which it was in the power of memory and invention to afford. All the Cato-street business was managed by me; and so indefatigable was 1, that, night or day, I ceased not to do every thing at his bidding. I got up moonlight meetings in the disturbed districts; and was made a member of the privy council, on account of my sagacity. A pension was allowed me, which, however, I resigned on conscientious principles; because I could not reconcile it to myself to be a party man, though I do not blame others for connecting themselves with whatever side they please. My dismissal from the cabinet arose out of this circumstance. One of the ministers held the great seals, the emolument of which induced me to endeavour to deprive him of so lucrative an appendage, for the sake of retrenchment. I made a glorious but unsuccessful trial, and in consequence received my congé, conveyed to me by one of H. M.'s judges-and all for not consenting that a tory should enjoy, in quiet, such manifest appurtenances of a time-server. But this dismissal was signified in the most gracious manner; and it was left at my option, whether I would serve in the colonies, or go out as foreign ambassador to a court, upon the lake of Como. I chose the latter, for I preferred the latitude of Italy to the vicinity of the line. How I served the administration in that post, shall be told in the subsequent volumes; here a mere outline of my private history will suffice. I did not neglect my previous cultivation in this classic land, where I amassed a rare collection of coins and antiques, and thoroughly studied music under Hurdigurdini, and Tamborino, the two great Cisalpine masters, and finally returned to England, a finished performer, and an accomplished traveller.

I brought home with me, from Geneva, a grand harmonicon, capable of playing, if properly managed, any overture, in any time or tune yet imagined. I have played some of the most original airs in the world on it, and never yet met any body who was not fully enchanted with its stops. This is now my great resource-as an amusement, I meanfor, in point of profit, I exact nothing but what the patrons of music choose to give towards my pipe and barrel.

Thus, sir, I have given you a hasty draft of my diversified life; and it remains for you to say, whether it is not capable of being woven into as entertaining a narrative as any of the theatrical memoirs heretofore published, or to be published. I have been more than ever was required of an actor-a chorist, a tumbler, a juggler, an enthusiast, a manager, an author, a preacher, a minister, an envoy, and a leader of an orchestra-What else can I add to this catalogue of fascinating employments? Have I not signalised myself in all of these, each of which is the extent of another man's ambition? If you think the details would make a selling book, and encourage other men of genius to benefit the world by their adventures behind the scenes, pray send me an offer, and if it is at all reasonable, I will set about it instanter, and push it into the hands of the public, before any more Reminiscences can appear; for I have plenty of time now upon my hands, having taken quiet lodgings in the compter, a large hotel, where my mother has been living in retirement for some years past.

JACK DAW.

DIARY

FOR THE MONTH OF MARCH.

A LUMINARY of the law is wont to observe, that there is no such thing as bad wine; some wine, he admits, is better than other, but none is bad. The same may be said of discussion of public affairs. There is no such thing as useless discussion; some discussion is more profitable than other, but none is bad. As stagnant waters corrupt, so undisturbed institutions deteriorate. Let in a breeze to ruffle them, and they are purified by the commotion. But then to hear the distracted voices of the discomposed tadpoles, who call the stars out of the firmament, to witness the turbulence of the tempest, and avert its dire rage; and protest that heaven and earth are coming together by reason of the agitation of their element ! If tadpoles had their way, waters would be ever stagnant and green; but the world is not made for tadpoles, and breezes ruffle and fresher currents purify the lakes. Great is the virtue of agitation; but wherever it takes place, there is sure to be some small fry of little creatures to be disturbed, and petulant is their resistance-angry and dismal their remonstrance. We should like to know the terms in which a certain unfavoured insect, which politeness would rob not only of its life, but even of its name, (albeit it is euphonous) would speak of a small-tooth comb. Would he not condemn it as something more horrible than a French Revolution. How he would paint the terrors of its ravages! What dreadful images he would present of the bleeding, mangled forms, and impaled bodies of his fellow 1-! and how impossible it would be to raise the little thing's little mind to the contemplation of the utility of the small-tooth comb; and to make him understand the justice and propriety of his being sacrificed to the comfort of the human head. And yet a 1- might have much to say too. He would point to the woods and waters, and observe, that they were all peopled with myriads of living creatures; and he would ask whether nature had not provided the abundant head of hair for his shelter and retreat, and those of thousands of his kind. He would inquire whether it was credible, compatible with divine wisdom, that those auburn tresses should have been made merely for show; and then philosophically passing to the examination of their nature, he would prove it to be vegetable, and argue thence, that it was intended for sporting cover to animal life. He would then proceed to draw a touching picture of the happiness of 1-living peacefully and innocently in the luxuriant pastures of a head unprofaned by a comb, and to describe the sudden and utter devastation produced by the introduction of that scourge to the race. Boroughs desolated at a scratch; whole people swept in an instant to destruction; fathers torn from their daughters; weeping mothers from their sons; fond husbands from their distracted wives; or whole families impaled together and writhing in common torture on one tooth. In vain should we urge to the spokesman that the head must consider what is most agreeable to its own ease; he would refer us to that great knob the world, and APRIL, 1827.

