Page images
PDF
EPUB

saves; and this you will find to your cost, if you are rude and offensive to the man of plums and of a plum, who has made himself your neighbour. There is another advantage in an upstart neighbour, to which few are insensible,-his propensity to give entertainments. Money to the upstart is seldom an object; and vanity and ostentation force him to have "the best that money can procure." If your pride cannot buckle to dining with him, dine on him; and console yourself with the reflection, that he would give the best page in his banker's book for a single leaf from your genealogical tree. In every sense, indeed, your upstarts are invaluable to your man of good blood. As a foil, they set off; as a rival, they stimulate; but, best of all, as a neighbour, they supply a perpetual fund of never-failing awkwardnesses and absurdities, to glad your heart, amuse your company, feed your malignity, and banish your ennui. Their overweening pretensions, indeed, once in seven years, may be troublesome, at the county election; but then their vanity and their ignorance are good wear and tear, every-day amusements, all the year long; and whether you are disposed to laugh or be angry, to rail or to ridicule, they furnish a constant supply of the raw material ready for the operation. There was a friend of my own,—if we may take his own word for it, a left-handed branch of the Plantagenets, but, when I first knew him, one of the dullest dogs in all Noodledum,-grave as a justice of peace, solemn as an undertaker, and as silent as a Quaker deserted by the Spirit. Though a high-church Tory, you might have taken his family fireside for a nonconformist conventicle, so simple and unadorned was the conversation; at present, every one of its members might be bound up "to face the title" of Colman's Broad Grins. For you are to know that it pleased Heaven, and an eighty-horse powered steam-engine, to make a man of a small cotton-spinner residing in a neighbouring town. This honest tradesman, as he grew rich, grew ambitious. He built a handsome square mansion, which he (being of Cockney origin) christened "The All;" and he turned an oak fence round six acres of meadow, which he dubbed "The Park." He rode likewise in his coach and four, and, agreeably to the dictum of Mons. Cottu, got himself enlisted on the Grand Jury. Certain pecuniary obligations conferred by old Twist upon my friend Blackacre enforced an invitation of the former to the manor-house, which has since grown, not without substantial reasons, into an intimacy; and though old Twist is himself as dull as a post, yet has he discovered to the Blackacres a mine of wit and fun, which in their whole previous lives they "had never dreamed of in their philosophy." "Twist All" stands very high, and commands an extensive prospect: on the very first visit, the Blackacres were called on to admire its city-ation; and ever since it has been a standing joke in the family to make old Twist recur twenty times a-day to the cityation of his house, the cityation of public affairs, or the cityation of any thing else, that can press into the service the ill-fated but obsequious polysyllable. The eldest Miss Twist has likewise an unfortunate predilection for the French word naïveté, though two hundred per annum spent during six years at a French boarding-school failed in purchasing its right pronunciation. Sometimes she admires navette in * Jurisprudence d'Angleterre.

[blocks in formation]

D

the abstract; sometimes she praises her sisters, for their great navieté ; but most frequently she gives herself credit for an extraordinary share of navitie ;-so ingeniously does she go wide of her mark! This little bit of slip-slop is the source of inextinguishable mirth to the Blackacres; the girls take off" the Twists" in every possible mode of malaprop accentuation; and the father invariably brings up the rear with a customary doubt of the genuineness of the article; affirming that the lady is as cunning as a fox, and that her navietie is, in plain English, nothing more than mere knavery. In this manner has the spectacle of the inferiority of the Twists roused the Blackacres to a sense of their own wit and spirit. The lapsus linguæ of the manufacturers keep the tongues of the agriculturists in incessant activity. The incongruities in their dress and furniture preserve their gentle-blooded neighbours in perpetual good humour with themselves; and old Twist's mismanagement of his land, which he will farm himself at a loss of thirty per cent. has almost reconciled Blackacre to the idea that the ground is no longer his own.

