thousand pounds per annum, but let that alone! | or resource here, and no very admirable boldAnd you, my lords bishops, beware how you ness, since some discussion of the reasons why sanction such an attempt, for your own £15,000" Methodism" grew out-a huge scion-from the or £20,000 will be endangered by the precedent. establishment, and some suggestions as to the "I ask the Bishop of London-does he think, mode of preventing further secessions by the offer after reformers have tasted the flesh of the church, of spiritual bread rather than polished stones, that they will put up with any other diet? Does might have come very properly from a professed he forget that deans and chapters are but mock- reformer. turtle that more delicious delicacies remain behind?" Such are the arguments of a man who prides himself on being a reformer-an old reformer, all his days a reformer. Reform is good so long as it keeps within proper bounds; let it pass these, and it will unsettle the foundations-it will mar the superstructure of society! Is it proposed to abolish a church sinecure after the death of the present incumbent? Think of the oaths of the archbishops! (the coronation oath had been abundantly ridiculed in the case of Catholic emancipation)-think of the sanctity of private property! think of the danger of innovation! So clamors the reverend moralist who had for years been contending against all these bugbears, and meantime reached the fat canonry of St. Paul's. "The honest boldness of the Edinburgh Review," says he, "effected much;" but honesty becomes folly when it would lead to the lessening of church revenues, however enormous. Time and space allow us to touch only on the more striking points in the character of this able reviewer and most widely influential writer. No man labored more zealously or more efficiently in the cause of Catholic emancipation, or with a more generous and at the same time caustic warmth in the defence of humanity against certain barbarities in English law and English custom. His papers on the latter class of subjects are eminently pungent and striking, while those on the Catholic question are equally admirable, sparkling with wit, and, what in a popular argument is of great practical importance, level to the comprehension of every one. He does not, it is true, advocate measures on the highest ground, but on the ground best calculated to produce conviction in the minds of those whom he addresses. He was no man to throw away his pearls. Sydney Smith was far from possessing a mind of the highest order. He effected much, not through any extraordinary reach of thought, but by strong common sense, aided by a lively wit and a keen sense of the ludicrous, all directed against certain popular errors of his day. But he was a man of maxims, not of principles-one who aimed at nothing higher than people's conduct, and that by means of the head and not the heart. It is the same with East India missions. The duty of Christianizing those countries is admitted, but the plan adopted is bad, and the men concerned are not to be trusted. Yet no other method is proposed, and it is even said that suitable persons cannot be found to undertake it. Some severe attacks and many bitter innuendoes against the clergy of the established church are found in the writings of our political reformer, but not a hint as to how they shall be made better. Our conjecture that as an originator or supporter of positive measures he was held in but little esteem, is confirmed by the fact that he scarce appears at all as a politician after his party obtained the chief power in the state. His vocation was gone. He was a potent assailant of old abuses, but not fitted to bring forward and defend the new measures which the times demanded. His views of education are marked by sterling sense and judgment. His papers on the subject deserve to be studied by every enlightened person in this country as well as in England. In them his natural acumen triumphs over all the prejudices of his time and country, and they are as well suited to the democratical side of the water as to the other. the In all matters of morals and religion, Sydney Smith appears to have been a good deal of a Mr. Worldly Wiseman-wise, truly, for himself and others as regards worldly matters, but not pos sessing nor caring to possess other wisdom. His opinion of human nature was evidently low, and he looked to low means for influencing mankind. He was a warm friend to the established church, for it made himself and many other gentlemen very comfortable, giving them, besides abundant means, rank, influence and consideration, which they could hardly have found anywhere else. But he was apparently no warm friend to the established clergy, titled or otherwise, if we may judge from the innumerable slurs which he casts upon them in his writings. He allows them, to be sure, credit of calmness, moderation and dignity, but marks them, nevertheless, as abundantly dronish, selfish and grasping. What a satire upon them is contained in the following remark: "No Orthodox clergyman can do so (open a church) without the consent of the parson of the parish, who always refuses because he does not choose to have his monopoly disturbed; and refuses in parishes where there are not accommodations for one half the persons who wish to frequent the Church of England." Fit persons, truly, to be entrusted with a monopoly in such things! Though Mr. Smith seems to have annexed to the term "sound religion," (a favorite term with him,) only the idea of adherence to the established