Chapter LIX: Conclusion (2)

The historian of “Inventions” says, that if, as some had done, he were to “reckon among the first traces of Lotteries every division of property made by lot, it might be said that Joshua partitioned the promised land into Lottery prizes before it was conquered.” In his opinion, the peculiarity of Lotteries consists in their numbers being distributed gratuitously, or, as in public Lotteries, for a certain price; it being left to chance to determine what numbers were to obtain the prizes, the value of which had been previously settled. He speaks of the “conditions and changes invented by ingenuity to entice people to purchase shares, and to conceal and increase the gain of the undertakers;” and, of the “delusion they occasion to credulous and ignorant people, by exciting hopes that have little probability in their favour.” He deems that the hint of modern Lottery was derived from the Romans. The rich persons at Rome, and particularly the emperors, endeavoured to attach the people by distributing among them presents consisting of eatables and other expensive articles, which were named _congiaria_. Tokens, or tickets, called _tesseræ_ (in Greek συμζολα,) were generally given out, and the possessors, on presenting them at the store or magazine of the donor, received those things which they announced. In many cases, these tickets were distributed to every person who applied for them, and then these donations resembled our distribution of bread, but not our Lotteries, in which chance must determine the number of those who were to participate in the number of things distributed. In the course of time, the Roman populace was called together, and the articles distributed thrown to them from a stage. Such things were called _missilia_, and belonged to those who had the good fortune to catch them; but as oil, wine, corn, and such like articles, could not be distributed in this manner, and as other articles were injured by the too great eagerness of the people, tokens or tickets were thrown in their stead. These were square pieces of wood or metal, and sometimes balls of wood, inscribed with the names of the articles. Those who had obtained these _tesseræ_ were allowed to transfer or sell them.[493]

* * * * *

Under “Lottery,” an antiquary refers to the _pittacia_ of Petronius. The Romans issued gratis, to their visitors in the Saturnalia, tickets which were all prizes, and marked with inscriptions called _apophoreta_. The Lotteries of Augustus were mere bagatelles for sport; Nero’s were very costly; those of Heliogabalus ridiculous; as, a ticket for six slaves, another for six flies, &c. these were handed round in vases.[494]

* * * * *

Imitations, on a reduced scale, of the Roman _congiaria_ have amused the continental princes and princesses of modern times. They distribute small presents to their courtiers, by causing trinkets or toys to be marked with numbers; the numbers being written on separate tickets, which are rolled up and put into a small basket or basin.[495]

* * * * *

In Italy, during the middle ages, the merchants or shop-keepers, in order to sell their wares more speedily and advantageously, converted their shops into offices of luck, where each person, for a small sum, was allowed to draw a number from the jar of fortune, which entitled the holder to the article written upon it; but as these shop-keepers gained excessive profits, and cheated the credulous people, by setting on their wares an extravagant price, which was concealed by the blanks, these practices were prohibited, or permitted only under strict inspection, and on paying a certain sum to the poor, or the sovereign.

From hence was derived the modern Lottery of the continent, when articles of merchandise were no longer employed as prizes, but certain sums of money instead, the amount of which was determined by the amount of money received, after the expenses and gain of the conductors were deducted. In these Lotteries, the tickets were publicly drawn by the charity boys, blindfolded. As they could not be conducted without defrauding the adventurers, it was at first believed, through old-fashioned conscientiousness, that it was unlawful to take advantage of the folly and credulity of the people, except for pious or charitable purposes. The gains were sometimes applied to the portioning of poor young women, the redemption of captives, or the formation of funds for the indigent, and other benificent objects. It was vainly imagined, that these public games of hazard would banish others still more dangerous; nor was it foreseen, that the exposure of tickets for sale, and their division into shares, would maintain and diffuse a spirit of gambling. This, however, was the result, and the profit from Lotteries became so great, that princes and ministers were induced to employ them as operations of finance: the people were forbidden to purchase tickets in foreign Lotteries, and, in order that the tickets of the state might be disposed of sooner, and with more certainty, many rulers were so shameless as to pay part of the salaries of their servants in tickets, and to compel guild companies and societies to expend in Lotteries what money they had saved. In 1764, this abuse was mentioned by the states of Wirtemburg among the public grievances, and in 1770 the duke promised that it should be abolished.

* * * * *

So early as 1521, the council of Osnaburg, in Germany, established a Lottery with wearing articles of merchandise for the prizes. In 1615, the magistrates of Hamburgh sanctioned a Lottery for building a house of correction in that city. An engraving is mentioned with the following title, “Representation of the _Loto Publico_, which was drawn in the large hall of the council-house at Nuremburg, anno 1715.” This is supposed to have been the first Lottery in that city. The first Lottery at Berlin was drawn in July, 1740; it contained 20,000 tickets at five dollars each; there were 4028 prizes; and the capital one was a house worth 24,000 dollars.

* * * * *

In 1549, a Lottery was drawn at Amsterdam for the building a church steeple; and another at Delft in 1595. In the hospital for old men, at Amsterdam, there is a beautiful painting by Daniel Vinckenbooms, which represents the drawing of a Lottery in the night time. He was born about 1578, and died in 1629.

* * * * *

In France, whither the Lottery was introduced from Italy, it was set on foot by merchants, and the only prizes were articles of merchandise: but, in 1539, Francis I. endeavoured to turn them to his own advantage. He permitted them under the inspection of certain members of the government, with a view, as was pretended, of banishing deceptive and pernicious games of chance; but on condition that he should receive for every ticket a _teston de dix sols six deniers_. It appears, however, from a royal order of recommendation, in February, 1541, that this Lottery was not then completed, and it is not known whether it ever was.

