Various

“ We once were sufficiently credulous to believe in the honesty of LOUIS-PHILIPPE; we sympathised with him as a bold, able, high-principled man fighting the fight of good government against a faction of smoke-headed fools and scoundrel desperadoes. He has out-lived our good opinion—the good opinion of the world. He is, after all, a lump of crowned vulgarity. Pity it is that men, the trusting and the brave, are made the puppets, the martyrs, of such regality! ”

“ Now if it be possible—and that it is, no one will now attempt to deny—to divide the brain into distinct faculties, why may not the stomach, which, it has been admitted by the Lord Mayor and the Board of Aldermen, is a far nobler organ than the brain,—why may it not also possess several faculties? As we know that a particular part of the brain is appropriated for the faculty of time, another for that of wit, and so on, is it not reasonable to suppose that there is a certain portion of the stomach appropriated to the faculty of roast beef, another for that of devilled kidney and so forth? ”

“ Our admiration of the boldness with which these men have faced their fate is mingled with the deepest regret that the prime conspirators are safe in Paris; that one sits in derision of justice on fellow criminals—on men whose crime may have some slight extenuation from ignorance, want, or fancied cause of revenge; that the other, with the surpassing meekness of Christianity, goes to mass in her carriage, distributes her alms to the poor, and, with her soul dyed with the blood of the young, the chivalrous, and the brave, makes mouths at Heaven in very mockery of prayer. ”

“ The only merit of “Court and City” being in the dialogue—the only merit of that consisting of minute and subtle representations of character, and these folks being utterly innocent of the smallest perception of its meaning or intention—the draughts they drew upon the patience of the audience were enormous, and but grudgingly met. But for the acting of Farren and the managers, the whole thing would have been an unendurable infliction. ”

“ That LOUIS-PHILIPPE, the Just of Spain, can consign his fellow-conspirator, the Just of Paris, to the scaffold, is a grave proof that there is no honour among a certain set of enterprising men, whom the crude phraseology of the world has denominated thieves.
It is to make the blood boil in our veins to read the account of the execution of such men as LEON, ORA, and BORIA, the foolish martyrs to a wicked cause. Never was a great social wrong dignified by higher courage. ”

“ The legitimate object of comedy is the truthful delineation of manners. In life, manners are displayed by what people do, and by what they say. Comedy, therefore, ought to consist of action and dialogue. ”

“ The din of wheels and the harsh discordant cries of busy life have died within his ear, and the tiny voices of choral birds have hymned him into peace; or the lettered eloquence of dread sages has become sound again, and he has communed in the grove and temple, as they of older time did in the eternal cities, with those whose names are immortal—and there I have seen the humble pipe! the sole evidence of luxury or enjoyment; when his daily task was suspended, it can never end, for he must weave and weave the fibres of his brain into the clue that leads him to the means of sustaining life. ”

“ Good husbands, good fathers, good brothers, and idolised landlords, are plenty enough; but a man who, like Aubrey, is all these put together, is indeed a scarce article; the more so, as he is also a profound scholar, and an honest statesman. In short, though pretty well versed in the paragons of virtue that belong to the drama, we find this Charles Aubrey to be the veriest angel that ever wore black trousers and pumps. ”

“ The pistol was fired against Spanish liberty; and the royal Just, finding the object missed, sneaks off, and leaves his dupe for the executioner. There, however, the similitude fails. LOUIS-PHILIPPE sleeps in safety—if, indeed, the ghosts of his Spanish victims let him sleep at all; whilst for Just, the carpenter, he is marked for the guillotine. Could Justice have her own, we should see the King of the French at the bar of Spain; were the world guided by abstract right, one fate would fall to the carpenter and the King. History, however, will award his Majesty his just deserts. ”

