Various

“ All the world were returning to town. Georgiana Gray had just forsaken Harrowgate and its waters, to participate in the thickening gaieties of the metropolis. Augustus Peacock had abandoned the moors of Scotland for the beauties of Almack’s; and Julius Candy had hastened from the banks of the Wye for the fascinations of Taglioni and the Opera. ”

“ It is a well-known and established fact, that nothing so far conduces to the domestic happiness of all circles as the golden system of living within one’s income. Luxuries cease to be so if after-reflection produces vexatious results; comfort flies before an exorbitant and unprepared-for demand; and the debtor dunned by the merciless creditor sinks into something worse than a cipher, as nothingness is denied him, and the one standing before him but aggravates, and multiplies his painful annoyances. ”

“ Julius, who was in a measure similarly affected by the excitement of his unknown friend, observed, that the gentleman certainly did seem of a peculiarly gay disposition; and the two rivals, each delighted with the fancied approval of his suit by the other, indulged a mutual cachinnation.
“I suppose,” after a slight pause remarked Augustus, with apparently perfect indifference, “you are aware that there was a rival in the field?”
“Oh! ah! did hear of a fellow,” responded Julius, with equal insouciance, “but the idea of any other man carrying off the prize, perfectly ridiculous!” ”

“ THE RIVAL CANDIDATES.
Be not afraid, gentle reader, that, from the title of our present article, we are about to prescribe for you any political draught. No! be assured that we know as little about politics as pyrotechny—that we are as blissfully ignorant of all that relates to the science of government as that of gastronomy—and have ever since our boyhood preferred the solid consistency of gingerbread to the crisp insipidity of parliament. ”

“ P.
“Never! ’pon my honour! never!”—exclaimed Julius, in a tone of moderate enthusiasm. “You may call them eyes, sir,” and here he elevated his own.
“And what lips?”
“Positively provoking!”
“Ah, sir!” languishingly remarked Augustus, “he will be a happy may who gets possession of such a treasure!”
“He will, indeed, sir,” returned his unknown rival, with an air of self-satisfaction, as if he believed that happiness was likely to be his own. ”

“ Manhug.
“If he knew you as well as I do, Manhug,” observes Mr. Jones, “he’d be sure to lend it—oh, yes!—I should rayther think so, certainly,” whereupon Mr. Jones compresses his nostril with the thumb of his right hand, and moves his fingers as if he was performing a concerto on an imaginary one handed flageolet.
“Mr. Rapp, what is the difference between an element and a compound body?”
Mr. Rapp is again obliged to confess his ignorance.
“A compound body is composed of two or more elements,” says the grinder, “in various proportions. Give me an example, Mr. Jones.” ”

“ Philosophers generally affirm that the only substance capable of producing a magnetic effect is steel; but had they been witnesses of the great attraction that the fortune of our fair heroine had for its many eager pursuers, they would doubtless have agreed with us that the metal possessing the greatest possible power of magnetism is decidedly—gold. Innumerable were the butterflies that were drawn towards the lustre of the lovely Georgiana’s money ”

“ In one word, Miss Kemble is a mistress of every branch of her art; and we can now say, what we have so seldom had an opportunity to boast of, that our English stage possesses a singer who is also an actress and musician! ”

“ This is most commonly thrown in, by giving to the stock-villain a dash of humour or sarcasm, so as to bring out his savagery in bolder relief. He is also invested with an unaccountable influence over the hero, who can on no account be made to see his bare and open treachery till about the middle of the fifth act, when the dupe’s eyes must be opened in time for the catastrophe.
These improvements have been carefully introduced into the present old new tragedy. Ugone Spinola is the presiding genius of Doria’s woes: and dogs him about for the pleasure of making him miserable. ”

“ It is impossible to reflect upon the enlarged humanity of Sir ROBERT—for though, indeed, he is no other than the old German quack revived, we will not refuse to him his new name—toward the sufferers of Paisley, without feeling that the fine spirit of finesse which made the reputation of the student of the Black Forest has in no way suffered from its long sleep ”

