himself within the precincts of certain places appointed for the entertainment of gentlemen who understand the conjugation of the verb "emprunter" better than " payer," we do not address our letters"Blank Blank, Esq. White Crossstreet," or "Blank Blank, Esq. King's Bench," we substitute the more elegant addresses "Spencer's Hotel," and "Abbot's Priory," without the risk of being misunderstood by the twopenny post. The modest Inuendo, as indeed is the case with the modest every thing -is calculated to do the practiser a mischief, at least I remember to have seen it attended by such result. It is notorious how very shamelessly that unfortunate race of demi-mortals, ycleped tailors, are sometimes treated by those who make it the business of their existence to set up the statue of gentility without being provided with the necessary pedestal, and who in consequence suffer it to stand on the shoulders of butchers, bakers, boot-makers, and the knights of the thimble aforesaid,-who are kind enough To take into their need a smile from hope And wait, in coldness, its fruition. But if this be sometimes the fate of a London tailor, what must he have to expect who stitches for the trunks of Irish country gentlemen, who, to do them justice, cannot number amongst their failings that of a cowardly eagerness to get rid of their creditors. One of these poor devils had a bill of three years' standing against a neighbour of his, a genteel well doing "middleman;" at length, driven to desperation by want of money, he took the daring resolution to apply for his debt, and actually sent him (with a basket of eggs) the following letter: times are very hard intirely-intirely— plase your oner from your oner's sarvent to comand, Timotheus Kinnealy. the woman hopes the eggs wil come handy to the young mistris out of her confinement. -tuseday mornin. This delicate and courteous epistle produced nothing less than the object it aimed at. A torrent of abuse formed the gentleman's answer. I was standing by his side while he wrote, and as I saw the grievous phrases glide from his pen-uttered a psha! of something like reproof"Damn the fool!" was his reply"he has put his neck down and I will tread on it." It silenced me at once, for (this was in the summer of 21) a very general and prophetic application of the thing flashed upon my mind. There is another species of the modest Inuendo, or hint, which does not perhaps originate precisely in the same feeling, nor is it quite so deleterious in its consequences; but it is doubtless very amiable, notwithstanding. The gentleman assures you he will not affect the so and so of such a person, nor the so and so of such a one, because, even if he had those pretensions (what a delightful inuendo!) it would not be considered perfectly modest in him openly to say so. There has been a pleasant instance of this order "about town" lately, For the last-heaven help the while!-we are not at a loss for instances or uses. It is the keystone and the corner stone of what is called scandal " in the vulgar," that very pleasant occupation which makes Time shake his pinions more fleetly over the heads of women and womanish men. But wait until next session slip your half-crown into the doorkeeper's hand, creep up, and poke your phiz into the gallery, then look round and listen, until you have caught a speaker on his legs—a man with a sharp nose, close set eyes, gathering brow, &c. &c. and I lay you any wager you please, that in a few minutes you plead guilty to having seen a genius in this class. S. D. S. MACADAMIZATION. A Letter from BILLY O'ROURKE to the Editor. Pavet arduam viam. MR. What's-your-name.-I am a prince by descent and a pavior by profession. True, I am a foreigner and barbarian, for I come from Ireland, but there is blood in my veins which heretofore ran riot up and down the O'Rourkes and O'Shaughnessies. Milesius was my greatgrandfather forty times removed, and my great-grandmother of the same generation was cousin by-the-buttonhole to O'Connor, progenitor and propropagator of the present great Roger O'Connor of Dangan Castle, who was found innocent of robbing the mail a few years ago, when the Orangemen were in want of a head to adorn King William's lamp-post at the Anniversary of the Boyne Water. Thus, Mr. Thingumbob, you see though I do fillip the pavingstones with a three-man beetle, though I do peg a few pebbles every day into the scull of our old Mother Earth (alma tellus, as Phelim used to call her), I really was born to a royal rattle. Excuse alliteration, Mr. Blank; I am not only a prince and a pavior, but a poet.