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that not for a fortnight, but for a long twelvemonth, as we were constrained to do, was a little harder exaction. "Man goeth forth to his work until the evening "-from a reasonable hour in the morning, we presume it was meant. Now, as our main occupation took us up from eight till five every day in the City; and as our evening hours, at that time of life, had generally to do with anything rather than business, it follows, that the only time we could spare for this manufactory of jokes-our supplementary livelihood, that supplied us in every want beyond mere bread and cheese-was exactly that part of the day which (as we have heard of No Man's Land) may be fitly denominated No Man's Time; that is, no time in which a man ought to be up, and awake, in. To speak more plainly, it is that time of an hour, or an hour and a half's duration, in which a man, whose occasions call him up so preposterously, has to wait for his breakfast.

upon the pillow; but to get up, as he goes on to say,

-revocare gradus, superasque evadere ad auras

and to get up moreover to make jokes with malice prepended-there was the "labour," there the "work."

No Egyptian taskmaster ever devised a slavery like to that, our slavery. No fractious operants ever turned out for half the tyranny which this necessity exercised upon us. Half a dozen jests in a day, (bating Sundays too,) why, it seems nothing! We make twice the number every day in our lives as a matter of course, and claim no Sabbatical exemptions. But then they come into our head. But when the head has to go out to them-when the mountain must go to Mahomet

Reader, try it for once, only for one short twelvemonth.

It was not every week that a fashion of pink stockings came up; but mostly, instead of it, some rugged untractable subject; some topic impossible to be contorted into the risible; some feature, upon which no smile could play; some flint, from which no process of ingenuity could procure a scintillation. There they lay; there your appointed tale of brick-making was set before you, which you must finish, with or without straw, as it happened. The craving Dragon-the Public

like him in Bel's temple-must be fed; it expected its daily rations; and Daniel, and ourselves, to do us justice, did the best we could on this side bursting him.

O those head-aches at dawn of day, when at five, or half-past five in summer, and not much later in the dark seasons, we were compelled to rise, having been perhaps not above four hours in bed-(for we were no go-to-beds with the lamb, though we anticipated the lark ofttimes in her rising we like a parting cup at midnight, as all young men did before these effeminate times, and to have our friends about us-we were not constellated under Aquarius, that watery sign, and therefore incapable of Bacchus, cold, washy, bloodless-we were none of your Basilian water-sponges, nor had taken our degrees at Mount Ague-we were right toping Capulets, jolly companions, we and they) but to have to get up, as we said before, curtailed of half our fair sleep, fasting, with only a dim vista of refreshing bohea, in the distance-to be necessitated to rouse ourselves at the detestable rap of an old hag of a domestic, who seemed to take a diabolical | sufficient. He carried this nonchalance so pleasure in her announcement that it was "time to rise;" and whose chappy knuckles we have often yearned to amputate, and string them up at our chamber door, to be a terror to all such unseasonable rest-breakers in future

"Facil" and sweet, as Virgil sings, had been the "descending" of the over-night, balmy the first sinking of the heavy head

While we were wringing out coy sprightlinesses for the Post, and writhing under the toil of what is called " easy writing," Bob Allen, our quondam schoolfellow, was tapping his impracticable brains in a like service for the Oracle." Not that Robert troubled himself much about wit. If his paragraphs had a sprightly air about them, it was

far at last, that a matter of intelligence, and that no very important one, was not seldom palmed upon his employers for a good jest; for example sake-" Walking yesterday morning casually down Snow Hill, who should we meet but Mr. Deputy Humphreys! we rejoice to add, that the worthy Deputy appeared to enjoy a good state of health. We do not ever remember to have seen him look better." This

