morbid anxiety that preyed on him throughout the dinner, which was an incomparable specimen of that laughable inequality of parts, of which that refection in a prison is frequently composed. A very noble turbot on a small and broken dish, a neck of venison equally respectable, and a brace of grouse, were to have furnished the repast; but the latter article was pertinaciously retained by the culinary ministrant as security for a score of eighteen pence; which it was obvious the party would have willingly (had such an operation of finance been feasible) advanced to liberate the glory of the second course. In the corner of the small apartment, which was to behold at first the rites of Comus, and subsequently to become the lodge of a masonic mystery, were standing twenty bottles of delicious Chambertin. A tablecloth was not to be procured; and considerable difficulties were confronted in the purveyance of bread, which eventually appeared; though the porter and potatoes, which were associated with that indispensable comestible in the commission of supply, were not to be acquired by any art of promise or persuasion. A paucity of wine-glasses was remedied by the substitution of cups and saucers; and the table being drawn towards a bed, the latter piece of furniture supplied a seat for two of the society, who uttered no reproaches at its uncomfortable lowness. Abstracts, pleas, detainers, in a fasciculus with the red tape noose, were profusely scattered round the room, and when encountered by the foot, were usually saluted with a kick and glowing malison, that indicated an appropriate estimate of the beneficence of law and lawyers. The company consisted of a gallant officer, who had acquired distinctions in the scientific branches of the military calling, and had received the Duke of Wellington's express and frequent commendation; an Irish barrister of sixty years of age, possessing an unusual rubicundity of visage, a yellow wig of spare dimensions, and the testamentary remains of linen which, from their atramental hue, appeared to mourn for their departed predecessors; a clergyman of brilliant parts and gaiety; a poacher who was famous for a song; an unfortunate of respectable birth and numerous progeny, who had languished there ten years in jeopardy; and a captain, of remarkable vivacity and elegance of person and deportment, who had borne a commission in a regiment of Lancers, and who was the master of the room and donor of the festivity. The circle would have boasted the addition of two members more, but Mr. was, owing to the disappointment of his blanchisseuse, confined within his dormitory, and the other was under the restraint of what is called 'the strong room,' on the testimony of an aged female Iris, who was detected in the fact of introducing gin, the liquor of affliction,-a clandestine act, which being undertaken at the instigation (as she said) of Mr. that offender was consigned to the penalty of a more rigorous seclusion. The wardrobe of these reduced unfortunates in general exhibits, what Otway has appositely termed, 'variety of wretchedness;' though here, perhaps, the sense of poverty is heightened by the retention of some isolated piece of garish raiment, like a happy point in the remembrance of the miserable, which casts a solitary, inextinguishable beam of distant joy along the gloom of present infelicity."

Our informant goes on minutely to delineate the orgies of this wretched den. The low wit, the audacious profligacy, the miserable buffoonery, are not subjects of public exhibition. The unhappy man, whom he has so powerfully described, was made the butt in one of these ridiculous ceremonies, which are found amongst those absurd associations called "Odd Fellows," and " Druids,” and in which the fears of the credulous are employed to call forth practical jests of the most contemptible character. In prison, or out of prison, the amusements of the stupid and the profligate are amongst the most miserable exhibitions of human weakness. In this mummery of the King's Bench, the debased faculties of the unfortunate gentleman alluded to were made the object of cruel and licentious sport;-and still he performed his part with perfect seriousness, acting with a feeling of unfeigned solemnity throughout the whole egregious foolery. The fact and the chief actors in that fact are well remembered. Distress of recollection gained on Mr. S. with daily violence: his liberation was followed, it is true, with all that the beneficence of patronage could do: he sailed for the West Indies, where the climate aggravated his disease of mind; he returned to England in a state of destitution, was immured in Bedlam, and concluded his disastrous career in calamitous necessity and mental darkness.

We could point out, in the squalid purlieus of the Bench, many instances of ruined fortune, desolated hope, and spiritless abandonment: all bowed beneath the foul humiliation of their destiny-officers who held commissions in distinguished regiments, turned horsedealers or bailiffs' followers; the son of a wealthy Indian, the cad to a stage-coach; a learned Theban, who has had the honour to receive the visits of illustrious dukes, a driveller in a miserable cul-de-sac, where, like his former prototype, Alcides in the court of Omphale, he bends to the infliction of the slipper: another, eminent for wit, for knowledge, and descent, may be beheld in wan and linenless attire, threading the Dædalean mazes of that foul locale, drowning misery and thought at every fountain of forgetfulness, and lighting fires at the shrines of the Geneva Diva, to be extinguished in the rank recess of temples more odious still.

