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قراءة كتاب Punch, or the London Charivari. Volume 1, July 31, 1841
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Punch, or the London Charivari. Volume 1, July 31, 1841
got nearly over all his difficulties—I suppose he meant to say he had nearly got under them—at all events the tunnel, when completed, will be a vast convenience to the metropolis, particularly to the lower classes. From the Tunnel went to Billingsgate-market—confiscated a basket of suspicious shrimps, and ordered them to be conveyed to the Mansion-house. Mem. Have them for breakfast to-morrow. Return to dress for dinner, having promised to take the chair at the Grand Annual Metropolitan Anti-Hydro-without-gin-drinking Association.
Here a hiatus occurs in the MS.; but from cotemporary authorities we are enabled to state that his lordship was conveyed home at two o’clock on the following morning, by some jolly companions.
“Slowly and sadly they smoothed his bed, And they told his wife and daughter To give him, next day, a couple of red- Herrings and soda-water.”
THE LOVES OF THE PLANTS.
The gay Daffodilly, an amorous blade,
Stole out of his bed in the dark,
And calling his brother, Jon-Quil, forth he stray’d
To breathe his love vows to a Violet maid
Who dwelt in a neighbouring park.
A spiteful old Nettle-aunt frown’d on their love;
But Daffy, who laugh’d at her power,
A Shepherd’s-purse slipp’d in the nurse’s Fox-glove,
Then up Jacob’s-ladder he crept to his love,
And stole to the young Virgin’s-bower.
The Maiden’s-blush Rose—and she seem’d all dismay’d,
Array’d in her white Lady’s-smock,
She call’d Mignonette—but the sly little jade,
That instant was hearing a sweet serenade
From the lips of a tall Hollyhock.
The Pheasant’s eye, always a mischievous wight,
For prying out something not good,
Avow’d that he peep’d through the keyhole that night;
And clearly discern’d, by a glow-worm’s pale light,
Their Two-faces-under-a-hood.
Old Dowager Peony, deaf as a door,
Who wish’d to know more of the facts,
Invited Dame Mustard and Miss Hellebore,
With Miss Periwinkle, and many friends more,
One evening to tea and to tracts.
The Butter-cups ranged, defamation ran high,
While every tongue join’d the debate;
Miss Sensitive said, ‘twixt a groan and a sigh,
Though she felt much concern’d—yet she thought her dear Vi—
Had grown rather bulbous of late.
Thus the tale spread about through the busy parterre:
Miss Columbine turn'd up her nose,
And the prude Lady Lavender said, with a stare,
That her friend, Mary-gold, had been heard to declare,
The creature had toy’d with the Rose.
Each Sage look’d severe, and each Cocks-comb look’d gay,
When Daffy to make their mind easy,
Miss Violet married one morning in May,
And, as sure as you live, before next Lady-day,
She brought him a Michaelmas-daisy.
NOTHING WONDERFUL.
The Duke of Normandie accounts for the non-explosion of his percussion-shells, by the fact of having incautiously used some of M’Culloch’s pamphlets on the corn laws. If this be the case, no person can be surprised at their not going off.
MODERN WAT TYLERS.
The anxiety of the Whigs to repeal the timber duties is quite pardonable, for, with their wooden heads, they doubtlessly look upon it in the light of a poll-tax.
Head of a Botecudo previous to disfigurement.
Head of a Butecudo disfigured by chin and ear pendants.
Head of a Botecudo disfigured by civilisation.
CIVILISATION.
“If an European,” says Sir Joshua Reynolds, in one of his Discourses, “when he has cut off his beard, and put false hair on his head, or bound up his own hair in formal, hard knots, as unlike nature as he can make it, and after having rendered them immoveable by the help of the fat of hogs, has covered the whole with flour, laid on by a machine with the utmost regularity—if, when thus attired, he issues forth and meets a Cherokee Indian who has bestowed as much time at his toilet, and laid with equal care and attention his yellow and red ochre on such parts of his forehead and cheeks as he judges most becoming, whichever of these two despises the other for this attention to the fashion of his country, whichever first feels himself provoked to laugh, is the barbarian.”
Granting this, the popular advocates of civilisation certainly are not the most civilised of individuals. They appear to consider yellow ochre and peacocks’ feathers the climax of barbarism—marabouts and kalydor the acme of refinement. A ring through the nose calls forth their deepest pity—a diamond drop to the ear commands their highest respect. To them, nothing can show a more degraded state of nature than a New Zealand chief, with his distinctive coat of arms emblazoned on the skin of his face; nor anything of greater social elevation than an English peer, with the glittering label of his “nobility” tacked to his breast. To a rational mind, the one is not a whit more barbarous than the other; they being, as Sir Joshua observes, the real barbarians who, like these soi-disant civilisers, would look upon their own monstrosities as the sole standard of excellence.
The philosophy of the present age, however, is peculiarly the philosophy of outsides. Few dive deeper into the human breast than the bosom of the shirt. Who could doubt the heart that beats beneath a cambric front? or who imagine that hand accustomed to dirty work which is enveloped in white kid? What Prometheus was to the physical, Stultz is to the moral man—the one made human beings out of clay, the other cuts characters out of broad-cloth. Gentility is, with us, a thing of the goose and shears; and nobility an attribute—not of the mind, but (supreme civilisation!) of a garter!
Certain modern advocates appear to be devout believers in this external philosophy. They are touchingly eloquent upon the savage state of those who indulge in yellow ochre, but conveniently mute upon the condition of those who prefer carmine. They are beautifully alive to the degradation of that race of people which crushes the feet of its children, but wonderfully dead to the barbarism of that race, nearer home, which performs a like operation upon the ribs of