THE year just expired will be ever memorable for its outburst of zeal in favour of locomotion; a wild and grand enthusiasm in the noble cause of cause-ways, was kindled in the general European bosom, and all our energetic spirits "took to the road." To bring out a new line was the favourite occupation of genius, as with the painter of old, nulla dies sine lineû. Most of these projected itineraries have their plans and sections safely lodged behind the scaffolding in Whitehall; and there, when duly sifted, will perhaps be found excellent materials for a complete illustrated "hand-book" of Great Britain and the adjacent islands. As to those parties who, less fortunate, have broken down in their attempt to effect a lodgement for their contemplated roads, either at the Board of Trade or (sadder still) at the office of the Accountant-general, we would recommend them to write (if they have the genius to do it) a book like the present, descriptive of the country traversed, with all its engineering facilities and other attractions, adding anecdotes of levelling, active and passive, and of hospitalities enjoyed along the line. If they do, we shall peruse their narrative with curious interest: if they do not, why,

"Down among the dead men,

Down among the dead men, let them lie."

We come to the subject before us. Projects of eastern itineraries have been pretty rife. Mr. Kinglake's great Eōthen line was early in the field, and a decided favourite with the public. They paid up freely upon it a third, and even a fourth call, which has just been made, is in the act of being responded to. Stimulated by honourable rivalry, Mr. ELIOT WARBURTON put forth early in the year a competing route from England eastwards; we allude, of course, to the "CROSS and CRESCENT" junction, which got its deposits readily enough, and still holds its ground.

A Tour from Cornhill to Cairo,

man and Hall.

A Mr. HILL subsequently submitted his scheme, the "TURBAN and TIARA;" but, in spite of that designation, it made but little head-way with capitalists. For this we could assign many reasons, were we inclined still farther to depreciate a concern already very low in the market, but we forbear; nor shall we notice harshly a meditated undertaking by a projector of our own metropolis, to be called "the CUTLETT and EL KABOB," provisionally registered, which, while yet in embryo, had to be abandoned on the crash occasioned by The Times.

It would, in fact, seem madness to advertise a new project in the present state of a market deluged with Oriental scrip; but the very circumstance of the promoters, Messrs. Chapman and Hall, coming out at this juncture, seems to us a proof of their confidence in the soundness of the plan, and its perfect readiness to meet the eye of scrutiny. We have accordingly examined this route from "Cornhill to Cairo;" and we find, that though the termini are the same as with other undertakings in this direction, the average level is considerably higher. We farther discover, that it is a strictly atmospheric line, laughing gas being the athmos by which the train of thought is hurried forwards; some of the gradients being gracefully borrowed from the Gradus ad Parnassum, the curves approximating generally to HOGARTH'S "line of beauty;" and the gauge of the raillery being throughout of the broadest charac

along the row called "Rotten:" and oft amid keen-eyed men in that grand Father of rows which the children of literature call PATER

NOSTER.

The inquiry is not irrelevant. Is he a man or a myth? a human or a hoax? Liveth he in the flesh among us ανδρεσι βροτοισι, taking his chop at the GARRICK, his omelette soufflée or vol-au-vent at the Reform?

"Superstne ac vescitur aurâ
Æthereâ?"
Eneid, lib. iv.

Or like Isaac Bickerstaff, Junius, and Geoffry Crayon, setting habeas corpus at defiance, is he but an umbratile, incorporeal sham, a mockery, a delusion, and a snare ?"

This problem has been variously and conflictingly solved, as in the parallel case of the grim old Stat nominis umbra. There is a hint in both instances of some mysterious connexion with the remote regions of Bengal, and an erect old pigtail of the E.I.C.S. boasts in the "horizontal" jungle off Hanover Square, of having had the dubious advantage of his personal acquaintanceship in upper India, where his I.O.U.'s were signed MAJOR GOLIAH GAHAGAN ; and several specimens of that documentary character, in good preservation, he offers at a low figure to

amateurs.

This statement of old Mulligatawny must still, we apprehend, be taken with a grain of salt; for one of our own set swears to having met this writer, not long since, at Stutgard, in that rather slow gasthof, the Koenig von Wirtemberg, whence he hailed as the Hon. AUGUSTUS FITZ-Boodle, and went through a series of adventures of a purely aesthetic class. To have fascinated as he did the lovely and lively Fraulein von Göbbledück, he must (adopting the previous theory) not only have had two heads to his individual shoulders, like the black eagle of Austria, but also renewed his youth like the cagle of the Psalmist. Indeed, on this latter point his longevity would seem to rival that of Frederic Barbarossa, in Victor Hugo's Trilogie, if we are to credit a statement from the drunken old gatekeeper of the late venerable and recently demolished prison of her most gracious majesty, the FLEET.