church, yet nobody deals the clergy harder blows. He inverts the rule of Mrs. Ranby, who was all sin without a single fault; for he credits the clergy with all excellence as a body, while he allows them individually no merit under heaven but decency. Another proof that his mind was not of a high order is, that he was infinitely more engaged in pulling down than in building up. He attacks existing abuses with eagerness and success, but even where the occasion calls for it, (and the occasion does sometimes call for it,) he offers no substitute, proposes no remedial plan. He attacks the Methodists with a virulence and vulgarity altogether inexcusable, and bewails their influence over the middling and lower classes, but he considers the case hopeless. "A man of education and a gentleman-cannot contend against such artists"-" the regular clergy-are too dignified;" -but "something may be done in the way of ridicule," and in allowing members of the establishment to open chapels without the consent of the Mr. Smith attributes an extraordinary efficacy rector. Education might do something, but "none to money. He speaks of "the English curse of of these things will be done." No great fertility poverty," but he certainly shows himself in this 66 In the Council of the Beasts, (says Lessing,) which met to determine their respective claims to rank and consequence, the nobler animals declared the decision a matter of no moment, as each had its own claims, good and substantial, whether allowed by others or not. All acquiesced in this view of the matter except the ass and the ape, who took it much to heart that no decision was pronounced. point as in many others, a true Englishman. He | services. These are the very people, generally does not, indeed, say that the gift of the Holy speaking, who have honored us by visits of exGhost may be purchased with money, but he ploration, and their report has usually been such comes as near it as anybody since the days of as would prove satisfactory at home, and furnish Simon Magus. To give one example. In the racy articles about America to such reviewers as Letters to Archdeacon Singleton, he states that he Mr. Smith. We regret that our countrymen have had found out the capital possessed by seven evinced such a sensitiveness to opinions thus conclergymen taken promiscuously in his neighbor- cocted. hood, and he finds it to be £72,000, while the average income from the livings is £400 per annum. And he draws the conclusion" from the gambling propensities of human nature, and the irresistible tendency to hope they shall gain the highest prizes, you tempt men into your service who keep up their credit and yours, not by your allowance, but by their own capital," &c. Keeping up the credit of the church by large fortunes! Americans are thought to place a high estimate on money, but it may be doubted whether any clergyman or layman among us would consider four hundred pounds a year insufficient to keep up the credit of the religion founded by our Saviour and his apostles. But Mr. Smith in this case only echoed the sentiment of the mass of his countrymen. He says "It is always considered a piece of impertinence in England if a man of less than two or three thousand a year has any opinions at all upon important subjects." True and evidently no less an impertinence in Mr. Smith's eyes than in those of others of his class. Witness his advocacy of the church as it is, because it attracts men of wealth; and his dread of anything approaching to an equalization of livings, because the average would be only £285, or $1400, a year! His whole argument is based upon the supposition that riches are indispensable to the respectability and influence of the clergy, and his unmeasured abuse of the Methodists turns in part upon their poverty. That Mr. Smith was no friend to the reform bill we infer with confidence from the absence of all allusion to it in his long gratulatory list of the beneficial measures accomplished by "the talents of the good and able men" of his time. In short, he was a genuine English aristocrat, a term which we use not all in an invidious sense. He was a friend to the middling and lower classes, but there is nothing in his writings which would lead us to think that he regarded them as fit depositaries of political power. He was an enemy to all oppression of the poor by the rich, but he had at least an equal dread of the beggar on horseback. He could commend in our land of equality certain qualities which agreed with his own natural biaseconomy, industry, common sense, enterprise-but he had a supreme contempt for the democratic character, and was never better pleased than when he could find room for a fling at the Yankees. The aristocratic feeling of England is, in our view, still more strongly inherent in the church, the army and the navy, than in the hereditary wealth and station of the country. Whoever belongs to either of the first-mentioned classes, in a place above the rank of subalterns, has a position from which he derives a certain respectability, and by which he is somewhat linked to the higher classes. All are paid "once in money and three or four times in hope," and the zeal of expectants is always greater and their appreciation of the desired good more intense than those of actual possessors. Hence a sort of official and officious loyalty to the established institutions of the country, always observable in British clergymen and officers in both Upon the whole, we conclude Mr. Smith to have been a keen-witted and sensible worldling, more capable of discerning