Various

“ Hans jumped like a parched pea. Without waiting for a reply, the stranger rose and opened the cupboard. “I never take anything stronger than water,” said Hans, in reply, to the “pshaw!” which broke from the stranger’s lips as he smelt at the contents of a little brown pitcher. “More fool you,” replied his customer. “Here taste that—some of the richest grape-blood of Rheingau;” and he handed Hans a small flask, which the sober barber respectfully declined. “Ha! ha! and yet you hope to thrive with the women,” said the stranger. “No wonder that Agnes treats you as she does. But drink, man! ”

“ When we remember their opinions on the Corn Laws, and see that they are a part of the cabinet which has already shown symptoms of some approaching alteration of the Bread Tax—when we consider their enthusiastic bigotry for everything as it is, and Sir Robert PEEL’S small, adventurous liberality, his half-bashful homage to the spirit of the age—sure we are that both GRAHAM and KNATCHBULL, to remain component members of the Peel Cabinet, must be masters of the science of dove-tailing; and hence, the men of men for the joinery-work of the new Houses of Parliament. ”

“ We put it to the patriotism of members of Parliament, whether they ought not immediately to throw themselves into the arms of Peto and Grissell, with an enthusiastic demand for tools. If they be not wholly insensible of the wants of the nation and of their own dignity, Monday morning’s sun will shine upon every man of her Majesty’s majority, for once laudably employed in the nation’s good. How delightful then to saunter near the works—how charming then to listen to members of Parliament! ”

“ There is many a respectable spider who would justly feel himself calumniated by any comparison between him and any one of twenty Parliamentary lawyers we could name; yet the spider spins its own web, and seeks its own nook of refuge from the Reform Broom of Molly the housemaid. And then, the tiny insect, the ant—that living, silent monitor to unregarding men—doth it not make its own galleries, build with toilsome art its own abiding place? Does not the mole scratch its own chamber—the carrion kite build its own nest! Shall cuckoos and Members of Parliament alone be lodged at others’ pains? ”

“ If we cast our eyes over the debates of the last six months, we shall find that hundreds of members of the House of Commons have exhibited the most extraordinary powers of ill-directed labour. And then their capacity of endurance! Arguments that would have knocked down any reasonable elephant have touched them no more than would summer gnats. Well, why not awake this sleeping strength? Why not divert a mischievous potency into beneficial action? Why should we confine a body of men to making laws, when so many of them might be more usefully employed in wheeling barrows? ”

“ The theatres have concluded; every carriage, cab, and “coach ‘nhired” in their vicinity is in motion; venders of trotters and ham-sandwiches are in full cry; the bars of the proximate retail establishments are crowded with thirsty gods; ruddy chops and steaks are temptingly displayed in the windows of the supper-houses, and the turnips and carrots in the freshly-arrived market-carts appear astonished at the sudden confusion by which they are surrounded. ”

“ At the little town of Stocksbawler, on the Lower Rhine, in the year of grace 1830, resided one Hans Scrapschins, an industrious and close-shaving barber. His industry met with due encouragement from the bearded portion of the community; and the softer sex, whose greatest fault is fickleness, generally selected Hans for the honour of new-fronting them, when they had grown tired of the ringlets nature had bestowed and which time had frosted. ”

“ The new man firmly withstands all inducements to irregularity until his first temptation appears in the form of the Cyder-cellars—the convivial Rubicon which it is absolutely necessary for him to pass before he can enrol himself as a member of the quiet, hard-working, modest fraternity of the Medical Student of our London Hospitals. ”

“ But as he collects his ideas, he contrives to muster sufficient presence of mind to order a Welsh rabbit, and in the interim of its arrival earnestly contemplates the scene around him. There is the room which, in after life, so vividly recurs to him, with its bygone souvenirs of mirth, when he is sitting up all night at a bad case in the mud cottage of a pauper union. ”