In that locale this deponent sayeth that his own father and predecessor in office "had knowed his honour," and often had him in that establishment, his name on the books being entered BARRY LYNDON, Esquire. It appears his luck was various, but Mr. Justice Fielding frequently came to his assistance, from whom (and with whom) he imbibed much. The XX. ex-doorkeeper, who still hovers about the "dear ruin," and roams among the cabbages of Farringdon Market, "verdantly still," thinks he "seed his honor of late, by moonlight, a standing close by, quite seedy and sorrowful-like." Most probable tale! for was not the FLEET one of our ancient institutions? and so few are allowed to remain, that it must go to the heart of a true Briton to witness their successive and preconcerted downfall. Where is all this to end? Go, reader, to Farringdon Street, and there ponder on the perishability of what our forefathers thought indestructible! There, on that waste ground, there was the FLEET! Classibus hic locus! Drop a tear (una furtiva lagrima) on the truly classic spot! It helps one to go and see where the Greeks encamped for so many generations,—

Juvat ire et Dorica castra Desertosque videre locos littusque relictum."

Yet, somehow, the place is sacred to its aboriginal traditions. Hence ! avaunt! 't is holy ground! The Greeks will stick by it still. The "DIRECT MANCHESTER (Remington's line)" have pounced upon it for the terminus of their "RAILWAY."

But

Let us back to nos moutons. which mutton? Cujum pecus? to speak with the shepherd of Mantua. For, as if to thwart all efforts at establishing our author's individuality, lo! another deponent flings additional confusion on the inquiry. Ay, a liveried flunkey, at the Dowager Lady Winterbottom's, in Berkeley Square, is seen to give a knowing wink as he reads the announcement of this book in The Times. all be true what is freely asserted in that neighbourhood concerning a FOOTMAN of the regulation stature, with a literary turn and keen habits of observation, a quondam correspondent of our own-AUTHOR, in

Can it

fact, of two epistolary volumes,* of which the publisher admits that, notwithstanding the vast demand for them at the fair of Leipsic, some few copies remain unsold? With these dim recollections, to which the prism of memory gives a yellowish tinge, is there not associated the phenomenon of the same author's recent appearance, in a fragmentary form, to wit, in a certain DIARY recording the astounding fortunes of JAMES DE LA PLUCHE, Esq., a personage who, in the recent ferment about railways, appears to have risen to the top, like the froth on a pot of porter? Here be abundant materials for bewilderment, and we are dumbfoundered accordingly.

With all the "aids to reflection" supplied to a pensive public in the foregoing statements, is there not "much that may give us pause if pondered fittingly?" Does not the whole subject of pseudononymous authorship rise before one in its awful phantasmagory? Fain would we here talk of Tom Moore's VEILED PROPHET, and denounce with the philanthropist BUCKINGHAM, and the poet BUNN, those "hollow hearts that wear a mask," if our present and proper business were not just now to elucidate the mysteries of Michael Angelo Titmarsh. Have we not met this literary malefactor before, even under his present disguise?

We stoutly assert, that of a Parisian Sketch-Book, by this author, the usual number of copies were entered at Stationers' Hall as far back as 1839, when it was generally found to contain so many mischievous assertions and dangerous hints, that Mr. GRANT was compelled to rectify all these fallacies and misstatements in a subsequent work of his own, Paris and its People. To have suggested the subject to so eminent a pen was in itself some compensation for the malice of that book,

"Bright things have their foil, 'Tis to a Bentley that we owe a Boyle."

In further illustration of which, when this "Titmarsh" went, in 1842, to the sister island, and published an IRISH Sketch-Book,† full of the most alarming views and startling para

doxes, the indefatigable Mr. Grant doggedly pursued him thither with his Impressions of Ireland (1844),—

"Rarò antecedentem scelestum,

Deseruit pede pœna claudo ;"

that is to say, there is a prosaical as well as poetical justice; an evening of devilled turkey-legs and champagne is soberly followed by next morning's red herring and soda

water.

