MA HYMEN AND LOW MEN. THE fashionable newspapers are continually sacrificing column after column of their valuable space to the duty of recording vastly fashionable marriages, whereof no doubt the details are devoured with great avidity by the fashionable world. Now these details may be interesting to fashionable people, but to persons not so fortunate they must be slightly tiresome. To readers who, for instance, reside in the New Cut, there can hardly be much interest in reading the description of a marriage in May Fair. At any rate, if merely for the purpose of variety, we should rejoice if the reporters would now and then describe an unfashionable wedding. Something in this style : MARRIAGE IN Low LIFE.-The wedding of MISS BUGGINS, eldest child and heiress of MR. JOSEPH BUGGINS, Rag and Bottle Merchant, Houndsditch, to MR. MICHAEL MUGGINS, Chimneysweep, Whitechapel, was solemnised on Tuesday last at Little Ebenezer Chapel, which we need not say was crowded, wellnigh to overflowing, with the flower and élite of the unfashionable world. The nuptial ceremony was performed, in a most impressive manner, by the REVEREND MOSES BENJAMIN BOANERGES HOWLER, second cousin of the bridegroom, assisted by his pew-opener, MRS. MARTHA MOULDIE, a greataunt of the bride. It had been intended that a full choral service should be given, but the bellows-blower of the organ was unfortunately absent upon urgent private business connected with the coal-trade; and as MISS SCREECH, the leading vocalist, was in bed with influenza, the music was confined to the whistling of the small boys assembled in the street. THE Daily News thus records certain recent outbursts of popular sympathy: "THE CLAIMANT AT LEICESTER.-Last evening the Claimant, who is to speak to-day at an out-door demonstration of Foresters at Loughborough, arrived at Leicester from London. He was met by a deputation from Loughborough, and on entering the stable-yard was received with much cheering by a large concourse of people. He drove off with his friends in a waggonette drawn by greys, with postilions, to the White Hart Hotel. The Claimant afterwards started for Loughborough, and a crowd of 10,000 persons assembled to see him depart, and cheered him lustily to the outskirts of the town. Similar demonstrations took place at various points on the route, and at Loughborough almost the entire populace turned out to meet the visitor." "Populace," observe, not "population." The Daily News has a keenly discriminating paragraph-writer. It was doubtless also the populace, as contradistinguished from the population, that constituted the "large concourse of people" by whom CASTRO was received, with immense cheering," at Leicester. We may be quite sure that if they had not, in their own minds, believed him really to be CASTRO, as he called himself, or, if not CASTRO, then to be ORTON, or if not ORTON, still to be such another as ORTON, and no bloated aristocrat, at least no aristocrat, either by birth or breeding, and particularly not the aristocrat he claims to be, they would never have cheered him. The Times, however, has given our fat enemy the hardest rap. It apprises him, through his friend, MR. ONSLOW, that it will report nothing more about "the Claimant" until the time comes to report "the Claimant's" Trial. Punch is not surprised at this, considering that MESSRS. ONSLOW and WHALLEY have not contradicted the statement, in a respectable Hampshire paper, that they were present at a meeting at which CASTRO used, in reference to one of Her Majesty's Ministers, language so vile that the reporter had to veil it with the aid of initials and dashes. It is still open to MESSRS. O. and W. to say that they indignantly protested, and left the place. But will they say it ? their attack on the vested interests of the Publicans, THE Teetotallers having in a measure succeeded in the Vegetarians will soon perhaps threaten those of the Butchers, which may, for the sake of elegance and distinction, be denominated the Blue Vested Interests. the bridegroom made a feeble oratorical response. A toast to the fair bridesmaid, MISS JEMIMA BUGGINS, having been proposed, and humorously acknowledged by MR. LARKER, her young man, the bride, attended by the ladies, retired to put her things on, and her trousseau was inspected privately by her bosom friends. Among the beautiful and costly wedding presents she received, special mention should be made of an elegant brass warming-pan, the gift of MR. MUGGINS, and a toasting-fork and pair of bellows, from MRS. HUGGINS her great-aunt. Amid a shower of old shoes, the happy couple then proceeded on an omnibus to Hampstead, for the purpose of enjoying a short donkey excursion on the Heath, important