the faults and absurdities of others than desirous of correcting his own; having a glimmering perception of how things ought to be, but lacking courage to recommend unpopular means of making them such. We regard him as a poor teacher of morals, and of religion no teacher at all. He pleaded the cause of down-trodden humanity less through sensibility and sympathy than through acute perception of wrong. He can characterize as "holy poltroonery" an unwillingness to examine religious or political tenets, but no man shows more weakness when the temporalities of the church are called in question. He hated the Methodists because they pretended to a warmth of piety which, if sincere, must put to shame the lifeless ministrations of the establishment, and he advocated the emancipation of the Catholics because it secured the foundations of his own church. He occupied the position of a professed servant of God, and he lived and died emphatically a man of this world. At another time we may attempt some detailed examination of his writings. From Chambers' Journal ARGUIN AND ITS VICTIMS. THOUGH discovered by the Portuguese four hundred years ago, and successively possessed by them, by the Dutch, and the French, the island of Arguin, adjacent to the western coast of Africa, was, till within a few months since, a perfect terra incognita to the English public. At that time circumstances of a distressing nature aroused attention to the subject; it being reported that several of our countrymen were held in captivity, and barbarously treated by the islanders. Among the most zealous advocates for the liberation of the unhappy captives was Captain Grover, whose name is so familiar to the public in connexion with the Bokhara victims. Through him we now learn some particulars respecting the island, its inhabitants, and our then suffering brethren-his information having been collected from Mr. Northwood, commanding the barque Margaret, who was detained three weeks in captivity; from William Honey, who was kept eleven months a prisoner at Arguin, and in a neighboring island; and from Mr. Vaughan, commanding the merchant brig Cou rier.* the Portuguese, Dutch, and French, and finally abandoned * Arguin, which has been successively a trading post of by the latter, with the view to the concentration of the It appears, by the log of the brig Courier, that, I change for the captives. The chief was, however, on the 26th May, 1844, the chief mate, Mr. Wil- not satisfied with the proposed ransom; and Capson, was sent with three hands to take soundings tain Northwood desired the men to return to the near Arguin, and that, on approaching the shore, Courier, and request Captain Vaughan to send they saw some natives, among whom was a white everything he could possibly spare. The latter, man, who hailed them in English. This induced accordingly, gave his mate in addition three or four Mr. Wilson to run his boat on shore, for the pur- dozen handkerchiefs, and other articles, and the pose of relieving his supposed countryman; but crew collected among themselves twenty-five as he neared, the natives began to beat their cap- shirts. These were all put in the long-boat, under tive with clubs, and it was not till the boat's mus- the charge of Mr. Wilson and his six hands, ackets were levelled at their heads that they desisted, companied by the cutter, with five men, all well and took to their heels. The white man immedi- armed. Captain Vaughan gave positive orders ately made for the boat, and was taken on board that they were on no account to land, but to anthe Courier. He stated that his name was Samuel chor near the shore, exhibit the articles they had Phillips, that he was a seaman belonging to the brought, and only to allow two or three chiefs to Margaret, of London, commanded by Captain approach them to treat. Unfortunately these orNorthwood, who, with a portion of the crew, was ders were disregarded, and as the islanders apthere in captivity, and subjected to the most cruel peared friendly, the whole party went on shore. treatment by the natives. Captain Vaughan, seeing from his ship that about forty natives were hastening to the beach, called loudly to Mr. Wilson to return on board-an order which, although it was heard, was not attended to. The islanders, as Captain Vaughan expected, fired as soon as the party landed; and the only one who escaped was Mr. Barrington Daines, the second mate, who succeeded in swimming off to Captain Vaughan immediately determined to release his fellow-countrymen by ransom or otherwise; and therefore brought up his ship, and anchored on the west side of the island, in four and a half fathoms water, about a mile from the shore. Four men then appeared on the beach, and made signs for them to land. This was not complied with; and on the following morning the Courier the ship, although desperately wounded, having got under weigh, and proceeded to the south-west point of the island, anchoring again in five fathoms water. The chief mate then landed with six men, and were kindly received by the natives, who promised to bring down Captain Northwood and the other prisoners early next day, to be ransomed. At the appointed time the natives came to the beach with Captain Northwood, who waved his hat, and requested Captain Vaughan to send a boat ashore; and accordingly the mate was again despatched with six hands, and provided with a supply of tobacco and other things, to offer in ex trade at their factory on the Senegal, is situated in 20 degrees 27 minutes north, and 16 degrees 37 minutes west. It is