Various

“ When, in a melo-drama, the bride is placing her foot upon the first step of the altar, and Ruffiaano tears her away, far from the grasp of her lover; when a rich uncle in a farce dies to oblige a starving author in a garret; when, two rivals duellise with toasting-forks; when such things are plotted and acted in the theatre, hypercritics murmur at their improbability; but compare them with the haps of the drama off the stage, and they become the veriest of commonplaces. ”

“ THE WIZARD OF THE NORTH,
the illustrious professor of Phœnixsistography, and other branches of the black art, the names of which are as mysterious as their performance.
One only specimen of his prowess convinced us of his supernatural talents. He politely solicited the loan of a bank-note—he was not choice as to the amount or bank of issue. “It may be,” saith the play-bill, “a Bank of England or provincial note, for any sum from five pounds to one thousand.” His is better magic than Owen Glendower’s, for the note “did come when he did call it!” ”

“ 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 its females. ”

“ I hate everybody, and, with the exception of gin-and-water, everything. I know every language, both in the known and unknown worlds; I am profoundly ignorant of history, or indeed of any other useful science, but have a smattering of all. I am excellently qualified to judge and lash the vices of the age, having experienced, I may almost say, every one of them in my own person. ”

“ H. Vining, who seemed to understand the purport of the words she had to speak, and was, consequently, inoffensive—a rare merit when Shakspere is attempted on the other side of the Thames.
The qualifications demanded of an actor by the usual run of Surrey audiences are lungs of undeniable efficiency, limbs which will admit of every variety of contortion, and a talent for broad-sword combats. How, then, could the new Macbeth—a Mr. Graham—think of choosing this theatre for his first appearance? His deportment is quiet, and his voice weak. ”

“ There is not a more striking instance of the remarkable connexion between little—very little—causes, and great—undeniably great—effects, than the extraordinary origin, rise, progress, germ, development, and maturity, of the above-bridge navy, the bringing of which prominently before the public, who may owe to that navy at some future—we hope so incalculably distant as never to have a chance of arriving—day, the salvation of their lives, the protection of their hearths, the inviolability of their street-doors, and the security of their properties. ”

“ In the year 1799, I made an attempt on the journal of the late Reverend Mr. Thomas Hill, then fast sinking in years; but he had ill-treated my father, pursuing him before Mr. Justice Fielding for robbing him of a snuff-box, in the year 1740; and he continued his resentment towards my father’s unoffending son. I was cruelly rebuffed by Mr. Hill, as indeed I have been by every other newspaper proprietor.
No; there is not a single periodical print which has appeared for forty-three years since, to which I did not make some application. ”

“ PUNCH.—And, wizard as he is, he’ll have his work to do. He, however, promises that every four-pound loaf shall henceforth go as far as eight, so that no alteration of the Corn Laws shall be necessary. He furthermore promises to plant Blackheath and Government waste grounds with sugar-cane, and to raise the penny post stamp to fourpence, in so delicate a manner that nobody shall feel the extra expense. As for the opposition, what will a man care for even the speeches of a Sibthorp—who can catch any number of bullets, any weight of lead, in his teeth? ”

“ But if the pride of the proprietor—if he can be called a proprietor who derives nothing from his property—be great, what must be the feelings of the captain to whose guidance the bark is committed! We can scarcely conceive a nobler subject of contemplation than one of those once indigent—not to say absolutely done up—watermen, perched proudly on the summit of a paddle-box, and thinking—as he very likely does, particularly when the vessel swags and sways from side to side—of the height he stands upon. ”

“ Graham cannot help his physical defects; but he can help being an actor, and, above all, choosing a part which requires great prowess of voice. In less trying characters, he may prove an acquisition; for he showed no lack of judgment nor of acquaintance with the conventional rules of the stage. At the Surrey, and in “Macbeth,” he is entirely out of his element. Above all, let him never play with Mr. Hicks, whose energy in the combat scene, and ranting all through Macduff, brought down “Brayvo, Hicks!” in showers. The contrast is really too disadvantageous. ”

“ It is a pitiful sight to behold these poor people taking leave of their softly-stuffed seats, their rocking-chairs, their footstools, slippers, cushions, and all those little official comforts of which they nave been so cruelly deprived. ”

“ Or, is it, as the mild and humane Judge P—— would prove to us, a necessary result of the Statutes at Large; and can it be rendered universal only by sending out Jack Ketch as a missionary—by the introduction of rope-walks in foreign parts, and the erection of gallows all over the world? Or, is it, as the Archbishop of Canterbury contests, to be achieved solely by the dissemination of bishops, and by diffusing among the poor benighted negroes the blessings of sermons, tithes, and church rates? Christianity, it has, on the other hand, been asserted, is the only practical system of civilisation ”

“ Whilst he is engaged in this pleasing task, I will give my readers a pen-and-ink sketch of my respected relative. Fancy a man declining from his fiftieth year, but fresh, vigorous, and with a greenness in his age that might put to the blush some of our modern hotbed-reared youths, with the best of whom he could cross a country on the back of his favourite hunter, Cruiskeen, and when the day’s sport was over, could put a score of them under the aforementioned oak table—which, by the way, was frequently the only one of the company that kept its legs upon these occasions of Hibernian hospitality. ”

“ The butchers are reduced to their last stake. The weavers say their lives hang by a single thread. The booksellers protest we must turn over a new leaf. The ironmongers declare that the times are very hard indeed. ”

