His inconsolable parents continued to drink; but they never saw again the terrible phantoms which had tormented their sleep. IV. MORAL. Thus the sergeant was punished for his impiety and the dress-maker for her avarice, and both for their intemperance. A COMMISSION OF LUNACY. "WHAT security have we," asked Bishop Berkeley, "that nations as well as individuals may not suddenly go mad?" What security have we, ask we, that a periodical with all its contributors may not go crazy en masse clean daft on some hobby or other and remain so for a tedious length of time? This query has been forced on our consideration by the extraordinary conduct of our whilom respected contemporary, the American Whig Review. For the last we don't know how many months it has been unable to talk (or rather rave) on any subject but two England and Free Trade, two monstrous nightmares which haunt all its dreams. The aggressions of England and the dangers of free trade these alternately are the staples of every one of its articles, no matter what the heading be. Thus, in the current number there is something professing to be a story of fashionable life in New-York (it might as well be in NovaZembla or New-South-Wales, for any resemblance it has to the reality); but before many pages it slides off into an exposition of the peculiar (political shall we call them?) views which characterize all the other papers of the Review. Every person, every occurrence of note has, in the excited imagination of our contemporary, some connexion with the gigantic conspiracy which England (aided, alas! by traitors among ourselves) is getting up against American industry and the liberties of the whole world. At the head of this conspiracy stands H. R. H. Prince Albert, &c., who, tired of his amateurtailoring pursuits. has left off inventing fantastic regimentals and ventilating hats to get up the Exhibition of Industry a great scheme of universal delusion, whereby the senses and substance of all nations are to be taken prisoner and shut up in a big glass case a sorcerer's palace, in which the eyes and ears of all the world and his wife are to be drugged and fascinated. His prime coadjutor on this side the water is of all men on earth to favor free-traders and monarchists the editor of the Tribune. Deeply implicated with and forming a sort of link between these, is Mr. James, the novelist, whose advent to these shores, it seems, had a hidden political purpose now first discovered, and whose immortal "two horsemen" are by our contemporary's heated vision metamorphosed into two fiery griffins ready to swallow up all our mills and factories after the precedent of the renowned Dragon of Wantley. Is n't it awful to contemplate? Will no protecting power interfere in time to save our beloved republic from the unhallowed designs of this nefarious triumvirate, Prince Albert, Horace Greeley, and G. P. R. James, who are coming to take away Nicaragua, and all our other liberties? It is much to be deplored that several unfortunate facts of recent occurrence, attested by the word of dozens of newspaper writers, afford some foundation for the hallucination of our esteemed contemporary. Thus it is notorious that George Thompson, M. P., and so forth, was sent out here express by the British government to effect a dissolution of the Union, for which purpose a large amount was subscribed, Lord Stanley, Baron Rothschild. Mr. Cobden, Professor Punch, and other well known personages, having put down their names for sums varying from L. 5000 to L. 10,000 each plus to be devoted to the buying up of John Jay, Esq., and other gentlemen of the Abolition persuasion. It has also been long known to all readers of the Sun, that our Minister in England has sold the whole country, East, West, North, and South, to the Court of St. James, receiving as the price of his iniquity the promise of the Dukedom of Massachusetts. To these familiar instances we can add some that have recently come under our own the sur observation. Thackeray, in his last work, has a whole page in praise of the New-York exquisites, whom he celebrates as having the finest beards, smallest feet, and largest cigars in the world. It is clear he would not say anything so flattering of the country without some ulterior object; which object, we learn from independent sources, to be that of visiting us; and this visit is clearly for the purpose of concocting with G. P. R. James (the Orestes and Pylades friendship of the two writers is well known) some atrocious plot against our liberties. But more. The approaching arrival of Martin F. Tupper is publicly announced, and a Washington corespondent of the New-York Herald has it on the best authority that President Fillmore has received intelligence from a source worthy of credit that the said Tupper is making arrangements with his friend Robert Dodge, Esq. (some mention the Editor of the Knickerbocker as an accomplice in the business, but this part of the report wants confirmation), to blow up the North River, and destroy the navigation of the Erie Canal. Seriously speaking, is it not rather absurd that this "Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations," which is an un-English idea from