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desire us to observe, that the history of human policy shows that its ease, peace, and interests, are perpetually sacrificed to those privileged twolegged that prey on it; and he would entreat us to remember, in what a dreadful light a small-tooth comb revolution is regarded by us, when it unfortunately is provoked by an excess of irritation; and how, for years afterwards, we resist any purifications, by expatiating on the past horrors. How could we answer this remonstrance?-by putting the back of our nail with an ex officio pressure on the speaker. It certainly is strangely difficult to make little creeping things believe htat man is not made for them. As Gay says:

"When I behold this glorious show,
And the wide watery world below,
The scaly people of the main,

The beast that range the wood or plain,
And know all these by heaven design'd
As gifts to pleasure human kind;

I cannot raise my worth too high ;
Of what vast consequence am I!”

"Not of the importance you suppose :

Replied a flea upon his nose:

"Be humble, learn thyself to scan;

Know pride was never made for man.

'Tis vanity that swells thy mind,

Was heaven and earth for thee design'd!
For thee made only for our need,

That more

more important fleas might feed."

Thus it is with the fleas on the noses of society all the world overman is invented for their need, that more important fleas may feed. What is the case and tranquillity of a nose compared with the pleasure of an established flea? All Ireland is kept in irritation simply that some important shovel-hatted-fleas may feed on her delicate bits. As I said before, however, great is the virtue of agitation, and even fleas are discomposed by flappers. Discussion is therefore as ungrateful to certain insects, covetous of that kind of retirement which the mouse sought in the Cheshire cheese, as the light of publicity is to dirty doings; and hence the spokesmen of the insects, or the advocates of the dirt, arraign the discussion or the light as the cause of mischief, instead of tracing the evil to the nature of the two things that suffer by them. We heard of a housemaid, the other day, who, on having some filth pointed out to her in a remote nook of a chamber, exclaimed, "Lord, Ma'am! it's all along with the nasty sun that comes into the room, and shows every speck of dirt!" Here was a housemaid fit for an all-work place in the House of Commons. Is there any member on the treasury benches who could hit off a defence of dirty doings more orthodoxly? Could the Attorney General Wetherell have made a better speech than this unlearned maid? Really I should be glad to see the girl placed where her parts might serve his majesty's government, and if Mr. Holmes will apply to me, I will procure her address for him. She will be worth all the old women of the gown now in the House, put together. Consider that her talent is natural, uncultivated, unpractised; and yet by her own lights, she has arrived at the established form of reasoning in resistance of all reforms. If we find any thing amiss in the jurisprudence of the country, or the administration of the laws, what is to blame? not the blemish, but

the housemaid's "nasty sun" that discovered it-the foul press, the filthy publicity. The housemaid would gladly pluck the "nasty sun out of the heavens, and fling it into the slop-pail instead of the filth; and our sluts of all-work in Parliament would fain pursue the same course with the press, or any other engine of publicity. Whatever discovers the necessity for brushes and brooms, is accounted a great evil. Exclusion of light, and consequent ignorance of dirt, is the policy. Ventilation and discussion should be deprecated in the political liturgy, more energetically than battle, murder, and sudden death.