We must terminate our observations. Had Mr. Haydon stood in need of our applause, we should willingly have testified it in emphatic and deserved terms. Our opinion of his pictures coincides with common admiration, and Mr. Haydon, we are certain, will not conceive that we have unworthily postponed a dissertation on his excellence to the occasion of enforcing moral truths of vast importance, to which the subject of his performance has naturally led us.

DIARY

FOR THE MONTH OF OCTOBER.

11th. Mr. Cobbett has, in his Register of this day's date, an article, in the shape of a letter to the Duke of Wellington, broaching the very comfortable doctrine, that England is in a rapidly-progressive state of decay. He echoes the wicked nonsense of some of the French papers, concerning which we said a word or two, last month, about the disgrace and shame which attach to England because she does not go to war for every trumpery question of foreign policy which turns up: that is, not of foreign policy as it affects England, but of foreign policy in its stricter sense, namely, when it affects altogether two foreign states, and England not at all.

We shall not, however, go into this part of the question at present; the blockade of the Dardanelles is subject to considerable qualifications, and it is rumoured that we shall hear more of the subject ere long. All the other doings, whether of Portuguese, Russ, or Turk, manifestly give us no shadow of right to go to war at all, even if every one thought as lightly of its horrors as Mr. Cobbett seems humanely to do, from the manner in which he sneers at those whom he supposes to use the expression. We wish to say a word about the decay of British power. In the first place, we hold all the set phrases about the necessary decay of empires sooner or later-that when a state has come to its climax it must decline-we consider all this mere jargon. Rome declined undoubtedly, and so did some of the eastern nations. But, in modern times, properly so called-that is, since the spread of letters, there has been no such thing. Spain, perhaps, may be taken as an exception-but letters never prevailed there. Information was stifled in the cradle :-but in the countries where she was strong enough, in that cradle, to crush, like Hercules, the serpents of superstition and oppression, she has proved the nurse and protectress of their prosperities ever since. Is it reasonable to suppose that, because the unwieldy Roman empire fell to pieces, such states as France and England, and the United States, should necessarily carry, in their thriving, the germ of decay? "When nations come to their zenith, they must decline." Even this, as it stands, is a complete begging of the question. Why must they decline? Why cannot they, having gained the summit, remain there? But for centuries, in all probability, we need not trouble ourselves about this. With the present beginnings of improvement in every line, it will be ages before we arrive at the termination of the course: that that course will not continue, we have never seen one tittle of evidence to lead us to believe. Let us hear Mr. Cobbett :

"This nation exhibits at this time every mark of a sinking state; every mark that the empire of Rome exhibited when it was approaching to its fall. The Government displays an incessant desire, which it is constantly gratifying, to spend money on things of show. Every thoughtful man, that passes HYDE PARK CORNER, naturally says to himself, this nation is falling. If we go to Whitehall, on whichever

side we turn our eyes, the false glare blasts the sight of the man who loves his country. A false and frivolous taste has seized upon the people, as well as upon the Government: in dress, in entertainments, in our manner of receiving our friends, in our language, habits, and everything, we have become a hollow and tinsel nation, compared to what our fathers were. Even in the sports of the field, we have become frivolous, and effeminate, and senseless. Our LORDS and GENTLEMEN now do precisely what the old NOBLESSE of FRANCE did, just before the Revolution. It is not sporting now, the finding of the game being uncertain, and the toil considerable; but it is going to a poultry-pen with people, instead of dogs, to drive out the animals, to preserve which, laws, in emulation of those existing in FRANCE, have been made and executed in England; and the at once slothful, effeminate, and tyrannical sportsmen (as they call themselves) have even adopted the phraseology, and borrowed the terms of the despicable creatures of France, calling a day's shooting, a battu!"