gentleman so surprisingly met upon Snow commencement of the present century. Even Hill, from some peculiarities in gait or the prelusive delicacies of the present writer gesture, was a constant butt for mirth to the the curt "Astræan allusion"-would be small paragraph-mongers of the day; and thought pedantic and out of date, in these our friend thought that he might have his days. fling at him with the rest. We met A. in From the office of the Morning Post (for Holborn shortly after this extraordinary we may as well exhaust our Newspaper rencounter, which he told with tears of Reminiscences at once) by change of property satisfaction in his eyes, and chuckling at the in the paper, we were transferred, mortifying anticipated effects of its announcement next exchange! to the office of the Albion day in the paper. We did not quite com- Newspaper, late Rackstrow's Museum, in prehend where the wit of it lay at the time; Fleet-street. What a transition-from a nor was it easy to be detected, when the handsome apartment, from rose-wood desks, thing came out advantaged by type and and silver inkstands, to an office-no office, letter-press. He had better have met any- but a den rather, but just redeemed from thing that morning than a Common Council the occupation of dead monsters, of which it Man. His services were shortly after seemed redolent-from the centre of loyalty dispensed with, on the plea that his para- and fashion, to a focus of vulgarity and graphs of late had been deficient in point. sedition! Here in murky closet, inadequate The one in question, it must be owned, had from its square contents to the receipt of an air, in the opening especially, proper to the two bodies of Editor, and humble awaken curiosity; and the sentiment, or paragraph-maker, together at one time, sat moral, wears the aspect of humanity and in the discharge of his new editorial functions good neighbourly feeling. But somehow the (the "Bigod" of Elia) the redoubted John conclusion was not judged altogether to Fenwick. answer to the magnificent promise of the premises. We traced our friend's pen afterwards in the "True Briton," the "Star," the "Traveller," from all which he was successively dismissed, the Proprietors having "no further occasion for his services. Nothing was easier than to detect him. When wit failed, or topics ran low, there constantly appeared the following-"It is not generally known that the three Blue Balls at the Pawnbrokers' shops are the ancient arms of Lombardy. The Lombards were the first money-brokers in Europe." Bob has done more to set the public right on this important point of blazonry, than the whole College of Heralds.

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The appointment of a regular wit has long ceased to be a part of the economy of a Morning Paper. Editors find their own jokes, or do as well without them. Parson Este, and Topham, brought up the set custom of "witty paragraphs" first in the "World." Boaden was a reigning paragraphist in his day, and succeeded poor Allen in the "Oracle." But, as we said, the fashion of jokes passes away; and it would be difficult to discover in the biographer of Mrs. Siddons, any traces of that vivacity and fancy which charmed the whole town at the

F., without a guinea in his pocket, and having left not many in the pockets of his friends whom he might command, had purchased (on tick doubtless) the whole and sole Editorship, Proprietorship, with all the rights and titles (such as they were worth) of the Albion from one Lovell; of whom we know nothing, save that he had stood in the pillory for a libel on the Prince of Wales. With this hopeless concern-for it had been sinking ever since its commencement, and could now reckon upon not more than a hundred subscribers-F. resolutely determined upon pulling down the Government in the first instance, and making both our fortunes by way of corollary. For seven weeks and more did this infatuated democrat go about borrowing seven-shilling pieces, and lesser coin, to meet the daily demands of the Stamp office, which allowed no credit to publications of that side in politics. An outcast from politer bread, we attached our small talents to the forlorn fortunes of our friend. Our occupation now was to write treason.

Recollections of feelings-which were all that now remained from our first boyish heats kindled by the French Revolution, when, if we were misled, we erred in the

company of some who are accounted very be marked at that office, with a view of its good men now-rather than any tendency being submitted, at least to the attention of at this time to Republican doctrines-assisted the proper Law Officers-when an unlucky, us in assuming a style of writing, while the or rather lucky epigram from our pen, aimed paper lasted, consonant in no very under at Sir J-s Mh, who was on the eve tone-to the right earnest fanaticism of F. of departing for India to reap the fruits of Our cue was now to insinuate, rather than his apostacy, as F. pronounced it, (it is hardly recommend, possible abdications. Blocks, worth particularising,) happening to offend axes, Whitehall tribunals, were covered with the nice sense of Lord, or, as he then flowers of so cunning a periphrasis-as delighted to be called, Citizen Stanhope, Mr. Bayes says, never naming the thing deprived F. at once of the last hopes of a directly that the keen eye of an Attorney guinea from the last patron that had stuck General was insufficient to detect the lurking by us; and breaking up our establishment, snake among them. There were times, left us to the safe, but somewhat mortifying, indeed, when we sighed for our more gentle- neglect of the Crown Lawyers. It was about man-like occupation under Stuart. But this time, or a little earlier, that Dan Stuart with change of masters it is ever change made that curious confession to us, that he of service. Already one paragraph, and had "never deliberately walked into an another, as we learned afterwards from a Exhibition at Somerset House in his life." gentleman at the Treasury, had begun to

BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART.

with a new fury beyond the grape, Bacchus, born in fire, fire-like flings himself at the Cretan. This is the time present. With this telling of the story-an artist, and no ordinary one, might remain richly proud. Guido, in his harmonious version of it, saw no further. But from the depths of the imaginative spirit Titian has recalled past time, and laid it contributory with the present to one simultaneous effect. With the desert all ringing with the mad cymbals of his followers, made lucid with the presence and new offers of a god,-as if unconscious of Bacchus, or but idly casting her eyes as upon some unconcerning pageant-her soul undistracted from Theseus-Ariadne is still pacing the solitary shore in as much heart-silence, and in almost the same local solitude, with which she awoke at day-break to catch the forlorn last glances of the sail that bore away the Athenian.