The question of flogging in the army has this month been agitated, and the mischief of discussion has of course been bewailed in the most piteous terms. This is, however, one of the many illustrations of its benefits. Within a few years, flogging has become (compared with former periods) extremely unfrequent, and this, from a conviction that the arguments against the punishment were so strong, that any abuse of it would provoke its entire abolition. It is now continued on sufferance, on the understood condition that it will be inflicted only in cases of the last necessity. Whether it would be better to get rid of it altogether, is a more difficult question thau many humane people seem to imagine. The opinion of some of the best and most liberal and enlightened military heads, is, that in time of peace, the power might be dispensed with, if it could be again resumed, as the army is then excellently composed, and the threat of dismissal is sufficient to deter from crime; but in a state of war, it is thought that the punishment is necessary to the discipline of an army recruited from the dregs of a populace which is, perhaps, the most brutal in Europe. When Sir Robert Wilson refers us for imitation to the discipline of the armies of France, he overlooks this material fact; that the principle on which it depends is one which has no influence on our lowest classes-namely, that of honour. The people must be elevated, before we can reckon on acting upon their minds by those means which have the most powerful sway in a country, where civilization, if not carried to so high a point, is more equally diffused. The superior orders in France do not hold their inferiors aloof as if they were infected with pestilence, or that vulgarity, our dreaded plague, were infectious. It is delightful to see the familiarity, the kindly intercourse, between the higher and lower classes in France, and we are satisfied that both are gainers by the communion. In the French army we have observed with more pleasure than we can describe, the obvious reliance which the men have on the sympathy of their officers, and the confiding readiness with which they communicate to them their petty cares, troubles, and concerns, and the interest with which their commanders listen to them. There is no hauteur, no distance preserved between the parties, and yet nothing is lost to authority by the concession of a little human kindness. Until the materials of our army resemble those of France and we know not when the insolent prejudices of our aristocracy will allow that time to come-we cannot hope to see it governed by the same mild means, and resort must be had to harsher punishments to restrain natures which our unsocial system has rendered callous. While, however, we incline to think that it may be necessary to retain the power of inflicting corporal punishment with a view to a

state of war, we must observe that nothing can be conceived more absurd than the extravagant arguments advanced in defence of them by the official approvers in the House of Commons.

"The Right Honourable Sir John Beckett (the advocate-general) said, that it had been granted upon the other side of the House, that the army, under its late commander-in-chief, had been brought to an admirable state of discipline. It was therefore fair to infer, that the practice of corporal punishment had been put upon the most judicious basis, and it was wise not to alter or tamper with a system that had produced such a fair result."

Here we have the old original fallacy of "cum hoc, ergo propter hoc;" the error in reasoning which would surely prevail in the orations of the less intelligent brutes, if brutes could speak, and which is every day found in the speeches of the country gentlemen.* Esop's Fly on the Chariot Wheel doubtless argued "cum hoc propter hoc," "Seeing that I am on this chariot, which proceeds so gloriously, is it not rational to imagine that I am a cause of its speed?" Uncivilized people, savages, and country gentlemen, can seldom distinguish between coincidence and consequence. If the wild man sees an operation performed with a variety of gestures, his reason does not instruct him how far they are or are not necessary to the result, and he takes it for granted that none of them can with safety be omitted. Hence the mummery of charms. In like manner, country gentlemen, when they see a system "working well," as the parliamentary phrase goes, conceive that all things coexistent with it, are causes. If the state vehicle rolls on in spite of a drag chain, they imagine that the drag chain is the principal cause of its advance, and that to take off the drag chain would be to stop for ever the progress of the machine. Sir John Shelley argued that the game laws were the main cause of the prosperity of Great Britain; for, said he, as it has attained to such greatness while these laws have existed, is it not fair to infer that they have been instrumental to it? The corollary is an argument against all innovation. A country manager, after the performance of Mrs. Siddons, observed, that "It was very well, but not equal to Mrs. Abingdon. For when Mrs. Abingdon," said he, "spoke such a passage, she used always to stand upon that trap door; now I observe that Mrs. Siddons, when she came to that part, stood in another place." This man had the mind of a Shelley. He fancied the trap door essential to fine acting, as Sir John fancies steel-traps necessary to national prosperity; but in the one case, the circumstance mistaken for cause was indifferent, in the other it is positively baneful.

The fallacy in question, says Bentham, consists in representing the obstacles, or at least the uninfluencing circumstances, as the cause of the beneficial results.

The army has been improved while flogging has been allowed, (cum hoc ergo propter hoc,) therefore, argues Sir John Beckett, it is not

Let it be always understood that in speaking of country gentlemen we mean those in Parliament who are distinguished above all the children of earth for prejudice, selfishness, and stupidity. They are the representatives of the class, but bad ones we hope, and indeed believe. There must be an abundance of intelligence in the country, but it is not in the great houses.