Part 4 (1/2)

Now, the professional cla.s.ses have a kind of licence on this subject; just as a poet is permitted to invent sunsets, and a painter to improvise clouds and cataracts, so a lawyer dilates upon the virtues or attractions of his client, and a physician will weep you good round substantial tears, at a guinea a drop, for the woes of his patient; but the church, I certainly thought, was exempt from this practice. A paragraph in a morning paper, however, disabused my ignorance in the most remarkable manner. The Roman Catholic hierarchy have unanimously decided that all persons following the profession of the stage, are to be considered without the pale of the church, they are neither to he baptized nor confirmed, married nor buried; they may get a name in the streets, and a wite there also, but the church will neither bless the one, nor confirm the other; in fact, the sock and the buskin are proclaimed in opposition to Christianity, and Madame Lafarge is not a bit more culpable than Robert Macaire. A few days since, one of the most fas.h.i.+onable churches in Paris was crowded to suffocation by the attraction of high ma.s.s, celebrated with the a.s.sistance of the whole opera choir, with Duprez at their head. The sum contributed by the faithful was enormous, and the music of Mozart was heard to great effect through the vaulted aisles of Notre Dame, yet the very morning after, not an individual of the choir could receive the benediction of the church--the _rationale_ of all which is, that the Dean of Notre Dame, like the Director of the Odeon, likes a good house and a heavy benefit.

He gets the most attractive company he can secure, and although he makes no scruple to say they are the most disreputable acquaintances, still they fill the benches, and it will be time enough to d.a.m.n them when the performance is over!

Whenever the respectable Whigs are attacked for their alliance with O'Connell, they make the same reply the priest would probably do in this circ.u.mstance--How can we help it? We want a mob; if he sings, we have it--we know his character as well as you; so only let us fill our pockets, and then------I do not blame them in the least, if the popery of their politics has palled upon the appet.i.te; if they can work no more miracles of reform and revolution, I do not see how they can help calling in aid from without.

A NUT FOR LEARNED SOCIETIES.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 110]

We laugh at the middle ages for their trials by ordeal, their jousts, their tournaments, their fat monasteries, and their meagre people; but I am strongly disposed to think, that before a century pa.s.s over, posterity will give us as broad a grin for our learned societies. Of all the features that characterise the age, I know of none so pre-eminently ridiculous, as nine-tenths of these a.s.sociations would prove; supported by great names, aided by large t.i.tle, with a fine house, a library and a librarian, they do the honours of science pretty much as the yeomen of the guard do those of a court on a levee day, and they bear about the same relation to literature and art, that do the excellent functionaries I have mentioned, to the proceedings around the throne.

An old gentleman, hipped by celibacy, and too sour for society, has contracted a habit of looking out of his window every morning, to observe the weather: he sees a cloud very like a whale, or he fancies that when the wind blows in a particular direction, and it happens to rain at the same time, that the drops fall in a peculiarly slanting manner. He notes down the facts for a month or two, and then establishes a meteorological society, of which he is the perpetual president, with a grant from Parliament to extend its utility. Another takes to old volumes on a book-stall; and becoming, as most men are who have little knowledge of life, fascinated with his own discoveries, thinks he has ascertained some curious details of ancient history, and communicating his results to others as stupid and old as himself, they dub themselves antiquarians, or archaeologists, and obtain a grant also.

Now, one half of these societies are neither more nor less than most impertinent sarcasms on the land we live id. The man who sets himself down deliberately to chronicle the clouds in our atmosphere, and jot down the rainy days in our calendar, is, to my thinking, performing about as grateful a task, as though he were to count the carbuncles on his friend's nose. We have, it is true, a most abominable climate: the sun rarely shows himself, and, when he does, it is through a tattered garment of clouds, dim and disagreeable; but why throw it in our teeth?

and, still more, why pay a body of men to publish the slander? Then again, as to history, all the world knows that since the Flood the Irish have never done any thing else than make love, illicit whiskey, and beat each other. What nonsense, then, to talk about the ancient cultivation of the land, of its high rank in literature, and its excellence in art. A stone bishop, with a nose like a negro, and a crosier like a garden-rake, are the only evidences of our ancestors' taste in sculpture; and some doggrel verses in Irish, explaining how King Phelim O'Toole cheated a brother monarch out of his smallclothes, are about the extent of our historic treasures. But, for argument's sake, suppose it otherwise; imagine for a moment that our ancestors were all that Sir William Betham and Mr. Petrie would make them--I do not know how other people may feel, but I myself deem it no pleasant reflection to think of _their_ times and look at _our own_. What if we were poets and painters, architects, historians, and musicians! What have we now among us to represent these great and mighty gifts? I am afraid, except our Big Beggarman, we have not a single living celebrity; and is this a comfortable reflection, is this a pleasing thought, that while, fourteen hundred years ago, some Irish Raphael and some Galway Grisi were the delight of our ill.u.s.trious ancestors--that while the splendour of King Malachi, with his collar of gold, astonished the ladies in the neighbourhood of Trim--we have nothing to boast of, save Dan for Lord Mayor, and Burton Bindon's oysters? Once more, I say, if what these people tell us be facts, they are the most unpalatable facts could be told to a nation; and I see no manner of propriety or good-breeding in replying to a gipsy who begs for a penny, by the information, that ”his ancestors built the Pyramids.”