between thirty and forty miles long, and about one mile wide. It is about eight miles from the mainland, (west coast of Africa,) between which and the island the water is shallow. There are three or four channels, the main having a depth of five feet. On the outer or seaward side there is, according to the positive assurance of Captains Northwood and Vaughan, and of W. Honey, from five to seven fathoms water close in-shore; a fact which is, moreover, attested by a person in Bathurst, and signed by Lloyd's agent. This is important, as a different opinion has been entertained. The island is of a whitish rock, covered with a constantly shifting sand. The northern portion is flat, but the southern rises to an elevation which admits of its being seen at a distance of thirty miles. The soil produces no wood but a small shrub, yielding a caustic juice applied medicinally by the natives. Fuel is brought to the island from a place fifty and excellent, though it has the appearance of milk. Two fairs are held annually on the island, in June and December; many strangers from a distance frequent them, bringing for barter necklaces, beads, cloths, and tobacco, for which they receive dried fish and oil. miles in the interior of the continent. Water is abundant received two shots in the arm, and one in the side. Mr. Wilson and two men were killed, while three were dangerously wounded. William Honey received two balls in the left arm, close to the shoulder. Being considered dead, he was, with Mr. Wilson and the other two men, thrown into the sea; but, revived doubtless by the salt water, had contrived to crawl to land. Captain Vaughan having only two seamen and two landsmen left in his ship, and seeing that the Arguins were preparing to attack him, slipped his cable, and was reluc tantly compelled to leave his countrymen to their wretched fate. The wounded were now carried to a small hut, where their sufferings during the night were intense. The next day, however, Captain Northwood induced the natives to dress their wounds; and though the system of surgery was rude in the extreme, it proved efficient. Indeed, all the men recovered, even those whose limbs, in Europe, would have been subjected to instant amputation. After a preliminary dressing, of a somewhat novel and not very delicate character, their wounds were the next day scraped with a common knife, and cauterized with the head of a red-hot nail. They were then washed with fish-oil, which gave great relief. The sufferings of Honey were dreadful; he was burned eighteen times, and eight pieces of the main bone of his arm came away. The wound in his breast they cut out with an instrument, resembling in shape a blacksmith's shovel, while they forced out the balls with brass rods. John M'Donald received three balls in the abdomen, two very severe sabre cuts on the head, by which his skull was fractured. His head and skull were scraped with a common knife twice a-day. Strange to say, the sufferings of these men seemed to afford great amusement to the women and children, who imitated their moans and cries. However, The inhabitants are about sixty in number, including women and children. Their only food is fish and fish oil: they have neither bread nor vegetables, except a small portion of rice, which is reserved for the sick. These people are remarkably affectionate to their children, and seldom quarrel among themselves. They are strict Mohammedans in all things but their ablutions, which they neglect. The people are tall and well-pro- they all recovered, though, during the eleven portioned, and their dress simple. They go armed with months of their captivity, their only food was fish; musket, dagger, and scimitar; and possess six boats, in- and they were often kept a considerable time withcluding those captured from the British. The only quad-out water, although there was abundance of it. rupeds on the island, exclusive of dogs and cats, are Even the women, who among the most savage white rats. The heat is very great, though generally tempered by a breeze from the north-east; and healthi- tribes show almost always some sign of compasness appears to be characteristic of the island. sion, appeared to take delight in their sufferings, and the little children pelted them with stones. To add to their miseries, they were in daily expectation of being sent to the mainland and sold to perpetual slavery. thing called for by the exigency of a moment, and done through merely instinctive impulse; yet coin must honor it. The simplest charities of life become a matter of tariff between superiors and inferiors. There was, however, one person who had heard of their captivity, and who was taking active Let us proceed to illustrate this part of our measures for their deliverance; namely Captain national code of morality. We were once placed Isemonger, commanding the merchant brig Africa-in circumstances in Paris strongly reminding us nus, who happened fortunately to be on the coast. of Sterne and his grisette. Wandering along its This gentleman possesses great influence on that obscure streets, we lost our way, and appeared part of the coast of Africa; and, on communica-likely to have roamed on forever, as each new ting the intelligence to the king of Trazars, who street seemed the precise facsimile of the last, is very friendly to the English, this monarch im- until at length we ventured to ask the way from mediately sent to Arguin, ordering the restoration a busy, little French woman, seated at the door of of the captives, or threatening to send an expedi- her shop. A