Then, over the area of thirteen remaining pages, the record contains the minute particulars of the monarch’s obsequies, which, though full of interest, are no farther to our present purpose.
No. CIV.
Bull—I speak not of Ole, but of John—Bull, when the teazle of opposition has elevated the nap of his temper, is a pestilent fellow: whatever the amount—and there is enough—of the milk of human kindness within him, there is, then, but one way, known among men, of getting it out, and that is, by giving Bull a bloody nose; whereupon he comes to his senses directly, and to a just appreciation of himself and his neighbors. True indeed it is, Bull is remarkably oblivious; and it sometimes becomes necessary to give him another, which is invariably followed, by the same happy result.
Qui hæret in cortice will never come at the milk of a cocoa nut. It is necessary to strip off its rough coat, and punch sundry holes in its wooden walls, and give it a regular cracking. It is precisely so with Bull. When the fit is upon him, Bull is terrible. He is the very Bull of Crete—the Bull of Claudian, in his rape of Proserpine—
Dictæus quatiens mugitibus urbes
Taurus—————————
Bull is a prodigious fellow;
Nations tremble at his bellow.
There seems to have existed a strange, political hallucination, in regard to Bull and Jonathan. We are clearly, all of us, of one and the same family—a Bull-begotten people; and have a great deal of pleasure, in believing, that old madam Bull was the mother of us all. A goodly number of highly respectable Bulls came over the water, of old, and were well contented with the green pastures of the New World. They differed, upon some points, from the Bulls they had left behind. They did not believe, that there was a power or right, to bellow louder than the rest, vested in any particular Bull, which power came down from Bull to Bull, in unbroken succession, from the Bull of Bashan. Such a belief, in their opinion, would have been a terrible Bull. Well; all at once, the trans-atlantic Bulls began to call the cis-atlantic Bulls—Jonathans. A very good name it was—a great deal better than Bulls. There could be no objection to the name, in the abstract.
But, unfortunately, it was bestowed, as a diminutive, and in derision; and the old Bulls, ere long, began to beat their flanks with their tails, and paw up the earth, and look unutterable things, about Jonathan’s cowardice; and they came over the water in droves, and began to roar awfully; and tore up the earth, under our very noses: and, after doing all, in our power to spare the world the miserable spectacle of a conflict, among Bulls, that were brothers, of the whole blood, we went to work, ex necessitate, with hoofs and horns; and tossed up such a terrible dust, at Lexington, and Concord, and Bunker’s Hill, and Long Island, and White Plains, and upon the Lakes, and at Sheensborough, and Albany, and Brandywine, and Saratoga, and Bennington, and Germantown, and Rhode Island, and Briar’s Creek, and Camden, and Broad River, and Guilford, and Hobkirk’s Hill, and the Eutaw Springs, and York Town, and at fifty places beside, that the old Bulls were perfectly astonished; and so very severely gored withal, that their roaring sunk, at last, into something like Snug’s, when he became fearful of frightening the ladies. The old Bulls—those that survived—went back again, like Sawney, out of the peach orchard; and the mammoth Bull, in London, publicly acknowledged, that we were as independent a set of Bulls, as ever he saw, or heard of.
No man, in his senses, marvels, that a contemptuous, and supercilious sentiment, towards us, in our days of small things, should have been indulged, by the vulgar and unphilosophical, among the English people. It is matter for surprise, nevertheless, that so much ignorance of the American character should have existed, in the higher ranks of British society—such disparaging estimates of men and materiel, on this side the water—such mistaken conceptions—such a general belief of almost universal pusillanimity, among men, who were not a whit the less Englishmen, than their revilers; as though there were something, particularly enervating, in breathing the bracing air of America, and listening to the thorough bass of the wild waters, breaking on our original walls of granite; and in struggling, with our horny hands, along the precipices, for bread—such an awful miscalculation of probabilities, as resulted at last, in the loss to King George of thirteen inestimable jewels, of the fairest water.
The impressions, entertained of the Americans, by the English people, or a great majority of them, about that period, were truly amusing. It is scarcely worth while to comment on the abuse of us, by the early reviewers, and the taunting inquiry, long—long ago, what American had ever produced an epic?—Unluckily, Joel did, at last.—This question, thus early and impudently propounded, was quite as sensible, as it might be, to ask men, who, by dint of industry and thrift, are just getting plain shirts to their backs—who among them ever had lace ruffles? We have improved since that time; and halmost hevery man in the ole population can hutter imself hin werry decent Henglish.