When on the subject of salads, in my last number, I forgot to protest against the vulgar practice of chopping lettuce small, more like food for turkeys than human beings. One of the best and most elegant salads at this season of the year is composed of well-blanched endive, red beet-root, and fine celery, and it should be dressed in the manner I have already mentioned. Salad is a luxury, in general, very inadequately enjoyed at great dinners; first, because it is seldom dressed with much skill, and secondly, because it is not sufficiently within reach.

In the article on hot water, I forgot also to particularize its great efficacy in the common and painful accident of crushing the fingers; for instance, in shutting a drawer, or a door. It will effectually prevent the nails from going black, and removes the pain with great quickness. Very cold water, instantly applied, will produce the same effect. It is useful that children, who are most liable to such accidents, and often suffer greatly from them, should be aware of these easy remedies.

MISCELLANEOUS.

There is very little illness that is not the effect of imprudence; and of the part which is not such effect, much is the consequence of giving way to attack. I attribute the degree of health I enjoy, and which I have before described, amongst other causes, to my determined resistance to first symptoms, but for which I am convinced I should not have escaped so well. Besides the inconvenience of illness, I have accustomed myself to consider it as a sort of disgrace, and endeavour to avoid it accordingly. It is the general custom to make too much of invalids, as if they were labouring under unavoidable misfortune. When it is really so, they are deserving of

the utmost attention and compassion; but when, as is for the most part the case, illness is the consequence of habitual indulgence or habitual carelessness, it ought to be the subject of reprobation. Illness has often a great mixture of selfishness in it, both in its cause and its continuance, to which the compassionate are unconscionably made slaves. When people will do those things which they have every reason to believe will make them ill, severity is the most effectual medicine, both for present cure and future preventive.

Good cheer is a most potent engine. When well-timed, it wins good will, and commands exertion more effectively than anything else. When well understood, it goes far at little cost. There was a gentleman in times past, who represented a very large county for several parliaments, at no other expense than hospitably entertaining a set of hungry fox-hunters whenever they happened to come near his house. I was once at a starving coursing party, where one of the company won all our hearts by a well-timed supply of bread and cheese and ale from a lone pot-house. The only election I ever assisted at, that was throughout effectively managed, owed such management in no small degree to a constant supply of sandwiches and Madeira to the committee. consider good cheer as the very cement of good government. It prevents ill-blood, brings different classes together, ensures attendance, and causes alacrity, vigour, and despatch. The doctrine I always hold to the parishes with which I have any thing to do is, that they must either eat together or quarrel together, that they must either have tavern bills or attor neys' bills. The public has no way of being so well served as by furnishing good cheer, though the public, or those who call themselves the public, do not seem to think so just at present.

Published also monthly with the Periodicals, stitched in a wrapper.

LONDON:

IBOTSON AND PALMER, PRINTERS, SAVOY STREET, STRAND.

I

BY THOMAS WALKER, M. A.

TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE,

BARRISTER AT LAW, AND ONE OF THE POLICE MAGISTRATES OF THE METROPOLIS.

PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY AT 12 O'CLOCK, BY H. RENSHAW, 356, STRAND, NEARLY OPPOSITE WELLINGTON STREET.

No. XXVI.] WEDNESDAY, NOV. 11, 1835. [PRICE 3d.

Reform.

Art of Listening.

Contents:

Miscellaneous.
Impressment.

REFORM.

REFORM is an admirable thing, though reformers are seldom admirable men, either in respect to their motives, or to the means they employ to attain their ends. They are ordinarily overbearing, rapacious, and inquisitorial, perfectly heedless how much suffering they cause to those who stand in their way, and only befriending their supporters for the sake of their support. They are often men of profligate habits, whose chief reason for busying themselves in public affairs is because they are afraid to look into their own. Their real delight is in pulling down both men and institutions, and if they could help it, they would never raise up either one or the other. When they do so, it is only from opposition, and never upon sound principles. They delight in the discomfiture of others, and take no pleasure in any one's happiness. With them every thing is abstract and general, except the work of demolition,

D D

and there they will enter into practical detail with great zest. The are profoundly ignorant of the art of government, and they seldom get beyond a general fitting measure, little knowing, and not at all caring, whom it pinches. As their policy is to flatter and cajole the lowest, they reject whatever is highminded and generous, and seek in everything to debase the social standard. They are to the many what courtiers are to the few, and like them they misrepresent and vilify every class but that by which they hope to thrive. They are vain and self-sufficient, and think they thoroughly know what they have neither heads nor hearts to comprehend. There is this in them that is disgusting, that they are the reverse of what they profess, and they are the more dangerous, because, under plausible pretexts and with specious beginnings, they work to ruin. They rise into notice and importance from the pertinacious clinging to abuse of men often more estimable than themselves, and from the inaction of those who content themselves with wishing for the public good, instead of sacrificing a portion of their ease in order to secure it. They see their ends but indistinctly, and they are regardless of the means by which they advance to them. They will advocate the cause of humanity with a total want of feeling, and will seek to establish what they call purity, by corruption and intrigue. Freedom of opinion they enforce by intimidation, and uphold the cause of civil and religious liberty by tyranny and oppres. sion. Nothing could exhibit the character of a reformer by trade, more strongly than the attempt to overhaul the pension list. It was an attempt inquisitorial, unfeeling, and unnecessary; and its object was to inflame and gratify the basest passions of the multitude. The amount, in a national point of view, was not worth thinking of; as a precedent it had lost all its force, and the only question was, whether a number of unoffending individuals should be dragged before the public, and made a prey to uneasiness and privation for the mere purpose of gratifying malignity, and prying curiosity. In some

thing the same spirit was the attempt to make public the names of all fund-holders above a certain amount; and as a specimen of arbitrary feeling, there cannot be a better than the proposal to break in upon the sanctity of a private dwelling with "a vigour beyond the law."

The true spirit of reform delights only in the establishment of sound principles by sound means. It looks to final results from the gradual elevation of the public mind, and avoids all precipitate and violent measures. It takes down with caution, and builds up with a view to practical convenience. It has the common interest constantly before it, and seeks not a mere transference of advantages, by benefiting one party or set of men at the expense of another. Its object is the diffusion of good with the least possible evil, and it aims at the well-being of its opponents, equally with that of its friends.

"The well-taught philosophic mind

To all compassion gives,

Casts round the world an equal eye,
And feels for all that lives."

Unfortunately, though the true spirit of reform reigns in the breasts of many, it is not sufficiently strong to excite them to more than good wishes: almost all active reformers have been called forth by personal pique, or personal interest, and their career has been more or less tarnished by unworthy motives. Some, indeed, have made beginnings on pure principles; but as such avoid all appeal to the passions, they have not had patience to wait for the ascendency of reason; or resolution, or temper, to stand up against unprincipled opposition. They have had to combat, alone, against a host of foes, and it would require almost the zeal of an apostle to endure to the end. What Pope says, is still near the truth, though perhaps, not quite so near as when he wrote:

"Truth would you teach, or save a sinking land,
All fear, none aid you, and few understand."