“ When he arrived there many of his old friends stood agape for a few moments: but as stranger things had occurred in Germany than a man growing two feet in one night, they soon ceased to notice the alteration in Hans’ appearance. Agnes was evidently struck with the improvement of the barber’s figure, and for two whole hours did he enjoy the extreme felicity of making half-a-dozen other young gentlemen miserable, by monopolising the arm and conversation of the beauty of Stocksbawler. But pleasure, like fine weather, lasts not for ever ”

“ Was there ever anything so lucky that the strike of the masons should have happened at this identical juncture! Parliament is prorogued. Now, deducting Sir Robert Peel, physician, with his train of apothecaries and pestle-and-mortar apprentices, who, until February next, are to sit cross-legged and try to think, there are at least six hundred and thirty unemployed members of the House of Commons, turned upon the world with nothing, poor fellows! ”

“ The people, we know, have been crying for bread—the manufacturers are starving—but their rebellious appetites will be appeased—their refractory stomachs will feel comforted, when they are told all that their friends the Tories have been doing for them. How will they blush for their ingratitude when they find that the following great measures have been triumphantly carried through Parliament by Sir Robert’s exertions—The VENTILATING OF THE HOUSE BILL! ”

“ To keep up his character, a new man ought perpetually to carry a stethoscope—a curious instrument, something like a sixpenny toy trumpet with its top knocked off, and used for the purpose of hearing what people are thinking about, or something of the kind. In the endeavour to acquire a perfect knowledge of its use he is indefatigable. There is scarcely a patient but he knows the exact state of their thoracic viscera, and he talks of enlarged semilunar valves, and thickened ventricles with an air of alarming confidence. And yet we rather doubt his skill upon this point ”

“ For the first two months of the first winter session the fingers of the new man are nothing but ink-stains and industry. He has duly chronicled every word that has fallen from the lips of every professor in his leviathan note book ”

“ As it is customary that an attendance in the Theatre of Lectures should precede the student’s determination to “have a shy at the College,” or “go up to the Hall,” so is it usual for a visit to one of the theatres to be paid before going down to the Cyder-cellars. The new man has been beguiled into the excursion by the exciting narratives of his companions, and beginning to feel that he is behind the other “chaps” (a new man’s term) in knowledge of the world, he yields to the attraction held out ”

“ Some, to be sure, may pick their teeth, in the Gardens of the Tuileries—some may even now venture to exercise their favourite elbow at Baden-Baden,—but with every possible and probable exception, there will yet be hundreds of unemployed law-makers, to whom time will be a heavy porter’s burden. ”

“ The precise hour at which the new man arrives at home, after this eventful evening, has never been correctly ascertained; having a latch-key, he is the only person that could give any authentic information upon this point; but, unfortunately, he never knows himself. Some few things, however, are universally allowed, namely, that in extreme cases he is found asleep on the rug at the foot of the stairs next morning, with the rushlight that was left in the passage burnt quite away, and all the solder of the candlestick melted into little globules. ”

“ We confess to a difficulty in finding among the members of the present Parliament a sufficient number of stone-squarers. When we know that there are so few among them who can look upon more than one side of a question, we own that the completion of the building may be considerably delayed by employing only members of Parliament as square workmen: the truth is, having never been accustomed to the operation, they will need considerable instruction in the art. ”

“ The whole band of jealous rivals set up the “Laughing Chorus,” and Agnes, in the extremity of her disgust, turned up her nose till she nearly fractured its bridge, whilst Hans rushed from the scene of his disgrace, and never stopped running until he opened the door of his little shop, threw himself into a chair, and laid his head down upon an old “family Bible” which chanced to be upon the table. In this position he continued for some time, when, on raising his head, he found his tormentor and the two ladies, grouped like the Graces, in the centre of the apartment. ”

“ BARRY, and are bound to praise the evidence of his taste and genius; but we know that the structure, however fair and beautiful to the eye, must have its foul places; and for the dark, dirty, winding ways of Parliament—reader, take a list of her Majesty’s Commons, and running your finger down their names, pick us out three hundred able-bodied labourers—three hundred stalwart night workmen in darkness and corruption. ”