“ Now we have seen that in “Court and City” there is little action: hence it may be supposed that the brilliancy of the dialogue it was that tempted the author to brush away the well-deserved dust under which the “Discovery” and the “Tender Husband” have been half-a-century imbedded. But this supposition would be entirely erroneous. The courtiers and citizens themselves were but dull company: it was chiefly the acting that kept the audience on the benches and out of their beds.
Without action or wit, what then renders the comedy endurable? ”

“ Thus the highest degree of sympathy is excited towards him; for everybody knows that no person would willingly resort to criticism (literary or dramatic) as a means of livelihood, if he could command a broom and a crossing to earn a penny by, or while there exists a Mendicity Society to get soup from.
We have yet to mention one character; and considering that he is the main-spring of the whole matter, we cannot put it off any longer. Mr. Gammon is a lawyer—that is quite enough; we need not say more. You all know that stage solicitors are more outrageous villains than even their originals. ”

“ Have we not here the late revolution in Spain—the QUENISSET conspiracy—and in the prime mover of the first, and the intended victim of the second rascality, KING LOUIS-PHILIPPE, the JEMMY TWITCHER OF THE FRENCH? ”

“ Jemmy, flinging away his crape and his crowbar, ran home to his house—he was then living somewhere in Petty France—went to bed, and the next morning appeared as snug and as respectable as ever to his neighbours. Vehement was his disgust at the knaves killed and caught in the attack on “The Spaniards;” and though there were not wanting bold speakers, who averred that Twitcher was at the bottom of the burglary, nevertheless, his grave look, and the character he had contrived to piece together for honest dealing, secured him from conviction.
Jemmy Twitcher was what the world calls a warm fellow. ”

“ It is he who, finding out a flaw in Aubrey’s title, angled per advertisement for the heir, and caught a Tittlebat—Titmouse. It is he who has so disinterestedly made that gentleman’s fortune.—“Only just merely for the sake of the costs?” one naturally asks. Oh no; there is a stronger reason (with which, however, reason has nothing to do) —love! Mr. Gammon became desperately enamoured of Miss Aubrey; but she was silly enough to prefer the heir to a peerage, Mr. Delamere. Mr. Gammon never forgave her, and so ruins her brother. ”

“ If she appears pleased, rise, seem excited, and at once ask her to say the important, the life-or-death-deciding, the suicide-or-happiness-settling question. If she pulls out her cambric, be assured you are accepted. ”

“ For the Rue Traversière we have only to read the Rue de Courcelles—for Colombier the wine seller, CHRISTINA ex-Queen of Spain. As for the subject of discourse at her Majesty’s hotel, events have bloodily proved that it was the overthrow of a throne—the murder of the constituted authorities of Spain—and, in the comprehensive meaning of Quénisset—“shedding blood, in fact!” At the wine-shop meetings the French conspirator tells us that there was “an old man, a locksmith,” who would read revolutionary themes, and “electrify the souls of the young men about him!” ”

“ It has never been your lot to thread the streets of mighty London, when the first springs of her untiring commerce are set in motion. Long, dear aunt, before thy venerable nose peeps from beneath the quilted coverlid [pg 231] to scent an atmosphere made odorous by cosmetics—long, dear Emmeline, ere those bright orbs that one day will fire the hearts of thousands are unclosed, the artizan has blessed his sleeping children, and closed the door upon his household gods. The murky fog, the drizzling shower, welcome him back to toil. ”

“ This nice adaptation of the dialogue to the various characters, therefore, offers scope for good acting, and gets it. Mr. Farren, in Sir Paladin Scruple, affords what tradition and social history assure us is a perfect portraiture of an old gentleman of the last century;—more than that, of a singular, peculiar old gentleman. And yet this excellent artist, in portraying the peculiarities of the individual, still preserves the general features of the class. The part itself is the most difficult in nature to make tolerable on the stage, its leading characteristic being wordiness. ”

“ It is upon these facts that I have founded my system of Stomachology; and contemplating what has been done, what is doing, and what is likely to be done, in the analogous science of phrenology, I do not despair of seeing the human body mapped out, and marked all over with faculties, feelings, propensities, and powers, like a tattooed New Zealander. The study of anatomy will then be entirely superseded, and the scientific world would be guided, as the fashionable world is now, entirely by externals. ”