* * * * *

In 1572 and 1588, Louis de Gonzague duc de Nivernois established a Lottery at Paris, for the purpose of giving marriage portions to poor virtuous young women on his estates. The prize tickets were inscribed _Dieu vous a élue_, or, _Dieu vous console_; the former insured to the young woman who drew it 500 francs on her wedding-day; the latter, inscribed on the blanks, suggested the hope of better fortune the year following. No Lottery was ever drawn with so much ceremony and parade. Pope Sextus V. promised those who promoted it the remission of their sins: and, before the drawing, which began every year on Palm Sunday, mass was said.

* * * * *

Ladies of quality were induced by this example to establish similar Lotteries for the building or repairing of churches or convents, and other religious or benevolent purposes. Three ladies set on foot a Lottery with tickets at 40 sous each, for redeeming persons who had fallen into slavery among the Turks. Some other ladies instituted a Lottery in behalf of their confessor, who had been made a bishop, that they might buy him a carriage and horses, with other requisites, to support his episcopal dignity.

French history records the institution of many Lotteries as the means employed to make valuable presents to ladies, and other persons of distinction. It is supposed the largest of the kind was one designed by cardinal Mazarine, to increase his splendour and popularity among the courtiers. The tickets were distributed as presents.[496]

* * * * *

Louis XIV., on the days which were not fast days, went to dine at Marly with madame de Maintenon and other ladies. After dinner, the minister who wished to converse with him arrived, and when his business was finished, if they did not walk, he conversed, listened to music, played at cards, or helped to draw _Lotteries_, the tickets of which cost nothing, but were all prizes. They were composed of trinkets, jewels, and silks; but there were never any snuff-boxes, because he could not endure snuff, or suffer those who used it to approach him.[497]

* * * * *

In the seventeenth century these games of chance grew into Lotteries, in the proper sense of the word. During a scarcity of money which prevailed in 1644, Lawrence Tonti came from Naples to Paris, and proposed that kind of life-rents, or annuities, which are named after him _Tontines_; though they were used in Italy long before his time. After tedious disputes, his proposal was rejected; for which, in 1556, he substituted, with the royal approbation, a large Lottery in order to raise funds for building a stone bridge and an aqueduct. This Lottery was never completed, and consequently never drawn; and a wooden bridge was constructed, instead of that which had been burnt. The first Lottery on the plan of Tonti was set on foot at Paris in 1660, when the conclusion of peace, and the marriage of Louis XIV., were celebrated. It was drawn publicly, under the inspection of the police. The price of each ticket was a Louis d’or, which at that time was only eleven livres; and the highest prize was a hundred thousand livres. This was gained by the king himself, but he would not receive it, and left it to the next Lottery, in which he had no ticket. In 1661, all private Lotteries were prohibited under severe penalties, and from that time there were no other Lotteries than the _Loteries royales_.[498]

* * * * *

The ill-famed Italian or Genoese Lottery in Germany was, as its name shows, an invention of the Genoese, and arose from the mode in which the members of the senate were elected; for when that republic existed in a state of freedom, the names of the eligible candidates were thrown into a vessel called _seminario_, or, in modern times, into a wheel of fortune; and during the drawings of them it was customary for people to lay bets in regard to those who might be successful. That is to say, one chose the name of two or three _nobili_, for these only could be elected, and ventured upon them, according to pleasure, a piece of money; while, on the other hand, the opposite party, or the undertaker of the bank, who had the means of forming a pretty accurate conjecture in regard to names that would be drawn, doubled the stakes several times. Afterwards the state itself undertook the bank for these bets, which was attended with so much advantage; and the drawing of the names was performed with great ceremony. The _venerabile_ was exposed, and high mass was celebrated, at which all the candidates were obliged to be present.

* * * * *

A member of the senate, named Benedetto Gentile, is said to have first introduced this Lottery, in the year 1620; and it is added, that the name of Gentile having never been drawn, the people took it into their heads that he, and his names, had been carried away by the devil. But at length, the wheel being taken to pieces in order to be mended, the name, which by some accident had never been drawn was found concealed in it.

This mode of Lottery is presumed to have been peculiar to the Genoese, who, for their own benefit established in many continental towns commissioners, to dispose of tickets, and to pay the prizes to those who had been fortunate.

* * * * *

These pernicious Lotteries continued till the end of the eighteenth century, when they were almost every where abolished and forbidden. To the honour of the Hanoverian government, no _Lotto_ was ever introduced into it, though many foreigners offered large sums for permission to cheat the people in this manner. Those who wish to see the prohibitions issued against the _Lotto_, after making a great part of the people lazy, indigent, and thievish, may find them in Schlozer’s Staats-Anzeigen,

Si son exécrable mémoire
Parvient à la postérité,
C’est que le crime, aussi bien que la gloire,
Conduit à l’immortalité.[499]

THE LAST LOTTERY IN ENGLAND.

Elia says, in the “New Monthly Magazine,”--“The true mental epicure always purchased his ticket early, and postponed inquiry into its fate to the last possible moment, during the whole of which intervening period he had an imaginary twenty thousand locked up in his desk--and was not this well worth all the money? Who would scruple to give twenty pounds interest for even the ideal enjoyment of as many thousands during two or three months? ‘_Crede quod habes, et habes_,’ and the usufruct of such a capital is surely not dear at such a price. Some years ago, a gentleman in passing along Cheapside saw the figures 1069, of which number he was the sole proprietor, flaming on the window of a Lottery office as a capital prize. Somewhat flurried by this discovery, not less welcome than unexpected, he resolved to walk round St. Paul’s, that he might consider in what way to communicate the happy tidings to his wife and family; out upon repassing the shop, he observed that the number was altered to 10,069; and, upon inquiry, had the mortification to learn that his ticket was blank, and had only been stuck up in the window by a mistake of the clerk. This effectually calmed his agitation; but he always speaks of himself as having once possessed twenty thousand pounds, and maintains that his ten minutes’ walk round St. Paul’s was worth ten times the purchase-money of the ticket. A prize thus obtained has moreover this special advantage;--it is beyond the reach of fate, it cannot be squandered, bankruptcy cannot lay siege to it, friends cannot pull it down, nor enemies blow it up; it bears a charmed life, and none of woman-born can break its integrity, even by the dissipation of a single fraction. Show me the property in these perilous times that is equally compact and impregnable. We can no longer become enriched for a quarter of an hour; we can no longer succeed in such splendid failures; all our chances of making such a miss have vanished with the Last of the Lotteries.