* I broke half the panes in the province of Leinster scribbling amatory verses, epigrams, and epitaphs on Miss Kitty M'Fun, with a glazier's diamond that I stole from my uncle; I wrote all the best lines in the "Emerald Isle" (all the bad ones were written by Counsellor Phillips), and I gave Tom Moore more hints for Thomas Little's poems than either of this duet of gentlemen ever had the decency to thank me for. But this is all bother. What I want to say is (Phelim O'Flinn, my Schoolmaster.) this:-I don't like at all at all this new-fashioned out-of-the-way way of paving the streets with jackstones. Who ever saw a street covered with gun-flints by way of pavement? This is pretty wig-making! I suppose the next thing we'll do is to spread them with Turkey carpets that our old duchesses and debauchees may trundle along to the Parliament House and the Opera without shaking themselves to pieces a season too soon! O give me the sweet little pebblement of my own native city in Shamrockshire-Dublin! Major-Taylorization against Macadamization any day! Where the jingles totter over the streets like boats on a river of paving stones! + Up and down! right and left! Hohenlo! toss'd hither and thither! from pebble to puddle! from gully to gutter!-Splish splash! there they go! while the Rawney § leers through one of his dead-lights back at Mr. Paddy O'Phaeton, Paddy for lack of a lash applies his perpetual toe to Rawney's abutment, and the lob within sits on his knuckles to keep his breeches from wearing out the cushions that feel as if stuffed with potatoes! That's something like jaunting; a man feels that he's getting the worth of his money. But to slidder over the arable like a Laplander in a sledge,-to have your streets as smooth and soaporiferous as a schoolboy's phyzzonomy,-Booh! I'd as soon tumble down Greenwich Hill with a feather-bed for my partner! Will you lend me the loan of a page or so in your "truly excellent 'Twas my mother's foster-brother wrote "The Groves of Blarney;" her maiden name was Kelly, and she is the identical she of whom the author says And av you would see sweet Mabel Kelly, which is the true reading. +Major Taylor, Paving-Master General to the City of Dublin. He also makes darkness visible at night, being Lamplighter-General. Jingles, one-horse wooden baskets, upon three wheels, and another on Sundays. § Corrupted from the paternal Spanish-Rosinante, we suppose.-Ed. Mr. What-ever-your-name-is, to make this case properly public? Sure, I know you will! Besides the beauty and gentility of pebblement which I have already noticed, I have two or three observations to make in its favour which I'd thank any Macadamite between this and himself to answer. I'll make him eat,-not a potatoe, but a paving-stone if he doesn't confess himself knocked down by the arguments I've brought to silence him. and widely circulating" periodical, do the latter without the help of paving stones. When the Duchess of Devilment's barouche and four rattled down Regent-street pommelling the pebblement, and knocking fire from the flints, with her full-bottomed, flour-pated, rosynosed, three-cocked-hat-covered coachman joggling from side to side of his box, and her silk-stocking'd, sleek-cheek'd, sly-eyed brace of li verymen bumping and bobbing up and down on the footboard as the vehicle chattered along; then indeed was the Duchess of Devilment something more in our eyes than a mother-ape in petticoats; then indeed was she heard and seen, though perhaps neither felt nor understood;-in short, she was somebody. But now, if the King himself were to sweep from Carlton House to the Crescent we should think him little better than a biped like one of ourselves! Firstly and foremost. I, and the rest of us, that is, all who live at present upon paving-stones, must now begin to starve with all possible alacrity upon nothing. Irishmen can't live like cameleopards* upon air, no more than Englishmen on potato and point. But if the streets are to be thrown holus-bolus into the hands of nobody but stonecrackers and levellers, what is to become of the professors of the noble Art of Paving,-me and the rest of us? Or does Mr. Macadam (the son of an original sinner!) think we'll dishonour the cloth by turning manufacturers of jack-stones and shovellers of shingles? Does he think (the sand-piper!) that gentlemen of the paving-profession will descend to get up on a little heap of pebbles and keep cracking there all day for his honour's advantage?