Any quotes him as an authority upon all those scientific subjects to which he has devoted his life, but at the same time promotes the younger sons of noblemen over his head, although for more than thirty years he has been separated, except at long and uncertain intervals, from kith and kin, gauging the valleys of the deep, and adding largely to the treasury of human knowledge. And wherefore this neglect? Simply because he has the sensibilities of a gentleman, and is not backed by political interest, and is a retiring, highspirited old man, disdaining to truckle to any one, or to appeal ad misericordiam at any human tribunal; for the soul which has so often been face to face with Nature in her most solemn moods, is armed with an honest pride-the strength of which few can guess-which braces it against neglect, and imparts to it an unflinching fortitude to bear, to forbear, and to suffer. merits I may possess are known and recorded, and if upon these grounds I receive no tangible recognition of my long services, then I will again go to sea, and lock up all complaints in my heart.' Such is the reflection of the veteran commander. But the commissioner-he holds his appointment from the Board of Tapeargues thus: 'I am not a man of learning, but will assume a love of it; and having a good memory, I will assail people's opinion with facts and figures, which at the moment presents some difficulty in answering, for even cleverer people than I seldom have dates at their fingers' ends. This will speedily procure me a reputation amongst a certain set, whose good opinion is of the utmost value. I will fawn, feign, and flatter in the proper quarter, and I will be especially civil to my wife's brother, who, possesses some considerable parliamentary influence; I will ask over and over again, undeterred by false delicacy or sentiment, for a particular berth far more lucrative than the one I at present hold, and I shall ultimately succeed in obtaining it.' The one man will, in all probability, shape his course for some 'ultimate dim Thule,' and will per haps, ætat. fifty-two, be speared by the Feejee Islanders; while the other will lay down his '42 port, harden his heart towards God and man, drink Vichy water for gout, and die in his comfortable home, with a wife and family around him, ætat. seventy-eight. But of the heaven which during our lives dwells in the souls of all of us, which of those two men had the larger share? How dissimilar in every respect from the commissioner-differing as much as pinchbeck from gold-is my good friend Damon, who is reading some newspaper at the other end of the room, probabiy wincing at the literal errors (which the printers' devils will make) in one of his own admirable leading articles in, let us say, the Morning Budget.' He, too, has a businesslike head, with a slight paucity of cilia-covering on the crown; but, fortunately, his baldness is all outside. He is one of the soundest political thinkers of the day, and loves contemporary history and social economy with a devotion worthy of the subjects; but with all his erudition and memory, he cracks a joke as if it were a sweet nut, tells a humorous story better than most men, and enjoys with an immensity of good nature my pertinacity in insisting that he once left Strasbourg in disgust, because he was unable to obtain sound political information out of the chambermaids. Unlike the other pretentious individual, he hates display of all kinds, and rather hides his light than burns it with the bull's-eye of egotism and conceit. He knows full well, the more our intellectual vision is extended by research, study, and thought, the more capable we are of perceiving the vast regions, which as yet we may not hope to penetrate, stretching far away into the illimitable, and holds that the most sublime speech of modern times is that ever to be quoted one of Newton, when he said, in answer to some flattering remark, that he was only picking up pebbles on the shore of the great ocean of truth. Next to the commissioner, at a table covered with the débris of a very substantial repast, laughing with a companion, is a young, handsome, dare-devil fellow, radiant with health and insolent with happiness. His friend is a lanky, pale-faced young gentleman, with a small waist, a long, pointed nose, and hands like the paws of a greyhound, the pretty filbert nails of which he is for ever trimming. The contrast which he presents to his robust companion is increased by the fact that he looks as grave and sententious as the celebrated canine Rhadamanthus in Landseer's picture. He eats his ham and eggs as if he were a mourner at their burial in his hypergastric crypt, and perpetrates a pun or tells a funny anecdote in so sad and lugubrious a manner, that those who watch his countenance without hearing his remarks fancy he is describing some awful event. He never by any chance laughs or even smiles, but the