mount, and returning, each with a glorious bunch of primroses in his hand. Alas! they little imagined what a change a few generations of bricklayers were destined to work upon this spot. The site of yonder murky brewhouse was then a delicious tea-garden. In the adjacent lane, then a shady sequestered avenue, in which the grasshopper chirped a welcome to the strolling lovers, the lazy waggon now growls along. For the lowing herd we have now the bawling watchman-to shrubberies and hedgerows have succeeded files of hackney-coaches and the very spot, perhaps, upon which the coy maiden of those days blushed her acceptance of the plighted vow, is now usurped by antipastoral barrels of pickled beef for exportation, or "all articles in the hardware line, for ready money only." These changes make me sad. The enormous corpulency of our metropolis is, doubtless, a proud test of our opulence and power; still I can never recur to its effects upon our rural habits, without envying those simpler times, when the humblest and most central citizen could sally forth once a week to refresh his senses, and ventilate himself and his little ones, in a country excursion; but now interminable streets and squares fence him in on every point, and nature and fresh air have become a day's journey from Cheapside.' "And yet (returned my antiquarian friend, taking up the conversation) I have never repined at being condemned to live in the present age. I know something of the "good old times" of which you speak. Let not a sounding phrase impose upon us. Our ancestors of the nineteenth century may have had a few wise and virtuous men among them; but as a generation, they were barbarous and perverse. With what contempt do the philosophers of our days refer to their maxims of state and legislation-their eternal wars-their senseless restrictions upon commerce-their criminal code-their laws for killing men and preserving pheasants--their taxation, the child of glory and the parent of grumbling-their sinecures their legal fictions-their special action on the case for calling a scoundrel by his proper name. What trifling with common sense! what tampering with human life! The same act in those days was murder in a court of justice, and honour in a ball-room. You see that spot beneath us which still retains its primæval name, the once famous Chalk Farm. It was there that our "good old forefathers" used to meet and pistol one another upon principles which we are unable to comprehend. I shall not go in detail through the folly of their institutions: let a single fact suffice. The youth of those times were taught their first notions of government in the Republican writers of Greece and Rome; and when they came to man's estate, were certain of being pilloried or hanged if they ventured, in word or act, to manifest a distaste to monarchical establishments. The same spirit of perverseness disgraced their literature. I have sometimes taken up a volume of their now-forgotten poetry, but at the first page have been compelled to fling away the unnatural trash in disgust. Their most popular poetry was the apotheosis of all that can be conceived most loathsome or abominable in wretchedness or in crime. Reprobates, who even then would not have been admitted into decent society, and who, if indicted at the "to quarter-sessions, must have been sentenced to whipping and low diet, were versified into right good poetical heroes; and the records of their misdemeanours were (to use the critical cant of the day) last as long as the English language." What a complimentary presentiment of our morals and our taste! Nor was this generation only irrational; it appears to have been completely miserable. I read that suicide was one of the customs of the country. Only imagine what a fearful and precarious tenure must have been existence, when a man, though he should escape the vengeance of the laws, and his neighbour's spring-guns, and his friend's bullet, was, after all, in hourly danger of blowing out his own brains. We laugh or shudder at these things; but they called themselves enlightened, and would have denounced as a fantastic speculator, any one who should hold (what we admit as self-evident truths) that capital punishments may be abolished without increasing crimes that the laws should not favour partridges that it is wiser to spend our money in drinking French wine, than in shedding French and English blood--that an appetite for military glory is the test of a barbarous age-that the democratic writers of antiquity are not the fittest manuals of allegiance-that poetry should not countenance beldames and ruffians-and, finally, that it was very unthinking in those who denied all this, to call themselves a thinking people.' "Music.-Mamaboo, the celebrated violin player from Timbuctoo, who for the last four years has been performing in the principal capitals of Africa and Europe, made his first appearance before a British audience on the 20th ult. We found that fame had not belied his powers. Nothing can exceed the brilliancy of his execution. He was frequently and rapturously encored. Mamaboo is not only one of the most admirable musicians of his age, but we have it from good authority that he possesses the mind and manners of an accomplished gentleman. He speaks his own language with great elegance, and French and English with considerable fluency. One little trait of him is worth relating. The day after his arrival in London, when asked what national object of curiosity he was most desirous to visit, he feelingly replied, The grave of Clarkson.' He confirms our late statement, that a splendid monument to the memory of that illustrious philanthropist has been erected in the capital of Timbuctoo. The following is the inscription, as translated by Mamaboo. The Africans, now free and happy, remember the benefits conferred four hundred years ago upon their suffering ancestors by Thomas Clarkson, an Englishman.' And yet perhaps the single specimen of the civilization of modern Africa, as manifested in the talents of this interesting stranger, should be contemplated as a more valuable and affecting memorial of our countryman's merits, than the most gorgeous tribute that architecture could bestow." "Antiquities. Velocipede. A Fellow of Cambridge has just published an interesting Treatise upon the origin and use of this curious instrument, respecting which the opinions of antiquarians have been so long divided. The prevailing notion of late has been, that it was a mere plaything of our ancestors; but the present writer advances a different theory, which he certainly supports with considerable ability and research. The substance of his doctrine may be shortly stated: He produces incontestable documents to shew, that the period when the Velocipede first appeared in England was in the nineteenth century, towards the close of what was denominated the Peninsular war. (It may be necessary to inform