“Life will now become a flat, prosaic routine of matter-of-fact; and sleep itself, erst so prolific of numerical configurations and mysterious stimulants to Lottery adventure, will be disfurnished of its figures and figments. People will cease to harp upon the one lucky number suggested in a dream, and which forms the exception, while they are scrupulously silent upon the ten thousand falsified dreams which constitute the rule. Morpheus will stifle Cocker with a handful of poppies, and our pillows will be no longer haunted by the book of numbers.

“And who, too, shall maintain the art and mystery of puffing in all its pristine glory when the Lottery professors shall have abandoned its cultivation? They were the first, as they will assuredly be the last, who fully developed the resources of that ingenious art; who cajoled and decoyed the most suspicious and wary reader into a perusal of their advertisements, by devices of endless variety and cunning; who baited their lurking schemes with midnight murders, ghost stories, crim-cons, bon-mots, balloons, dreadful catastrophes, and every diversity of joy and sorrow to catch newspaper-gudgeons. Ought not such talents to be encouraged? Verily, the abolitionists have much to answer for!”

* * * * *

Here, at last, ends the notices respecting the Lottery, of which much has been said, because of all depraving institutions it had the largest share in debasing society while it existed: and because, after all, perhaps, the monster is “only scotched, not killed.”

[429] See vol. i. col. 1486.

[430] Morning Herald, Sept. 3, 1817.

[431] Maitland’s London.

[432] Gentleman’s Magazine, 1778.

[433] Stow, in his Annals.

[434] Ibid.

[435] Gentleman’s Magazine, 1798.

[436] Anderson’s History of Commerce.

[437] Malcolm’s Manners.

[438] “Whereas some give out that they could never receive their books
after they were drawn in the first lottery, the author declares, and
it will be attested, that of seven hundred prizes that were drawn,
there were not six remaining Prizes that suffered with his in the
fire; for the drawing being on the 10th of May, 1665, the office did
then continue open for the delivery of the same (though the contagion
much raged) until the latter end of July following; and opened again,
to attend the delivery, in April, 1666, whither persons repaired daily
for their prizes, and continued open until the fire.”

[439] Gentleman’s Magazine.

[440] Malcolm’s Manners.

[441] Anderson.

[442] Malcolm.

[443] Ibid.

[444] Anderson.

[445] Spectator, No. 191.

[446] Sunday, October 22, 1826.

[447] The Times, November 3, 1826.

[448] Mr. Smeeton in the _Examiner_.

[449] Malcolm.

[450] Smollett.

[451] Gentleman’s Magazine.

[452] Lounger’s Common Place Book.

[453] Smollett.

[454] Gentleman’s Magazine.

[455] Anderson.

[456] Gentleman’s Magazine, 1731.

[457] Gentleman’s Magazine.

[458] Gentleman’s Magazine, 1739.

[459] The Champion, January 10, 1740.

[460] Gentleman’s Magazine.

[461] Ibid.

[462] Maitland. Gentleman’s Magazine.

[463] Universal Magazine.

[464] Gentleman’s Magazine.

[465] Ibid.

[466] Smollett. Gentleman’s Magazine.

[467] Gentleman’s Magazine.

[468] In the Universal Magazine for December.

[469] Universal Magazine.

[470] Memoir of Holland in Universal Magazine.

[471] Gentleman’s Magazine.

[472] Ibid.

[473] Universal Magazine.

[474] Gentleman’s Magazine.

[475] Ibid.

[476] Ibid.

[477] Ibid.

[478] Anderson.

[479] Universal Magazine.

[480] Town and Country Magazine.

[481] Universal Magazine.

[482] Report of Committee of House of Commons on Lotteries, 1808.

[483] Report of Police Committee of House of Commons 1816.

[484] The price of a Sixteenth in the present Lottery.

[485] Communicated by J. J. A. F. from a Calcutta newspaper of Sept.
3, 1818.

[486] Charity and Patriotism.

[487] This and other of the bills quoted are lent by our
correspondent, J. J. A. F. from his Lottery Collections.

[488] See _ante_.

[489] The day the royal assent was given to the last Lottery act.

[490] Baker’s Chronicle.

[491] Mr. Nelson’s History of Islington.

[492] A few interesting Anecdotes, &c. 18mo. 1810.

[493] Beckmann.

[494] Fosbroke, Ency. of Antiquities.

[495] Beckmann.

[496] Ibid.

[497] Private Life of Louis XIV.

[498] Beckmann.

[499] Ibid.

~November 16.~

EXTRAORDINARY LUNAR HALO.

On the night of this day in 1823, about half past nine o’clock, Dr. T. Forster observed a very remarkable and brilliant phenomenon about the moon. It was a coloured discoid halo, consisting of six several concentric circles; the nearest to the moon, or the first disk around her, being dull white, then followed circles of orange, violet, crimson, green, and vermillion; the latter, or outermost, subtending in its diameter an angle of above ten degrees. This phenomenon was evidently produced by a refraction in the white mist of a stratus, which prevailed through the night, but it varied in its colours, as well as in its brilliancy, at different times.[500]

NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR.

Mean Temperature 43·00.

WHIMS AND ODDITIES.

The company of odd-looking personages playing at nine-pins in the hollow of the wild mountain, were not greater objects of wonder to Rip Van Winkle, than forty original designs by Mr. Hood will be to the reader who looks for the first time at this gentleman’s “Whims and Oddities.”[501]

All the world knows, or ought to know, that among persons called literary there are a few peculiarly _littery_; who master an article through confusion of head and materials, and, having achieved the setting of their thoughts and places “to rights,” celebrate the important victory by the triumph of a short repose. At such a minute, after my last toilsome adventure in the “Lottery,” sitting in my little room before the fire, and looking into it with the comfortable knowledge that the large table behind me was “free from all incumbrances,” I yearned for a recreative dip into something new, when Mr. Hood’s volume, in a parcel bearing the superscription of a kind hand, was put into mine. It came in the very nick; and, as I amused myself, I resolved to be thenceforth, and therefrom, as agreeable as possible to my readers.

