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ed a row of flambeaux, and the Magistrates, in a most splendid manner, illuminated the front of the Exchange, and regaled the populace with five hundred hogsheads of ale. The Fountain and Cross Wells were pyramids of light, and the reservoir on the Castle Hill having been made into punch, every pipe and cock in the city supplied the inhabitants with that delicious Glasgow beverage to their supper. But it is impossible

for us to describe the scene. Im agination alone can do it justice. The testimonies of private rejoicing baffle, all description. One circumstance, however, we ought not to neglect. The cocks began to crow at ten o'clock, believing they had overroosted themselves. The canary birds in their cages sung out rejoicing, and Nature, like Tom Campbell's Andes, giant of the Western Star, unfurled a meteor flag from Nelson's Monument, which reached to Kirkaldy, and actu ally set fire to the house where the smuggler lived, whose execution occasioned the Porteous mob,

The effects produced by the Rumour all over Scotland, were as remarkable as those of which we were ourselves eye and ear witnesses in the Modern Athens. The Tontine at Glasgow was immediately hung with black velvet; and one illustrious gentleman, who disturbed the uniformity of the West Country sorrow, by daring a grin, was forthwith kicked by a hundred feet into the Outer Exchange. The sharpshooters, a fine body of 700 men, were drawn up in a hollow and silent square in the green near Nelson's pillar, (over which was hung a banner, with the arms of the city upside down ;namely, the tree that never grew, the fish that never swam, and the bell that never rung,) while a suitable discourse was delivered to them by their incomparable Colonel, during which not a man in the corps refrained from tears. The troops had wooden flints in their firelocks, signifying that all our scintillations were gone, and the great muffled drum was heard sounding all night through the city. The boilers in all the steam-boats at the Broomielaw were instantly mum-the callenders stood still-and a thousand spinning-jennies did disconsolately hang down their heads. Several of the Professors were too much affected to lec

ture on that day; and such was the stupor of grief at Harley's, that a hundred cows went supperless to bed. The theatre was open, but only one young lady in the upper boxes, and one country minister in the bottomless pit. Had Catalani been there, she would have sung in solitude—had the Rumour been delayed till next summer, the King must have put off his visit to Scotland till the year 1823.

Paisley was in despair, from Maxweltown to Gauze-street,-from the Snedden to the Seedle. Red were the eyes of the brown-duffled tambourers, and every weaver wept. Port-Glasgow vied with Greenock in grief. For one day, no allusion was made to the unfortunate steeple of the first, and the great question of the stools in the Assembly Room of the second was set at rest. "A deep distress had humanized their souls," and there was a ge→ neral shaking of hands, in the reconcilement of a wide and general affliction.

The Rumour crossed the Devil's Bowling-Green, and into the heart of the Highlands. A thousand · stills were sad in the Moor of Rannoch, and the herring-fishing on Loch-Fyne lost a day. A drove of black cattle coming across the hill road from Spey-side to Bræmar, was met by the Rumour, and Captain Macdougall, formerly of the 79th, who had become a great grazier, fell off his shelty, and has remained senseless ever since. The sensation at Inverness was much stronger than that occasioned by their earthquake; and the countenance of John-a-Groats was troubled. Many families talked of emigrating, in consequence of this sudden blow; and nothing but delicacy prevents us from mentioning the names of three clergymen one a Catholic, one an Episcopal, and one a Presbyterian, who, in a rash moment, committed suicide, when they heard we had resigned. The good old Presbyterian left strict injunctions to have a complete set of the Magazine, neatly bound and lettered, laid on his breast in the coffin, and buried along with him-injunctions which were scrupulously fulfilled by his son-a contributor.

But this article threatens to become lengthy; so we have given you all we could, and shall let you dream the rest. Buthow felt Scotland when the Rumour