some of our readers, that this war was conducted in Spain, under the auspices of Wellington, a well-known general of his day; and that its successful result was to give a timely check to the ambitious encroachments of Napoleon Bonaparte.) Now,' says our author, the enemy being, at the commencement of the contest, superior in cavalry, (an historical fact) is it not quite natural to assume, that the Government would buy up all the spare horses in the kingdom, and ship them off to reinforce the British army? My conclusion, therefore, is, that in the general scarcity of horses, caused by this necessary measure, Velocipedes were invented to supply their place. This conclusion is corroborated by three most powerful circumstances: First, There is extant a coloured engraving, bearing date about the period in question, in which a Royal Duke is represented as travelling from London to Windsor on a velocipede. Is it to be imagined, that a prince of the blood would not have procured a horse, if the substitute were not the familiar vehicle of the higher classes? Secondly, Velocipedes fell into disuse shortly after the conclusion of the war; and, Thirdly, I find, by the parliamentary records, that about the same time the agricultural tax was repealed-a tax, let me say, which our ancestors, notwithstanding their ignorance of the first principles of political economy, would never have imposed, had not the pressing demands of the state for those animals been such as to justify the apparent impolicy of the measure.' On the whole, we are rather disposed to concur with this ingenious antiquarian." "AMERICA. "To the Editor of the Old Hampstead Magazine. London, July 17, 2200. "Mr. EDITOR,-I cannot refrain from making a few observations upon a letter signed Columbus, inserted in your last, wherein the writer, as it appears to me, has been seduced by his national prepossessions into a strain of very invidious comparison, and into many unfounded conclusions upon the subject of the respective merits of America and England. "The first point that he introduces, and on which he seems especially to pique himself, is, the superior courtesy and refinement of manners, which so pre-eminently distinguish the American gentleman from the less fortunate inhabitant of every other quarter of the globe.' Really, Mr. Editor, this is going rather too far. This is the first time I ever heard it was a misfortune to have been born an Englishman; and even if it were so, I should not deem it 'pre-eminently courteous' in this American gentleman,' to make a voyage across the Atlantic for the purpose of telling me so. I know not what Columbus's notions of refinement may be, but I sincerely pray, that the youth of Old England may long continue uninfected by the finical airs and jaunty gait, and effeminate babble, and sentimental languor, and superhuman grimace, of the Transatlantic coxcombs that infest our drawing-rooms. "He goes on: Even the boasted "British fair" consider their attractions incomplete, unless their minds have received a final polish in the brilliant circles of Washington and Philadelphia, and their persons a final fascination from the unrivalled productions of the American loom.' Mr. Editor, in answer to this pretended superiority of American manners and manufactures, I appeal to all (except the ladies, who will never listen to reason) whether English conversation and English stuffs have not always been allowed, by the most competent judges, to be fully equal (in my opinion they are far superior) to any thing in that way that we have seen imported from Americaand if the British fair' have had the folly to think otherwise, does not Columbus see that it is, and has been from time immemorial, a part of woman's nature to despise every thing native, and to dote upon whatever is foreign. They must have foreign fashions, foreign phrases, foreign attitudes, foreign perfumes, foreign shrubs and flowers; even in daily conversation, the indelible character of their sex breaks out, and, try to fix their minds upon what you will, they are sure to fly off to something foreign to the subject. It is hence, believe me, and not from the intrinsic beauty or value of the articles, that we see our wives and daughters bedizened in Kentucky gauze, and East Florida satin, and Susquehana lace, and head-dresses à l'Illinois, and the various other items of Transatlantic frippery. "Columbus complains of our travelling: he rails at the insolence of our waiters and hostlers, and descants in a strain of sensitive sublimity upon the transcendent horrors of a double-bedded room, ‘an abomination never heard of in his native land.' In answer to this exquisite tirade, I shall merely ask him, if he ever chanced to hear of the homely Jonathan of days of yore, who never grumbled at making one of three-in-a-bed, and would have been affronted at its being hinted to him that he was not enjoying substantial comfort. I shall not follow Columbus through his pompous detail of the political importance and resources of the American empire, nor through his rapturous eulogiums upon the American schools of painting and sculpture, and upon the generations of statesmen, philosophers, and poets, whose names have shed a lustre upon the land that produced them.' As to some of the facts asserted, I shall only say, that, judging from a single specimen, I must allow his countrymen to possess the inventive faculty in a high degree, while his reasonings and general views seem to savour more of the exploded absurdities of three or four centuries ago, than of the juster notions that distinguish the present philosophic and enlightened age. "Your constant Reader, "BRITANNICUS." "LITERATURE. "To the Editor of the Old Humpstead Magazine. "SIR,-Your inhuman allusion to me in your late strictures upon moderu poetry was too palpable to be misunderstood. I have therefore to inform you, that my poem was submitted to the public at the ardent solicitations of several literary friends, whose judgments are not inferior to that of any periodical critic in the kingdom. But I never expected that it could please the present degenerate taste. I told them what I now tell you, that it was written for posterity, and to the decision of an impartial posterity I confidently appeal. July 5, 2200. Yours, "ANTHONY SANGUINE." TO THE DAISY.* SWEET simple flower, though lost to fame, Surely thou 'rt Nature's favour'd flower! Then bade thee grace young Spring's new power, The glowing God beheld thee fair, As brightly glancing from the sky, And, pleased at Nature's friendly care, He said, "Henceforth be call'd mine eye.” Now each returning season brings Thy modest mien, thy lowly sphere, And as I view that orb so dear, Sweet flower! I'll still remember thee. L. "Thus the word 'daisy' is a thousand times pronounced, without our adverting to the beauty of its etymology, viz. the eye of day.' "-NEW MONTHLY MAG. vol. I. page 133. art. CAMPBELL'S LECTURES. |