* * * * *

On the title-page of Mr. Hood’s book is this motto, “O Cicero! Cicero! if to pun be a crime, ’tis a crime I have learned of thee: O Bias! Bias! if to pun be a crime, by thy example I was biassed!--_Scriblerus._”

The first engraving that opened on me was of

In this figure, “a medley of human faces, wherein certain features belong in common to different visages,--the eyebrow of one, for instance, forming the mouth of another,”--Mr. Hood has successfully “tried to typify a common characteristic of dreams; namely, the entanglement of divers ideas, to the waking mind distinct or incongruous, but, by the confusion of sleep, inseparably ravelled up, and knotted into Gordian intricacies. For, as the equivocal feature, in the emblem, belongs indifferently to either countenance, but is appropriated by the head that happens to be presently the object of contemplation; so, in a dream, two separate notions will mutually involve some convertible incident, that becomes, by turns, a symptom of both in general, or of either in particular. Thus are begotten the most extravagant associations of thoughts and images,--unnatural connections, like those marriages of forbidden relationships, where mothers become cousins to their own sons or daughters, and quite as bewildering as such genealogical embarrassments.”

As an illustration of this kind of dream, the author relates a dismal one, “which originated in the failure of his first and last attempt as a dramatic writer;” and another, wherein the preliminaries were pleasant, and the conclusion was whimsical. “It occurred,” says Mr. Hood, “when I was on the eve of marriage; a season, when, if lovers sleep sparingly, they dream profusely. A very brief slumber sufficed to carry me in the night-coach to Bognor. It had been concerted, between Honoria and myself, that we should pass the honeymoon at some such place upon the coast. The purpose of my solitary journey was to procure an appropriate dwelling, and which, we had agreed, should be a little pleasant house, with an indispensable look out upon the sea. I chose one, accordingly; a pretty villa, with bow-windows, and a prospect delightfully marine. The ocean murmur sounded incessantly from the beach. A decent, elderly body, in decayed sables, undertook, on her part, to promote the comforts of the occupants by every suitable attention, and, as she assured me, at a very reasonable rate. So far, the nocturnal faculty had served me truly. A day-dream could not have proceeded more orderly; but, alas, just here, when the dwelling was selected, the sea view secured, the rent agreed upon, when every thing was plausible, consistent, and rational, the incoherent fancy crept in and confounded all,--by marrying me to the old woman of the house!”

Because it never happened that Mr. Hood in his dreams fancied himself deprived of any sense, he was greatly puzzled by this question,--

“_How does a_ BLIND _man dream?_”

“I mean” says Mr. H. “a person with the opaque crystal from his birth. He is defective in that very faculty which, of all others, is most active in those night-passages, thence emphatically called Visions. He has had no acquaintance with external images; and has, therefore, none of those transparent pictures that, like the slides of a magic-lantern, pass before the mind’s eye, and are projected by the inward spiritual light upon the utter blank. His imagination must be like an imperfect kaleidoscope, totally unfurnished with those parti-coloured fragments, whereof the complete instrument makes such interminable combinations. It is difficult to conceive such a man’s dream.

“Is it, a still benighted wandering,--a pitch-dark night progress, made known to him by the consciousness of the remaining senses? Is he still pulled through the universal blank, by an invisible power, as it were, at the nether end of the string?--regaled, sometimes, with celestial voluntaries, and unknown mysterious fragrances, answering to our more romantic flights; at other times, with homely voices, and more familiar odours; here, of rank smelling cheeses, there, of pungent pickles or aromatic drugs, hinting his progress through a metropolitan street. Does he over again enjoy the grateful roundness of those substantial droppings from the invisible passenger,--palpable deposits of an abstract benevolence,--or, in his nightmares, suffer anew those painful concussions and corporeal buffetings, from that (to him) obscure evil principle, the Parish Beadle?

“This question I am happily enabled to resolve, through the information of the oldest of those blind Tobits that stand in fresco against Bunhill-wall; the same who made that notable comparison, of scarlet, to the sound of a trumpet. As I understood him, harmony, with the gravel-blind, is prismatic as well as chromatic. To use his own illustration, a wall-eyed man has a _palette_ in his ear as well as in his mouth. Some stone-blinds, indeed, dull dogs without any _ear_ for colour, profess to distinguish the different hues and shades by the touch; but _that_, he said, was a slovenly, uncertain method, and in the chief article, of paintings, not allowed to be exercised.

“On my expressing some natural surprise at the aptitude of his celebrated comparison,--a miraculous close likening, to my mind, of the known to the unknown,--he told me, the instance was nothing, for the least discriminative among them could distinguish the scarlet colour of the mail guards’ liveries, by the sound of their horns: but there were others, so acute their faculty! that they could tell the very features and complexion of their relatives and familiars, by the mere tone of their voices. I was much gratified with this explanation; for I confess, hitherto, I was always extremely puzzled by that narrative in the ‘Tatler,’ of a young gentleman’s behaviour after the operation of couching, and especially at the wonderful promptness with which he distinguished his father from his mother,--his mistress from her maid. But it appears, that the blind are not so blind as they have been esteemed in the vulgar notion. What they cannot get one way they obtain in another: they, in fact, realize what the author of Hudibras has ridiculed as a fiction, for they set up

---------communities of senses,
To chop and change intelligences,
As Rosicrucian Virtuosis
Can _see with ears_--and hear with noses.”