“ The interesting condition of Her Majesty is a source of the most agonising suspense to the Lord Mayors of London and Dublin, who, if a Prince of Wales is not born before their period of office expires, will lose the chance of being created baronets. ”

“ But the truth is, Toryism has a new host to contend with. Her old reign was supported by fictitious credit—by seeming prosperity—and, more than all, by the ignorance of the people. Well, the bills drawn by Toryism (at a long date we grant) have now to be paid—paper is to be turned into Bank gold. Arithmetic is a great teacher, and, with the taxman’s ink horn at his button-hole, gives at every door lessons that sink into the heart of the scholar. ”

“ Men are lived over again. The world is now as it was in ages past: there was none then but there hath been some one since that parallels him, and, as it were, his revived self.” We are devout believers in the creed.
HERR VON TEUFELSKOPF was a High German doctor, of the first class. He had taken his diploma of Beelzebub in the Black Forest, and was gifted with as fine a hand to force a card—with as glib a tongue to harangue a mob at wakes and fairs, as any professor since the birth of the fourth grace of life,—swindling. ”

“ She can burst forth a torrent of sound expressive of our strongest passions, without losing an atom of tone, and she can diminish it to a whisper, in sotto voce, as distinct as it is thrilling and true intonation. ”

“ Doria’s father dies, and Nina’s consents to his marriage; so that we see them, at the opening of the third act, the picture of connubial bliss, in a garden belonging to the Duke’s palace at Genoa, exchanging sentiments which would be doubtless extremely tender if they were quite intelligible. A great deal is said about genius being like love; which gives rise to a simile touching a rose-bud in a poor poet’s window, and other incoherencies quite natural for persons to utter who are supposed to be in love. This peaceful scene is interrupted by an alarm of war ”

“ A light damask curtain is found to have been saturated with port wine; a ditto chair-cushion has been doing duty as a dripping-pan to a cluster of wax-lights; a china shepherdess, having been brought into violent collision with the tail of a raging lion on the mantel-piece, has reduced the noble beast to the short-cut condition of a Scotch colley. A broken candle has perversely fallen the only way in which it could have done any damage, and has thrown the quicksilver on the back of a large looking-glass into an alarming state of eruption. ”

“ And here we may be forgiven for a short digression on the subject of the dramatic Materia Medica, and poison-ology. The sleeping draughts of the stage are, for example, generally speaking, uncommon specimens of chemical perfection. When taken—even if the patient be ever so well shaken—nothing on earth, or on the stage, can wake him after the cue for his going to sleep, and before the cue for his getting up, have been given; while it never allows him to dose an instant longer than the plot of the piece requires. ”

“ By a process not very prevalent amongst English singers—practice the most constant, study the most unwearied. Punch will bet a wager with any sporting dilettante that Miss Kemble has sung more while learning her art, than many old stagers while professing and practising it. ”

“ The candidates of whom we write were no would-be senators—no sprouting Ciceros or embryo Demosthenes’—they were no aspirants for the grand honour of representing the honest and independent stocks and stones of some ancient rotten borough, or, what is about the same thing, the enlightened ten-pound voters of some modern reformed one—they were not ambitious of the proud privilege of appending for seven years two letters to their names, and of franking some half-dozen others per diem. ”

“ A word or two on the merits of Nina Sforza. There are two classes of dramatists who are just now contending for fame—those who cannot get their plays acted because they are not dramatic, and those who can, because their pieces are merely dramatic. Mr.—we beg pardon, R. Zouch S. Troughton, Esquire,—belongs to the latter class. He is evidently well acquainted with the mechanics of the stage; he knows all about “situation”—that is, sacrificing nature to startling effect. ”

“ The villain went to the Lowther Arcade—took me with him by force. Fancy my agony; literally accessory to handing ices to milliners’ apprentices and staymakers; and when the wretch commenced quadrilling it, he dos-a-dos’d me up against a fat soap-boiler’s wife, in filthy three-turned-and-dyed common satin.”
“Scoundrel!”
“Rascal! But he was discovered—he reeled home drunk. I, that is, as it’s known, we make the men. The Cornet saw him, and thrashed him soundly with a three-foot Crowther.” ”