calls of business compelling them reluctantly to give up all idea of a more lengthened wedding tour. LITERARY PROSPECTS. WE are told that nothing succeeds like success: and we may therefore, we think, venture, without fear of contradiction, to assume that these new works, whenever they are published, will be doubtless as successful as those which they succeed : Fettered at First: a Story written as a prelude to Linked at Last. To-morrows with Artists: to be published as a companion work to Yesterdays with Authors. Valley of Poppies. Interest, to follow Golden Keys. Rich Master Sparrow: a new Sensation Story, but not written by the Author of Poor Miss Finch. a The Big Toe of Destiny: a Tale of Eastern Travel, published as companion to The Finger of Fate. Slugs in the Salad: a Domestic Story, adapted for the readers of Poppies in the Corn. MANLY WOMAN. URLINGTON ARCADE W ORTHY AND SAPIENT MR. PUNCH, You, who notice everything, have doubtless noticed how of late Lovely Woman has been. pleased to ape-but that sounds monkeyish, let me rather say to imitate the ugly dress of Man. Coats, waistcoats, jackets, neckties, wristbands, shirt-collars, and shirt-fronts, may all be now described as articles of feminine costume; and such description might proceed even further in the matter, and descend to certain garments, such as gaiters for example, which hitherto have been designed for solely Man's own use. If one glances at the latest fashions in the newspapers, one sees the fact confirmed by such sentences as these: ... "Bonnets are now worn more like hats than ever, in fact it is very difficult to tell them apart." "These fashionable jackets are generally trimmed across the chest with brandebourgs and frog buttons." "Very elegant little vestes are worn over indoor toilettes." "For visiting dress, a mousquetaire jacket, open to the waist and trimmed to match, over a claret satin waistcoat." Fragments such as these will show how manly Lovely Woman is becoming in her dress, and to a thinking mind the fact is not without significance. We have heard much goose-gabble of late-or swan-song shall I call it ?-respecting Woman's Rights, and I look upon her growing manliness of raiment as a step in the direction of her standing in Man's shoes. By accustoming us generally to behold her in our garments, she hopes to make us reconciled to see her in our place. Who knows but next Session she may leave the Ladies' Gallery, and creep into the House, and sit among our Senators, and even walk into the lobby, undetected, and disguised in her masculine attire? Assuredly, now that the Ballot Bill is passed, a strict watch should be kept at all the polling-places, to guard against impersonation of male voters by their wives; for ladies in the fashion dress so vastly like their husbands, that it is perplexing to tell quickly which is which. Believe me, then, in some alarm, CAVENDO TUTUS. AN ANTI-ANTI ASSOCIATION. THE British Association for the Advancement of Science is a confederacy perfectly harmless. So likewise are the Archæological Societies; so are the sages and sagesses who constitute the Social Science Congress: so are most of the various gatherings of professors and philosophers and praters now taking place, as they are wont to at this leisure time of the year, under the influence of the propensity to speak and the love of lecturing and being lectured. But, as BURKE remarked, "When bad men combine, good men should unite." The Vacation affords opportunity for meetings which are other than harmless. Fanatics and fools can meet as well as philosophers. Their congregations are offensive. Some of them, especially odious, are essentially conspiracies against personal freedom; for instance, all assemblies of the United Kingdom Allance, and all other leagues for the legislative enforcement of tota abstinence; the Anti-Tobacco Society, and all the rest of the combinations for tutoring grown persons like children and coercing them like idiots. When prigs and pedants combine to enslave the nation, all reasonable men should unite to put down the pedants and prigs. If they do not unite, the fussy, importunate, agitating meddlers will go on as they have begun encroaching on the liberties of Britain faster than the sea encroaches on its cliffs. The Sea i entreated to excuse a comparison which is most odious. Neptune would repudiate with scorn the foes of Bacchus. To the Societies, therefore, which, on the dispersion of the Legi lature are accustomed yearly to hold their self-convoked parisments, it is very desirable that there should be added an AntiFanatic Society, with the special object of opposing, and counteracting and making of none effect and of no avail, all the operations