HOGARTH excepted, can we produce any | reeling satyr rout about him, re-peopling and one painter within the last fifty years, or re-illuming suddenly the waste places, drunk since the humour of exhibiting began, that has treated a story imaginatively? By this we mean, upon whom his subject has so acted, that it has seemed to direct him-not to be arranged by him? Any upon whom its leading or collateral points have impressed themselves so tyrannically, that he dared not treat it otherwise, lest he should falsify a revelation? Any that has imparted to his compositions, not merely so much truth as is enough to convey a story with clearness, but that individualising property, which should keep the subject so treated distinct in feature from every other subject, however similar, and to common apprehensions almost identical; so as that we might say, this and this part could have found an appropriate place in no other picture in the world but this? Is there anything in modern art-we will not demand that it should be equalbut in any way analogous to what Titian has effected, in that wonderful bringing together Here are two points miraculously coof two times in the "Ariadne," in the uniting; fierce society, with the feeling of National Gallery? Precipitous, with his solitude still absolute; noon-day revelations,

Mr.

with the accidents of the dull grey dawn to battle for indecorous mastery.-We have unquenched and lingering; the present seen a landscape of a justly admired neoteric, Bacchus, with the past Ariadne; two stories, in which he aimed at delineating a fiction, with double Time; separate, and harmonising. one of the most severely beautiful in antiquity Had the artist made the woman one shade-the gardens of the Hesperides. To do less indifferent to the God; still more, had she expressed a rapture at his advent, where would have been the story of the mighty desolation of the heart previous? merged in the insipid accident of a flattering offer met with a welcome acceptance. The broken heart for Theseus was not lightly to be pieced up by a God.

comfort the irksomeness, has peopled their solitude with a bevy of fair attendants, maids of honour, or ladies of the bed-chamber, according to the approved etiquette at a court of the nineteenth century; giving to the whole scene the air of a fête champêtre, if we will but excuse the absence of the gentlemen. This is well, and Watteauish. But what is become of the solitary mystery—the

- justice, he had painted a laudable orchard, with fitting seclusion, and a veritable dragon (of which a Polypheme, by Poussin, is somehow a fac-simile for the situation), looking over into the world shut out backwards, so that none but a "still-climbing Hercules " could hope to catch a peep at the admired Ternary of Recluses. No convenWe have before us a fine rough print, tual porter could keep his eyes better than from a picture by Raphael in the Vatican. this custos with the "lidless eyes." He not It is the Presentation of the new-born Eve only sees that none do intrude into that to Adam by the Almighty. A fairer mother privacy, but, as clear as daylight, that none of mankind we might imagine, and a goodlier but Hercules aut Diabolus by any manner of sire perhaps of men since born. But these means can. So far all is well. We have are matters subordinate to the conception of absolute solitude here or nowhere. Ab extra the situation, displayed in this extraordinary the damsels are snug enough. But here the production. A tolerably modern artist artist's courage seems to have failed him. would have been satisfied with tempering He began to pity his pretty charge, and, to certain raptures of connubial anticipation, with a suitable acknowledgment to the Giver of the blessing, in the countenance of the first bridegroom; something like the divided attention of the child (Adam was here a child-man) between the given toy, and the mother who had just blest it with the bauble. This is the obvious, the firstsight view, the superficial. An artist of a higher grade, considering the awful presence they were in, would have taken care to subtract something from the expression of the more human passion, and to heighten the more spiritual one. This would be as much as an exhibition-goer, from the opening of The paintings, or rather the stupendous Somerset House to last year's show, has been architectural designs, of a modern artist, have encouraged to look for. It is obvious to hint been urged as objections to the theory of our at a lower expression yet, in a picture that, motto. They are of a character, we confess, for respects of drawing and colouring, might to stagger it. His towered structures are of be deemed not wholly inadmissible within the highest order of the material sublime. these art-fostering walls, in which the Whether they were dreams, or transcripts of raptures should be as ninety-nine, the grati- some elder workmanship-Assyrian ruins tude as one, or perhaps zero! By neither old-restored by this mighty artist, they the one passion nor the other has Raphael satisfy our most stretched and craving conexpounded the situation of Adam. Singly ceptions of the glories of the antique world. upon his brow sits the absorbing sense of It is a pity that they were ever peopled. On wonder at the created miracle. The moment that side, the imagination of the artist halts, is seized by the intuitive artist, perhaps not and appears defective. Let us examine the self-conscious of his art, in which neither of point of the story in the "Belshazzar's the conflicting emotions- a moment how Feast." We will introduce it by an apposite abstracted!—have had time to spring up, or anecdote.