Again, if our days are dark, our nights are worse; and what, in Heaven's name, have we to do with an observatory and a telescope as long as the _Great Western?_ The planets are the most expensive vagabonds to the Budget, and the fixed stars are a fixed imposition. Were I Chancellor of the Exchequer, I'd pension the Moon, and give the Great Bear a sum of money as compensation. Do not tell me of the distresses of the people, arising from cotton, or corn, China, or Chartists--it is our scientific inst.i.tutions are eating into the national resources. There is not an egg-saucepan of antiquity that does not cost the country a plum, and every wag of a comet's tail may be set down at half-a-million. I warrant me the people in the Moon take us a deuced deal more easily, and give themselves very little trouble to make out the size of Ireland's eye or the height of Croaghpatrick. No, no; let the Chancellor of the Exchequer come down with a slapping measure of retrenchment, and make a clear stage of all of them. Every man with money to buy a cotton umbrella is his own meteorologist; and a pocket telescope, price eight-and-fourpence, is long enough, in all conscience, for any man in a climate like ours; or, if such a course seem too peremptory, call on these people for their bill, and let there be a stated sum for each item. At Dolly's chop-house, you know to the exact farthing how much your beefsteak and gla.s.s of ale will cost you; and if you wish, in addition, a slice of Stilton with your XX, you consult your pocket before you speak. Let not the nation be treated worse than the individual: let as first look about us, and see if a year of prosperity and cheap potatoes will permit us the indulgence of obtaining a new luminary or an old chronicle; then, when we know the cost, we may calculate with safety. Suppose a fixed star, for instance, be set down at ten pounds; a planet at five; Saturn has so many belts, I would not give more than half-a-crown for a new one; and, as for an eclipse of the sun, I had rather propose a reward for the man who could tell us when we could see him palpably.

For the present I merely throw out these suggestions in a brief, incomplete manner, intending, however, to return to the subject on another occasion.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 114]

A NUT FOR THE LAWYERS.

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Authors have long got the credit of being the most accomplished persons going--thoroughly conversant not only with the features of every walk and cla.s.s in life, but also with their intimate sentiments, habits of thought, and modes of expression. Now, I have long been of opinion, that in all these respects, lawyers are infinitely their superiors. The author chooses his characters as you choose your dish, or your wine at dinner--he takes what suits, and leaves what is not available to his purpose. He then fas.h.i.+ons them to his hand--finis.h.i.+ng off this portrait, sketching that one--now bringing certain figures into strong light, anon throwing them into shadow: they are his creatures, who must obey him while living, and even die at his command. Now, the lawyer is called on for all the narrative and descriptive powers of his art, at a moment's notice, without time for reading or preparation; and worse than all, his business frequently lies among the very arts and callings his taste is most repugnant to. One day he is to be found creeping, with a tortoise slowness through all the wearisome intricacy of an equity case--the next he is borne along in a torrent of indignant eloquence, in defence of some Orange processionist or some Ribbon a.s.sociate: now he describes, with the gravity of a landscape gardener, the tortuous windings of a mill-stream; now expatiating in Lytton Bulwerisms over the desolate hearth and broken fortunes of some deserted husband. In one court he attempts to prove that the elderly gentleman whose life was insured for a thousand at the Phoenix, was instrumental to his own decease, for not eating Cayenne with his oysters; in another, he shows, with palpable clearness, that being stabbed in the body, and having the head fractured, is a venial offence, and merely the result of ”political excitement” in a high-spirited and warm-hearted people.