quiet, clever manner in which he draws out his more volatile companion, suggests a very large share of mischief and humour. There is a story going the round of the hotel to the effect that all the ladies' boots, which had been placed at their bedroom doors, were found in the morning each containing a bouquet of flowers; and it was observed that the smallest and prettiest boots contained the choicest sprigs. I should make a shrewd guess that the perpetrator thereof was my ruddy young friend, and the joke is about the only practical joke I could forgive, for there was a something not inelegant in the offering, and just a sufficient amount of impudence in the act to give it its salt. The near neighbourhood of two such specimens of the genus homo was certainly most unfortunate for the commissioner; and as there was no table disengaged to which he could adjourn, he was obliged to bear the disagreeable contiguity with what grace he could spare. Already there existed between these three that sort of antagonism which habitués of the same coffee-room often experience, even when entire strangers to each other. At first the young gentleman tried to get a 'rise' out of the man of figures by making execrable puns VOL. I.-NO. V. (such as declaring that the bouquets in the ladies' boots were an offering to their understandings), and letting them off, cracker-like, at his recondite head. From the respect due to my reader, I should be extremely sorry to give him more than the above specimen of the manner in which the two friends twisted and turned the English language into tropes and figures which might rile' their adversary; but it was all of no use, and for this excellent reason, a pun to the commissioner was no pun at all; for only seeing one meaning, and being intensely literal, they were like epigrams with the point omitted, and fell at his feet as harmless as puff-darts on the hide of a rhinoceros. While on this subject, I must say that a pun, unless it falls into its place naturally, or shoots like a bright crystal spontaneously from the subject, ought by all honest men to be regarded as a sort of skeleton key by which the burglar enters the arcanum of intelligence to corrupt, to steal, and to destroy. Johnson's well-known dictum, that a punster would pick a pocket, is perhaps the best alliterative thing ever said upon the subject; but Johnson himself punned, and very badly too. He could always find praise for puns in the dead languages, possibly to show his knowledge of them-such as his allusions to Burke's classical bon-mot upon Wilkes' being carried on the shoulders of the mob : Lege solutis.' numerisque fertur Athenæus describes a certain Pompeianus as a word-catcher,' but word-twister would be more to the purpose, though certainly you must first catch your word. A good or bad pun rising from the sparkle of conversation is one thing, but the attempt to found what I suppose would be by them called a Punic school, whereof punsters are the high-priests and masters, is a peculiar feature in English literature, to say the least of it. In the first place, nothing is so easy as a play upon words, for the English language, owing to its derivatives com 2 D ing from so many sources, teems with syllables of a similar sound with dissimilar meanings. Besides which, the generality of punning is an impertinence. It is very often an attempt on the part of Ignorance, ill at ease with himself and with others, to change the current of conversation from a subject about which he knows nothing into a channel narrow and shallow, wherein he is at home. I have known the authors of broad, and even coarse, burlesques term themselves littérateurs, and have seen them offended if, at some feast of letters, they have been provided with third-rate places. The truth is, they mistake the light of wordy fireworks for the steady light of constructive ability, and at some modern gathering of Deipnosophists would place a Macaulay or Prescott at the side-table and elect to the chair the author of the last successful extravaganza. Fairy pieces, produced by a union of elegant fancy, wit, music, and something very nearly akin to lyric poetry, are welcome to every one; and even burlesques, founded upon ballets, nursery tales, or melodrames are admissible; but I cannot help believing that turning the higher order of dramas into doggrel and puns is a degrading use of our pens and of our time. I would symbolize the authors of such travesties as half-witted fellows following in the wake of true genius, with a cracked lantern in their hands, making grimaces, imitating any peculiarities in his gait, and throwing stones at him. Horrid propensity, making all sense a lie; Punsters and pickpockets are of a clan : Thus Johnson the burly, called Johnson the surly, A thief; for he punn'd, did that terrible man.' 