Wild and reckless as TIT shewed himself in Ireland, yet, in one respect, his caution was exhibited. He did not fall into the fatal mistake as to the facial angle of the Celtic ladies, since then become so awful a matter with The Times' Commissioner, for whom the fate of Orpheus at the hands of the spreta matres of Cunnemara would not be too much retributive revenge. Very different was his appreciation of Irish lasses. Ex. gr. :

Beauty is not rare

In the land of Paddy,
Fair beyond compare
Is Peg of Limnavaddy;
Had I HOMER's fire,

Or that of Serjeant TADDY,
'Tis then I'd strike the lyre,

For Peg of Limnavaddy!"

Nor was it in vain that he depicted and deplored the unutterable squalor of Maynooth. Spring Rice quoted him in the House of Lords in opposition to Mr. Grant's account read by Fox Maule in the Commons.

So far we have traced our author, but here another transformation occurs. The attendance on agricultural dinners, and the fattening effect of Irish provisions generally, with PETER PURCELL's particular hospitalities, seem to have combined to swell him into unusual dimensions; for, no longer recognisable as Titmarsh on his return, he burst upon the town as the "Fat Contributor' to Punch, in which capacity, when we last heard of him, he had determined to travel in the East, had "let his mustachios grow," and embarked on the Oriental Steam Company's vessel, the Burrompooter.

Here a feeling of incredulity will naturally come upon the reader.

Must he admit all this multiformity in single-handed authorship, and do not so many irreconcileable phases stagger belief in one persisting individuality? We refer the doubtful on this point to that celebrated work the Vestiges of Creation, in which the grand doctrine of PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPEMENT, long known to the initiated, is put in a popular shape. The famous "nebular theory" is there reproduced and expounded, and, as with the planet we inhabit, so various stages of pre-existence may be presumed to have been gone through by our author. That the fat contributor to Punch, now revolving in his full rotundity, may have previously existed in an attenuated and otherwise diluted form, is but a simple hypothesis, familiar in its process to the student of geodesical transmutation. The early rarefied and scatter-brain period has been only condensed into cohesion and comparative solidity. The primitive or Barry Lyndonian epoch, recognisable by traces of quartz, is succeeded by the FitzBoodle formation, amid broken strata and detritus. Major Goliah Gahagan is but a sort of mastodon or megatherium, dug up to bear evidence of a former intellectual organisation, while that peculiar stage, viz. the Yellowplush period, corresponds to the ichthosaurian or lizard era of animal life on our globe.

If this theory is not deemed conclusive, then must we take refuge in the books of Hindoo theology, and (as, in point of fact, our author is an avroxy of Calcutta) refer to the various incarnations of VISNOU, in imitation of whom this wayward genius may be supposed to incorporate himself in a variety of manifestations.

PUNCH himself, in whom he is now embodied as a most pinguidinous contributor, was not always Punch.

"Dear Tom, this brown jug which now

foams with mild ale

Was once Toby Philpot, a merry old soul."

He was once a Greek deity, and called PAN. Then, as now, he played on the pandean pipe, and wielded a truncheon, though as yet he had neither dog nor Judy; the essential feature, however, i.e. the aboriginal nose, was already developed. Long flourished he in early Greece, when

MUSIC, heavenly old maid! now presiding at the Ancient Concerts, was yet in her teens,-HE, no doubt, was among the "passions" who

"Thronged around her magic cell."

Of course, before his marriage with the present Mrs. P.

Suddenly, after many years of prosperous existence, a voice was heard among the Cyclades, to the effect that PAN was dead,απολωλε ο Ilav (vide Plutarch); but was it so? The undying one, not he! 'Twas only a sham to cover his retreat from a numerous body of ruthless creditors. He simply changed his name and address, appearing at the imperial court of Rome under a variety of aliases-Plautus, Publius Syrus, Flaccus, nay, occasionally Naso: and how his influence was suddenly felt-how he himself improved on the transfer, is attested by the facetious Tully, a good judge. "Romani

sales salsiores sunt quam illi Atticorum." The manner of his disappearance in the wreck of the Roman empire is probably explained in some of the Byzantine histories, though the circumstance is pretermitted by Mr. Gibbon. He turned up, however (we knew he would), at the revival of letters, in the shape of a distorted old statue in the Piazza Navona, and assumed the name of PASQUIN.