“ On extending my observations, I found that different individuals were characterised by different tastes in food, and that one man liked mint sauce with his roast lamb, while others detested it. I discovered also that in most persons there is a predominance of some particular organ over the surrounding ones, in which case a corresponding external protuberance may be looked for, which indicates the gastronomic character of the individual. ”

“ On one shelf of it is seated a supposititious Judge, surrounded by some half-dozen pseudo female spectators; the bottom shelf being occupied by counsel, attorney, crier of the court, and plaintiff. The special jury are severally called in to occupy the right-hand shelf; and when the cupboard is quite full, all the forms of returning a verdict are gone through. This is for the plaintiff! Mr. Aubrey is ruined; and Mr. Titmouse jumps about, at the imminent risk of breaking the cupboard to pieces, having already knocked down a counsel or two, and rolled over his own attorney. ”

“ The dumb show of staring into each other’s faces, squeezing fingers, and sighing, originated, we have reason to believe, with the ancient Romans. It is much practised now-a-days—as saving breath, and being more lover-like than talking. ”

“ Ragged, blue-faced urchins were scrambling the pearly particles together, and, with all the joyous recklessness of healthier childhood, carrying on a war less fatal but more glorious than many that have made countless widows and orphans, and, perhaps, one hero. ”

“ Many men are rather notorious in our great metropolis for “living upon nothing,” that is, existing without the aid of such hard food as starved the ass-eared Midas; out these gentlemen of invisible ways and means have a very decent notion of employing four out of the twenty four hours in supplying their internal economy with such creature comforts as, in days of yore, disinherited Esau, and procured a somewhat gastronomic celebrity for the far-famed Heliogabalus. ”

“ The dialogues of these two “sets” go on quite independent of each other, action there is none, nor plot, nor, indeed, any progression of incident whatever. Lord Dangerfield tells you, in the first scene, he is trying to seduce Lady Whiffle, and you know he won’t get her. Directly you hear that Sir Paladin Scruple has declared in favour of Miss Dangerfield, you are quite sure she will marry the son; in short, there is not the glimmer of an incident throughout either department of the play which you are not scrupulously prepared for—so that the least approach to expectation is nipped in the bud. ”

“ Doctors Spurzheim and Gall have acquired immense renown for their ingenious and plausible system of phrenology. These eminent philosophers have by a novel and wonderful process divided that which is indivisible, and parcelled out the human mind into several small lots, which they call “organs,” numbering and labelling them like the drawers or bottles in a chemist’s shop ”

“ The most exalted virtue of the stage is, in the long run, seen in good circumstances, and vice versa; for, in this country, one of the chief elements of crime is poverty. Hence the picture is reversed; we behold a striking contrast—a scene antithetical. We are shown into a miserable garret, and introduced to a vulgar, illiterate, cockneyfied, dirty, dandified linendraper’s shopman, in the person of Tittlebat Titmouse. In the midst of his distresses his attention is directed to a “Next of Kin” advertisement. It relates to him and to the Yatton property ”

“ Catnach’s admirable idea of having the last dying speeches all struck off on the night before an execution, so as to get them into the hands of the public as early as possible. It was, moreover, my own suggestion to stereotype one speech, to be used on all occasions; and I also must claim the merit of having recommended the fixing a man’s head at the top of the document as “a portrait of the murderer.” ”

“ In fact, even in their modern dress, they are two distinct dramas, only both are played at once—a wholesome economy being thus exercised over time, actors, scenery, and decorations: the only profusion required is in the article of patience, of which the audience must be very liberal.
The courtiers consist of Lord Dangerfield, who although, or—to speak in a sense more strictly domestic—because, he has got a wife of his own, falls in love with the young spouse of young Lord Whiffle ”