“ Looking as we do at the above-bridge navy, in a large and national light, we are not inclined to go into critical details, such as are to be met with, passim, in the shrewd and amusing work of “The Passenger on board the Bachelor.” There may be something in the objection, that there is no getting comfortably into one of these boats when one desires to go by it. It may be true, that a boy’s neglecting “to hold” sufficiently “hard,” may keep the steamer vibrating and Sliding about, within a yard of the pier, without approaching it. ”

“ Vulgarity, it is said, sticks to a man like a limpet to a rock. Shawn knew the best way to rub it off would be by mixing with good society. Dress, he always understood, was the best passport he could bring for admission within the pale of gentility; accordingly, he boldly attempted to pass the boundary of plebeianism, by appearing one fine morning at the fair of Ballybreesthawn in a flaming red waistcoat, an elegant oarline22. ”

“ It is sometimes lamented that the taste for poetry is on the decline—that it is no longer relished—that the public will never again purchase it as a luxury. But it must be some consolation to our modern poets to know (as no doubt they do, for it is by this time notorious) that their productions really do a vast deal of service—that they are of a value for which they were never designed. ”

“ We have every reason to believe, unless a very respectable authority, on whom we are in the habit of relying, has grievously imposed upon us, that a very illustrious personage has consulted a certain exalted individual as to whether a certain other person, no less exalted than the latter, but not so illustrious as the former, shall be employed in a certain approaching event, which at present is involved in the greatest uncertainty. ”

“ Do you suppose I care for being beaten? Bah! I no more care for a flogging than a boy does at Eton: and only let the flogger beware—I will be a match for him, I warrant you. The man who beats me is a coward ”

“ Hence, the people, knowing them as well as they know the contents of their own breeches’ pockets, may not be gulled so long as if governed by those whose tricks—I mean, whose capabilities—have not been so strongly marked. With new men we have always the benefit of hope ”

“ Sir Hussey Vivian was relating to Sir Robert Peel the failure of the Duke of Normandie’s experiment with a terrible self-explosive box, which he had buried in a mound at Woolwich, in the expectation that it would shortly blow up, but which still remains there, to the great terror of the neighbourhood, who are afraid to approach the spot where this destructive engine is interred. Sir Robert, on hearing the circumstance, declared that Lord John Russell had served him the same trick, by burying the corn-law question under the Treasury bench. ”

“ Indeed, when we consider the high state of civilisation which this country has attained, and imagine for an instant the awful amount of distress which would necessarily accrue from the general practice of Christianity among us, even for a week, it is clear that the idea never could be entertained by any moral or religious, mind. ”

“ But it is not so easy as some people imagine to shake off the remembrance of what we have been, and it is still more difficult to make our friends oblivious on that point, particularly if we have ascended in the scale of respectability. Thus it was, that in spite of my grandfather’s weighty purse, he could not succeed in prefixing Mister to his name; find he continued for a long time to be known as plain ‘Shawn Duffy, of the Devil’s Half-acre.’ It was undoubtedly a most diabolic address ”

“ Dunn, the miller of Wimbledon, has recently given his infant the Christian name of Cardigan. If there is truth in the adage of “give a dog a bad name and hang him,” the poor child has little else in perspective than the gallows. ”

“ Fortunately for the success of my grandfather’s invasion of the aristocratic rights, it occurred on the eve of a general election, and as he had the command of six or eight votes in the county, his interest was a matter of some importance to the candidates. Be that as it may, it was with feelings little short of absolute dismay, that the respectable inhabitants of the extensive village of Ballybreesthawn beheld the metamorphosed tenant of ‘The Devil’s Half-acre,’ walking arm-in-arm down the street with Sir Denis Daly, the popular candidate. ”

“ By them, also, we are told that “words would manifestly fail in portraying so low a state of morals as is pictured in the lineaments of an Australian chief,”—a stretch of the outside philosophy which we certainly were not prepared to meet with; for little did we dream that this noble science could ever have attained such eminence, that men of intellect would be able to discover immorality in particular noses, and crime in a certain conformation of the chin.
That an over-attention to the adornment of the person is a barbarism all must allow ”

“ The bakers complain that the pressure of the times is so great, that they cannot get the bread to rise. The bricklayers swear that the monopolists ought to be brought to the scaffold. The glaziers, having taken some pains to discover the cause of the distress, declare that they can see through the whole affair. The gardeners wish to get at the root of the evil, and consequently have become radical reformers. ”

“ All the world will be now a-touring. But every one is not a Dr. Bowring, and it is rather convenient to be able to edge in a word now and then, when these rascally foreigners will chatter in their own beastly jargon. ”

“ Another individual, who is more dignified than the third personage above alluded to, but not nearly so illustrious as the first, and not half so exalted as the second, has nothing whatever to do with the matter above hinted at, and it is not at all probable that he will be ever in the smallest way mixed up with it. ”

“ The most rabidly-engaged gentleman was Turner, who, despite the remonstrances of his colleagues upon the expense attendant upon his whimsical notions, would persist in making the grass more natural by emptying large buckets of treacle and mustard about the ground. ”

“ Sprung from a little knot of (we wish we could say “jolly young,” though truth compels us to proclaim) far from jolly, and decidedly old, “watermen,” the above-bridge navy, whose shattered and unfrequented wherries were always “in want of a fare,” may now boast of covering the bosom of the Thames with its fleet of steamers ”

“ 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. ”

“ It will be seen that, on the principle of the Painter and his Cow, we have distinctly written above each sentence the language it belongs to. It is always better to obviate the possibility of mistakes. ”