-Och the gander! He knows a little less than nothing if he thinks to bamboozle us in this way! Secondly and foremost. The nobility and gentry will be no such gainers after all by exploding the pebblement-system. We all know that every one is thought of exactly in proportion to the noise she or he makes in the world. Now if my lady this and my lord that, are to whistle through the city as softly as Mr. Macadam would make them, without kicking up a continual row in their carriages, why they'll never be heard of! But they can never Thirdly and foremost. I see nothing the Macadamites have brought with them in exchange for our paving-stones but dust in one hand and dirt in the other. If the new system of streetification goes on, London will shortly be nothing but a criss-cross of high-roads, and the houses will be worse than so many citizens' country boxes, built on the brink of the roadside, and enveloped like the Lord Chancellor's head in a wig-full of dust and confusion. In summer the street walkers and flaghoppers of every description and denomination will be covered from head to foot with surtouts a la poudre, and look like a population of millers just turned loose from the hopperloft. In winter they will be over the boots in mud and slip-slop; they'll be as cleanly bespattered as if they had stood the brunt of Fleet-market in the pillory; they'll be taken by the pigeons, tailors, peripatetic caterwaulers, and all the other odd fish that frequent the house-tops, for nothing but gigantic gutter-snipes and magnified mud-larks!† And our rows * Our correspondent probably forgets the exact distinction between cameleopards and cameleons; he, however, we think, fully supports the national character, as given by Hudibras As learned as the Wild Irish are.-Ed. + Gutter-snipes and mud-larks, poetical names for pigs, in Ireland. We do not profess to know the precise difference between them. Our learned correspondent perhaps only makes use of the rhetorical figure-pleonasmus, to fill up his period.-Ed. of shoppery too! Why they'll be filled to the tip-top shelf with whirlwinds of powdered jackstones! ribbons and bobbins, laces and braces, caps and traps, petticoats and waistcoats, all their paraphernalia and strumpetry, tag-rag-merry-derry-periwig-and-hatband, will be dredged with ground-pepper dust! and the prentices within will be choaked extempore before they can whistle Jack Robinson!-Twont do, Mr. Nobody! By the powders, it wont! Lastly and foremost. We shall lose all our old women! Think of that Mr. Thingumbob! We shall lose our old women as fast as hops!-A friend of mine let me into this secret t'other day behind a pot of Whitbread. The blood of all our old beggar women will be on Mr. Macadam's head, if he goes on with his pippin-squeezing system of streetification! He will be guilty of universal aniseed!* In a few years if the Macadamites should supplant the Paving-Board, we shall not be able to get an old woman for love or money. Why?-I'll tell you. Wont they be sure to be run over wherever they are to be found crossing a crossing? When the coaches and cavalry travel on velvet,-when the rattle of a wheel or the tramp of a quodrapid + shall be drowned in the dust,-will any old woman but a witch be able to hear what's coming upon her? When the streets are so soft and smack-smooth that one may drive from No. any thing in any place, to St. Paul's, or to Westminster, in the tick of a death-watch, may not a blind beldame of any sex, age, or condition, be torn from the delights of this life and in a manner kicked into the middle of the next, without so much as "By your leave" or "Beg your pardon"? Or do we expect an old woman to run like a lamplighter when she sees the pole of a carriage within an inch of her beard? or to skip like a hen on a hot griddle when she feels a couple of coach-horses treading on her toes, and perhaps whipping off her wig like hay from a pitch-fork? Even with all the "notes of preparation which paving stones could give, our coachmen generally contrived to demolish some dozen of sexagenerian pedesterianst every twelvemonth. Aniseed is great fun of an opera night for the big-wigs on the boxes; and even gentlemen-whips have been known to practise this interesting kind of murder when they wished to show how quietly they could trot over an old woman without losing their balance.