Never having tried opium, and therefore without experience of “such magnificent visions” as are described by its eloquent historian, “I have never,” says Mr. Hood, “been buried for ages under pyramids; and yet, methinks, have suffered agonies as intense as _his_ could be, from the common-place inflictions. For example, a night spent in the counting of interminable numbers,--an inquisitorial penance,--everlasting tedium,--the mind’s treadmill.”

* * * * *

That “the _innocent_--sleep,” is an exceptionable position. What happy man, with a happy wife by his side, and the first, sweet, restless plague and pledge of their happiness by hers, has not been awakened to a sense of his felicity, by a weak, yet shrill and spirit-stirring “la-a, la-a, la-a, la-a, la-a-a, la-a-a--a,” of some secret sorrow, “for ever telling, yet untold.”

Happy the man whose only care
A _few_ paternal _achings_ are.

Gentle reader of the Benedictine order! I presume not to anticipate the pleasure thou wilt derive from contemplating thyself engaged in a domestic exercise, suited to the occasion,--pacing thy bed-room at “the heavy middle of the night,” holding the _little_ “innocent”

Fondly lock’d in _duty’s_ arms;

its dear eyes provokingly open to the light of the chamber-lantern; thine own closed by drowsiness, yet kept unsealed by affection; thy lips arranged for the piano of carminative sounds--“quivering to the young-eyed cherubim”--

Oh! slumber my darling
Thy sire is a knight--

--thy “darling” ceasing its “sweet voice,” to offer more decisively by its looks, “I would out-night you.” Brother Benedict! there is an engraving of thee, and thine, in the book I speak of, mottoed, “Son of the sleepless!”

Let me extract another _cut_, seemingly a portrait of the _alarming_ “hope of the family,” after thou hast for some few years tried, perchance, “the _Locke_ system; which, after all,” according to Mr. Hood, “is but a _canal_ system for raising the babe-mind to unnatural levels”--

* * * * *

At about the age of “My son, sir,” boys seek to satisfy their curiosity, and gratify their taste. It is the _spelling_-time of young experience, and they are extremely diligent. Their senses are fresh and undepraved, and covetous of the simplest pleasures.

Every town in England, and every village, with inhabitants and wealth sufficient to consume a hogshead of “brown moist” within a reasonable time, exhibits an empty sugar cask in the open street; it is every little grocer’s pride, and every poor boy’s delight:--

“Gentle reader, read the motto! read the motto!” Look at the engraving; “_show_ it to your children, and to your children’s children,” and ask them what they _think_. If you desire an immediate living example to illustrate professor Malthus’s principle, that “population always comes up to the mean of subsistence,” set out a sugar cask, and there will be a swarm of boys about it, from no one knows whither, in ten minutes. The first takes possession of the inside, and is “monarch of all he surveys.” Like the throne, it is an envied, and an unquiet possession. From the emulous, on all sides, he receives vain addresses and remonstrances, and against their threatening hands is obliged to keep a sharp look out; but his greatest enemy, and for whom he keeps a sharp look _over_, is the grocer’s man. A glimpse of that arch-foe “frightens him from his impropriety” in a twinkling; unless, indeed, from the nearness of the adversary he fail to escape, when, for certain, his companions leave him “alone in his glory,” and then he knows for a truth, that “after sweet comes sour.” The boy there, straddling like the “Great Harry,” has had his wicked will of the barrel to satiety, and therefore vacates his place in favour of him of the hat, on whose nether end “time hath written strange defeatures.” It is not so certain, that the fine, fat, little fellow, with his hands on the edge of the tub, and the ends of his toes on the ground, will ascend the side, as that he who stoops in front is enjoying the choicest pickings of the prize. The others are mere common feeders, or gluttons, who go for quantity; _he_ is the epicure of the party--

He seeks but little here below
But seeks that little _good_;

and, of foretaste, he takes his place at the bung-hole, where the sugar crystallizes, and there revels in particles of the finest candies. “I pity the poor child,” says Mr. Hood, “that is learned in alpha beta, but ignorant of top and taw”--and I pity every poor child who only knows that a sugar tub is sweet, and is ignorant of the sweetest of its sweets. There are as many different pickings in it as there are _cuts_ in a shoulder of mutton, or Mr. Hood’s book. My authority for this information is an acute, pale-faced, sickly, printer’s boy, an adapt in lickerish things, who declared the fact the morning after he had been to see Mr. Mathews, by affirming, with enthusiasm, “I’ve tried it, I’ve analyzed it, and I know it.”

“Ah! little think the gay, licentious proud,”

who spend their money on bulls-eyes and hard-bake, which are modern inventions, of the delicacies within a grocer’s plain, upright and downright, good, old, natural, brown sugar tub--

“O! there’s nothing half so sweet in life.”

Mr. Hood introduces another “sweet pleasure,” with another equally apt quotation:--

This figure of “THE POPULAR CUPID,” Mr. Hood copied, “by permission, from a lady’s Valentine;” and he says, “in the romantic mythology it is the image of the divinity of Love.” He inquires, “Is this he, that, in the mind’s eye of the poetess, drifts adown the Ganges--

Pillow’d in a lotus flow’r,
Gather’d in a summer hour,
Floats _he_ o’er the mountain wave,
Which would be a tall ship’s grave?

--Does Belinda believe that such a substantial Sagittarius lies ambushed in her perilous blue eye?--I can believe in his dwelling alone in the heart--seeing that he must occupy it to repletion: in his constancy--because he looks sedentary, and not apt to roam: that he is given to melt--from his great pinguitude: that he burneth with a flame--for so all fat burneth: and hath languishings--like other bodies of his tonnage: that he sighs--from his size. I dispute not his kneeling at ladies’ feet--since it is the posture of elephants--nor his promise, that the homage shall remain eternal. I doubt not of his dying--being of a corpulent habit, and a short neck: of his blindness--with that inflated pig’s cheek. But, for his lodging in Belinda’s blue eye, my whole faith is heretic--for she hath never a _sty_ in it.”