thousand different directions, uttered tion to destroy the whole tribe. Captain North- in a thousand different phrases, sent us away as wood, and all his men who could be moved, were perplexed as before. Led by blind chance, we accordingly placed in an old fishing-boat, escorted directed our steps straight on, and passed a street by ten of the natives, and, after a painful voyage down which we ought to have turned. We had of nine days, were delivered over to the gallant not gone far, when a great outery was heard Isemonger. Honey and his two wounded com- behind us, joining itself to the clatter of a couple panions were left behind, and Captain Northwood of wooden shoes. Monsieur was altogether wrong; did not then think there was the least chance they and we were led to understand that we might have would survive their sufferings. However, through girdled the globe in that direction without arriving the exertions of the man who effected the deliver- at our destination; however, the error was corance of all, these wounded men were ordered to rected, and we speedily reached home. We were be delivered up, without ransom, to any European in precisely the same predicament in London, and ship that would receive them. No vessel appearing to claim them, despite the efforts made at home for that purpose, they were, after eleven months of great suffering, conveyed by the Arguins themselves to the Gambia. It must appear extraordinary that these men should have been allowed to remain eleven months in this dreadful state, within eight days' run of our shore. Despite the efforts of the owners to induce government to act, some misapprehension seemed to exist; for, in reply to Every-day life supplies us with abundant instanthe urgent intreaties of the mother of William ces-they must occur to every one-of the venal Honey, the secretary of state forwarded an extract light in which all little good offices are regarded in from a despatch written by Captain Bosanquet, England. If a horse has broken his bridle, and commanding her majesty's ship Alert, which states gambolled a few yards down the street, and is that he had communicated with one of the chiefs brought back an unwilling captive by some advenof Arguin, who " stated that the three Englishmen turous person; if a memorandum is dropped, and had died of their wounds, and that they had no some lucky boy has picked it up, and restored it white prisoners." This despatch is dated 7th No- to its rightful owner; if, on a blustering day, the vember, 1844, and the men were not liberated until wind will take your hat off, and it scampers down the 1st May, 1845. They arrived in London on some hilly street, and is caught by some fleet3d of August. It is most unfortunate that this re-legged errand-boy, who has participated with port should have been fully credited, as, but for the benenolent and patriotic exertions of Captain Isemonger, they would have lingered out their wretched lives upon the island. From Chainbers' Journal. SALEABLE CIVILITIES. had occasion to ask for similar instruction from one of two lumping boys idly lounging at the corner of a street. What was our success? The boy declined affording the requisite information gratuitously, but offered to put us right in two minutes for twopence. Behold the contrast! Assuredly, many though the social errors of our neighbors are, mercenary civility is not to be reckoned among them. some half dozen others in the fun of the capture; if your handkerchief hangs from your pocket, and some extra-honest passer-by informs you of the circumstance, with a touch of his hat, intimating that your honor might have lost it; if you sprain your ankle, or fall over a shred of orange-peel, or are knocked down by some runaway horse, and are assisted by some humane members of the surWe observed the other day, in a popular maga- rounding mob into a neighboring surgery; if, in zine, an anecdote of a gentleman who, having short, in any of the thousand misfortunes which dropped a package of papers, and getting it are daily apportioned to us, an inferior renders restored to him by a working man, who ran across assistance to, or does some little office for, his a street for the purpose, was so shabby as merely superior, a debt is incurred; it is a cash account; to render thanks in return. The writer seemed to creditor and debtor are the synonyma for obliger consider it necessary that the gentleman should and obligee: humanity, good-nature, nay, the have given at least sixpence as a remuneration for first elements of the Christian duty of man to man, this act of ordinary civility. This way of thinking are obliterated from the minds of both parties, and touches upon a feature of our age, especially as the obligation can only be discharged by treating regards metropolitan life, which is worthy of a it as so much merchandise, and paying for it. few remarks. It seems now to be held as a fixed point of duty amongst us, that whenever a gentleman, by choice or accident, receives the least civility from his inferiors, he should reward them in money. It may be something costing hardly an effort, some It would be far from difficult to construct a scale of metropolitan civilities, and to affix the orthodox rates to each of the minor kindnesses; thus Holding a horse for a few minutes, twopenceif with extra politeness, fourpence. Directions in topography, or street-seeking, twopence with personal attendance, threepence. Picking up a handkerchief, one penny to boys, twopence to men. Shutting a cab-door, to the waterman one penny-where does your honor