“ The reporters mark as a miracle the extraordinary fact, that during the whole time of the fire, the weathercock continued to vary with the wind. The gentlemen of the press, probably, expected that the awful solemnity of the scene would have rendered any man, not entirely lost to every sense of feeling, completely motionless. ”

“ Doria is aroused by a hunting-party who have risen so early that they seem to have forgotten to take off their nightcaps, to which the Italian hood, as worn by the Haymarket hunters, bears an obstinate resemblance. The Prince discovers his wife has fled, and orders his chasseurs to divert their attention from the game they had purposed to ride to cover for, and to hunt up the missing Nina.
“In the deep recesses of a wood” Spinola and Doria meet, the latter having, by some instinct, found out his pseudo-friend’s treachery; of course they fight: Doria falls ”

“ Both these miseries were consequent upon the Applebite festivities, and Agamemnon saw a series of catarrhs enter the house as the rout-stools made their exit. He was quite right; for the next fortnight neck-of-mutton broth was the standard bill of fare, only varied by tea, gruel, and toast-and-water.
There is no evil without its attendant good; and the temporary imprisonment of the Applebite family induced them to consider the propriety of naming the infant heir, for hitherto he had been called “the cherub,” “the sweet one,” “the mother’s duck of the world,” and “daddy’s darling.” ”

“ Then as to poisons; there are some which kill the taker dead on the spot, like a fly in a bottle of prussic acid; others, which—swallowed with a sort of time-bargain—are warranted to do the business within a few seconds of so many hours hence; others again there are (particularly adapted for villains) that cause the most incessant torment, which nothing can relieve but death; a fourth compound (always administered to such characters as Nina Sforza) are peculiarly mild in their operation—no stomach-ache—no contortions—but still effectual. ”

“ We have no doubt that Lords and Commons will be blown up on the re-assembling of Parliament; and as an assurance that we do not speak upon conjecture only, we beg to subjoin a portrait of the delinquent. ”

“ Such, in the most exalted sense of the term, is Miss Adelaide Kemble. Unlike nearly every other English singer, she has not set up with the small stock-in-trade of a good voice, and learned singing on the stage; making the public pay for her tuition. On the contrary, nature has manifestly not been bountiful to her in this respect. ”

“ We have seen how Sir ROBERT has snatched the cards out of the hands of the Whigs, and shall find how he will play the self-same trumps assorted by his opponents. A change is already coming over the Conservatives; they are meek and mild, and, with their pocket handkerchiefs at their eyes, lisp about the distresses of the people. ”

“ Manhug, I really must entreat of you to be more steady,” interrupts the professor. “You would scrape the ceiling with the fire-shovel, would you not? Plaster contains lime, and lime is an antidote. Recollect that, if you please. They like you to say you would scrape the ceiling, at the Hall: they think it shows a ready invention in emergency. Mr. Newcome, you have heard the last question and answer?”
“Yes sir,” says the fresh arrival, as he finishes making a note of it.
“Well; you are sent for, to a man who has hung himself. What would be your first endeavour?” ”

“ This will be the cry of the Conservatives; and we shall see men, who before would have vowed themselves to slow starvation before they would admit an ear of wheat from Poland or Egypt, vote for a sliding-scale or no scale at all, as their places and the strength of their party may be best assured. ”

“ This attempt to discuss moot points upon the stage—to turn as it were the theatre into a debating society—will certainly not succeed. Audiences—especially Haymarket ones—have a taste for being amused rather than reasoned with; besides, those on that side of the question which the author chooses shall be the weaker, do not like to see the stage-orators get the upper hand, without having a chance of answering them. ”

“ In a large room, ornamented by shelves of bottles and preparations, with varnished prints of medical plants and cases of articulated bones and ligaments, a number of young men are seated round a long table covered with baize, in the centre of whom an intellectual-looking man, whose well-developed forehead shows the amount of knowledge it can contain, is interrogating by turns each of the students, and endeavouring to impress the points in question on their memories by various diverting associations. ”