Daughters three,

That sing around the golden tree?

This is not the way in which Poussin would have treated this subject.

The court historians of the day record, that anxiety for the preservation of their persons, at the first dinner given by the late King-such as we have witnessed at a theatre, (then Prince Regent) at the Pavilion, the when a slight alarm of fire has been given— following characteristic frolic was played off. The guests were select and admiring; the banquet profuse and admirable; the lights lustrous and oriental; the eye was perfectly dazzled with the display of plate, among which the great gold salt-cellar, brought from the regalia in the Tower for this especial purpose, itself a tower! stood conspicuous for its magnitude. And now the Rev. ****, the then admired court Chaplain, was proceeding with the grace, when, at a signal given, the lights were suddenly overcast, and a huge transparency was discovered, in which glittered in gold letters

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an adequate exponent of a supernatural terror? the way in which the finger of God, writing judgments, would have been met by the withered conscience? There is a human fear, and a divine fear. The one is disturbed, restless, and bent upon escape. The other is bowed down, effortless, passive. When the spirit appeared before Eliphaz in the visions of the night, and the hair of his flesh stood up, was it in the thoughts of the Temanite to ring the bell of his chamber, or to call up the servants? But let us see in the text what there is to justify all this huddle of vulgar consternation.

From the words of Daniel it appears that Belshazzar had made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand. The golden and silver vessels are gorgeously enumerated, with the princes, the king's concubines, and his wives. Then follows

Imagine the confusion of the guests; the Georges and garters, jewels, bracelets, moulted upon the occasion! The fans dropped, and picked up the next morning by the sly courtpages! Mrs. Fitz-what's-her-name fainting, "In the same hour came forth fingers of a and the Countess of * * * * holding the smell-man's hand, and wrote over against the ing-bottle, till the good-humoured Prince candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of caused harmony to be restored, by calling in the king's palace; and the king saw the part fresh candles, and declaring that the whole of the hand that wrote. Then the king's was nothing but a pantomime hoax, got up countenance was changed, and his thoughts by the ingenious Mr. Farley, of Covent troubled him, so that the joints of his loins Garden, from hints which his Royal High- were loosened, and his knees smote one ness himself had furnished! Then imagine against another." the infinite applause that followed, the mutual rallyings, the declarations that "they were not much frightened," of the assembled galaxy.

The point of time in the picture exactly answers to the appearance of the transparency in the anecdote. The huddle, the flutter, the bustle, the escape, the alarm, and the mock alarm; the prettinesses heightened by consternation; the courtier's fear which was flattery; and the lady's which was affectation n; all that we may conceive to have taken place in a mob of Brighton courtiers, sympathising with the well-acted surprise of their sovereign; all this, and no more, is exhibited by the well-dressed lords and ladies in the Hall of Belus. Just this sort of consternation we have seen among a flock of disquieted wild geese at the report only of a gun having gone off!

This is the plain text. By no hint can it be otherwise inferred, but that the appearance was solely confined to the fancy of Belshazzar, that his single brain was troubled. Not a word is spoken of its being seen by any else there present, not even by the queen herself, who merely undertakes for the interpretation of the phenomenon, as related to her, doubtless, by her husband. The lords are simply said to be astonished; i. e. at the trouble and the change of countenance in their sovereign. Even the prophet does not appear to have seen the scroll, which the king saw. He recals it only, as Joseph did the Dream to the King of Egypt. "Then was the part of the hand sent from him [the Lord], and this writing was written." He speaks of the phantasm as past.

Then what becomes of this needless multiplication of the miracle? this message to a royal But is this vulgar fright, this mere animal conscience, singly expressed-for it was said,

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