almost all the other Societies whose name is Anti, and, since they infest us so atrociously, we may with propriety say, after th Reporters, "whose name is Legion." Only the Anti-Fanatic Society should do more, a great deal, the talk. It should meet to work, and take counsel how to devise wa and means to frustrate the machinations of the prigs and pedant and would-be regulators of other men's habits and appetites, t pester the people into permitting their necks to be laden with th yoke of paternal government. Amongst the measures desirable that purpose may be suggested the taking of order for the compe tion of songs and ballads to be sung about the streets for the purp of bringing fanatical bores into contempt and ridicule amongst common people, who will not attend to, because they cannot unde stand, merely argumentative exposures of folly and injustice, whose votes determine elections. Illustrated lampeons, and squ calculated to effect the same end, might also be provided i rewards, for instance, or prizes offered for the best: and abo the proper steps should be taken to confute fanaticism and hubu and promote morality and enlightenment into the bargain, by widest possible distribution of Punch. "CROWNER'S QUEST LAW." jumped out of his bed-room window the other day in AN unfortunate gentleman at Ealing, under treatment fr delirium, fell through a conservatory and glass door int of the next house, and sustained fatal injuries. Befor however, he recovered consciousness enough to say that he when he jumped through the window, he was at Ramsga bathing-machine, and that he was jumping into the wate inquest after death having been held on the residue of this fellow by DR. DIPLOCK, the coroner's jury-according to repart returned a verdict-"That the deceased died from injuries by a fall, which was accidental, whilst he was in an unsound st of mind." The Gentlemen of the Jury, if their verdict is to be underst according to its grammar, may have meant to say that the deceas whilst he was in an unsound state of mind, died in consequente ( injuries caused by a fall, which was accidental. Or they may ha meant to say that he died from injuries caused by a fall which bey pened to him accidentally whilst he was in an unsound state mind. Taken in the former meaning, the part of their ver relative to his state of mind is mere surplusage; in the latter it simply states what was not the case. Nobody meets with accidental fall in jumping out of window, whether purposely under a delusion. "It must be se offendendo; it cannot be ele as the First Gravedigger in Hamlet argues. But perhaps Ealing Jury were induced to return a verdict at variance with fur by building too much on the further proposition of the reas above referred to, "If I drown myself wittingly it argues an at Conversely, if I drown myself unwittingly, it may argue an s dent. But if you jump out of window whilst you dream you jumping into the water, although you do not wittingly jump out window, yet you wittingly jump. You must take your jump alt gether unwittingly for it to argue an accident. But such an a dent is an accidental act, describable as a leap which was accidental. not as a fall. A verdict stating that a person died in consequence of a fall, which was accidental, conveys the idea that, no matter whether he died sane or insane, his fall was a mere tumble; although a jump during an unsound state of mind and a tamb amount to the same thing morally, yet the one act in its physi nature is discriminated from the other by intelligence; but coroners juries will be coroners' juries. They might be worse. The phras ology of their verdicts might be as ambiguous and disputable, ar even as senseless, as that of many Acts of Parliament. A DEADLY DISCHARGE.-A "Whalley" of Nonsense. AUGUST 24, 1872.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. capital out of me, of which coin I shall never see one rap, why then, my dear P., I say such conduct is more than unpardonable, it ought to be punishable by civilised laws. Let the next intending Livingstonesearcher take this notice from me:-"Look out, what you're about, my friend; they don't know much about COKE and BLACKSTONE and the glorious British Constitution out here (except my own glorious British constitution, and I'm hale and hearty), but they do know something about Habeas corpus, and when the Niggers in these parts once habeas a corpus, that corpus won't see dear Old England again in a hurry.' I am going to stick up a Notice to Trespassers. I'll write to you, dear old P., again, some time or other, and send you my good care of myself, and on which you can exercise your jovial am more than comfort- vocalisation. able where I am. I may say I live in luxurious