'Oh, a rascally pun Is the natural son And humour it hides.' Send him to Jericho, whether he will or no; Give him a whipping as rogue or a rake; Cast round him manacles, and let the man he calls Bind him with-oh, there's a pun by mistake!' Certainly the vagaries of fortune are endless. We have just called the reader's attention to a man who considers it infra dig. to indulge in anything that approaches a laugh, and sitting in the same room with him is an individual who owes all his success in life to nature having placed a permanent smile upon his face. At school, it is true, he got many a licking from the belief of the masters that he was laughing at them; but by degrees they discovered that the poor fellow was affected by a chronic simper. When thrashed, he smiled; when he was sent to the bottom of the class he smiled; when he had a tooth drawn he smiled so sweetly that the dentist pulled out four; when he was engaged in a pitched battle with some other boy he still smiled, than which nothing could be more provoking, and involved him in an additional drubbing after he had cried ‘pax.' 'I'll pax you, you young dog,' cries big bully, and at him again. When he went home for the holidays, his respected mother died, and he smiled so pleasantly at her funeral that even the undertakers were scandalized. When, at length, he entered the world on his own account, fortune returned his smile. His father made him a grocer, and his simper got him a plum. The maid-servants flocked to his shop, he was such a good-tempered young man, always a smile and a kind word for everybody;' and so his first success in life began. After being in the grocery line for some time, he took out a licence, and, by an easy transition of trades, he became a wine merchant; and the smile with which he poured you out a glass of sherry insured his success in this venture also. In due course, he asked a young lady to marry him, and though she refused at first, he smiled so blandly that she afterwards recanted, and became the wife of his bosom, and of his smile. Having made a little money, he purchased houses, and smiled tenants into them, and enlarged his capital, and employed the best chemists, who worked in vineyards in the City, to produce wines with the captivating titles of a fine fruity wine,' 'a silky ditto,' 'an elegant example of the vintage '42, a rough and ready wine,' et hoc genus omne, all of which the said chemist or chemists produced. There sits our friend, smiling at the remains of his breakfast, at the waiter when he passes, at his own boots, and at everybody and at everything. He has retired from business some years, and comes to the sea-side every season to simper with the same identical look with which he was born, and which, like the light of the vestal virgins, is never to be extinguished. I suppose the risible muscles, having become rigid, they would have to be cut, like a horse for string-halt, before that indelible grin could ever be eradicated. Near this curious individual, his breakfast-table covered with a heterogeneous mélange of edibles, is a wealthy, fashionable, titled roué, who looks as if he had been lately exhumed, owing to his unhealthy and cadaverous appearance. He has so thoroughly exhausted mind and body by dissipation that gluttony is the only vigorous vice he has been able to retain for the solace of his premature old age. Depraved, heartless, and licentious, he is, nevertheless, a man of many accomplishments, and is well versed in the current literature of Europe, which he reads in several of its languages. He is an excellent classic, too; and had he lived in the days of Nero would most likely have been a rival and successor to Petronius Arbiter; only had he written his autobiography in Greek, I do not believe even the 'spirited publisher' of our day (whose idea of 'standard' literature has led to the transfusion of so many peculiar classics into the vernacular) would have found a translator courageous enough to meddle with the offal. He would be witty and amusing if not shamelessly indelicate, and his habit of swearing at the servants, while giving the most ordinary orders, is an outrage upon the whole room. He turns all the i's and e's of his expletives into a's, or double a's, so there is quite a breadth and richness about his absolute style and imperative commands. Yet this man-certainly the most loathsome specimen of a human wreck I ever knew; and if I dared to hint at the depth of his vices and excesses the reader would agree with me-with sufficient luminosity about him to suggest the sparkle that often accompanies rottenness-this man is the centre of a certain clique of well-born gentlemen, and amongst them he is regarded as the leader of ton, and an authority upon most matters of taste. Possibly this arises from the fact of his being not only a gourmand, but a consummate gourmet; and if you pride yourself upon the dinner you have ordered, and ask his opinion of the menu, you will soon find how profoundly ignorant you are as a gastronomic