FIGHTING FREWEN AND SOBER SHELLEY.
There appeared a chance a few days ago, that certain Members of Parliament would, instead of shooting the grouse, have the more exciting sport of shooting one another. Sir John Shelley very properly refuses to be drawn into either a murder or a breach of the peace; and quietly refers Mr. Frewen's furious correspondence to Messrs. Tyrrell, Paine, and Layton, who are, we presume, Sir John's solicitors.
A "little quarrel" with a legal firm may be less agreeable to one whom we fear we must call Fighting Frewen, than a personal rencontre with the Member for Westminster. A fight with a forensic antagonist in Westminster Hall is more formidable than a little harmless pistol-popping at Chalk Farm; and the powder of a barrister's wig is more dangerous to be set in agitation than the common gunpowder of commerce.
Poor Frewen is evidently much nettled at finding that Sir John Shelley won't fight, and in the desperate endeavour to stir up the unwilling baronet, tries the old cab-driver's dodge of calling after him "No gentleman!" We must say we cannot congratulate Mr. Frewen upon having got the best of the matter in either spirit, taste, or argument; for there is something more dignified in Sir John Shelley's request to be "excused from answering any further letters," than in Mr. Frewen's coarse wind up of "Call yourself a gentleman!"