was contradicted? Precisely as a man under sentence of death would feel on receiving an unexpected reprieve the night before execution, or rather, on the scaffold. Scotland was on the scaffold. She felt as if the rope were round her neck, and she were about to play swing. All at once Rumour changed his tone, and Scotland could bear to live. The effect was like magic. No dead body on a dissecting table ever played such absurd pranks with foot, hand, or mouth, under a galvanic battery, as did old Scotland, when she heard that our resignation was all a bam. Grimaldi or Kean was a joke to her. She took her foot in her hand, and so kept dancing about on the heather, in many a rigmarole. Then would she give a most indecorous slap upon her back settlements, accompanied with a yelling gaffaw; then she would speak Gaelic; and last ly, putting herself in an attitude of profound meditation, she would whip off a quaich of the mountain dew, as if it had been so much whisky, and, with a convulsive shudder of exulting joy, shriek out our name" Christo pher North, Christopher North," till jovial Echo flung back the dear, dear name in her face, from the rocky brow of Glenevis, or the stone-girdled bo som of Cairngorum. Loud lowed the cattle on a thousand hills-the red deer in the forest of Dalness knew that all was right-the eagle, to shew he was up to it, stooped down from a thunder-cloud, and gave a great gander on a common near Fort-William such a drive on the posteriors, that he drove him into the Linnhe Loch in a shower of feathers; while a noble, surly, sable, grim bull, coming slowly from his mountain pasture, and meeting a questionable sort of animal, with a Galloway stot appearance, ran him into a quagmire, in which he sunk down inch by inch, till he entirely disappeared the last snort of his nostril blasting out a quantity of mud, and the red tuft of his tail peering out, as a mark where the unfortunate steer had been thus prematurely ingülphed.

Such is an unadorned adorned the most account of the Rumour, its rise and fall. And now that the Public must feel tolerably easy and composed in her mind, let us entreat her, for goodness sake,

not to give way to these sudden ebullitions of feeling, which must sooner or later prove ruinous to her, even though she should have the constitution of a horse. However, the Public certainly might have a crow to pluck with us in private, if she chose; for, had we not given in our resignation, she would have been spared all this worry. But we have found how dear we are to each other. Henceforth our lives are united, and the day on which any thing is amiss with the one, will be indeed a black day to the other. May the Public live for ever! for never never could we outlive the hour on which she was gathered to her fathers. We should just see her publicly buried, and then lie down by her side.

The day has been when alternate fits of pity, indignation and contempt, permeated our minds on seeing and hear ing the occasional fooleries of worthy men anent Blackwood's Magazine. Now every thing of the kind is at an end, and if popularity had ever been an object with us, we might indeed point to the laurels on our brow, and hold our tongues. But we allude to this, not on our own account, but for the sake of those well-meaning men who res coiled from our patronage, and endea voured to look shocked at the monthly murders we kept conscientiously perpetrating on the souls and bodies of the traitorous and blasphemous Whigs. When we laid the axe to the root of" the wicked, great in pride, spread like the green bay-tree," and brought him crashing to the ground with all his branches, could not the terrified Tories have quietly stepped aside out of the reach of the ruin, and then returned and danced upon the fallen trunk? No. They were frightened at the concus sion, and took like rabbits to their holes; and, what was worse, pretended hypocritically to lament the fall of the tree whose noxious drippings had withered every thing beneath them, and which was alike destitute of shelter and of shade. That time is over. The true Tories always loved us;the half-breeds never did; and they now see, in their unprotected feebleness, that they must endure, as best they can, "not the tyrannous breathing of the North," but that calm and settled chill, beneath which expires the last

glimmering spark of a false Tory's life.

But how stand we with the Whigs? -We stand over them with a determined countenance, in which there is no trace of pity, while they are lying prostrate at our feet. We do not greatly value ourselves, that we struck them to the ground. Their own folly, treachery, and cowardice, wrought their overthrow, we only trod them under feet,-whenever they strove to rise, we floored them not with grassers, but with mirers; and then holding them up with one hand, punished them with the other, in sight of the great ring of Europe. The Whigs of the day know our power, and they fear it. First they scornedthen they blustered-then they whined-then scorned again-then cried out foul-then fell without a blow then shewed the white feather, and then bolted. Did not they give the challenge? And what right have they to complain, if we never gave them a chance, having youth, blood, bottom, weight, height, length, strength, and skill all on our side? We said smash -and they were smashed.

Some few of the Whigs were men of talents; and in a small village, like Edinburgh, had been suffered to vaunt and vapour, till absolutely none but themselves were deemed worthy to wag a tongue. They did not relish a blow on the jugular-and began to suspect that when men play at bowls, they may meet with rubbers. There was, however, some excuse for the haughtiness of these gentlemen, who, we grant, are not altogether utter ninnies;-but, gentle reader, what do you think of the slim-slender-slobberysouled scavants, from seventeen to seven-and-twenty, who, on our first appearance, began to cheep and chuckle, and thought to crow over Christopher North? What think you of the small Whiglings of the Parliament-House, with incipient coxcombs, and nascent spurs, taking a fly at the old Cock of the North, all dubbed and steeled for the sod, fed, clipped out, and victorious in a hundred mains? We had no ambition to be a chicken-butcher; but we took into our beak these little deluded dunghills, and after a few strokes, drove them in consternation to their beparritched cavies. Every

now and then, when they thought the Old Cock of the hundred combats was at a distance, they thrust their noses through the bars, and ventured on a hesitating crow; this they thought shewing pluck,—but on the most distant intimation of our approach all the pens were still, and all our little Whig warriors panting like mice in the straw.