These are all clever efforts, and demand consummate powers, at the hand of him who makes them; but what are they to that deep and critical research with which he seems, instinctively, to sound the depths of every scientific walk in life, and every learned profession. Hear him in a lunacy case--listen to the deep and subtle distinctions he draws between the symptoms of mere eccentricity and erring intellect--remark how insignificant the physician appears in the case, who has made these things the study of a life long--hear how the barrister confounds him with a hail-storm of technicals--talking of the pineal gland as if it was an officer of the court, and of atrophy of the cerebral lobes, as if he was speaking of an attorney's clerk. Listen to him in a trial of supposed death by poison; what a triumph he has there, particularly if he be a junior barrister--how he walks undismayed among all the tests for a.r.s.enic--how little he cares for Marsh's apparatus and Scheele's discoveries--hydro-sulphates, peroxydes, iodurates, and proto-chlorides are familiar to him as household words. You would swear that he was nursed at a gla.s.s retort, and sipped his first milk through a blow-pipe.

Like a child who thumps the keys of a pianoforte, and imagines himself a Liszt or Mosch.e.l.les, so does your barrister revel amid the phraseology of a difficult science--pelting the witnesses with his insane blunders, and a.s.suring the jury that their astonishment means ignorance.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 117a]

Nothing in anatomy is too deep--nothing in chemistry too subtle--no fact in botany too obscure--no point in metaphysics too difficult. Like Dogberry, these things are to him but the gift of G.o.d; and he knows them at his birth. Truly, the chancellor is a powerful magician; and the mystic words by which he calls a gentleman to the bar, must have some potent spell within them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 117b]

The youth you remember as if it were yesterday, the lounger at evening parties, or the chaperon of tiding damsels to the Phoenix, comes forth now a man of deep and consummate acquirement--he whose chemistry went no further than the composition of a ”tumbler of punch,” can now perform the most difficult experiments of Orfila or Davy, or explain the causes of failure in a test that has puzzled the scientific world for half a century. He knows the precise monetary value of a deserted maiden's affections--he can tell you the exact sum, in bank notes, that a widow will be knocked down for, when her heart has been subject to but a feint attack of Cupid.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 118]

With what consummate skill, too, he can show that an indictment is invalid, when stabbing is inserted for cutting; and when the crown prosecutor has been deficient in his descriptive anatomy, what a glorious field for display is opened to him. Then, to be sure, what droll fellows they are!--how they do quiz the witness as he sits trembling on the table--what funny allusions to his habits of life--his age--his station--turning the whole battery of their powers of ridicule against him--ready, if he venture to retort, to throw themselves on the protection of the court. And truly, if a little Latin suffice for a priest, a little wit goes very far in a law court. A joke is a universal blessing: the judge, who, after all, is only ”an old lawyer,” loves it from habit: the jury, generally speaking, are seldom in such good company, and they laugh from complaisance; and the bar joins in the mirth, on that great reciprocity principle, which enables them to bear each other's dulness, and dine together afterwards. People are insane enough to talk of absenteeism as one of the evils of Ireland, and regret that we have no resident aristocracy among us--rather let us rejoice that we have them not, so long as the lawyers prove their legitimate successors.

How delightful in a land where civilization has still some little progress before it, and where the state of crime is not quite satisfactory--to know that we have those amongst us who know all things, feel all things, explain all things, and reconcile all things--who can throw such a Claude Lorraine light over right and wrong, that they are both mellowed into a sweet and hallowed softness, delightful to gaze on. How the secret of this universal acquirement is accomplished I know not--perhaps it is the wig.

What set me first on this train of thought, was a trial I lately read, where a cross action was sustained for damage at sea--the owners of the brig Durham against the Aurora, a foreign vessel, and _vice versa_, for the result of a collision at noon, on the 14th of October. It appeared that both vessels had taken shelter in the Humber from stress of weather, nearly at the same time--that the Durham, which preceded the Prussian vessel, ”clewed up her top-sails, and dropped her anchor _rather_ suddenly; and the Aurora being in the rear, the vessels came in collision.” The question, therefore, was, whether the Durham came to anchor too precipitately, and in an unseamanlike manner; or, in other words, whether, when the ”Durham clewed up topsails, and let go her anchor, the Aurora should not have luffed up, or got stern way on her,”

&c. Nothing could possibly be more instructive, nor anything scarcely more amusing, than the lucid arguments employed by the counsel on both sides. The learned Thebans, that would have been sick in a ferry-boat, spoke as if they had circ.u.mnavigated the globe. Stay-sails, braces, top-gallants, clews, and capstans they hurled at each other like _bon bons_ at a carnival; and this naval engagement lasted from daylight to dark. Once only, when the judge ”made it noon,” for a little refection, did they cease conflict, to renew the strife afterwards with more deadly daring, till at last so confused were the witnesses--the plaintiff, defendant, and all, that they half wished, they had gone to the bottom, before they thought of settling the differences in the Admiralty Court. This was no common occasion for the display of these powers so peculiarly the instinctive gift of the bar, and certainly they used it with all the enthusiasm of a _bonne bouche_.