To Rome he stuck as long as that capital continued to be the brainsbox as well as cash-box of Europe; but having his own misgivings of an approaching diminution in both respects, he crossed the Alps with RABELAIS. Awhile was he uncertain whether to fix in France or Spain, till the latter preponderating in the balance of power, we find him established on the other side of the Pyrenees, donkey-borne through the pleasant towns of Andalusia, under the form of Sancho PANZA. In that character he is (wrongfully) accused of having

"Laughed Spain's chivalry away.”

The secret causes of Spanish downfall, and the melancholy lesson to be thence learned, being far removed from a laughing matter, most assuredly. Be that as it may, when the grand monarque came to rule the

roast, we find our friend Punch still at head-quarters, this time in the shape of SCARRON. As such, he kept the court alive till that old king became (as his wife Judy said) no longer amusable; whereupon he cast about for a change, alternating between England, Ireland, and France. In the son of a hatter, mechant comme un diable, and crooked as a note of interrogation, he found a fitting tabernacle, and out came the DUNCIAD of the day. In Swift he tenanted "the deanery" of St. Patrick's awhile, then after grinning for nearly a century from the grotesque lanternjaws of Voltaire, was snuffed out at the French Revolution, as it was thought, but erroneously, for in the club-footed diplomatist TALLEYRAND, with grave buffoonery, he continued to emerge now and then, through each successive roar of that terrific mahlstrom, down to the quiet days of the umbelliferous Louis Philippe. Some thought he had died in blessed odour of Whiggery, a canon of St. Paul's, and pointed to the burial register of the Rev. Sidney Smith; but just then, at the bottom of Ludgate Hill, he flung aside the long-worn trammels of alias and incognito, and in his own proper character,-AS PUNCH-il vero pulcinello, re-asserting his ancient dominion, indisputable monarch of all JOKEDOM, burst upon the world.

Of this Potentate or of his staff it won't do to say aught in disparagement. Here, in sooth, is a brotherhood of writers whose tremendous power is only now beginning to be recognised. The wits and sages of Port Royal had no such influence in their day, nor had the provincial pleasantries of Pascal half such circulation.

To the EAST, then, let us off with TITMARSH! To the dull, dreary, desolate East, land of the cypress, marriage-portion of the owl, where in our time holyday walks used to be taken in cemeteries, women glided by in winding-sheets, banded hounds disputed the broken causeway with men, and the tall minaret lifted its crescent against the blue sky above a landscape strewn with dunghills and dead dogs, with here and there a donkey, a howling Dervish, a dromedary, and if aught else there be that is dismal.

And shall we have our laugh in the midst of all this desolation? Ay shall ye and all the more brilliant, because of the surrounding gloom, shall be the flash of wit and the glitter of fancy; not unlike (pity 'tis 'tis true!) the bright silver plaque on the black velvet coffin. Even such is the curious temperament of our tourist, such the buoyancy of his indomitable hilarity, that though full often during the progress of this journey doth his bosom swell with indignant emotions, and the big tear gather in his manly eye, at the sight of misery and wrong, though the truest and tenderest human sympathies hallow many an eloquent page in his book, yet somehow the everlurking laugh brings a line (turned topsy-turvy) of Lucretius to one's memory:

"Medio de fonte dolorum Ecce jocosum aliquid vel in ipsis fletibus afflat!

But what of that, if the result be a delightful compound of mirth and melancholy, an agro dolce of sagacity and fun, never lagging for one moment, yielding to no adverse influence of time or place, land or sea, finding utterance at every emergency for some pleasant sally in a continued series; beginning off the Needles of the Isle of Wight, and ending with that of Cleopatra ?

As Sterne, in the outset of his journey, fell in with a poor monk at Calais, Titmarsh, not to be outdone, picks up a bishop off Vigo Bay. The gentle bearing of the holy man is given with particular unction, quite a contrast is he to our episcopal "lions of the fold" of Tuam or Exeter. The parting scene thus :

"Then came the bishop's turn; but he couldn't do it for a long while. He went from one passenger to another, sadly shaking them by the haud, often taking leave, and seeming loth to depart, until Captain Cooper, in a stern but respectful tone, touched him on the shoulder, and said, I know not with what correctness, being ignorant of the Spanish language, 'Senor Bispo! Senor Bispo !' on which summons the poor old man, looking ruefully round him once more, put his square cap under his arm, tucked up his long black petticoats, so as to shew his purple stockings and jolly fat calves, and went trembling down the