Mr. Hood, doubtless, desires that the world should know his “Whims and Oddities” through his own work; its notice here, therefore, while it affords a winter evening’s half hour entertainment, is not to mar his hopes. But it is impossible to close its merry-making leaves without shadowing forth a little more of the volume.

It ought to be observed, that the prints just presented are from engravings in Mr. Hood’s book, of which there are forty drawn by his own pencil; and, that he attaches a motto to each, so antithetical, as to constitute the volume a pocket portfolio of designs to excite risibility. For example:--

He tells a story of his “Aunt Shakerly,” a lady of enormous bulk, who placed Mr. Hood’s baby cousin in the nursing-chair while she took in the news, and then, in her eagerness to read the accidents and offences, unthinkingly sat, with the gravity of a coroner’s inquest, in the aforesaid chair, and thereby unconsciously suppressed “an article of intelligence”--an occurrence which there is little reason to doubt appeared among the “horribles,” in the favourite department of her paper, the next morning. The engraving that pictures this is mottoed, “THE SPOILED CHILD!”

Mr. Hood institutes “A Complaint against Greatness,” through “an unhappy candidate for the show at Sadler’s repository,” described in the following item of the catalogue--“The reverend Mr. Farmer, a four years’ old Durham ox, fed by himself, upon oil-cake and mangel-wurzel.” The complainant, however, says, “I resemble that worthy agricultural vicar only in my fat living.”

This being the season when these condemned animals come up from the country to the metropolis, it seems a fit time to hear the complainant’s description of his journey. “Wearisome and painful was my pilgrim-like progress to this place, by short and tremulous steppings--like the digit’s march upon a dial. My owner, jealous of my fat, procured a crippled drover, with a withered limb, for my conductor; but even _he_ hurried me beyond my breath. The drawling hearse left me labouring behind; the ponderous fly-waggon passed me like a bird upon the road, so tediously slow is my pace. It just sufficeth, oh, ye thrice happy oysters! that have no locomotive faculty at all, to distinguish that I am not at rest. Wherever the grass grew by the way-side, how it tempted my natural longings--the cool brook flowed at my very foot, but this short, thick neck forbade me to eat or drink; nothing but my redundant dewlap is likely ever to graze on the ground!--If stalls and troughs were not extant, I must perish. Nature has given to the elephant a long, flexible tube, or trunk, so that he can feed his mouth, as it were, by his nose: but is man able to furnish me with such an implement? Or would he not still withhold it, lest I should prefer the green herb, my natural, delicious diet, and reject his rank, unsavoury condiments?--What beast, with free will, but would repair to the sweet meadow for its pasture”--

Verily, it is humane thus to lecture man from the mouth of an animal, whose species is annually deformed for butcherly pride, and the loathing of the table--“to see the prize-steak loaded with that rank, yellow abomination, might wean a man from carnivorous habits for ever.” The supplicant for our compassion adds, in behalf of himself and his dumb-fellow creatures, “It may seem presumption in a brute to question the human wisdom; but truly, I can perceive no beneficial ends worthy to be set off against our sufferings. There must be, methinks, a nearer (and a better) way of augmenting the perquisites of the kitchen-wench and the fire-man.” There is an admirable cut of the over-fed petitioner, breathing “O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt!” The figure of the crippled drover is excellent.

Mr. Hood devises a romantic adventure that befel a herd of these animals of the common class, and a little wooden, white-painted house on four wheels, to which a sedentary citizen and his wife had retired to spend their days, “impaled” by the wayside on Hounslow-heath, where--

Having had some quarters of school breeding,
They turn’d themselves, like other folks, to reading;
But setting out where others nigh have done,
And being ripen’d in the seventh stage,
The childhood of old age,
Began as other children have begun,--
Not with the pastorals of Mr. Pope,
Or Bard of Hope,
Or Paley, ethical, or learned Porson,--
But spelt, on sabbaths, in St. Mark, or John,
And then relax’d themselves with Whittington,
Or Valentine and Orson--
But chiefly fairy tales they loved to con,
And being easily melted, in their dotage,
Slobber’d,--and kept
Reading,--and wept
Over the White Cat, in their wooden cottage.

Thus reading on--the longer
They read, of course, their childish faith grew stronger
In gnomes, and hags, and elves, and giant grim,--
If talking trees and birds reveal’d to him,
She saw the flight of fairyland’s fly-waggons,
And magic-fishes swim
In puddle ponds, and took old crows for dragons,--
Both were quite drunk from the enchanted flaggons;
When as it fell upon a summer’s day.
As the old man sat a feeding
On the old babe-reading,
Beside his open street-and-parlour door,
A hideous roar
Proclaim’d a drove of beasts was coming by the way.

Long-horned, and short, of many a different breed,
Tall, tawny brutes, from famous Lincoln-levels,
Or Durham feed;
With some of those unquiet, black, dwarf devils,
From nether side of Tweed,
Or Firth of Forth;
Looking half wild with joy to leave the North,--
With dusty hides, all mobbing on together,--
When,--whether from a fly’s malicious comment
Upon his tender flank, from which he shrank;
Or whether
Only in some enthusiastic moment,--
However, one brown monster, in a frisk,
Giving his tail a perpendicular whisk,
Kick’d out a passage thro’ the beastly rabble;
And after a pas seul,--or, if you will, a
Horn-pipe, before the basket-maker’s villa,
Leapt o’er the tiny pale,--
Back’d his beef-steaks against the wooden gable,
And thrust his brawny bell-rope of a tail
Right o’er the page,
Wherein the sage
Just then was spelling some romantic fable.

The old man, half a scholar, half a dunce,
Could not peruse, who could?--two tales at once;
And being huff’d
At what he knew was none of Riquet’s tuft;
Bang’d-to the door,
But most unluckily enclosed a morsel
Of the intruding tail, and all the tassel:--
The monster gave a roar,
And bolting off with speed, increased by pain,
The little house became a coach once more,
And, like Macheath, “took to the road” again!