want to go?twopence. Assistance in case of accident-varies from sixpence to a shilling; and so on. He who would be so foolhardy as to refuse these regular demands, while his bravery might be extolled, would incur the odium of every bystander, and might think himself fortunate if he escaped the open execrations of the disappointed benefactor. with regard to its normal consequences, as the A B C of a course of beggary. The tale of the officer who gave one of his men a sovereign to drink his health with, and was astonished to find that, in the man's anxiety to obey orders, he had drunk his health so assiduously for three or four days, as to be brought at last to the guardroom, and disgraced in his regiment, is one which is continually enacted. The money given and received in the manner to which we are alluding, is sacred to the alchouse, and to the fellowship of pot-companions; and the libations made at such a shrine, commenced under the sanction, authority, and recommendation of the donor, are perpetuated by the taste and newly-acquired habits of the recipient, until, in too many instances, they reduce him to rags, and his family to wretchedness. We are here looking at the subject in a strong, but in by no means a singular light. We know many who deplore the necessity they are continually under, in order to avoid insult, of contributing to keep up a custom in direct opposition to their deliberate convictions; and we believe that few ordinary doings of the affluent classes are more injurious to the character and wholesome self-esteem of the humbler classes, than when, instead of reciprocating kindness for kindness, or expressing simply a sense of sincere obligation in return for a minor good office, they make un Such a state of things is very disgraceful in an age calling itself an era of refinement, and turning up its nose at all bygone times, as if there were nothing that was good or great in them. If out-ofdoor civility must have its price, let there be a regular body of such "helps" enrolled at once; give them a regular livery, and let each wear a brazen badge, denoting his number and the regular rate of payment for all sorts of civilities; and thus deliver honest men from the insult and injury of the degradation of their brotherly-kindness to the level of, or rather to an inferiority to, the base metal with which it is bought and for which it is sold. We are continually being disgusted with appli-worthy, and, after all, inadequate returns of cations for beer, for something to drink our health, for something to grease the wheels of our gig with, for something to water our garden with, or to sprinkle the dusty road with. If the carpenter has done some trifling job, when he comes to be paid, something must be given over and above his regular pay to wet the work with, or it is impossible that it will stand. If the dustman perform his arduous office, and, after relieving our dustbin of its contents, comes up, with cindered hair and grimy face, to acquaint us with the fact, surely we could not deny him something to wash down the dust with which he is pretty nigh choked. If the sweep has been putting the chimney to rights, then the heap of soot there was to be surenever seed a chimbley so foul-he was always so pettickler about them smoke jacks-he knowed a many sweeps as 'ud smesh them all to nothing: could our honor give him something to oil his husky throat with?" 66 The principle on which such demands are made seems to us wholly bad. It is on this, the hydra whose hundred heads spring up in every possible direction, that we would animadvert. The work done, of course, is worth its pay, just as much as twenty shillings are worth a sovereign. The demand is made for the civility with which its performance is attended-a demand, by the way, invariably greater in proportion to the civility with which the workman himself has been treated. Such civility, we would say, is due, and ought to be rendered, merely as a requirement of the social compact between man and man in all ranks and spheres of life. This custom of performing work in a civil manner, merely with the ultimate view to certain pence, sixpences, and shillings, must be directly injurious to the workman's own character, lowering him in his own esteem, and derogating, in no inconsiderable degree, from his respectability in the estimation of his superiors. We regard it in its least serious light, simply as unreasonable. The matter puts on a more serious aspect when we look at it, as we have strong reason to do, money. If brotherly-kindness be the bond of Like some diseased atmosphere, this custom has penetrated the remotest recesses of social life, spreading its infection on high and low, from the palace to the prison, in the streets, by the roadside, in the grand hotel, in the petty tavern, in the playhouse, and even inside the church-door; and though now and then some ultra-reformer of a commercial traveller, in a fretful letter to the Times, goes into an elaborate calculation of how much a year the item of civility costs him, and denounces the whole host of waiters, and chambermaids, and hostlers, and boots, and ostlers, and porters, spreading wild dismay throughout the hostels of our queendom; and though some Boanerges of a public writer hurls his thunderbolts at the stolid head of that sluggish giant, the people; and though some mighty preacher proclaims it, as practised within consecrated walls, to be on the one side an insult, and on the other a sin, like a noxious weed, it only springs up the ranker, whether it is cut up or cut down. |