But to cut imagery;-the naked and unadorned fact is, that it had become customary, about a couple of years ago, for the young dullards of the Whig party to deny our talents! "There is, we grant you, now and then, some ability in Blackwood!!" muttered these wooden oracles, " but very little research!!" On the very same principle, we understand that the greatest curiosity in the world, now exhibiting on the Earthen Mound, Mr Wardle, who measures exactly 28 inches on his stocking-soles, admits, when driven into a corner, that the American giant who is his next-booth neighbour, is a man of some size, that is, somewhat about eight feet high. The candour of the small coxcombs in admitting occasional symptoms of ability in Ebony, appeared to themselves in the most amiable light; and we remember one of them, praising the Latin translation of Chevy Chase, and in the excess of his erudition, misquoting one line into bad grammar and another into false quantity.

"Some verses in the Chaldee were not amiss!" they were graciously pleased to own, before several members of the Stove-School. Our humanity was touched; and three of these infants will remember us taking them aside, and patting them on their heads, (rather jacobinically greasy for our taste,) with a strict injunction never again to make such an indecent exposure of their naked intellects. They staredthey strutted-they stuttered-they scowled ;-but we were inexorable; and commanding silence, on pain of a Notice, they then and thenceforth held their peace.

In every circle of society that is the size of a Swedish turnip, there is a man or two of wit, possibly an old maid. They pun-say sharp thingsand write quatrains. Their witticisms are like caraway comfits to the buttered toast at tea-parties; and "if they would but publish, how their writings

sale to have risen 3000 since our last report. When the sale of a Magazine reaches 20,000, it assumes a stationary appearance. Perhaps it is still continuing to increase, but the imagination is not affected by the addition of a few scores or hundreds to so many thousands, and the state of the mind is sceptical. Had we not created so many other excellent Magazines, it cannot admit of a doubt that our sale would, ere now, have been 40,000, which proves, to a demonstration, that our sale is now exactly equal to that of all the other Magazines put together.

would sell!" The Tee-totum School is on the whole whiggish. When Ebony was talked of, in every such party of six, there were at least three rejected contributors. "Our personality was odious," snuffed and hissed out the spiteful tabbies and surly tomcats of the coterie. "He makes game of personal infirmities," quoth a sour black virgin plumb-damasc; " but let the old hobbling varlet look to his own rheumatism." Thither repaired the pigmy praters of the Whigs, and quoted Jeffrey against us. The young satirists were pressed to marmalade, and made to sit down to a rubber. No one was there to take our part;-and before" she lay down in her loveliness," the old Christabel drank to our downfall in a bumper of cogniac.

Most of our enemies have now ceased to be so in the course of nature. The clever and middle-aged Whigs are waxing dull and old, and though still somewhat peevish, seem prudently disposed to let us alone so may they doze and drivel in peace. The weak and young Whigs have become middle aged, and their foziness can no longer be concealed, so we have no satisfaction now in playing with them at football. Many ancient maidens have gone the way of all flesh, to burial or the nuptial bed, and attack us no more either in mould or matrimony. We are often miserably low-spirited for want of enemies, and know not where to look for a victim to sacrifice to our fury. We have been too long sailing down a quiet stream, and long for a waterfall over which we might plump into a more lively and troubled existence. At one time the hands of many men were against us, but now every paw is at peace-we can no longer wear gloves-and our head nods like that of a Mandarin in perpetual salutation. We are oppressed by the politeness, and fear that we shall eventually sink under the gratitude, of the hu

man race.

But somewhat too much of this; so let us speak a few words about our sale. Mr Blackwood and We have lately had some trifling disputes on this point. He seems to us, why we know not, anxious to conceal the limits of his circulation. He will not own to 20,000, though we think we have data to go upon, when we assert the

Now, we have a plan to submit to the consideration of our brother Editors and Proprietors all over the island -a plan of a Consolidated Fund. There may be objections to it of which we are not aware, and therefore it is with diffidence that we now exhibit an Outline.