When this happened the old man’s wife was absent,

Getting up some household herbs for supper,
Thoughtful of Cinderella, in the tale,
And quaintly wondering _how_ magic shifts
Could o’er a common pumpkin so prevail,
To turn it to a coach;

nor did she turn round, till house and spouse had turned a corner out of sight.

The change was quite amazing;
It made her senses stagger for a minute,
The riddle’s explication seem’d to harden;
But soon her superannuated _nous_
Explained the horrid mystery;--and raising
Her hand to heaven, with the cabbage in it,
On which she meant to sup,--
“Well! this _is_ fairy work! I’ll bet a farden,
Little prince Silverwings has ketch’d me up,
And set me down in some one else’s garden!”

Here ends the “fairy tale” of Hounslow-heath.

* * * * *

“She is far from the land!” is a motto to an engraving of a _land_ lady, frightened by voyaging in a Thames wherry, opposite St. Paul’s. Her after alarms at sea are concluded pleasantly:--

“We were off Flamborough-head. A heavy swell, the consequence of some recent storm to the eastward, was rolling right before the wind upon the land:--and, once under the shadow of the bluff promontory, we should lose all the advantage of a saving westerly breeze. Even the seamen looked anxious: but the passengers, (save one,) were in despair. They were, already, bones of contention, in their own misgivings, to the myriads of cormorants and waterfowl inhabiting that stupendous cliff. Miss Oliver alone was sanguine. She was all nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles; her cheeriness increased in proportion with our dreariness. Even the dismal pitching of the vessel could not disturb her unseasonable levity;--it was like a lightening before death--but, at length, the mystery was explained. She had springs of comfort that we knew not of. Not brandy, for that we shared in common; nor supplications, for those we had all applied to; but her ears, being jealously vigilant of whatever passed between the mariners, she had overheard from the captain,--and it had all the sound, to her, of a comfortable promise,--that ‘if the wind held, we should certainly _go on shore_.’”

* * * * *

The popular ballad of “Sally Brown and Ben the Carpenter,” which first appeared in the “London Magazine,” is inserted in this volume. “I have never been vainer of any verses,” says Mr. Hood, “than of my part in the following ballad. The lamented Emery, drest as Tom Tug, sang it at his last mortal benefit at Covent-garden; and, ever since, it has been a great favourite with the watermen of the Thames, who time their oars to it, as the wherrymen of Venice time theirs to the lines of Tasso. With the watermen, it went naturally to Vauxhall: and, over land, to Sadler’s-wells. The guards, not the mail coach but the life guards, picked it out from a fluttering hundred of others, all going to one air, against the dead wall at Knightsbridge. Cheap printers of Shoe-lane and Cow-cross, (all pirates!) disputed about the copyright, and published their own editions; and, in the mean time, the authors, to have made bread of their song, (it was poor old Homer’s hard ancient case!) must have sung it about the streets. Such is the lot of literature! the profits of ‘Sally Brown’ were divided by the ballad-mongers: it has cost, but has never brought me, a halfpenny.”

* * * * *

A “Recipe for Civilisation,” in Hudibrastic lines, is waggishly ascribed to the “pen of Dr. Kitchiner--as if, in the ingredients of versification, he had been assisted by his _Butler_.” It is accompanied by a whimsical whole length of “the Cook’s Oracle,” adjusting musical notes on the bars of a gridiron, a ludicrous allusion to the good-humoured Doctor’s diversified attainments in science and popularity.

* * * * *

From an odd poem, attributed to an odd personage, “The Last Man,” two verses are selected, as an example of feelings which the punning on the title-page seemed to have proscribed:--

I’ve buried my babies one by one,
And dug the deep hole for Joan,
And cover’d the faces of kith and kin,
And felt the old church-yard stone
Go cold to my heart, full many a time,
But I never felt so lone.

For the lion and Adam were company,
And the tiger him beguiled;
But the simple kine are foes to my life,
And the household brutes are wild.
If the veriest cur would lick my hand
I could love it like a child!

* * * * *

Mr. Hood’s pen essays “WALTON REDIVIVUS: _A New River Eclogue_.”

“[Piscator is fishing--near the sir Hugh Middleton’s Head, without either basket or can. Viator cometh up to him, with an angling-rod and a bottle.]”

It is prefaced by a citation “_From a Letter of C. Lamb_,” in these words:--“My old New River has presented no extraordinary novelties lately. But there Hope sits, day after day, speculating on traditionary gudgeons. I think she hath taken the fisheries. I now know the reasons why our forefathers were denominated East and West Angles. Yet is there no lack of spawn, for I wash my hands in fishets that come through the pump, every morning, thick as motelings--little things that perish untimely, and never taste the brook.”

To face this “Eclogue” there is a motto, “My banks they are furnished,” beneath a whole length figure, _so_ like “poor Jemmy Whittle!”--only not looking so good natured.

* * * * *

“Love me, love my dog,” is a fearful _cut_--Mr. Hood’s step-mother, and her precious “Bijou”--with a story, and a tail-piece--“O list unto my tale of woe,”--unnaturally natural.

* * * * *

One of the best pieces in the volume is “The Irish Schoolmaster,” who, from a clay cabin, “the College of Kilreen,” hangs out a board, “with painted letters red as blood,” announcing “CHILDREN TAKEN IN TO BATE.”

Six babes he sways,--some little and some big,
Divided into classes six;--alsoe,
He keeps a parlour boarder of a pig,
That in the college fareth to and fro,
And picketh up the urchins’ crumbs below
And eke the learned rudiments they scan,
And thus his A, B, C doth wisely know,--
Hereafter to be shown in caravan,
And raise the wonderment of many a learned man.

Alsoe, he schools some tame familiar fowls,
Whereof, above his head, some two or three
Sit darkly squatting, like Minerva’s owls,
But on the branches of no living tree,
And overlook the learned family;
While, sometimes, Partlet, from her gloomy perch,
Drops feather on the nose of Dominie,
Meanwhile, with serious eye, he makes research
In leaves of that sour tree of knowledge--now a birch.