Twist, though at bottom a good fellow enough, of plain strong sense, and bearing his budding honours with reasonable meekness, has nevertheless a taste for show and expense, that might have proved distressing to the less opulent country gentlemen, whom he throws into the shade, (and that might, in such a case, have been the means of sending his family to Coventry; or in other words, consigning them to the society of those townsfolk, from whose second-hand gentility the father had retreated into the Grand Jury room)—but that envy does not necessarily take away the appetite. If the best wine is the wine which is drunk at another man's expense, Twist's claret might on its own merits have been deemed the second best, even though it still stood on the debtor side of your account with the wine-merchant. Twist also keeps a man-cook, who, though as ill-tempered as fire can make him, is still "your only peace-maker," and reconciles many a reluctant cub, of estated conceit, to his master's-vulgarity. If Twist's conversation is not good, his turtle uniformly is; and whatever may be the quality of his wit, his champaign is always sparkling, and never ropy. But, best of all, Twist's three young ladies, each with thirty thousand pounds—to her fortune, clinch the business, and render their father the most popular man in the county. For their sake, a Twist was never omitted in an invitation. Every body drinks wine with them, every body dances with them, and every body flatters them; and though this has given some offence to three portionless Honourables, who, for their sake, were sometimes "left and abandoned by the velvet friends" of their own grade;-yet the forgiving souls overlooked it all for the sake of the Master Twists, their thriving, and therefore truly-amiable brothers.

At the present moment, when commercial prosperity increases faster than the power of enjoyment, and capital is at so low a value that you can scarcely get three per cent. for your money, the encouragement of upstarts, is quite a national concern. The paltry extravagance of the mere estated spendthrift, cannot waste and dilapidate half fast enough to keep industry in employment. It is the upstart alone who can spend like a gentleman, and prevent money from becoming as little in demand as air or water. If all the jewels and plate which ornament the houses

and persons of city upstarts, were circulating on 'Change, those who live by the interest of their capital might beg in the streets; and if these useful personages preserved in their prosperity the penurious practices by which they rose to wealth, half the shops in Bond-street would fall to ruin, the seats in a certain nameless assembly would not fetch the price of an election dinner, and the monsters of the Heralds' Office would cease to breed. In the indirect taxation of the country, the most fatal diminution would soon be discovered; the imports would rapidly fall off, and (what would have puzzled the economists of the last generation) the exports would share their fate: insomuch that it is chiefly to the useful corps of upstarts that we are indebted for our present exemption from the income-tax.

After this enumeration of the various utilities of an upstart, need it be added, that the dislike of so meritorious a class, is a positive proof of littleness of mind? If the puffed-up conceit of some of the weaker vessels be a stumbling-block in the way of their less fortunate associates, who have been left behind in the race, it is only because an equal portion of vanity and pride lies rankling in the bosoms of the undistinguished, ready to burst forth on the first puff of Fortune's favouring gale; and Plato's reply to Diogenes, if they had ever heard of it, would be the best defence of the calumniated. D'ailleurs, when a man spends his income like a prince, it is rather hard that he may not be as whining and as insolent as a prince likewise; and be it moreover observed, en passant, that if your upstart places a wide distance between himself and his former equals, nobody has a better right to know what he is doing, since he has himself painfully traversed the interval in person, and must be able to tell its length to a fraction.

Whatever France may have gained by her counter-revolution, she is evidently a loser in the downfall of her upstarts the parvenus, who have sunk to a sad discount in consequence of that event. In their place a spacious and degenerate breed have been forced to the surface, with all the faults and few of the virtues of their great originals. After suffering a thirty years' eclipse in the garrets of half the cities of Europe, they have suddenly cast the slough of their crysalide condition, and now flutter through Paris in a new-furbished splendour, (to borrow an image from sign-board technicalities) just like the "old hog in the pound new revived." From the Gardens of the Tuileries, they look down with disdain on the few stragglers remaining of the genuine breed; and equipped with a douillet and an umbrella, they regard with an equal contempt, the marshal who assisted in conquering half the world, and the financial roturier, who has swallowed and consumed the better portion of the fruits of his victories. It is, however, in the country towns, that these modern antiques shine forth in the full brilliancy of their revivification. Under the denomination of mayors, préfets and sous préfets, they rule the people with a rod of iron, and are indeed viceroys over" the king and his ministers.