purveyor. He is not only thoroughly acquainted with every récherché dish that continental artists have produced, but in most cases he can tell you how to make them; though there are some he declares so exceedingly delicate that they are not producible in our smoky climate, and, like carmine, lose a portion of their beauty if not prepared in a rarefied and pure air. He has an intimate knowledge of feasting amongst the ancients, and would learnedly criticise the pure distinctions between the Athenian, Lacedæmonian, Cretan, Persian, Egyptian, and Thracian banquets, and delights in descanting upon the various properties of the Erbulian, the Formian, the Lesbian, the Mamertian, the Sabine, the Marcotic, and a hundred different sorts of drinks amongst the heathens; while especially he would discuss the difference between the Falernian, fit for men, and the 'Opernian Falernian,' fit for gods. If you gave him caviare, he would exclaim, to some plât requiring the genius of invention and the skill of practical art. There is, however, one gold thread running through the dark texture of this man's nature, one bright spot in his shameless life, which, like the vital principle in the grain of Egyptian wheat that has lain buried for a thousand years, may keep, in the dim future, that dark soul from utterly perishinghe has loved fondly, devotedly, and he is faithful to memory. In his chambers in Piccadilly-where many an orgie, rivalling the days of Domitian, had been enacted-is the model of a beautiful hand; but the glass case which covers it is opaque; and there hangs a picture against his wall of a woman lovely as Venus; but a green curtain conceals it, which is never withdrawn. It is pleasant to turn from this Trimalchio, who is finishing his breakfast off snipes' kidneys and dry curaçoa, to that very strange-looking individual, whom one would pronounce to be a dapper groom in a good place. He is exactly like the pictures of Mr. Punch, and the stoop in his shoulders has been acquired by a peculiar habit of constantly regarding the Roman outline of his nose with a glance at once expressive of tenderness and respect. Every portion of his personal appearance cries 'stables,' and upon making his acquaintance you find he is a sort of peripatetic racing calendar, for he knows the name of every horse that has been a winner at the principal races for the last twenty years. The buttons of his waistcoat are gold horseshoes. The pin in his cravat is a highly-chased horse's head. The ring on his finger is made from the hair of the tail of a favourite filly. He carries a heavy riding-whip in his hand, and his trousers are strapped tight down, as if he were ready at any minute for a cross-country ride or a brush with the harriers. When he opens his mouth there is no longer any doubt as to the high standing of his profession. Bet you six to two he is broken kneed.' 'By Jove! What a clipper Bucephalus is, but I have some doubts about his rider.' 'Bet you even the cob don't fetch thirty pounds at Tattersall's.' 'Done in ponies.' Such were the fragments of conversation going on between him and his friends, while every now and then he would whip out of his breast-pocket a little memorandumbook and inscribe therein certain hieroglyphics, which would most likely be translated into losses or gains of many thousands the next Derby Day. In no country in the world except England could such a character be found. The same peculiarity of mind which has made that individual a gentleman jockey, but resulting in far different effects, has moulded that fresh-coloured, hale old man, standing with his back to the fire, into a devotee at the shrine of nature, and he is what is termed a naturalist. His life has been spent in watching the habits of animals lowly in the scale of existence, and he has thus acquired, perhaps, the most truly valuable gift to man-the faculty and habit of loving-loving in its extended meaning-the minima and maxima; and his ear, accustomed to the inner whisperings of nature, knows where to find many a magic melody hidden from others. He turns his research and knowledge into serviceable channels, too, for he has established evening classes for the poor at the Institute at Band gives them a popular idea of the workings of nature, illustrating his meaning by amusing and curious facts. I remember, at one of his lectures to a very humble auditory, when explaining the uses and ultimate ends of geology, a burly fellow started up and exclaimed: 'Well, I am darned if I think breaking up stones on the highway a lively sort of fun any how.' To which the veteran lecturer replied 'Yes, my friend, you would if youremember that these same stones contain the alphabet of creation.' Whether the interlocutor understood this I cannot say, but the earnest tone with which it was uttered brought conviction, and there was a hearty burst of 'Hear, hear,' amongst the 'roughs' generally. |