* * * * *

Now, by the creeping shadows of the moon,
The hour is come to lay aside their lore;
The cheerful pedagogue perceives it soon,
And cries, “Begone!” unto the imps,--and four
Snatch their two hats and struggle for the door,
Like ardent spirits vented from a cask,
All blythe and boisterous,--but leave two more,
With Reading made Uneasy for a task,
To weep, whilst all their mates in merry sunshine bask,

Like sportive elfins on the verdant sod,
With tender moss so sleekly overgrown,
That doth not hurt, but kiss, the sole unshod,
So soothely kind is Erin to her own!
And one, at hare and hound, plays all alone,--
For Phelim’s gone to tend his step-dame’s cow;
Ah! Phelim’s step-dame is a canker’d crone!
Whilst other twain play at an Irish row,
And, with shillelah small, break one another’s brow!

But careful Dominie, with ceaseless thrift,
Now changeth ferula for rural hoe;
But, first of all, with tender hand doth shift
His college gown, because of solar glow,
And hangs it on a bush to scare the crow:
Meanwhile, he plants in earth the dappled bean,
Or trains the young potatoes all a-row,
Or plucks the fragrant leek for pottage green,
With that crisp curly herb, call’d Kale in Aberdeen.

And so he wisely spends the fruitful hours,
Linked each to each by labours, like a bee;
Or rules in learning’s hall, or trims her bow’rs;--
Would there were many more such wights as he,
To sway each capital academie
Of Cam and Isis; for, alack! at each
There dwells, I wot, some dronish Dominie,
That does no garden work, nor yet doth teach,
But wears a floury head, and talks in flow’ry speech!

* * * * *

For the entire of the subjects already extracted from, and for many others not adverted to, even by name, reference should be had to the work itself. There is one design, however, so excellent a specimen of Mr. Hood’s clear conception and decisive execution, that merely in further illustration of his talent it is here introduced.

An engraving of Mr. Hood’s admirable “Parish Beadle,” from his “Progress of Cant,” was inserted in an account of that print on p. 130 of the present volume of the _Every-Day Book_. Great as was the merit of that print, in point of wit and humour, and curious as it will always be regarded for its multiform developement of character, and relationship to the manners of the age, yet it is largely exceeded, in these respects, by the volume of “Whims and Oddities.” Possessing the rare talent, of illustrating what he writes by his own drawings, Mr. Hood is to be esteemed in a twofold capacity. He has, withall, the remarkable merit of having acquired his knowledge of art by his own teaching; and, what augurs well, the praise which the “Progress of Cant” deserved and obtained, has wholesomely invigorated him to higher mastery. There is a firmness of execution in the designs to the “Whims and Oddities,” surprisingly superior to the general manner of his meritorious etching just mentioned. The book is altogether the most original that the press of late years has produced; and, luckily, it comes like a seasonable visiter, to raise shouts of laughter “round about the coal-fire” in cold weather.

[500] The varieties and causes of these phenomena are described in Dr.
Forster’s “Researches about Atmospheric Phenomena,” 3d edition, p. 98.

[501] “Whims and Oddities, in Prose and Verse; with forty original
designs by Thomas Hood, one of the authors of ‘Odes and Addresses to
Great People,’ and the designer of the Progress of Cant, London,
Relfe, 1826.” 12mo. 10_s._ 6_d._

~November 17.~

HUGH,

_Bishop of Lincoln_.

His name is in the church of England calendar and almanacs on this day, which was ordained his festival by the Romish church, wherein he is honoured as a saint.

* * * * *

St. Hugh was born in Burgundy in 1140, educated in a convent, took the habit of the Chartreuse near Grenoble before he was of age, was ordained priest, and, at the end of ten years, the procuratorship of the monastery was intrusted to him. Henry II. of England, confiding in his prudence and sanctity, induced him to come over and regulate the new monastery of Carthusians, founded by the king at Witham in Somersetshire, which was the first of that order established in England. He was consecrated bishop of Lincoln, 21st September, 1186, exerted his episcopal authority to restore ecclesiastical discipline, especially amongst his clergy, and maintained the claims of the church against the crown itself. In quality of ambassador from king John, he went to France and negotiated a peace; on his return he was seized with a fever, presumed to have been occasioned by his abstemiousness, and died at London, on blessed ashes strewed on the floor, as he directed, in the form of a cross, on the 17th of November, 1200. His body was embalmed, and conveyed with great pomp to Lincoln, where it was met by king John of England and king William of Scotland, with three archbishops, fourteen bishops, above a hundred abbots, and a great number of earls and barons. The two kings put their shoulders under the bier as it was carried into the church.

Alban Butler, from whom these particulars are derived, affirms that three paralytic persons, and some others, recovered their health at St. Hugh’s tomb. He further relates, that, during the saint’s life time, Henry II., being on his way from Normandy to England, in a furious storm, prayed for mercy, through the merits and intercession of St. Hugh, whereon a calm ensued, and the voyage was made in safety.

* * * * *

THE UNTOMBED MARINERS.

_An incident really witnessed in the Bay of Biscay._

The waves roll’d long and high
In the fathomless Biscay,
And the rising breeze swept sullen by,
And the day closed heavily.

Our ship was tight and brave,
Well trimm’d and sailing free,
And she flew along on the mountain wave,
An eagle of the sea.

The red cross fluttering yet,
We lower’d the noble sign,
For the bell had struck, it was past sunset,
And the moon began to shine.

Her light was fitful, flung
From a sky of angry gloom,
Thick hurrying clouds o’er the waters hung,
Their hue was of the tomb.

Yet now and then a gleam
Broke through of her silent ray,
And lit around with her soften’d beam
Some spot of that plumbless bay.

O’er the bulwark’s side we heard
The proud ship break the spray,
While her shrouds and sheets by the wild winds stirr’d,
Made music mournfully.