We propose, then, that there shall be a Magazine, still called Blackwood's Magazine, of which we are to be Prime Editor; but that it shall be published once a-fortnight, and that the price shall be ten shillings. We think that all the small print,-i. e. deaths_and marriages, promotions, meteorology, &c., may be, once for all, sent to the Devil, and that the whole ought to consist of original articles. Each number must consist of 500 pages, being equal in size to about four numbers of any living monthly miscellany. It will thus cost each subscriber L.12 ayear. Now, each page will average about six ordinary octavos, so that each number will contain about 3000, or be equal to about ten good whacking volumes. A year produces twenty-four numbers, or 240 good whacking volumes, all for L.12, which is exactly one shilling a head. Now in this way, we conceive, could 50,000 libraries be formed in a single year all over Great Britain and Ireland. Nobody will be so absurd as to believe that the sale would stop at 50,000. But we shall call it only 50,000, as it is pleasant to reason within safe limits, even in a grand speculation. A steady annual sale of 50,000 produces the grand total of L.600,000, to a single farthing. We shall say that printing, &c., costs L.200,000, or one-third of the whole. That the proprietors and the trade in general draw another third,

L.200,000; and that the Prime Editor, the Subordinates, and Contributors, pocket the remaining L.200,000. A very few minutes consideration will suffice to point out the manifold advantages of such an arrangement.

In the first place, an instantaneous shove will be given to the paper manufactories of the kingdom. Mr Cowan will become one of the richest men in Scotland. What Mr Ballantyne will do, we know not. He must build new premises about the size of the Glasgow Barracks, and set a hundred presses at work, otherwise he never can print the Magazine, and also the Scotch Novels. What a shew of devils! How the imps will pour forth into daylight when the great floodgates of Pandemonium are flung open, and they all issue out to dinner over the Old Town, seeking what they may devour! Devils live cheap; at their ordinaries we have heard they dine devilish well at twopence an imp. As to our worthy printer, he will be enabled in a few years to purchase Fleurs -No, that is entailed-but any immense property in the neighbourhood of Kelso -and sure we are that he will make a generous landlord. Suppose that our printer clears a penny on each number, why, that amounts to upwards of L.5000 per annum ; but say twopence, and there is L.10,000 per annum, neat. But let us leave these calculations, in the general belief that paper-makers, printers, compositors, pressmen, and demons, are all about to wallow in wealth, and let us shortly consider the external circumstances of the Editor and his merry

men.

We have seen, then, that L.200,000 are to be set aside for a genteel and handsome remuneration to ourselves and the men of talents over whom we preside. We prefer a moderate sala ry, if fixed, to a much more splendid thing, uncertain; and therefore we are willing to accept L.20,000. The English Opium-eater must become, as far as residence will make him so, a Scottish segar-smoker; and, as minister for foreign affairs, have the goodness to accept L.10,000 a-year. If this seems shabby, he has only to drop a hint, and a few thousands additional, he well knows, can be no object to us. Tickler shall be Collector of the Cus

toms for Scotland, with a salary of L.3000; and Wastle, whose tenants have given over paying rents, has signified his willingness to accept the Home-Department, at L.4000. Now we four, Christopher North, the English Opium-Eater, Tickler, and Wastle, will, we hold, conduct the affairs of a great Magazine with more ability than all the literary men of Europe in a slump. The Odontist, with his characteristic generosity, has refused a salary; his practice among our fair subscribers being now at once so extensive and so lucrative, that probably in a few years he will retire from the profession, and dedicate himself entirely to the completion of his great National Work. O'Doherty has solicited the situation of Traveller for Orders, and to collect the outstanding rural debts; and as they are not likely to exceed L.2 or 3000 a-year, we shall not baulk the Ensign in any rational scheme of personal aggrandizement. A's wishes are moderate-a cottage at Lasswade, with 1000l. a-year, and he shall have it. Money goes a long way in Germany, and Kemperhausen, who is now at Frankfort-on-the-Main, can smoke his pipe and get maudlin with Müllner on 500. The two Mullions have asked a few thousands by way of loan, as they have opened a splendid provision warehouse at the head of Leith Walk, and let their shew of hams tell the world the extent of our generosity.

But while we shall thus take care of all our resident contributors, our remuneration to all our literary friends will be on a scale of proportionate magnificence. We shall henceforth pay fifty guineas a sheet for common articles, and shall not bogle at a hundred for prime. A number will contain about 30 sheets

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-our annual presents to non-resident contributors may be somewhere about L.40,000. ; so that a considerable share of profit will still be left in our hands. A serious question arises, how is it to be employed? In the first place, we intend to found twenty travelling contributorships, at a salary of 10001. each per annum. We know that, notwithstanding what is said to the contrary by gentlemen shabby genteel, travelling abroad cannot be done cheaper with any comfort. These travelling contributors shall be sent all over Europe, Asia, America, and Africa. Their discoveries

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