beginning to end, should be represented as a great conspiracy of England against the interests of the world? This notion was altogether too cosmopolite and social for an English ministry or an English public to originate; the merit of it belongs entirely to the Queen's husband. The English, who endured the German Prince well enough so long as he only made hats and shot pheasants and gave them something to laugh at, began to abuse him as soon as he got hold of an original and successful idea. They swore at the expense of the preparations, forgetting the enormous sums that foreign visitors would bring into their island; they were in agonies lest Rotten Row should be destroyed, though none of the plans contemplated interfering with that particularly stupid equestrian promenade. The feeling was so strong that it actually made Brougham and Campbell, for the first time since they had been peers together, take the same side. The Prince's position and the Court influence just managed to carry the project through; but to this day the great organs of public opinion in England have not ceased to rail and sneer at it. And now some of our wiseacres discover that the whole is a device of Russell, Palmerston, and Cobden, to bamboozle Brother Jonathan, and destroy American manufactures. While we are thus writing, a friend who is deeply skilled in antiquarian lore, and has been diving into the newspapers of the last three weeks, looks over our shoulder, and informs us that the real detecter of the awful moral torpedo concealed in this great glass house is not our friend the American, but one of our City Fathers. Alderman Shaw (may his intelligence never be less!) informed the assembled wisdom of Manhattan that this World's Fair was a second edition of the Congress of Vienna, to enslave America, and re-rivet the fetters of Europe. This tremendous intelligence - coming on such authority, too - utterly stupifies and bewilders us; in popular phraseology, it "throws us all off the hooks." We are petrified at such an exhibition of human depravity. To think that these kings and kaisers should make such an attempt in an age which has penny papers, and Paine's Gas, and the Rochester Spirits, and so many means of diffusing virtue and intelligence! Where do they expect to go to? We can only exclaim in the memorable words of Julius Cæsar to Oliver Cromwell : Quousque, Catilina, abutere patientiâ nostrâ? THE WEEK OF THE COUP D'ETAT. MONDAY, Dec. 1, 1851. To-night there is to be the first representation of a new opera at the Comique, "Blue Beard's Castle." "We will go and see it," says the spokes-woman of our party. Now, for my own part, I feel very little enthusiasm in the matter of first representations. Indeed, I would rather not see a new piece till the fourth or fifth night. By not going to first nights you escape a good deal of trash. You escape much disappointment for yourself, H and some painful sympathy with author, composer, manager, and artists. Neither the piece nor the audience has fair play the first night; it is too like a last rehearsal only in public instead of in private. Accidents frequently occur, always jarring, often ridiculous. On the production of La Perle du Brésil last week, the tenor inadvertently represented good King Dagobert; he appeared with his continuations wrong side out, and could hardly walk, as may be supposed, to say nothing of the ludicrous figure he cut. But ce que femme veut, &c., so we posted off to the Comic Opera, but were too late in the field. "Not one place," said the clerk, before I could open my mouth to ask, or indeed was fairly inside the door. Forthwith a small crowd of enterprising speculators beset me, with offers of stalls and boxes, but I turned a deaf ear to them. Money goes fast enough in Paris without paying these gentlemen a hundred per cent. profit. Something must be done, however, to console the ladies. The plot of the Perle du Brésil is manifestly absurd, but the music is Félicien David's; it ought to be good. So up we plod to the Boulevard du Temple, "a weary, weary way to go," especially for a man in a misfitting pair of American boots, and just recovering from a sprained ankle. Plenty of room here; it looks as if the experiment of an opera in the St. Antoine quarter was not remarkably successful. 212 P. M. Mount Bay Harry, and off to the Chateau Madrid - not exactly the resort for a family man, but I have a business appointment with a person who is not to be found anywhere else at this hour, and whom I cannot go to see at any other. While we are arranging our affair (to prevent any misconception, it should be remarked that the person is of the same sex with myself), Brion's best barouche drives up with a great splash, a four-in-hand before it, dapple-greys and bright bays chequered à l'Americaine, three of my beloved countrymen inside, and a fourth driving. Certainly our people are born whips. This young gentlemen I call him young gentleman, for he is some years my junior - where should he have learned to drive? He is a stockbroker, a regular Wall-street man; his professional experience would naturally bring him into contact with bulls and bears, and lame ducks, and other creatures, but not with |