have been hushed up. Yes,—it was necessary that every man should suffer in his potatoes; not only the sinful Protestant who consented to the Grant, but the lucky Catholics who accepted it. The judgment fell upon all tribes alike—the tribes of the Established Church and of the Church of Babylon. The Bishop of London’s ’tatoes are in as forlorn a way as the ’tatoes of the Irish Lion of Judah: that’s some comfort, grandmother.

Well, and what does this blight say to the Catholics—what does every potato cry (with the little voice that what they call tubercular consumption has left it)—what does it cry to the “Papishes,” but, “Change your religion, and henceforth be happy in your ’tatoes!” At first, I thought this change of religion a ticklish matter; but when I see how easily the nobs—the bright examples of the world—do it, why, it’s only conceit in smaller people to hesitate: for I’ve just read a long story about the Emperor Nicholas, who’s in Italy with his poor dying wife. (By the way, it seems that the Emperor, like many other folks, is such a good-tempered, jolly fellow when he’s out, that it’s a pity he should ever go home again.) The Emperor’s daughter, the Duchess Olga (a good playbill name, isn’t it?) was to marry an Austrian Archduke; but her father wouldn’t let her alter her religion from the Greek to the Catholic Church. Now, however, Nicholas has thought better of it,—and his daughter may change her religion for a husband, just as she’ll put on a new gown to be married in. When emperors and kings play at hustle-cap with creeds, isn’t it downright impudence in mere nobodies to be nice!

When I think, though, that the Maynooth Grant has brought the rot in potatoes, I can’t help looking round about the world, and fearing what may by-and-by become of us for our friendship with heathens. We take tea of the Chinese—a people, evidently an insult to heaven—though long put up with, and mustering hundreds of millions. Doesn’t Mr Ferrie fear that some day all us men may rise in the morning with pig-tails, and the women get up with a little foot apiece? We buy rhubarb from the wicked Turk. A time may come when—for a visitation—the drug may deceive all the doctors, and Old Gooseberry only know what mischief may happen! We get tallow from Russia. How do I know that I mayn’t in every six to a pound, without thinking of it, set up a candle to the Greek Church! Will Flunky Ferrie think of these things?—for there are many of his kidney who’d like to be enlightened.

But, O grandmother! perhaps the worst is to come. The Church is really now in danger! I’ve not had a fare up Ludgate Hill lately, but I’ve no doubt St Paul’s is cracked from top to bottom. Would you believe it? David Salomons, the late Sheriff (who was sweetly cheated out of his gown as Alderman, the said gown being now on the shoulders of Church-and-State Moon, Esq.)—David Salomons, a Jew, has given £1666, 13s. 4d. to buy a scholarship of £50 a year for the city of London, and the city—Gog and Magog quivered as with ague—has been mean enough to take it. Oh for the good old times, when they used to spit upon Jews in the Exchange! And now we take their money from ’em! I know you’ll think it a blow at the Church. The scholarship is said to be “open to members of every religious persuasion;” this is a flam-blind. The gift is a sly attack on the Established Church. It is the evident intention of the Minories to turn us all Jews. Never has there been such a blow struck at the vested interests of Smithfield Pig-market. Sir Robert Inglis—whom I took up at Exeter Hall a night or two ago—says, in two years there’ll be a grand Rabbi in Lambeth Palace.—Your affectionate grandson,

Juniper Hedgehog.

THE END.