Beware," gentle reader, " of counterfeits, for such are abroad." But let them not bring the condition of an honest upstart into contempt. Let the false pretenders act as they may, the "true sort" will ever be regarded by the judicious as a worthy, innocent, and useful portion of the community; and even should a Twist get into parliament, and have the

ill taste to oppose national rights and liberal sentiments, and to set himself against every concession to the people from whom he sprang, however much you may pity or condemn the individual, still, I pray you, remember that his being there, is an encouraging prospect for industry, a feather in the national cap, and a practical triumph over the absurd principle, which regarding mankind as divided into the two species of natural lords and natural slaves, marks out for derision the industrious architect of his own fortune, by affixing to him the senseless and reproachful appellation of Upstart. M.

LONDON LYRICS.

The Church in Langham Place.

"WHOEVER walks through London streets,"
Said Momus to the Son of Saturn,
"Each day new edifices meets,

Of queer proportion, queerer pattern:

If thou, O cloud-compelling god,

Wilt aid me with thy special grace,

I, too, will wield my motley hod,

And build a church in Langham-place."

"Agreed," the Thunderer cries: "go plant
Thine edifice, I care not how ill;
Take notice, Earth, I hereby grant

Carte blanche of mortar, stone, and trowel.

Go, Hermes, Hercules, and Mars,

Fraught with these bills on Henry Hase,
Drop with yon jester from the stars,

And build a church in Langham-place."

Down, four in hand, to earth they go,
Pass by Palladio, Wren, and Inigo,
Contracting for their job, to show

How far four gods can make a guinea go.
This plan was Doric, ergo bad,

And that Ionic, ergo base;

No proper model could be had,

To shape this church in Langham-place.

In deep confab they pass'd two hours;
Alcides on his club of tough oak
Leant, and exclaim'd, "Martello towers
Lie scatter'd on the coast of Suffolk :
Let one of those toward London swerve,
Mars, out of war, they're out of place;
What can they better do, than serve

To form a church in Langham-place ?”
The word was said, the deed was done,
Light Hermes toil'd in vain to stir it,
When, with a kick, Alcmena's son

Soon tilted down the granite turret.
Like a huge hogshead up to town
The martial structure roll'd apace,
And, mortar-coated, settled down
Into a church in Langham-place.

But, ere with belfry or with bell

They graced its top, its side with casement,
They found an unexploded shell

Alive and burning at its basement.
The channell❜d air now upward drew
Flame after flame, in lurid race,
And gave a sort of glass-house hue
To their new church in Langham-place.

""Twill never do," Alcides cried,

"The Atlas will indict for arson," While Momus carelessly replied

"Phoo! never mind it-smoke the parson!'
Mars, at a push, had wit at will,

And said, "Your joint misgivings chace,
This round Martello tower shall still

Be a new church in Langhamn-place."

To Ætna's red Vulcanian steeps,

Fly, Mercury, on feather'd sandal,

And, when the giant Titan sleeps,

Snatch, god of thieves, his huge bed-candle:

Bear thence its tall extinguisher,

This conflagration to efface,

"Twill added dignity confer

On our new church in Langham-place

The cone up-tilted, Momus bawls-
"Attention, all our loving people,
Here Mars's tower affords us walls,
And Titan's candlestick a steeple:
Our fane, thus martially endow'd,

Soon may some Boanerges grace,
And Son of Thunder,' draw the crowd
To our new church in Langham-place!"

THE PHYSICIAN.-NO. XIII.

Of the influence of the Winds on Health.

It seems to be the effect of a particular Providence, that we are usually visited in Spring by high winds and storms. Indeed, upon the whole, I cannot for my part consider the winds so pernicious to health as they are commonly accounted, or coincide with Hoffmann when he says, that "God has placed his chemical laboratory in the earth, whence issue winds and malignant effluvia." Essential as it is that we should live in a pure air, if we would remain healthy, so essential is it that there should be winds to purify our atmosphere of the many noxious vapours, which would but too speedily corrupt and infect our juices. In Spring, the warm breath of milder breezes opens the bosom of the earth, which was closed throughout the winter. The changeableness of the weather fills the atmosphere with aqueous vapours. The beneficial frost which purified it in winter, now leaves us; and we should therefore have just reason to apprehend unwholesome air and malignant diseases in Spring, did not storms supply the place of frost and cleanse the atmosphere. Hippocrates, in his time, observed, that a wet Spring occasions contagious fevers, and the experience of all succeeding physi

« PreviousContinue »