‡ For all these reasons, Mr. MyFriend, and a great many worse ones, I think Macadamization is very superiorly un-preferable to pebblement. So do all of the profession. We are about to get up an address to the Parliament, which is to be calledThe Pavior's Petition, in which we pray for paving stones, and show that the new system of streetification comes under the penalty of the Chalking-Act, being a capital innovation upon the long-established customs of the country. As for Mr. Macadam, we are determined to take the law into our own hands, and stone him the first time we catch his honour in London. No more at present from your BILLY O'ROURKE, Professor of Paving; No. 0, Knave's Acre; first floor down the chimney. We thought ourselves tolerable philologists, but this word we acknowledge sets our ingenuity at defiance. We can but offer a conjectural explanation. The Latin for an old woman is anus; whence possibly ani-cide (which our pavior, by a poetical licence we suppose, spells aniseed) may be taken to express-old-woman-killing.-Ed. + Sic in MS. I'd a grand-aunt that was kilt once in this fashion; she died above twenty years after with the mark of a horse-shoe on her-The gentleman that kilt her gave her a penny. WALLADMOR: SIR WALTER SCOTT'S GERMAN NOVEL. Walladmor. Frei nach dem Englischen des Walter Scott. Von W****s. "Freely translated!" Yes, no want of freedom! All free and easy! impossible to complain on that score. Verily, this is the boldest hoax of our times. Most readers we suppose have read the mere fact of the hoax as communicated through the Morning Chronicle, by the late Mr. Bohte, on his return from the Leipsic fair: for those who have not, we repeat it here.German booksellers, it seems, had come to an agreement, one and all, that Sir Walter Scott was rather tardy in his movements: he lay fallow longer than they would tolerate. To take two crops off the land in each year-was not sufficient. Such slovenly farming was not to be endured. And at all events there must be a Scotch novel against the Leipsic fair; the Jubilate-fair of 1824; which fair is at Easter. But unfortunately Sir Walter's cycle did not coincide with that of Leipsic and Frankfort. When Saxony kept her Easter jubilee, the Scotch press was keeping Lent. The Edinburgh moon, that so steadily waxes and wanes, was at that time "hid in her vacant interlunar cave:"-but the men of Leipsic, and the "Trade" from Hamburgh to Munich, insisted that she should be at full. "Shine out, Sir Walter!" they all exclaimed," and enlighten our darkness!" But, as he would not, somebody must shine for him. Flectere si nequeam Superos, Acheronta The best thing of all was the The better half of the prayer Jove, as we have said, dispersed to the winds: but to the second Annuit, et totum nutu tremefecit Olympum. Gods Gods and men agreed that there should be a capital hoaxand men; 66 et concessere columnæ," and the Leipsic book-stalls abetted it. A hoax was bespoke in three volumes; and a hoaxer was bespoke And the grave publishto make it. ers throughout Germany, Moravians and all, subscribed for reams of hoax. A great Hum was inflated at Leipsic, and went floating over the fields of Germany: a Toupoλvž, or glittering bubble-blown by the united breath of German PaternosterRow,-ascended as the true balloon. Bubbled Germany laughed, because it knew not that it was a bubble: and bubbling Germany laughed, because it knew full well that it was. The laugh of welcome was before it: the cachinnus of triumph was behind it. They had made a false Florimelt of snow; and the false Florimel went wandering from the Danube to the Rhine; and won all hearts, it is said, from the true Florimel. And now at length is the false Florimel come over to England: and here are we to welcome herscattering gay rhetoric before her steps as from an Amalthea's horn: make way for her therefore in England: be civil to her, oh! our Fathers in the "Row: " welcome her in Albemarle-street: ye constables, whether spelt with little c's or great C's, keep open the paths for your daughter that comes back to claim a settlement and her rights of affiliation: why must she only be rejected from her father's house? she only be frowned upon by the gay choir of her sisters?-Furnace of London criticism! remit thy fires: * Walladmor. Freely translated from the English of Sir Walter Scott. By W****s. Berlin: F. A. Herbig. 1821. 3 Vols. |