“ It will be seen, by a glance at the above table, that the three great divisions of society, namely, High Life, Low Life, and Middle Life, are subdivided, or more properly, sub-classed, into the Superior, Transition, and Metamorphic classes. ”

“ As to expiring laws—‘tis all a fallacy. One of the glorious privileges of the English Constitution is, that the laws never expire—neither do the lawyers—they are everlasting. Justice may die in this happy land, but law—never! ”

“ Like Sir LYTTON BULWER, when he girds up his loins to write an apocryphal comedy, we approach our work with graceful solemnity. Like Sir LYTTON, too, we always dress for the particular work we have in hand. ”

“ The Emperor is such a devil of a fellow, that those about him are afraid to tell him the truth; and though his troops have been most unmercifully wallopped, he has been humbugged into the belief that they have achieved a victory. ”

“ Both have a violent desire to cut the shop; the younger for glory, ambition, and all that (after the fashion of all city juveniles, who hate hard work) , the elder for ease and elegance. The papa and mamma have a slight altercation on the subject of their sons, which happily, (for family quarrels seldom amuse third parties) is put an end to by a second “shine,” brought about by the entrance of Sir Philip Brilliant, to make the threatened complaint about bad workmanship. The younger and fiery Thomas Blount resents some of Sir P.B.’s expressions to his father ”

“ Let P C and W R, or Peel the Conservative and Wakley the Radical, represent their different oppositions to the New Poor Law, to which that of W R, or Wakley the Radical, is greater than that of Peel the Conservative—it is required to cut off from W R, or Wakley the Radical’s opposition a part, so that it may agree with that of P C, or Peel the Conservative. ”

“ The new man does not enter much into society. He sometimes asks a few other juniors to his lodgings, and provides tea and shrimps, with occasional cold saveloys for their refection, and it is possible he may add some home-made wine to the banquet. ”

“ We had a long conversation in the afternoon with a gentleman who is up to every move in the poultry-market, and his opinion is, that the flouring system must soon prove the destruction of fair and fowl commerce. We do not wish to be premature, but our informant is a person in whom we place the utmost reliance, and, indeed, there is every reason why we should depend upon so respectable an authority. ”

“ He can see very little into the most transparent mill-stone who believes that we pen these essays—essays that will endure and glisten as long, ay as long as the freshest mackerel—if he think that we sit down to this our weekly labour in a careless lackadaisical humour. ”

“ The study of Geology, in the narrow acceptation of the word, is confined to the investigation of the materials which compose this terrestrial globe;—in its more extended signification, it relates, also, to the examination of the different layers or strata of society, as they are to be met with in the world. ”

“ None but Ministers know what Ministers go through for the pure love of their country; no person who has not reposed in the luxuriously-cushioned chairs of the Treasury or Downing-street can conceive the amount of business Sir Robert and his colleagues have transacted during the three months they have been in office. ”

“ Let there be a van full of stokers before the first class carriages; for, as the directors appear to be liberal of the stokers’ lives, it is presumed that every railway company has such a glut of them that they can be spared easily. ”

“ Miss Terrey infused into a simple country girl a degree of character which shews that she has not yet fallen into the vampire-trap of too many young performers—stage conventionalism, and that she copies from Nature. ”

“ When there happens to be a number of brother-tars similarly employed, who have engaged all the coaches, fiddlers, and sweethearts in the town, it is then that Jack is put to his wits’-end; and it is only by buying cocked-hats and top-boots for the boat’s-crew, or some such absurdity, that he can get all his cash scattered before he is obliged to return on board. This is a picture of a sailor ashore, but a sailor aground is a different being altogether. An unlucky shot may deprive him of a leg or arm ”

“ The new man is at first so bewildered, that it would take but little extra excitement to render him perfectly unconscious as to the probability of his standing upon his occipito-frontalis or plantar fascia. ”