Sheriffs' Officers Superseded.
We hear that an ingenious mechanic at Ipswich has invented a machine to perform perpetual motion, which is described as "self-acting after being put in motion by a screw." So is a bailiff who acts on a usurer's writ. We wonder if the Ipswich automaton would arrest an insolvent?
Motto for the Electric Telegraph.—"Between you, me, and the Post."
CLOWNS OF THE NEW SCHOOL.
SOMEBODY said that it takes a wise man to make a fool. This stands to reason, like the parallel proposition, that it takes a man to make a beast of himself; for if anybody is rendered either beast or fool by his own act, he cannot have been either the one or the other previously. But, running counter to the proverb, fools now endeavour to make wise men, and the Clown on the stage combines the teacher with the tumbler; is didactic and funny; intermingles philosophy with antics, and moralizes and makes faces by turns. The play-going public may perhaps admire this conjunction of light and shade with motley; if so, its taste will be catered for by enterprising managers. In the preparation of the Pantomimes for Christmas, the Clowns should be got to rehearse their parts carefully, with a view to the correct delivery of those discourses which will constitute the serious portion of their business. When the Clown throws off his great head, and his regal vestments, or doublet and trunk hose, and rushes to the foot-lights, he utters an exclamation and propounds an interrogatory. Tradition requires thus much; but Fashion will demand more. He will have to expand and amplify the old forms of words whose brevity has hitherto been sufficiently instructive as well as amusing, so as to elucidate the fulness of their significance. For example:—Having been transformed from Emperor to Zany, Mr. Merryman, at the tap of the Fairy's wand, jumps out of his robes, and appears in his diversified and proper colours. He turns his toes in, and runs up to one of the stage boxes. He there stoops forwards, resting his hands on his knees, grins, squints, rolls his eyes, thrusts his tongue out, and pulling himself by the ears, draws it back again. He then composes his flake-white and vermilion countenance, and utters the following soliloquy:—
"On this spot of earth, at this moment of time, between the past and the future, that is to say, Here, an aggregation of human entities, animal creatures endowed with reason and conscience, a multitude of Objects that constitute You in relation to the One Individual Subject, Myself: in a word, We, exist in a state of conscious Being, of self-cognisant perceptivity and ratiocinativity; in short, Are!
"In what condition, mental or bodily, of suffering or enjoyment, of weal or woe, of riches or poverty, of health or disease, of seriousness or levity, of gravity or mirth, of appetite or satiety, of wakefulness or somnolence, more briefly, How, in respect to the state of conscious being, self-cognisant perceptivity and ratiocinativity, exist, or Are, that multitude of Objects which in relation to my Individual Selfhood, constitute You?
"To condense my meaning into the fewest words by which it is capable of being confined, I would remark that,
"Here We Are!
"And to that momentous observation, allow me to add the profound inquiry,
"How Are You?"