ease, free and untaxed. I am monarch of all I survey, and the country is simply lovely. Don't make any blooming error, y dear old P., this is not a desert, or anything resembling one. Here there is no dull care in drive away, and all is happiness unclouded. But my point is this, why shouldn't I be lowed to enjoy myself, and take my own time about it, without being tracked, and dogged, ad hunted for, like a sovereign in a dust-bin, and perhaps finally fetched back by some terprising compatriotss (hang them !), as if I was a naughty child out for a holiday for hom its nurse had come at last? What's their object? Curiosity? Well, that's unpardonable in my opinion: but when 3 result is their own gain, to write articles about me, to give entertainments with, perhaps, etches of me and the views of the country, and to pocket a heap of coin by making THE ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY and YORK have returned a THE THAMES AND ITS URBAN-TRIBUTARIES. eply to the Memorial on the subject of "Athanasius's Curse," preented to them on the part of certain of the laity by the EARL OF FROM various letters in the Times under the superscription of HAFTESBURY. "It is a loving and a fair reply." Their Most deverend Graces quote therein a method of settling the difficulty This concern that the River so misnamed is, so much of it as runs between resented by the maledictory clauses of the otherwise chiefly unin- "The Silver Thames," it may be known to those whom it may not elligible Symbol which delights ARCHDEACON DENISON. it does concern know that too well; you may correctly say, indeed, lan was proposed by the Ritual Commission, "which has recom- Kew and Teddington, little better than an open sewer. Those whom that they nose it; for a cup of the fluid purveyed by the cleanliest hended an explanatory rubric to this effect":of the water-companies being raised to the lips will be found to have not been quite, by the best filtration, deodorised. And a walk from Kew to Richmond, and so up, by the margin of the Thames, facetiously or absurdly called Silver, for on the contrary its hue is rather that of Vandyke Brown, will convince the most insensitive of the character of the stream to which tributaries from towns have imparted colouring The Conservators of the Thames are called in question because the and odorous particles, nutritious to plants, but noxious to persons. water, whose conservation is their business, is so different, as it may they cannot hang the Vestrymen and Town Councillors who, with be discerned by the nostrils to be, from conserve of roses. But their constituents, occasion the tarnished and graveolent condition There is, however, the Metropolitans find, a very general impres- of the Thames, once sweet and silver. The only result of going to ion that none of these explanations would suit the requirements Law or to Equity with those offenders on that account would be the of the case." We should rather think so. How is it possible, do gratuitous enrichment of the gentlemen of the long robe and the the Ritual Commissioners imagine, for anybody wilfully to reject blue bag. A special Act of Parliament is needed for the conservathe Catholic Faith, even if he is an Irishman of the (unfaithful) tion of the Thames from pollution. A word from a deputation to Irish? How can one wilfully reject the belief of what he knows MR. AYRTON, whose enthusiasm on behalf of limpid streams is nototo be true, and what other rejection of belief can be wilful? Surely rious, of course will suffice to secure the immediate introduction of wilful rejection of faith is impossible even for the most erratic of the needful Bill, under the auspices of a Government whose Premier St. Patrick's stray sheep. By what other causes than involuntary and Chancellor of the Exchequer have already done so much as MR. ignorance, or prejudice necessarily invincible, do the Oxford Pro- GLADSTONE and MR. LOWE have to make everything pleasant, fessors suppose that any man can possibly be hindered from accepting a faith delivered in terms which nobody understands? By the knowledge that it is a fiction or a forgery, or by intellectual discernment that it is nonsense? Their Reverences surely cannot mean to reduce the Creed, whose defenders they are, to an absurdity. On the whole it appears that, whether in or out of Church, the less that is said about the Athanasian Creed the better, particularly during the Dog Days. Unless indeed the remark may be added that The Vestures of the Sky. A YOUNG Lady said she should so like to go up in a balloon. She wished very much to get above the clouds and look down. It must be so pretty. She had heard that even the darkest cloud had a silver lining. |