Truly this is amusing. As for love of things of show, there is, at the very least, as much love of things of use. There are new bridges as well as new palaces-at Hyde Park Corner itself, if there be an old, inconvenient gateway replaced by a handsome new one, on one side the road, the same thing may be said with regard to a charitable hospital on the other. We have gas, we have Macadamized streets, we have steam-power, become general in this "false and frivolous" London. Moreover, the desire that our metropolis should be improved to the eye, at the same time that we are improving it in essentials conducive to health and comfort, argues any thing, we think, rather than that such a desire springs from "hollow and tinsel" tastes. The argument about Rome happens not to be founded upon fact. The grandeur of the city of Rome, as regarded what Mr. Cobbett sneeringly denominates things of show," was in full existence in the time of Augustus, which we rather believe to have been some century or more before the beginning of the decay of the empire. With regard to the assertion, that "in dress, in entertainments, in our manner of receiving our friends, in our language, habits, and every thing, we have become a hollow and tinsel nation, compared to what our fathers were," the truth is, notoriously, diametrically the other way. Our dress!— look at the prints of the last century. Where are the gold lace, the embroidery, the full dress in the morning, the powdered periwig, the clouded cane, now? Are the cropped hair, the plain coat, the round hat, the trowsers-are these things "tinselly," in comparison with what our fathers wore? And, for the other points,-speech-manners— general intercourse, we strongly surmise that Sir Charles Grandison, could he rise from the grave, would egregiously differ in opinion from Mr. Cobbett. As for the (we will freely admit) very unsportsmanlike innovation of the battue, it is little short of farcical to bring this as an illustration of national decay. Why the French are despicable creatures, we are utterly at a loss to discern. Granting that the body of the Noblesse before the Revolution was so, what has that to say to the question? Is France decayed?

Moreover, can any two countries be more different than England now, and France before the Revolution? Is ours a people corvéable

et taillable à toute outrance? Are our clergy and nobility privileged from taxation? Have we no liberty of the press? We grant, frankly and fully, that there are many and crying evils in our system to be redressed; but we say that, in spite of them all, and, heaven knows! we do not underrate them, England thrives and prospers. That she would thrive and prosper much more rapidly if the more crying of these evils were redressed-if the corn laws, for instance, should be revised, or rather, to go at once to the root of the matter, if the power of the landed aristocracy should be lessened-we thoroughly believe, and most cheerfully concede. But that, in despite of all the evils which tend to retard her career, England is, in point of fact, advancing in wealth and power-aye, and in happiness-every day, we think about as manifest as that her so doing is gall and wormwood to Mr. Cobbett, the King having declined his offer of being Prime Minister. Decay!-Look at the spread of education among the people-of "useful knowledge among all classes of the community. As the Bishop of St. David's,

*

to his great honour, said the other day to his clergy in his primary charge, it is not now the mere rank, the name, of clergyman or gentleman that will insure respect-the people are becoming enlightened, and those now their superiors must themselves advance to remain so: information and good conduct alone can keep them so. Does this look like a decaying nation? The Bishop of Winchester, in his late diocese of Llandaff, sent round interrogatories to his clergy, among which was this" Are there infant schools in your parish-and, if not, why not?" Does a nation seem to be going to decay when this, the most salutary, almost, of all the measures of improving the poor, is thus enforced by a bishop? Heaven knows, our political predilections are not such as to make us extravagant admirers of the right reverend bench, but there is something symptomatic of sound advancement in the mere fact of the existence of prelates who speak thus. At all events it does not look like decay.

It

As to actual wealth-pounds, shillings, pence-commerce, undoubtedly, is the great and grand source of the riches of England. Look at what we are, and look at the physical size of the country, and we think there will be few (except those who return thirteen members to Parliament, and consequently who are interested in pressing their qualification, landed possessions) who will dispute this. Well, then, we ourselves published in our last number a table of the commercial shipping of England, which we think smacked most slenderly of decay. displays a regular increase for several years past, ending, in the year 1827, with the following distressing statement of ships entered to and from all parts of the world: Inwards-British vessels, 20,457; Foreign, 5,820: Total, 26,277: the tonnage of these vessels being, of the British, 2,777,388, and of the Foreign, 715,824: Total, 3,493,212. Outwards, British vessels, 22,049; Foreign, 5,505: Total, 27,554; Tons-British, 2,828,869; Foreign, 732,481; Total, 3,561,350. Truly, this statement is very indicative of decay!

Mr. Cobbett ends by saying that, though we ought to go to war, we cannot, without an equitable adjustment and a reform in Parliament.

We have not the Charge at hand, and do not profess to give Dr. Jenkinson's words -but the above contains their meaning.